People for the American Way is launching a campaign today aimed at getting our new Congress to take up the cause of election reform. Here’s a bit of the into to their petition:

Tell Congress to make Election Reform a top priority.

In the first 100 hours of the new Congress, the new Democratic House majority will be tackling many of the issues they were sent to Washington to fix, including ethics and corruption, the minimum wage, prescription drugs, implementation of the 9/11 Commission suggestions and stem cell research.

Let’s make sure ELECTION REFORM is at the top of their agenda as well!

When it comes to fair elections, we are not there yet. Despite encouraging results on Election Day, the fact remains that tens of thousands of eligible voters were disenfranchised this year — possibly making the difference in a few key races, but undoubtedly presenting us with an immediate problem to solve. Together, we need to send the message to Congress that before we can move our democracy forward, we need to make sure we have a democracy in the first place.

Help make election reform part of the new Congress’ “100-hour plan.”

Our goal is to hand-deliver stacks of petitions to the new Democratic Leadership before session starts and show them, in black and white, that there is a real groundswell around election reform, and Americans demand fair elections.

PFAW’s proactive 2007 agenda for expanding democracy and protecting the right to vote includes the following objectives, on the federal and state levels.

Resolve problems with electronic voting machines. Recurring machine errors, inadequate poll worker training and serious security flaws with both the machines and their vote-tabulating software are enormous threats to the integrity of American elections. These problems must be addressed, not only to restore voter confidence, but to protect the fundamental right of every voter to have his or her vote accurately counted. Unaccountable, unverifiable, unauditable voting must end.

Stop deceptive practices and voter intimidation by passing federal and state legislation to prohibit and punish dirty tricks, deliberate misinformation, and other misleading measures that keep people away from the ballot box (like the misleading robo-calls you may have seen news reports about).

Repeal or overturn restrictive voter ID requirements that disenfranchise eligible voters without improving the integrity of elections.

Eliminate restrictions on voter registration that disenfranchise entire communities (like burdensome proof of citizenship and ID requirements).

Continue to protect minority voting rights and important legislation like the Voting Rights Act.

If this is an agenda you support, take the first crucial step with us and sign our petition urging the House to make election reform part of its platform during the 110th Congress’ first 100 hours.

If you have a minute, consider signing the petition… Remember, nothing else matters if we don’t have a way to verify the vote.

Did a British screenwriter stumble onto a clue as to who may have programmed Sirhan Sirhan to kill Bobby Kennedy? Here’s a clip from the Guradian:

…As Kennedy lies dying on the pantry floor, Sirhan is arrested as the lone assassin. He carries the motive in his shirt-pocket (a clipping about Kennedy’s plans to sell bombers to Israel) and notebooks at his house seem to incriminate him. But the autopsy report suggests Sirhan could not have fired the shots that killed Kennedy. Witnesses place Sirhan’s gun several feet in front of Kennedy, but the fatal bullet is fired from one inch behind. And more bullet-holes are found in the pantry than Sirhan’s gun can hold, suggesting a second gunman is involved. Sirhan’s notebooks show a bizarre series of “automatic writing” – “RFK must die RFK must be killed – Robert F Kennedy must be assassinated before 5 June 68” – and even under hypnosis, he has never been able to remember shooting Kennedy. He recalls “being led into a dark place by a girl who wanted coffee”, then being choked by an angry mob. Defence psychiatrists conclude he was in a trance at the time of the shooting and leading psychiatrists suggest he may have be a hypnotically programmed assassin.

Three years ago, I started writing a screenplay about the assassination of Robert Kennedy, caught up in a strange tale of second guns and “Manchurian candidates” (as the movie termed brainwashed assassins). As I researched the case, I uncovered new video and photographic evidence suggesting that three senior CIA operatives were behind the killing. I did not buy the official ending that Sirhan acted alone, and started dipping into the nether-world of “assassination research”, crossing paths with David Sanchez Morales, a fearsome Yaqui Indian.

Morales was a legendary figure in CIA covert operations. According to close associate Tom Clines, if you saw Morales walking down the street in a Latin American capital, you knew a coup was about to happen. When the subject of the Kennedys came up in a late-night session with friends in 1973, Morales launched into a tirade that finished: “I was in Dallas when we got the son of a bitch and I was in Los Angeles when we got the little bastard.” From this line grew my odyssey into the spook world of the 60s and the secrets behind the death of Bobby Kennedy.

Working from a Cuban photograph of Morales from 1959, I viewed news coverage of the assassination to see if I could spot the man the Cubans called El Gordo – The Fat One. Fifteen minutes in, there he was, standing at the back of the ballroom, in the moments between the end of Kennedy’s speech and the shooting. Thirty minutes later, there he was again, casually floating around the darkened ballroom while an associate with a pencil moustache took notes…

I should be cleaning house right now, or reading what Seymour Hersh has to say about Iran, or posting an update on Ken Ham’s creationism museum, but I’m stuck in this Bobby Kennedy assassination rut now that I can’t seem to get out of. I know my time would be better spent on a million other things, but I’m knee deep in RFK assassination porn and I can’t seem to extract myself… If I don’t make it to Thanksgiving dinner, you might want to come by and check up on me.