Election Reform, Fraud+News-Wed-1/3/07 Guide-Stars & "Idealism As The Soul Of America"

[kpete]

Election Reform, Fraud, & News Wed 1/3/07
January 3, 2007 at 04:40:26

Guide-Stars & "Idealism As The Soul Of America"

Idealism: The Soul of America

by Paul Lehto

The subject of "realism" in politics is fascinating, because for one thing the mere mention of "realism" often causes people to sell out their ideals, usually for absolutely nothing. In such a case, "realism" is in fact a fraud and a rip-off in which one hands over one's most precious ideals, whatever those may be, and exchanges them for precisely nothing. In some cases, these ideals come straight out of the Constitution or Declaration of Independence and get this ignominious treatment by the forces of so-called "realism."

If you're concerned that following my critique of realism means that you'll somehow lose touch with the practical aspects, fear not: There surely is an important place in politics for balanced and nuanced assessments of a pragmatic and utilitarian nature. But, when one's most important ideals are involved, like the ideals a country's Constitution is based on, or around which one organizes one's most important life concepts and life values, then other more important considerations come into play with sacred ideals invoked.

..........................


When it comes to our country, the ideals of the Founders were so bold and visionary that we are still working on some of them, like Thomas Paine's ideal of no disenfranchisement of the right to vote, ever, or for any reason, except for trying to take away the vote of others.

Even if we never fully accomplish our ideals, they are nevertheless critically important because they are the guide-stars that orient our lives, and without them we would truly get lost and might well simply stay lost. In fact, we use ideals constantly, whether we acknowledge it or not. Thus, in the area of our most precious freedoms, we should be on guard for the unintended effects of "realism" which may cause us to trash our ethical guide-stars, at moments when they are most needed: at any important moment in our personal lives or the life of our country. Far from being "unrealistic" the ideals of freedom, liberty, equality, opportunity, compassion and human rights are indeed the soul of America. America is well known as the first country founded solely on ideas. Indeed, "America has never forgotten and will never forget" the nobler things that brought her into being and that light her path." -- Bernard Mannes Baruch (1870-1965)

Read the rest of this BEAUTIFUL Piece at:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_paul_leh_070103_idealism_3a_the_soul_o.htm

Paper Sturdy Enough For Handling Recounts/Storage

Election Integrity Experts Recommend Investigation and Legislation


The question of ensuring an accurate, transparent count of the people's vote has been at the forefront of concerns of many individuals and groups, both private and governmental. how to guarantee that the actual will of the people is carried out. This week the U.S. Senate and House will be meeting and voting on recommendations to improve the voting system. Several of the nation's foremost election integrity experts have spent the last several months grappling with some of these issues and have come up with 14 recommendations for federal legislation to ensure the integrity of our democracy.
(PRWeb) January 3, 2007 -- In light of the continuing problem of questionable election outcomes in jurisdictions all over the country, where tens of thousands of votes appear not to have been recorded correctly, these recommendations are crucial to reestablishing trust in U.S. elections. Just five of these recommendations would prevent the wrong candidate being sworn into office as it appears may be happening in Florida's House District 13 election. Due to the untimely release of complete vote count data, investigators are just now turning up statistically improbable vote outcomes and election challenges are still underway. Those five recommendations, with just the briefest of definitions, are:

• Manual Audits, enough votes have to be manually hand counted to ensure that the machine counts are not outcome-altering;

• Auditable Voting Systems, the system must provide a voter-verified permanent paper copy of the vote that is sturdy enough for handling in recounts and/or storage;

• Public Election Records, rapid access to paper and electronic election records, and detailed vote counts in all vote types to ensure that over or under votes in different vote types don't cancel each other out and thereby obscure vote irregularities, before a race is called;

• Public Right to Observe, genuine observation, not just presence in the room is vital to the maintenance of fairness and transparency;

• Teeth in the Legislation, civil and/or criminal penalties or a reduction of funding for failure to live up to the standards of a fair and open election process, do not swear in until election contests are satisfied.

To read the recommendations with details in full go to http://electionarchive.org/ucvInfo/US/EI-FederalLegislationProposal.pdf


http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2007/1/emw494587.htmText

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[kpete]

1. Missing votes in Ohio call races into question by Bob Fitrakis

January 3, 2007 at 07:01:07

Missing votes in Ohio call races into question

by Bob Fitrakis


Missing votes in Ohio call races into question
January 2, 2007

While Democratic Party supporters celebrate their success in Ohio, where their statewide candidates won four out of five executive offices and they now control both the U.S. House and Senate, they are ignoring massive and verifiable irregularities in the 2006 election. Similar irregularities � including missing votes, undervotes and overvotes � may come back to haunt the Democrats in the 2008 general election.

The only statewide partisan loss for the Democrats was also the closest contest. Republican Mary Taylor defeated Democrat Barbara Sykes for State Auditor by an official vote of 50.64% to 49.36%. Taylor prevailed by 48,826 votes. The Columbus Dispatch's final poll, usually the most accurate in the state for candidate races, predicted Sykes would win by 10%.

An analysis by the Free Press documents massive discrepancies between the unofficial turnout reported by Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell immediately following the election and the official general election turnout numbers reported in December 2006. These discrepancies may help explain Sykes' unexpected loss.

In Cuyahoga County which contains the Democratic stronghold of Cleveland, immediately following the election 562,498 votes were reported cast with 30,791 listed as absentee or provisional ballots. The official results show 468,056 counted in Cuyahoga. This means that 94,442 ballots cast in the unofficial total disappeared in the official tallies. This represents a shocking 16.8% of all the votes cast in Cuyahoga.

Sykes won 62% of the vote in Cuyahoga County.

more at:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_bob_fitr_070103_missing_votes_in_ohi.htm

[kpete]

2. Voting Exit Strategy 2007

January 3, 2007 at 06:10:47

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_rady_ana_070102_evoting_exit_strateg.htme

Voting Exit Strategy 2007

by Rady Ananda


While machine advocates try to justify electronic voting, even going so far as to add yet another electronic gadget (assuring us this is the magic bullet that will fix all our electronic voting system "glitches"), here's a less expensive, common sense strategy for 2007.



1. Require the Secretary of State to order each county that purchased DREs to prepare to implement a hand-counted paper ballot (HCPB) system by January 1, 2008.

2. Have each set of County Commissioners send a letter to all printers in their county seeking an estimate to print paper ballots, and asking them to submit a written protocol on chain of custody, so that the ballots printed are all accounted for at every moment from production to delivery to the Board of Elections.

3. Choose the printer according to most secure protocol, by reputation for quality and integrity, and then by cost. Each county is limited to using a local printer, and this will boost the local economy.

4. Train all counting team poll workers in the "sort and stack by candidate" method of counting, as used in New Hampshire. Train all poll workers in chain of custody protocol and other election procedures.

5. Limit poll worker shifts to an 8-hour maximum. Bring in a fresh team to count the ballots at the end of the day, at the polling site. Use people from different political parties on each counting team. Allow the public to observe.

6. Reconcile the ballots with the signatures and prepare a final reconciliation, signed by all poll workers who agree with the reported results. Have the presiding judge (the poll worker supervisor for each precinct) report the results immediately, to the room, to the Board of Elections, and by posting a copy of the results at the precinct.

7. Have two people from different political parties deliver the ballots, once they've been security-sealed, to the Board of Elections, along with other election materials. Those ballots stay sealed until a recount, or until otherwise legally opened for public inspection.

more at:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_rady_ana_070102_evoting_exit_strateg.htm

[kpete]

3. Instant runoff voting: speaking to voter needs

Guest columnist
Wednesday, January 3, 2007
Instant runoff voting: speaking to voter needs
By Krist Novoselic

We are in the middle of a transition on how we hold elections in Washington.

It all started when the popular blanket primary was declared unconstitutional in 2003. As a result, our Legislature implemented the "pick-a-party" primary. While palatable to voters elsewhere in the country, its lack of wide-open choices triggered the gag reflex in Washington.

In 2004, voters passed Initiative 872, the Grange's top-two primary. Before it was even tried, I-872 was struck down for the same reasons as the old blanket primary was and is still in litigation, struggling toward a final appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

But on Nov. 7, elections in our state set a new course.

more at:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2003506676_krist03.html

[kpete]

4. Dems finalize new rules

Dems finalize new rules
By Jonathan E. Kaplan and Jackie Kucinich

House Democrats hurried yesterday to put the finishing touches on ethics reforms that would ban lawmakers and staffers from accepting trips, gifts and meals from lobbyists and prevent the new majority from holding votes open to change the outcome.

Democrats will adopt and then amend the House Rules package tomorrow to ban all travel paid for by lobbyists or organizations that employ lobbyists, require the ethics committee to pre-approve travel paid for by outside groups, enact a total gift ban, and require lawmakers to pay the market cost of flying on a corporate jet, said Democratic staffers and officials with government watchdog groups.

And, because they feel they lost the 2003 Medicare prescription drug benefit vote because GOP leaders held it open for three hours, during which they flipped opponents into the “yes” column, Democrats will include a provision in the rules to prevent any sort of repetition, said aides to incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

Democrats also will eliminate the practices of changing conference reports after members have signed them and excluding elected members from conference committees.

more at:
http://thehill.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/010307/demrules.html

[kpete]

5. ES&S vote machines skipped a step [FL-13] - promised at Election website

ES&S vote machines skipped a step - promised at Election website
by joan reports
Wed Jan 03, 2007 at 05:38:21 AM PST




http://www.srqelections.com/ivotronic/ivotronic.htm



In the disputed race between Christine Jennings and Vern Buchanan —the two are separated by 369 votes in their claim to a seat in the US House of Representatives— the "iVotronic" touchscreen machines at the precincts did not alert voters to undervotes, and did not ask if they wished to input a vote choice in a race that was not yet recorded.

Yet, that operation at odds with specific printed instructions on the website of election supervisor Kathy Dent (R) that showed voters the sequence to expect in casting a vote on Sarasota County's iVotronic, sold by Election Systems & Software (ES&S).

18,000 voter records registered no vote for a congressional seat, 13% of voters <1 of 8> who walked into the booth, yet only 1.2% of Sarasota absentee (paper) ballots cast no vote in that race. >> More people had a vote recorded for "Hospital Board southern district" than for the Jennings-Buchanan race to replace Katherine Harris.

more at:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/1/3/83821/42709

[kpete]

8. FL: Security expert: E-voting still has issues

Security expert: E-voting still has issues
2 jan 2007 | 20:54 uur

The debate over the security of electronic voting machines hasn't gone away after November's elections in the U.S.

In Florida, Christine Jennings, a Democratic candidate for U.S. House of Representatives, is pressing forward with a lawsuit asking for a revote. More than 18,000 people in Sarasota County, Florida, voted in other races on the ballot, but e-voting machines from Election Systems & Software Inc. didn't record a vote in Jennings' race, which she lost by 369 votes.

Meanwhile, in early December, the Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC), an advisory board to the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission, voted to draft requirements for independently verifiable voting records, such as paper printouts, to be used with direct record electronic (DRE) machines.

Groups like the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) have long been calling for independent audits for DREs, and Eugene Spafford, chairman of the group's U.S. policy committee, says there's still work to be done to ensure accurate e-voting. Spafford, a widely recognized computer security expert and executive director of the Purdue University Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security, recently spoke to IDG News Service about e-voting security and reliability. An edited transcript of that interview follows.

IDGNS: Even with the TGDC's vote in December, an independent audit requirement would still be years away. What needs to be done sooner to improve e-voting security?

more at:
http://www.computerpartner.nl/article.php?news=int&id=4564

[kpete]

6. Report Exposes Excessive E-Voting Machine Malfunctions in Mid-term Elections

Report Exposes Excessive E-Voting Machine
Malfunctions in Mid-term Elections

By VoteTrustUSA, VotersUnite, and VoterAction
January 03, 2007

A Survey of Pollworker and Voter Experience Reveals Pervasive and Recurrent Failures among Computerized Voting Systems


Download the Full Report
http://www.votetrustusa.org/pdfs/E-VotingIn2006Mid-Term.pdf
Read the Executive Summary
http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2157&Itemid=1214

A report prepared by civic watchdog groups VoteTrustUSA, VotersUnite.org, and Voter Action found the 2006 mid-term elections were marred by persistent and widespread voting machine malfunctions. In preparing the report “E-Voting Failures in the 2006 Mid-Term Elections,” the groups examined data collected from the Election Protection Coalition hotline (1-866 OUR VOTE) and the Voter Action hotline, reports submitted from Election Day pollworkers through the Pollworkers for Democracy project and local and national news accounts collected by VotersUnite.Org.

In all, 1022 accounts of machine related problems from more than 300 counties in 36 states were examined and categorized. The report summarizes and provides contextual and comparative analysis of the difficulties caused by each type of equipment problem, such as machine malfunctions that impeded polls from opening, machine failures at poll closing and vote tabulation, and votes lost or changed on the voting machine screen. It also includes first hand accounts from voters and pollworkers describing the machine difficulties they encountered on Election Day and how the machines hampered the voting process.

The report recounts incidents of voters leaving without casting a vote because the machines would not start or broke down during Election Day. Machines often failed to record the voter’s correct choice on the ballot or summary screen and caused voters to question if their vote was recorded. Several pollworker accounts described problems closing the machines, retrieving vote totals from the computerized systems, and aggregating the totals with software, sometimes counting votes multiple times or failing to count them at all. The report suggests that in some cases votes were lost.



“By studying the experiences of voters and pollworkers we saw a different view of the 2006 election than has been widely accepted. In report after report voters and pollworkers were repeatedly frustrated in their effort to vote or have the votes recorded and counted correctly by recurring machine malfunctions,” said Joan Krawitz, executive director of VoteTrustUSA and co-director for the Pollworkers for Democracy project. “In too many instances voting machines failed our voters and our democracy, confirming that our present system is not adequate for the tremendous responsibility of counting our votes.”

more at:
http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2156&Itemid=26

[kpete]

7. TX: Electronic voting led to errors, report says

Houston & Texas News

Jan. 3, 2007, 6:08AM
Electronic voting led to errors, report says
Malfunctioning machines and late poll openings among complaints

By ROSANNA RUIZ

Electronic voting machines meant to streamline the Election Day process have resulted in late poll openings, data-retrieval errors and widespread machine failures, according to a new report about last year's midterm election.

The report, from three advocacy groups that have been critical of electronic voting, focuses on 1,022 complaints regarding electronic voting equipment from 314 counties in 36 states.

"The evidence presented indicates that electronic voting in its current form is systematically flawed and will require significant corrective measures to remedy the problems that have been exposed," concludes the 23-page report issued by Voter Action, VotersUnite.Org and VoteTrustUSA.

Complaints from Harris County cited in the report are primarily about malfunctioning machines at polling sites near the Galleria area, Third Ward and at Reagan High School. Fort Bend County polling sites that received the wrong voting machines are also mentioned.

more at:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/4440454.html

[kpete]

9. Hold e-voting company to account

Hold e-voting company to account


Talk about activist judges! In dismissing the motion to examine the source code of Election Systems & Software Inc. voting machines, the courts have trumped democracy.

I'm a software developer with over 20 years of experience. I've worked in a number of hardware environments, operating systems, programming languages, application types and industries.

For ES&S to argue that the source codes that control the iVotronic voting machines are a trade secret that should not be disclosed is ludicrous. Technology companies reveal "proprietary trade secrets" all the time. This is done through non-disclosure agreements. Furthermore, the programming necessary to capture and tabulate touch-screen input could be performed by any first-year computer science student and would be unlikely to give someone a competitive advantage.

That leaves two possible conclusions: ES&S is afraid of revealing significant security flaws (and/or) it is hiding actual malfeasance.

I find it interesting that I can be wiretapped, and yet a corporation entrusted with the cornerstone of democracy is not held to account.

Michael Vercelli

Sarasota

http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070103/OPINION/701030591/1029

[freedomfries]

12. great letter!

Thanks for posting kpete!

[kpete]

10. Tell Congress to Require Paper Ballots

Submitted by Bob Fertik on January 3, 2007 - 2:09pm.Voting Machines

Democrats.com has fought against electronic voting machines since Stolen Election 2000. Now that Democrats are in charge of Congress, requiring paper ballots for all elections should be at the top of their agenda. Click here to send our letter to your Representatives .
http://www.democrats.com/peoplesemailnetwork/92?ad=d0


A paper ballot, whether counted by optical-scan system or hand, is the minimum requirement for any Election Reform legislation in which voters may have confidence.

Recent elections proved electronic voting machines - both those without paper ballots, such as Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) touch-screen systems, and even those with so-called "Voter Verified Paper Audit Trails" - caused massive disruptions, undermined the results of crucial elections, and forced thousands of voters to leave the polls without being able to exercise their franchise.

Paper ballots are needed to ensure every vote is recorded precisely as the voter intends, that every vote is counted and, if necessary, re-counted accurately.


Click here to send our letter to your Representatives http://www.democrats.com/peoplesemailnetwork/92?ad=d0

For more information visit VelvetRevolution.us

http://www.democrats.com/peoplesemailnetwork/92?ad=d0

http://www.democrats.com/tell-congress-to-require-paper-ballots

[Joe Chi Minh]

11. ".... except for trying to take away the vote of others." Indeed, words of

awesome beauty, Paul!

The fraudsters and vote-suppressors disenfranchised, as the common felons they are! The only felons in electoral terms.

[Land Shark]

13. Thanks KCabotDullesMarxIII and also kpete for the thread!