Investigative Reporter needs Election Center info, Texas Conference

WillYourVoteBCounted

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Fri Feb-04-05 07:40 PM
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Investigative Reporter needs Election Center info, Texas Conference

An investigative reporter is getting ready to do a new story on
The Election Center a group that advises election officials while also accepting funding from ES&S, Diebold and Sequoia.

We need to get our hands on an actual brochure describing the Austin Texas conference going on right now.
We already have seen the online version as listed at the
Election Center website.

Repeat, we need the actual brochure or invitation that gives details about the event.

Background on The Election Center, information that hasn't been brought to light before:

In their 2003 IRS filing, fully one-sixth of their
money from the last four years came from investments and large donations.
This includes $65,000 from groups that each donated totals larger than $11,700.

First, look at the Agenda for the (happening-now)
conference in Austin, TX:

http://www.electioncenter.org/conferences/HAVA/Austin.doc

and

http://www.electioncenter.org/conferences/HAVA/AustinProgram.doc

(both on http://www.electioncenter.org/conferences/HAVA/HAVA.htm)

Notice that pretty much everything is the same, but look at that Friday
2:00pm - 3:15pm session,
"A Look at the Technology Available".

The first document explicitly lists Diebold, ES&S,
and Sequoia as the "available technology"; the second document has these references removed.
If you go to File -> Properties for each one, you see that
Austin.doc was written 11/29/2004 by Ernest Hawkins
(a member of TEC board),
and that AustinProgram.doc was modified 12/01/2004 to have those references removed.

2. TEC is building a huge cash reserves. Attached is a graph showing
their income, their expenses, their cash reserve, and their "public
support percentage", as calculated in their IRS Form 990 Filings.
Filings going back to 1997 are available at http://www.guidestar.org/

At the end of 2003, they had accumulated nearly $900,000, up from less than $300,000 in 2001.

This for a group with annual operating expenses of about
$500,000 (of which $100,000 goes toward the paycheck of Doug Lewis).

3. TEC insisted that the Potomac cruise wasn't that important, it wasn't that glamorous, and it was harmless fun.
HOWEVER, if we use the "Wayback Machine" from the Web Archive:

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.electioncenter.org/

we come across this page:

http://web.archive.org/web/20050201202649/http://www.electioncenter.org/attn/2000events.html

Note the last activity planned for 2001:

Greece: Athens June (13 days) Return to Birth Place of Democracy

2 Days Athens, 7 days cruising to Greek Isles, Istanbul
(Turkey), Alexandria (Egypt), Jerusalem, 2 more days in Athens
with one day of travel each way from New York (travel from your
originating city can be included)

Did TEC (and possibly the vendors) sponsor a two-week jaunt around the Mediterranean?
Future versions of the website don't mention anything
new (at least not that archive.org saw), but what happened? Was the
cruise cancelled? Did it happen? Who went? Who paid?

(and finally, the reason for the Subject line)

4. The 2003 IRS filing includes assets of $142,916 from "Unrealized
Gains". I'm not an accountant, but I seem to recall that this means
that TEC owns stock.

I think the public MUST know if a group that is
presenting itself as a fact-finding non-profit owns any
stock whatsoever in the vendors whose products they push
and from whom they have already admitted accepting money.

Imagine if they own any stock in voting-related companies
and are pushing the products of these companies.

Those are the questions. I hope we can get some answers.