Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News Sunday 9/18/05

[Wilms]

All members welcome and encouraged to participate.

Please post Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News on this thread.

If you can:

1. Post stories and announcements you find on the web.

2. Post stories using the "Election Fraud and Reform News Sources" listed here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x371233

3. Re-post stories and announcements you find on DU, providing a link to the original thread with thanks to the Original Poster, too.

4. Start a discussion thread by re-posting a story you see on this thread.


If you want to know how post "News Banners" or other images, go here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=371233#371391

Link to previous Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x393866

[Wilms]

1. Election Reform Conference

Friday, 16 September 2005

announcement: Election Reform Conference

On October 7-8, the Center for Policy Alternatives, Demos and Common Cause will host an Election Reform Conference. This conference is designed to provide policy content, leadership development and networking opportunities for state legislators to advance an election reform agenda in their states. This conference, targeted to state legislators in the Midwest, has three strategic objectives:

* Raise the awareness of state policymakers of the electoral problems that need repair within their states while providing proposals and best practices that provide solutions to these challenges.
* Develop leadership capacity among policymakers and apply that capacity to effect change within their states.
* Connect these legislators to electoral policy experts, reform advocates and citizen organizers and facilitate the creation of action plans to move a reform agenda forward in their states.

This combination of strategic objectives - leadership, education and networks - has been successfully used to reform public policy and enrich democracy in America. --

CPA: Events: Election Reform Conference http://www.stateaction.org/events/electionreform/about.cfm


http://www.votelaw.com/blog/archives/003355.html

[Wilms]

2. Boston: DOJ settles suit against city

Thu Sep 15, 2005

Boston: DOJ settles suit against city

AP reports: The Justice Department said Thursday it has dropped its voting rights lawsuit against Boston after city officials agreed to provide voting materials in Chinese and Vietnamese, and to allow federal observers to monitor polling places.

The agreement comes six weeks after the federal government filed a lawsuit — part of what it said is a national initiative — alleging that Boston's election practices discriminate against Hispanic and Asian American voters who do not speak English. ...

The announcement Thursday said Boston agreed to provide ballots, registration notices and other forms in Spanish, Chinese and Vietnamese. Boston also agreed to provide more training to poll workers regarding the Voting Rights Act.

Also, Boston agreed to a court order appointing federal observers to monitor polling places through 2008, the announcement said. --

-snip/more-

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050915/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/voting_rights_suit_1

[Wilms]

3. New Hampshire: Dems sue RNC and NRSC over phone-jamming

Thursday, 15 September 2005

New Hampshire: Dems sue RNC and NRSC over phone-jamming

AP reports:

By Holly Ramer, Associated Press Writer | September 14, 2005

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- The New Hampshire Democratic Party added more defendants Wednesday to a lawsuit over the jamming of its phone lines on Election Day 2002.

Repeated hang-up calls overwhelmed the party's get-out-the-vote phone banks and a ride-to-the-polls line for more than an hour that day. Former state GOP director Chuck McGee and Republican consultant Allen Raymond pleaded guilty to taking part in the scheme and James Tobin, a former regional director for the Republican National Committee, is scheduled for trial in December.

As those criminal cases proceeded in federal court, Democrats sued the state Republican Party, McGee and Raymond in Hillsborough County Superior Court seeking more information about the plan and reimbursement for its costs of setting up the phone banks.

On Wednesday, they expanded the civil lawsuit to include Tobin, former state GOP chairman John Dowd, the Republican National Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee. -- Democrats add defendants to phone-jamming lawsuit - Boston.com

-snip/more-
http://www.boston.com/news/local/new_hampshire/articles/2005/09/14/democrats_add_defendants_to_phone_jamming_lawsuit

[Wilms]

4. EFF: Florida Disability Rights Advocates Fight to Avert E-voting Debacle

September 15, 2005

EFF, Florida Disability Rights Advocates Fight to Avert E-voting Debacle

Case Puts Security and Auditability at Risk in the Next Election

Volusia County, FL - On Wednesday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals supporting Volusia County, Florida, in an ongoing legal battle to permit the County to consider voting systems that are both accessible to the disabled and auditable for everyone. EFF's brief strongly urged the Court to reject an argument by the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) that Volusia County should be forced to purchase paperless touchscreen voting machines for the upcoming October 11th election. This deadline, EFF argued, would require the County to rush to prepare for the election, possibly jeopardizing its efforts to program the machines, train election and pollworkers, and educate the public. Instead, the County should be given the chance to acquire voting technology that creates an auditable paper trail, as well as provides accessibility features for a wider range of disabled voters.

EFF's brief was joined by the Handicapped Adults of Volusia County (HAVOC), Verifiedvoting.org, Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR), and VotersUnite!

A federal District Court judge ruled against the NFB in July, noting that neither Florida law nor the Americans With Disabilities Act required the County to purchase touchscreen voting machines that leave no paper trail. The NFB appealed the case and continues to demand that the paperless machines be mandated for the October election, despite earlier warnings by County officials that the County needed months to prepare.

"We're disappointed that national disability rights groups have taken such a counter-productive step despite opposition from local disability rights leaders," said EFF Staff Attorney Matt Zimmerman. "At a time when people devoted to meaningful election reform should be working together, it's unfortunate that the NFB is making the dangerous argument that election integrity should be sacrificed for otherwise laudable accessibility goals."

"As a blind voter, I'm strongly opposed to the paperless e-voting machines that the NFB is trying to force onto us," added HAVOC president David Dixon. "I want a voting system that is accessible to as many voters as possible and that also produces an audit trail. The paperless machines are simply the wrong approach, and I support the County's efforts to try to find a better way."

More information on e-voting here.

Contacts:

Matt Zimmerman
Staff Attorney
Electronic Frontier Foundation
[e-mail]

http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2005_09.php#003981

[Wilms]

5. WebCast: TGDC Plenary Meeting - September 29, 2005

TGDC Plenary Meeting

When: September 29, 2005

Where: NIST-Boulder Laboratories
325 Broadway, Building 1, Main Auditorium
Boulder, Colorado 80305-3328

Purpose: To review and approve an outline plan to establish recommendations for future voluntary voting system guidelines.

Topics: Help America Vote Act

Status: The meeting is open to the public. No registration fee is required. Persons planning to attend should notify NIST via e-mail: [e-mail]. Include affiliation and contact information for pre-registration purposes.

Summary: The Technical Guidelines Development Committee (the “Development Committee”) has scheduled a plenary meeting for September 29, 2005. The Development Committee was established to act in the public interest to assist the Executive Director of the Election Assistance Commission in the development of the voluntary voting system guidelines. Further details are available in the Federal Register Notice.

Supplementary Information: All participants are required to show picture identification (for foreign attendees, this is a passport) at the guard station when entering the NIST Boulder campus. They will then need to park their vehicle and enter the Visitor Information Trailer right next to the guard station. There, they will show identification again and be issued a meeting badge.
The NIST police will be randomly searching vehicles as they arrive on site. Meeting attendees may be asked to pull over and allow the police to inspect their vehicle. These are random inspections at the discretion of the police. Upon entrance to Building One, individuals will be required to pass through a magnetometer and may be subject to having any bags, purses, suitcases, briefcases, etc. searched by DoC security. Attendees are required to wear their meeting badge at all times while on campus.

Web Cast: This meeting will be web cast. The URL for this web cast will be available at this site in the near future.

Contact Information: Allan Eustis, 301-975-5099

http://vote.nist.gov/tgdc_plenary20050929.htm

[Wilms]

6. Electronic voting produces questions of reliability

Electronic voting produces questions of reliability

By Mike Himowitz, The Baltimore Sun

Published: Sunday, Sep. 18, 2005

-snip-

But for those of us worried about electronic voting, there was sweet satisfaction in NSF’s choice of Hopkins’ Avi Rubin to head a consortium of voting researchers from six institutions, including Stanford, Rice and Berkeley. Collectively, they’ll be known as A Center for Correct, Usable, Reliable, Auditable and Transparent Elections, or ACCURATE.

For years, Rubin and like-minded computer scientists have been telling election officials, lawmakers, talk show hosts and anyone else who will listen that current electronic voting systems are not necessarily safe, accurate or secure. Actually, it’s worse than that. They’re far more vulnerable to fraud, mischief, sabotage and just plain screw-ups than anyone who makes them or buys them is willing to admit.

Rubin’s tiny computer security group at Hopkins created a national furor two years ago when it found an all-you-can-eat buffet of security flaws in the programming code used in Diebold voting machines.

Outraged by the outing of their sorry secret, Diebold, other manufacturers and voting officials launched an immediate campaign to discredit Rubin and other concerned scientists as academic kooks and anti-democratic troublemakers who were out to subvert the entire election process.

-snip/more-

http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050918/BUSINESS/109180070/-1/news

[Wilms]

7. WV: ES&S selected as new vendor for election equipment

ES&S selected as new vendor for election equipment

By PAMELA BRUST

Friday, September 16, 2005

CHARLESTON - State election officials announced Thursday that Election Systems & Software (ES&S) has been selected as the new vendor for election equipment in West Virginia.

Secretary of State Betty Ireland announced earlier the state will use the optical scan voting method to comply with federal requirements.

Wood County is one of 28 counties using optical scan and purchased its equipment from ES&S. Twelve counties in West Virginia use punch cards, including Kanawha County. Ten counties use paper ballots including neighboring Pleasants and Wirt. The remaining counties use the lever system.

-snip/more-

http://www.newsandsentinel.com/news/story/0916202005_new09_election091605.asp

[Wilms]

8. WA: Anyone watching Tuesday's election?

Sunday, September 18, 2005

Anyone watching Tuesday's election?

By Jerry Cornfield
Herald Columnist

It's been 10 exhausting months in the world of Washington's elections.

Battle fatigue started in November when polls closed on the closest race for governor in state history, a campaign decided after three tallies and a bruising six-month court clash.

While lawyers fenced, legislators passed 11 laws aimed at stamping out election fraud and error, whose pervasive manifestations were uncovered in the very public and very gory autopsy of the governor's election.

Voters vented daily in a thunderclap of criticism that reverberated online and echoed on radio talk shows. Officials in charge had no escape.

Tuesday marks their first major test to demonstrate that they can count every ballot efficiently and correctly. Given all the past attention, one might expect an army of monitors deployed at polling places to make sure.

Not so. The intensity is gone. Those hot under the collar the past 10 months seem to be giving this one a pass.

-snip/more-

http://heraldnet.com/stories/05/09/18/100loc_jerry001.cfm

[Wilms]

9. California’s Voting Integrity: A CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

C a l i f o r n i a ’ s V o t i n g I n t e g r i t y

-snip-

A CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

We ask everyone who has input on what would constitute a reasonably airtight audit protocol (that is easy enough for the average person to follow) to weigh in on what the parameters of an ideal Gold Star Audit protocol should be.

-snip-

If you have some good ideas in this regard and seek the reward of repairing democracy, we need your input. Please submit your paper (using an easy-to-read outline format as provided above), with your contact information, to: [e-mail] by October 15th.

Thereafter, at a date yet to be determined, we will notify finalists of a panel discussion in a town hall setting where these papers may be explained and debated. The final synthesis of this process will be presented to our California legislators for a possible oversight hearing on these remedies to the inadequacies of the current Election Code. From this process we predict legislation will be drafted for the 2006 legislative cycle.

http://www.califelectprotect.net/GoldStar_091305.pdf

Thanks to Einsteinia for posting the discussion:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x393931

[Wilms]

10. IL: Macon County Clerk Bean offers to cut budget request

Macon County Clerk Bean offers to cut budget request

By MARY TALLON - H&R Staff Writer

Saturday, September 17, 2005

-snip-

Bean had requested the budget increase to address sweeping unfunded state and federal mandates on elections. These have required the purchase and maintenance of expensive voting equipment and changed registration deadlines and early voting rules that have forced election staff to work longer hours.

-snip/more/but you get the point-

http://www.herald-review.com/articles/2005/09/17/news/local_news/1010135.txt

[Wilms]

11. Truth Is All Dot Net

Truth Is All

http://truthisall.net

[texpatriot2004]

12. Thank you Wilms for this fantastic post, Thanks TIA for all your

great work and thank you too Autorank.

[MelissaB]

14. I think this deserves it's own post.

No?

[Wilms]

13. Germany: A Vote of No-Confidence for Online Polls

18.09.2005

A Vote of No-Confidence for Online Polls

Jacob Comenetz, DW-WORLD.DE

-snip-

In Germany, when it comes to voting technology, less is often seen as more. The extensive legal framework that determines the rules for elections dictates that a central agency, the PTB, based in Berlin, control the technical viability and security of voting machines.

Thus far, the PTB has only approved a single -- Dutch -- electronic voting machine for use in German elections. Saying that the level of security was inadequate, the agency rejected machines from Diebold Election Systems, an American company whose devices counted most of the votes in the 2004 US presidential election.

Part of the problem with the so-called "black box" voting machines manufactured by Diebold was their use of closed-source software, including Microsoft Windows. Any manipulation or fraud involving this software would be undetectable by the public at large. The PTB does not accept any voting technology with closed-source coding.

-snip/more-

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,1711936,00.html

[Wilms]

15. A Quick-ish DIEB-THROAT Followup...

Blogged by Brad on 9/18/2005

A Quick-ish DIEB-THROAT Followup...

Odds 'n' Ends and the Net Reaction...

PLUS: Brad Appearances on Pacifica and Huffington Post

There's been quite a hullaballoo both here and elsewhere since I posted my exclusive interview with DIEB-THROAT last Thursday pointing to the Cyber Alert from the arm of the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security which warned about Diebold's hackable machines prior to last November's election. That's good. Without noise and vigilance from the citizenry, the story of what has happened and continues to happen to our Electoral System in this country will be drowned out by those who have an interest in the system remaining as is...and real democracy in America will drown along with it.

-snip-

Several Mainstream Media organizations have contacted me since publishing Thursday's story to get more info and/or interviews with DIEB-THROAT. I've done everything I can to accommodate them, and hopefully we'll be seeing more on this story soon. Then again, I was also contacted by many MSM'ers after I broke the amazing Clint Curtis story, and we're still waiting for those exposes to appear in the MSM. So we'll see what happens. Don't wait for them! Make noise yourself right now!

-snip-

Amongst the notable noise out there on the net was this coverage by Mako Yamakura at the Detroit News and Free Press weblog site. Yamakura does a fine job of explaining -- in laymen's terms -- the significance of the US-CERT Cyber Alert discussed in my original article.

-snip-

P.P.S. Arianna has asked me for a piece on this as well for Huffington Post which I hope will be posted soon over.

-snip/more-

http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00001842.htm

Discussion here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x394009

[Wilms]

16. kick n/t