Palm Beach County update

[bailey77]

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/politics/content/local_news/epaper/2005/02/21/c1c_geo_0221.html

PALM BEACH POST

Electronic voting critic Bev Harris advised local activists to broaden their ideological base and file lots of lawsuits. Calls for closer scrutiny of voting systems have been embraced most enthusiastically by the Angry Left.

"Be very careful about exclusionary political conversations," Harris warned about 15 members of the Palm Beach Coalition for Election Reform. "The perception among the right wing who are interested in this issue is that it's been co-opted by the left."

Wednesday night's gathering was bipartisan — both the Democratic and Green parties were represented. The coalition has no Republicans, but co-Chairwoman Susan Van Houten says, "We want to include them. We're reaching out."

Harris also advised the coalition to emulate anti-smoking activists.
"This is like the tobacco litigation where you have to throw a whole bunch of lawsuits against the wall," Harris said. "You throw them against the wall and you share your discovery, and that's how you move the thing forward."

2004 electronic voting logs sought
By George Bennett
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/politics/content/local_news/epaper/2005/02/17/m4b_blackbox_0217.html

Thursday, February 17, 2005

The 2004 presidential election is history, but the investigation of it continues for some hardy activists... A leading national critic of electronic voting plunked down a $4,500 advance payment at the Palm Beach County elections office Wednesday for internal logs from voting and tabulating machines used last fall.

The check was handed to new Elections Supervisor Arthur Anderson by Bev Harris of Renton, Wash., the founder of the group Black Box Voting.

Harris is in Florida this week as part of her group's ongoing national "fraud audit" of the election. Anderson said he doesn't know how long it would take to supply the data, which include paper summary tapes from each of the 4,270 touch-screen machines used last fall and log entries from the county's central tabulating system.

Black Box Voting asked for the information in November and filed a lawsuit accusing former Elections Supervisor Theresa LePore of stonewalling the group's public-records request.

LePore's office in December calculated that the information requested by Harris would cost $4,227 for copying and staff time. Harris said she came up with the $4,500 estimate after additional talks with elections staffers. Harris said the records should show whether vote totals add up and whether individual voting machines had to be shut down for trouble during Election Day.

Black Box Voting has not dropped its lawsuit against the elections office, but Harris said Wednesday that Anderson "seems very cooperative. I'm very certain we're going to get the records."

==================

Black Box Voting investigators Kathleen Wynne and Bev Harris met privately with new Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor Arthur Anderson on Thursday, Feb. 17, to discuss concerns and clean-up strategies for Palm Beach County. Anderson is arranging for an independent review panel to evaluate the touch-screen voting system.

[bailey77]

1. Reading over the forum as a whole, it is apparent that many

are looking to political party hacks to take the lead in this issue.

Be very careful about exclusionary political conversations

Very early on, the election integrity issue, including the voting machine issue, was tackled by citizens representing both the left and the right. A search of the archives at FreeRepublic.com will yield many thoughtful posts on voting machine vulnerabilities that are indistinguishable from those at DU.

Slashdot has frequently provided brutal analyses of electronic voting systems, representing citizens from all sides of the political spectrum.

If you think you will win this issue by keeping it in the partisan realm, you are in for some real frustration and you also do a disservice to half of America.

There is a lot of lip service to the statement "it's a nonpartisan issue" but many don't really seem to believe that Americans of all political persuasions really do want fair elections.

[Wilms]

2. Well said. n/t

[berniew1]

3. Documentation of touchscreen fraud, dirty tricks, suppression in P B Count

http://www.flcv.com/fraudpat.html
http://www.flcv.com/palmbeao.html
http://www.flcv.com/pbvsum.html