Colorado Bill Would Ban Lying Cops

Käthe Kollwitz- Mother with her Dead
Son sculpture, October 22, 1937.
Kollwitz  (July 8, 1867 – April 22, 1945)
is a famous ant-fascist artist who
lived in Germany.

Madison, Wisconsin — It's inherently indecent to bear false witness, to defame and malign another.

Most of us adopt this ethic as axiomatic. But it's likely your local police dept is not among those institutions committed to truth, dedicated to the proposition that false witness is a cruel evil.

Alex Burness reports in the Colorado Independent that proposed Colorado legislation, SB-166, would ban from serving in state police departments the "estimated average of 70 Colorado cops who are fired every year for knowingly lying in an official capacity."

This legislation is a good start as a corrective to the rampant dishonesty and indecency that run through the cultures and practices of your local police department.

Other states, especially mine, should follow Colorado's lead.

Wisc AG Van Hollen hosts McCain 'victory' party

From the Capital Times (Madison, Wis), John Nichols reports:

VAN HOLLEN TO HOST McCAIN "VICTORY" PARTY
After claiming for weeks that there was nothing partisan about his ambitious election season regimen of suing the Government Accountability Board and dispatching attorneys and special agents to polling places where high Democratic turnouts might reasonably be expected, Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen comes out of the closet Tuesday night.
He's co-hosting the 'Wisconsin GOP Election Night Party' -- where supporters of John McCain and Sarah Palin will toast their successes or drown their sorrows -- at a Waukesha hotel.
Van Hollen, a McCain campaign co-chair, will be joined by other non-partisan good government activists like Republican congressmen Paul Ryan and Jim Sensenbrenner.

Wisconsin is in the bag folks, no one is complacent here. We'll handle Van Hollen and the pricks here.

But Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, Colorado, Nevada and even Pennsylvania, any obstruction problems voting there, go the polls prepared:

- 1-866-OUR-VOTE Hotline (1-866-687-8683)
- Find your local Obama office and vote prepared to call them, http://www.barackobama.com/index.php
- Find your local paper's office and prepare to call them

Fighting Suppression in Swing States

If you can't convince them to vote for you: Stop as many as you can from voting.

That's the GOP's mantra, but Barack Obama and a coalition of groups are fighting back.

From the Brennan Center for Justice:

Sean "P. Diddy" Combs and Russell Simmons have teamed up with the Advancement Project and the Brennan Center for Justice on a voter education campaign in the key states of Florida, Virginia, Ohio and Colorado.

The campaign kicked-off Saturday, with the release of Public Service Announcements, released to radio, which gave voters important information to bring ID and to contact 1-866-OUR-VOTE with any problems.

Radio ads can be found here.

When voters show up at the polls and have their eligibility questioned, they may be asked to vote with 'provisional ballots.' Known as a fail-safe for voters who are being challenged or who are not on the rolls, provisional ballots should be treated skeptically.

Rules vary from state to state, but these ballots are often counted only if the voter appears in a voter registration database or if the voter can provide evidence of his eligibility in the days after the election. For this reason, many provisional ballots go uncounted. In the 2008 primaries, 40% of provisional ballots were ultimately rejected.

The bottom line is that provisional ballots are not counted like regular ballots and are easy to toss out, as the New York Times reported last week. In a close race, results can rest on how many provisional ballots are ultimately counted.

Our experts can talk about voter purges, challenges, provisional ballots, voting machines, registration problems, intimidation, judicial elections, and other election day issues.