Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News Tuesday, 9/26/06

[Melissa G]

Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News Tuesday, 9/26/06


"Court victory lets preserved Ohio 2004 ballots tell new tales of theft and fraud as indictments and convictions mount" see post one for details!

The Truth Will OUT!!! Do your part to Help!

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 new Spring 2006 Edition of "Election Fraud and Reform News Directory" listed here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x407240

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.




Please "Recommend" for the Greatest Page (it's the link just below).

[Melissa G]

1. Fitrakis & Wasserman Ballots Tell New Tales of Theft and Fraud

"Court victory lets preserved Ohio 2004 ballots tell new tales of theft and fraud as indictments and convictions mount"
http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_bob_fitr_060925_court_victory_lets_p.htm

by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman

http://www.opednews.com



September 25, 2006

Ohio election protection activists have won a landmark court battle to preserve the ballots from 2004's disputed presidential election, and researchers studying those ballots continue to find new evidence that the election was, indeed, stolen. Among other things, large numbers of consecutive votes in different precincts for George W. Bush make it appear ever more likely that the real winner in 2004 should have been John Kerry. Meanwhile, indictments and prison terms are mounting among key players in that tainted contest.

In King Lincoln Bronzeville Neighborhood Association et. al. v. J. Kenneth Blackwell, three community groups and five individuals have won a precedent-setting federal decision preserving the ballots from the 2004 election. By federal law those ballots could have been destroyed en masse September 3, twenty-two months after the November 2, 2004 balloting. Republican Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell gave every indication that he would order the records to be destroyed as soon as he could. Admissions have already come from a few counties that illegally disposed of election-related materials well before the federal deadline. By law, all such documents were to be preserved, under lock and key, right up to the federal deadline.

While running the 2004 election, Blackwell served as the very active co-chair of Ohio's Bush-Cheney campaign. He is now the GOP nominee for governor, but is trailing substantially in all major polls behind Democratic Congressman Ted Strickland.

Blackwell was put on notice by Columbus Attorney Cliff Arnebeck and others who filed the King Lincoln suit contending illegal discrimination against black and young voters in 2004. The suit is based on widespread allegations involving mal-distribution of voting machines, dubious vote counts, race-based voter suppression and many other questionable occurrences before, during and after the 2004 balloting. The suit asked Judge Algernon Marbley of the federal district court in Columbus to order Blackwell to force Ohio's 88 county boards of elections (BOEs) to preserve ballots and other election-related materials so the full extent of the allegations could be proven.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_bob_fitr_060925_court_victory_lets_p.htm

[Melissa G]

2. Parties Lining Up Lawyers For Election Day Challenges

Parties Lining Up Lawyers For Election Day Challenges

SPECIAL SECTION






Reported by: A.P.
Web produced by: Neil Relyea
Photographed by: 9News
First posted: 9/25/2006 6:43:34 PM
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- Democrats are openly lining up election-day teams of lawyers around the country to fight what they allege could be GOP efforts to suppress votes.

Republicans quietly say they have their own strategies for potential problems Nov. 7 but won't give specifics.

They say Democrats' concerns are overblown.

"They're going to have an awful lot of people standing around with nothing to do," said Bill Todd, a Republican lawyer in Columbus who expects to work for the state GOP on election day.

The parties' efforts come in the wake of the 2000 recount in Florida and irregularities in Ohio's elections two years ago. Those problems included long lines, a shortage of voting machines and some electronic machines that malfunctioned or miscounted votes.

http://www.wcpo.com/news/2006/local/09/25/oh_elections.html

[Melissa G]

3. Paper ballot question for Sarasota question appealed by state

Published Monday, September 25, 2006

Paper ballot question for Sarasota question appealed by state

By DAVID ROYSE
Associated Press Writer

TALLAHASSEE, Fla.
The state agency that oversees elections is appealing a Sarasota judge's decision to allow voters there to choose whether the county should have a voting system with a paper record in 2008.

Secretary of State Sue Cobb said Monday that the matter needs to be decided to maintain uniform rules for what constitutes a ballot.

The question of whether to use a voting system that includes a "paper trail" in the county will still be put to voters there Nov. 7.

State officials aren't asking judges to keep the question off the ballot, saying that even if voters say yes, there will still be almost two years to work through the legal ramifications and to void the vote if an appeal is successful.

Circuit Judge Robert B. Bennett Jr. ruled earlier this month in favor of a group, Sarasota Alliance for Fair Elections, that wants an auditable trail of paper records created by voting machines. The group collected enough signatures to get the measure before voters, but the county fought it, saying it was unconstitutional.

http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060925/APN/609251756

[Melissa G]

4. Common Cause Says Measure for Emergency Paper Ballots this November Would

Common Cause Says Measure for Emergency Paper Ballots this November Would be 'Ideal'
Blog Statement by V.P. Barbara Burt Refers to our 'LET AMERICA VOTE ACT' Legislation as 'The LEAVE NO VOTER BEHIND Act'
Contact Congress (Who We Hear May be About to Act!) Now!
Barbara Burt, the Vice-President and Director of Election Reform at the non-partisan Common Cause, has posted a statement this morning on the organization's blog in support of the 'LET AMERICA VOTE ACT' (Emergency Paper Ballot legislation) that we proposed last week as an emergency measure that Congress could pass in their few legislative days left before the election recess.

The idea is to ensure that registered voters who bother to show up to the polls this November could at least cast their vote — even if the voting machines are malfunctioning or unavailable, as has been the case in primary after primary election so far this year.

The measure should make it illegal to turn away a properly registered voter without allowing them to cast a vote. Giving them a Provisional Ballot is not an alternative, since those ballots are often not counted at all.

As Burt writes in her blog item in support of the initiative:

This is an initiative that would ensure that every precinct stock paper ballots for use in an emergency or, possibly, in case voters demand to vote on paper. It would be ideal to get this passed through Congress before the election, but Congress is leaving Washington at the end of this week. So chances of passage are slim (although they are capable of fast action on ocassion).
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3528

[Melissa G]

5. Diebold: Voter Registration Machines Ready For November Election

Diebold: Voter Registration Machines Ready For November Election

POSTED: 6:42 pm EDT September 25, 2006


ANNAPOLIS, Md. -- Steps are being taken to make sure some glitches that interrupted the voting during Maryland's primary election do not happen again in November.

On Monday, the Maryland State Board of Elections demonstrated revisions to the electronic polling system that caused so many problems. Diebold officials said the voter registration machines are ready to go for the Nov. 7 election.

During the primary, a malfunction caused the system to reboot after only 40 or 50 registrations. Diebold hadn't tested a large enough pool of registrations to catch the glitch.


Diebold officials said the software flaw is now fixed. The Board of Elections has been promised that all 3,550 voter registration machines will be checked to make sure every thing is ready for the November election.

If not, the state will turn to paper ballots.

http://www.nbc4.com/politics/9931524/detail.html

[Melissa G]

6. Machines’ vote quirk miffs state overseers

Machines’ vote quirk miffs state overseers
Associated Press
INDIANAPOLIS – A voting machine company is working to fix a software glitch on 5,000 machines in Indiana that prevents voters from casting a straight-party ballot, but local election officials said they have no concerns about the machines.

Officials with the Indiana Election Commission were upset that MicroVote General Corp. did not tell them sooner about the software problem. The general election is Nov. 7.

“I am disturbed by their lack of candor, and the commission is disturbed by their lack of candor,” said commission Chairman Tom Wheeler, who sent a three-page letter to every county election official using MicroVote’s Infinity system.

The Infinity voting machines are used in 47 Indiana counties, including several in northeast Indiana. The company disabled the straight-party voting function so the machines could be certified for use in the primary election, but did not tell election officials.

http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/fortwayne/news/local/15610674.htm

[Melissa G]

7. Trust in machines is hard to come by

Trust in machines is hard to come by
A judge rules that the secretary of state's office botched the certification of Colorado's new voting machines, but he's right to allow their use.



Squeezed by the calendar, Denver District Judge Lawrence Manzanares made the only call possible last week in ruling that the Nov. 7 election should go forward with electronic voting machines that were used in the August primary.

A group of Colorado citizens, backed by a California-based organization that has challenged new voting machines in other states as well, had asked Manzanares to ban use of four types of voting machines that had been certified by the state.

snip
The fact that Secretary of State Gigi Dennis and her staff failed at what should have been their most important assignment this year is sobering, and has left the state's voters in an uncomfortable position. It should be a top priority for the new secretary of state - Republican Mike Coffman and Democrat Ken Gordon are vying for the job - to ensure the security of voting systems and restore citizen confidence.

http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_4394644

[Melissa G]

8. A surefire election forecast

A surefire election forecast
By Ed Quillen
Denver Post Columnist



Here is a safe prediction for this year's general election: If any contest is remotely close, there will be litigation about the accuracy of the vote.

Indeed, there already has been litigation. Denver District Judge Lawrence Manzares ruled last week that the electronic voting machines to be used in this election do not comply with the security procedures required by state law. Even so, he declared, to switch to another voting method now, just six weeks before the election, "would create more problems than it would solve."

No voting system is perfect, including the traditional paper ballot. In my days as editor of the Breckenridge newspaper, nearly 30 years ago, I occasionally drank lunch with an attorney who had many years under his belt. He had been quite active in precinct-level machine politics during his youth, he said, and he once reminisced about how "the damn Republicans in North Denver used such soft lead pencils that it was really hard to erase their votes and fix their ballots."

But at least there's some physical evidence of tampering with paper ballots. (For these electronic wonders, you might find something educational at http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting.)

http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_4394653

[Melissa G]

9. Evoting? Get ready to type in those write-ins

Evoting? Get ready to type in those write-ins

By JOHNNY JOHNSON
The Daily Sentinel

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

You might be one of those voters who would prefer an alternative to those whose names appear on the printed ballots. You might also be one of those voters who would like to try out the county's new electronic voting machine — the one with a scroll wheel that operates like that of an iPod mp3 player.

If so, you might find yourself wondering how to 'write-in' a candidate, when there's nowhere to write.

Luckily, election officials picked a machine that has "thought of everything," according to assistant Elections Administrator Todd Stallings.

Giving a quick demonstration Monday, Stallings twisted the eSlate scroll wheel, first counter-clockwise then clockwise to cycle through the choices.

Once the correct choice is highlighted — in this case "Write-in" — Stallings hit the "Enter" button.

http://www.dailysentinel.com/news/content/news/stories/2006/09/26/write_ins.html

[Melissa G]

10. Georgia: No Photo ID Required At Polls This Year

News 4 Jax.com

Georgia: No Photo ID Required At Polls This Year
State Plans Appeal

POSTED: 7:04 am EDT September 26, 2006



ATLANTA -- Voters will not be required to show a picture ID at Georgia polls in November after the elections board decided Friday not to hasten its appeal of a judge's decision that threw out the identification law.

A majority of the elections board members said they disagreed with the judge's ruling on Tuesday, but believed it was too late to try to get the decision overturned. Absentee voting begins Monday for the Nov. 7 general election.

"If we prevail, the rules will have changed midstream," said board member Randy Evans.


The board voted 3-1 to direct state lawyers to appeal the ruling, but did not ask the appeals judge to decide the case quickly.

http://www.news4jax.com/news4georgia/9935050/detail.html

[rumpel]

11. US Count Votes Press Release: The Election Integrity Audit

PR WEB

The National Election Data Archive’s Kathy Dopp and Frank Stenger developed a method for calculating election audit sizes that would detect any electronic miscount that could alter an election outcome, for all auditable voting systems, particularly when voters verify that their paper ballot records are correct.

Salt Lake City, Utah (PRWEB) September 25, 2006 -- The elections industry is the only major industry not routinely subjected to independent manual audits. In any field, electronic mistakes or tampering would go undetected in the absence of audits. Banks, churches and businesses are subjected to routine independent audits to detect and prevent errors and embezzlement.

Virtually all U.S. votes will be counted electronically by 2008. Electronic voting systems make it possible for one person to rig a state-wide election and for electronic errors and failures to produce wrong results.

Vote counts determine who controls budgets of millions to trillions of dollars. Yet only perhaps fifteen states conduct any audits – manual checks - of vote count accuracy and their procedures are not sufficient to detect wrongfully altered outcomes in close races. In some states audit procedures are not independent; audit results are not made public; audit results are not used to correct discrepancies found between manual and electronic vote counts; or the audits are performed after election results are certified.

The lack of detailed election audits is especially alarming in light of the fact that U.S. jurisdictions publicly report vote counts aggregated in a way that hides evidence of vote count errors, machine problems, and tampering. Forensic analysis of election data - broken out by precinct and by vote type – could be used to reveal significant irregular patterns that result from partisan vote padding, under-votes, or vote-switching. However, because no jurisdictions routinely release these detailed election results, candidates would need to contest their elections; make legal open records requests to obtain the data; and have it analyzed – all prior to conceding.

Solution: The National Election Data Archive (NEDA)’s Kathy Dopp and Frank Stenger developed a solution for calculating vote count audit sample sizes to ensure electronic vote count integrity in all auditable voting systems, particularly when voters verify that their paper ballot records are correct. Properly calculated and conducted audits – hand counts of paper ballots performed to check the accuracy of electronic vote counts - can be performed in jurisdictions using audit-able voting systems.

“The Election Integrity Audit” method has been supported by the work of Roy Saltman, who was instrumental in initiating the first federal engineering and procedural performance standards for voting systems and who proposed similar election audit size calculations in 1975; and by Ron Rivest of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology whose September 2006 paper “Estimating the Size of a Statistical Audit” proposes similar election audit size estimation that can be done with a calculator; and by Howard Stanislevic who proposed a similar method in August 2006. The election audit calculation work of Dopp and Stenger is new because it provides a numerical method to directly calculate the optimal election audit size.

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/9/prweb441769.htm

and at:

http://uscountvotes.org/ucvInfo/release/ElectionIntegrityAudit-release.pdf
http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/ElectionIntegrityAudit.pdf

[Melissa G]

12. Scholars: Ballot access is a must -Mexico

Scholars: Ballot access is a must

By Irma Sandoval and John M. Ackerman
El Universal
Martes 26 de septiembre de 2006

Mexico now has two presidents-elect. One officially recognized by the electoral authorities — Felipe Calderón — and the other proclaimed the “legitimate president” by millions of followers — Andrés Manuel López Obrador. There is one way to settle this crisis. As in the aftermath of Bush vs. Gore in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, a group of Mexico’s newspapers should be allowed to conduct a canvass of the ballots.
Unfortunately, the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), which organizes the presidential elections, has announced that it will not open the ballots to public scrutiny.

The institute appears bent on repeating the government’s performance after the 1988 presidential election, in which the computers “malfunctioned.” It is widely believed that massive fraud allowed Carlos Salinas de Gortari, the candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), to mysteriously overcome the early lead of the leftist candidate, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas. To cover its tracks, the government then quickly burned the evidence.

The Freedom of Information Act, enacted in 2002, is one of the best in the world. It gives full priority to transparency, stating that everything should be made public except when disclosure might harm economic stability or national security. But even this “reserved” information must be made available after 12 years have passed.

http://www2.eluniversal.com.mx/pls/impreso/noticia.html?id_nota=34923&tabla=articulos

[Melissa G]

13. Immigration Reform, in Pieces

Editorial
Immigration Reform, in Pieces


Published: September 26, 2006
This can’t be what President Bush had in mind when he gave a prime-time speech about immigration in May. “An immigration reform bill needs to be comprehensive,” he told the nation, “because all elements of this problem must be addressed together, or none of them will be solved at all.”

That was then. Now we have the Republican-controlled House passing a pre-election lineup of narrow enforcement measures packaged to give voters a false impression of resolve. Mr. Bush has even given up talking a good game on immigration: he says he will sign the Republican legislation as a “first step” toward the real reform he has said he wants but has done depressingly little to achieve.

Republican leaders want you to think they are hard at work overhauling the broken immigration system in the last days before going home. But don’t be fooled by the noise and dust. These are piecemeal rehashes of legislation the House passed last December. They include a 700-mile border fence that would cost more than $2 billion and would not work, and tough-sounding but profoundly undemocratic bills that would allow the indefinite detention of some illegal immigrants seeking asylum, make it easier to deport people without judicial review, and require voters to prove citizenship before participating in federal elections. The latter measure attacks an imaginary problem — voting fraud by illegal immigrants — and would disenfranchise countless Americans who are old and poor.

Among the most poisonous provisions is one that would give state and local police agencies authority to enforce federal immigration laws. Police departments big and small have bristled at the idea, saying they lack the expertise and the resources to enforce immigration law. They say it would cripple crime fighting by severing hard-won relationships with potential victims and witnesses: immigrants who will end up fearing and avoiding them.

But for every police chief who sees this as a foolish attack on law enforcement, there is a sheriff or local politician, like Steve Levy, the Suffolk County executive on Long Island, who is just itching to seize control of his or her own little corner of the immigration battlefield. It’s an every-mayor-for-himself approach that would only worsen the ad hoc incoherence of the national immigration system.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/26/opinion/26tue1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

[Melissa G]

14. Stricter Voting Laws Carve Latest Partisan Divide

Stricter Voting Laws Carve Latest Partisan Divide


By JOYCE PURNICK
Published: September 26, 2006
MESA, Ariz. — Eva Charlene Steele, a recent transplant from Missouri, has no driver’s license or other form of state identification. So after voting all her adult life, Mrs. Steele will not be voting in November because of an Arizona law that requires proof of citizenship to register.

“I have mixed emotions,” said Mrs. Steele, 57, who uses a wheelchair and lives in a small room in an assisted-living center. “I could see where you would want to keep people who don’t belong in the country from voting, but there has to be an easier way.”

Russell K. Pearce, a leading proponent of the new requirement, offers no apologies.

“You have to show ID for almost everything — to rent a Blockbuster movie!” said Mr. Pearce, a Republican in the State House of Representatives. “Nobody has the right to cancel my vote by voting illegally. This is about political corruption.”

(EDITORIAL GAG PUKE inserted here...for republican nasty BS)
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/26/us/politics/26voting.html?hp&ex=1159243200&en=f73197cb48a65819&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[Melissa G]

15. Politics and the Price of Gas

DU discussion here...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x450995
Politics and the Price of Gas
GRANVILLE, Ohio -- The price of gas is an ongoing story on the Ramble. As we've driven from district to district, we've kept a close eye out to see how low gas will go.
Last night, exiting off of Route 16 we saw the first signs for sub-$2 gas. Three stations offered fuel for $1.98 or $1.99 per gallon. By the time we reached our hotel -- in Newark, Ohio -- the cost was back up to $2.19.

snip
The politics of gas are fascinating in these congressional districts as Democrats in nearly every one are hammering their Republican opponents for accepting donations from oil and gas companies. Despite the drop in the cost of a gallon of gas, most Democrats insist they are not concerned that it will blunt one of their key issues in the fall campaign.

Cincinatti City Councilman John Cranley (D), who is challenging Rep. Steve Chabot (R) in the fall, said the declining price at the pump made little difference to his call for a new energy policy. "The government should not be subsidizing the most proiftbale corporations in the history of the world," he said.

In the midst of the back and forth on gas prices comes a new poll from Gallup that shows large numbers of the American public are skeptical about the timing of the cost cuts. Forty-two percent of the sample said that the Bush Administration had "deliberately manipulated the price of gasoline so that it would decrease before this fall's elections," while 53 percent said the price drop had nothing to do with the President.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2006/09/more_gas.html