Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News Tuesday, 1/16/07

[Melissa G]

Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News Tuesday, 1/16/07


Because of Freezing weather MLK day festivities were curtailed in Central TX...I'm posting some good excerpts and quotes as I find them in Honor of those who have come before us in this struggle...

Entire city of Austin pretty much shut down due to snow and sleet... Repub TX Gov Perry's inauguration festivities moved inside... no parade...heh heh...

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).



edit to add MLK pic

[Melissa G]

1. Hill Will Examine Voting Machines

Hill Will Examine Voting Machines
By Matthew Murray, Roll Call Staff
January 16, 2007
This article was published in Roll Call.

After rewriting rules for lobbyists, increasing the federal minimum wage and moving on other election-year promises, senior Democratic Members in both chambers said Friday that within weeks they will begin scrutinizing electronic voting equipment and, for now, shelve other election-related proposals such as overhauls of 527s and electronic financial disclosure in
the Senate.

"The first thing is going to be elections," Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, told a group of reporters Friday. "We're going into 2008 with that is problematic. "

As early as next week, Feinstein said the Senate Rules panel might hold hearings on alleged electronic voting machine irregularities and other issues brought to light, some say, in the still-contested House election in Florida's 13th district. The seat, previously occupied by former Rep. Katherine Harris (R), is now held by Rep. Vern Buchanan (R), who state audits have confirmed won the contest by 369 votes. Buchanan was sworn in Jan. 4 to represent the Sarasota-based district.



But Christine Jennings, the Democrat on the ballot, claims faulty electronic voting machines cost her the election. In December, Jennings filed a formal complaint with the House, which has the final say over seating Members, alleging that a "pervasive malfunctioning" of the machines led to an "undervote" of 18,000 individuals.

http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2190&Itemid=26

[Melissa G]

2. Beyond a ‘thing-oriented’ society

http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/941


Beyond a ‘thing-oriented’ society
Published by Josh Lynch January 16th, 2007 in Uncategorized, News and Media, Dirty Energy, Climate Justice, Impacted Communities
Every year I am struck with wonder and emotion on the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination. Perhaps the thing I admire most about this man and his legacy is the fact that in the face of a frightening life-and-death struggle that is hard for Americans of my generation to grasp, he spoke out and fought for a vision of what his country could become. As we think about the primary issues of today including climate change and new dirty energy development, we can learn a lot from Dr. King’s words and actions. I was reminded of this by a recent message from Ted Glick, of the Climate Emergency Council:

During the later years of Kings life, the years following the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, King began to speak out about what he called “a far deeper malady within the American spirit. . . I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” (Beyond Vietnam, April 4, 1967)

http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/941

[Melissa G]

3. Tributes in song and speech VIDEO

As we fight for Election reform, let us remember that we are just a few drops in long stream of those who have risked life and limb in the the cause of voting rights...
stories like this one below always give me pause.

"Whatever you do will be insignificant but it is important that you do it."
Mahatma Gandhi




Tributes in song and speech VIDEO
Here’s a sampling of Martin Luther King Jr. Day events across the area on Monday:
The Kansas City Star

MIKE RANSDELL | THE KANSAS CITY STAR
The William Jewell College concert choir performed Monday at Liberty’s Martin Luther King Jr. celebration at the college’s Gano Chapel. E. Bernard Franklin, president of Metropolitan Community College-Penn Valley, gave the keynote speech, hip-hop dance troupe Level 5 performed and public servants were honored.

What they saw: Soloists Alicia Saunders, Linda Cofield and Russell Fears performed in lieu of a snowbound choir; 52 high school seniors presented with $500 scholarships; and the Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, a contemporary of King, delivered the keynote speech.

What they heard: Shuttlesworth spoke of the day in 1956 when Ku Klux Klan members bombed his Birmingham, Ala., home with 16 sticks of dynamite. He survived and refused to leave town, choosing to organize the city’s civil right’s demonstrations.

Fought segregation: Shuttlesworth made his name as a civil rights leader while enduring beatings, more than 30 stints in jail and countless battles with Birmingham segregationist Bull Connor.

Quote: “In Birmingham, I learned that God’s light can shine in the darkest places.”

— Shuttlesworth

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/local/16468194.htm

[Melissa G]

4. Voting method hits third-party voting

http://media.www.dailyvanguard.com/media/storage/paper941/news/2007/01/16/News/Voting.Method.Hits.ThirdParty.Voting-2633020.shtml?sourcedomain=www.dailyvanguard.com&MIIHost=media.collegepublisher.com

Voting method hits third-party voting
Proponents say fusion voting allows votes for primary candidates from third-party voters
T. Evans

A panel of elected officials, nonprofit organizers and PSU professors discussed implementing a different method of voting in Oregon to a packed house at the Portland State Urban Studies Building on Friday.

Fusion voting, which is now legal in seven states and more commonly practiced in New York and Connecticut, allows voters to vote for a primary candidate under their own third party. Also known as "expressive voting," this practice is said to encourage voters to signal their ideals and values to the primary party candidates, panel members said.

snip
Daniel Cantor, executive director of the Working Families Party of New York, and the other panelists said that fusion voting would benefit Oregon if actually enacted. Because there are not as many third-party voters as primary-party voters, Cantor said, it is nearly impossible to get a third-party candidate to win an election.

snip
Panelists said that this would prevent a spoiler effect, which most recently was seen in the 2000 presidential election. Many speculated that votes for third-party candidate Ralph Nader took votes from Democrat Al Gore, leading to Bush's victory.

http://media.www.dailyvanguard.com/media/storage/paper941/news/2007/01/16/News/Voting.Method.Hits.ThirdParty.Voting-2633020.shtml?sourcedomain=www.dailyvanguard.com&MIIHost=media.collegepublisher.com

[Melissa G]

5. King's dream is summons to act, not just to hope

IN MY OPINION
King's dream is summons to act, not just to hope
BY LEONARD PITTS JR.
[e-mail]


AN ICON OF HOPE: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. acknowledges the crowd at the Lincoln Memorial for his 'I Have a Dream' speech during the March on Washington, D.C. Aug. 28, 1963.
On the web | Audio and text of Martin Luther King's speech
And so Dream season rolls round again.

snip
EMPHASIS ON `NOW'

''We have also come to this hallowed spot,'' he said, standing at Lincoln's doorstep, ``to remind America of the fierce urgency of now.''

Over and over, he said it: ``Now is the time. Now is the time.''

snip
It always amazes me that people who command technology their forebears could not have imagined can feel so powerless after those forebears, armed with little more than telephones and mimeograph machines, went out and changed the world.

snip
It is a fine and noble thing to have a dream. But having a dream is no excuse for accepting an onerous status quo and waiting passively on ''someday'' to make things right. A dream is not an excuse. It's a responsibility.

And now is still the time.

http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/16462115.htm

[Melissa G]

6. Wrong Winner Chosen Twice by Same Voting Machine

another good article by autorank...


January 15, 2007 at 05:27:33

Wrong Winner Chosen Twice by Same Voting Machine

by Michael Collins




"Scoop" Independent News

Congress Seats Two Clear "Losers"

Wrong Winner Chosen Twice by Same Voting Machine

Examining Florida 13th and North Carolina 8th
Congressional Districts Leaves Little Doubt

Michael Collins
Part 2 of a Series – Part 1
Washington, DC.

The Election Contest filed by Democrat Christine Jennings and her attorney Kendall Coffey creates complications that could blow the electronic voting world to pieces. In the simplest terms, the Jennings Florida 13th Congressional district case requires a review of the Kissell loss in North Carolina's 8th Congressional district. And that spells disaster for e-voting.

Why? Because both the Florida and North Carolina districts used iVotronics touch screen voting machines. These voting machines produced very similar levels of counting errors. The errors cost both Democrats thousands of votes. Ultimately, both Democratic candidates were denied a victory by less than 400 votes.

While Jennings makes a very strong case for a voided election and new vote in Florida, the case becomes virtually unassailable when reviewing results from North Carolina. At the same time, the North Carolina 8th results, reviewed in the context of the election contest analysis of Florida's 13th, makes it abundantly clear that the loser, Kissell, should have won in almost any scenario other than voting machine malfunction.

In both districts, the iVotronic touch screen voting machines produced undervote rates at or above 15%. What this means is that supposedly one in seven voters cast ballots but left out a choice for the most important election (an unmarked race on an otherwise marked ballot is called an undervote). The only culprit in both the Florida 13th and North Carolina 8th elections is voting machine malfunction. The facts supporting the case for losers winning don't allow for much debate in these Florida and North Carolina races. They're simple and a review leads to conclusions that devastate any trust in electronic voting.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_michael__070115_wrong_winner_chosen_.htm

[Melissa G]

11. difference of opinion on autorank scoop article

posted here by WillYourVoteBCounted...


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x464643

[Melissa G]

7. Nevada is game for '08 caucuses

Nevada is game for '08 caucuses

The state's Democrats have unique concerns that 2008 candidates ignore at their peril.

By Mark Z. Barabak, Times Staff Writer

January 15, 2007

LAS VEGAS — snip

Democrats here like guns, loathe taxes and see nature as a source of fun and profit, not a place that some Washington bureaucrat should lock away. And skip the Rust Belt rhetoric about all those manufacturing jobs fleeing to China and Mexico. Economic issues require a different approach in a state that has boomed for the last 40 years.

"snip
Nevada represents the leading edge in a political shift, as the Rocky Mountain West becomes the new battleground in presidential politics. Democrats, hoping to bring a fresh voice to their nominating process and give candidates a head start on the fall campaign, have set Nevada's caucuses for Jan. 19, 2008.

snip
"This is seen as a very, very unique opportunity to get the presidential candidates on the record on Western issues and put them in the national arena early," said Billy Vassiliadis, one of Nevada's political power brokers and the impresario behind Las Vegas' sly marketing slogan. "Instead of talking about manufacturing jobs and farm subsidies, we'll be discussing public lands, infrastructure needs, ranching, mining and water, water, water."

snip
Beyond that, Nevada is a state with a strong libertarian streak. Burdened with a hostile terrain, it found its salvation in sin: gambling, legal prostitution (outside the metropolitan areas) and quickie marriages and divorces. Although that makes for a broad-minded social policy, it also translates into an aversion toward big government and its costs.

http://ktla.trb.com/news/la-na-nevada15jan15,0,6662478.story?coll=ktla-news-1

[Melissa G]

8. PA County group to tell state official of voting concerns

County group to tell state official of voting concerns
From CDT staff reports
Members of the Centre County group that has been fighting for voting machines with voter-verified paper trails will present their concerns to Secretary of the Commonwealth Pedro Cortes during a meeting Wednesday in State College.

According to Concerned Voters of Centre County, three members will present Cortes with a summary of problems the group says the county's touch-screen machines experienced on election day. The group will suggest that Pennsylvania mandate optical-scan ballots, which let voters use pens to fill out the ballot cards. Paper-trail supporters say those ballots create a permanent record that can be recounted.

Last year Centre County, like many places in Pennsylvania, switched to electronic, touch-screen voting machines. The switch from the county's old punch-card system was made to comply with federal and state regulations.

Some have been critical of the new machines, saying they open the door to mistakes and fraud. The county has defended the touch-screens, saying they have been tested and are reliable.

http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/16462429.htm

[Melissa G]

9. Final New York ballot count gives SEP Senate candidate more than 11,000 votes

Final New York ballot count gives SEP Senate candidate more than 11,000 votes

The certified election results announced by the state of New York last month recorded 11,071 votes cast for the Socialist Equality Party’s candidate for US Senate, Bill Van Auken. This final official tally represents more than a 41 percent increase over the unofficial returns announced in the immediate aftermath of the November 2006 midterm elections.

Van Auken challenged incumbent Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton in the race, running on a platform demanding the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all US troops from Iraq and advancing socialist policies to combat social inequality. His name was placed on the ballot through a concerted petition campaign that won the support of 25,000 New York voters.

While the overall New York State Board of Elections results recorded a major increase in the SEP vote statewide—over an initial count of 7,738—the New York City Board of Elections, which issues the final count for the city’s five boroughs, produced precisely the opposite change in its final count.

snip

The sharp change in the SEP’s vote totals outside New York City in some cases reflect the fact that ballots were impounded in hotly contested races, such as the one that saw incumbent Republican Thomas Reynolds narrowly beat his right-wing Democratic challenger, Jack Davis in New York’s 26th Congressional District, which includes part of Erie County, whose seat is the city of Buffalo.


http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/jan2007/nyvo-j15.shtml

[Melissa G]

10. New Yorker- TECH SUPPORT E-VOTE

TECH SUPPORT
E-VOTE
Issue of 2007-01-22
Posted 2007-01-15


Nothing excites an electoral conspiracy theorist like electronic voting machines. There’s the latest foul-up in Florida (eighteen thousand votes lost in the Thirteenth District in November), or the Princeton professor—you can watch him on YouTube—who in less than a minute hacks into a voting machine and plants software redirecting votes from candidate “George Washington” to “Benedict Arnold.” In 2002, the federal government mandated that states upgrade their voting systems. New York is among the last in the country to do so—the slowness, depending on whom you ask, derives either from caution or from incompetence. In the meantime, the city’s Board of Elections has called in an unlikely authority: the voting public.

A couple of weeks ago, a notice appeared in local papers announcing that all voting-machine venders being considered for a state contract would give a demonstration of their wares in Staten Island. The event was part of an “American Idol”-like series of shows around the city, to culminate in a hearing at which voters will voice their opinions about the machines. Up for consideration, devices that would make a spy shiver: Avante’s VOTE-TRAKKER EVC308-FF; ES&S’s Model 100 and AutoMARK; Diebold’s AccuVote-OS and AutoMARK VAT; and, finally, Sequoia’s AVC Advantage Plus and Optech Insight.

On a recent Thursday evening, about twenty voters assembled in the Juror Room of the Staten Island courthouse. A few canes and one oxygen tank rested in the aisles as Gene Seets, of Election Systems & Software, introduced the new M100. “Wow, this is kind of scary!” he said, tapping the microphone. No laughs. “O.K., so I’m a poll worker on Election Day. What do I do?” Seets ran his hand over the M100, which looks like a black photocopying machine. He walked through the process: poll worker uses a key card to open a panel in the side of the machine; machine produces a zero tape (like a grocery-store receipt, which shows that no votes have been recorded); poll worker checks the settings (“Time’s right, date’s right, year’s right—we must have an election!”). The voter marks a paper ballot with a pen and feeds it into a scanner. “And that’s the ES&S M100!” Seets said. “I don’t think I’ve ever done this demonstration and had people say, ‘Woooooo!,’ but it’s really easy to use.”

snip
One of the debates about e-voting involves the choice between optical scanning machines, which, like the M100, read marks on a paper ballot, and direct-recording electronic (DRE) machines, which use a touch screen. At a reception that was held after the demonstrations, a salesman from Avante showed a touch-screen model, the VOTE-TRAKKER EVC308-FF, to Mary Kain, a development officer at the Staten Island Zoo. The VOTE-TRAKKER is shrouded in red curtains and looks like a television on wheels. You touch your candidate’s name and the machine spits out a paper receipt, showing whom you’ve selected. You verify your vote by touching “cast ballot” on the screen, and the machine cuts the receipt and drops it into a metal box.

snip
Sandrow scowled. “I don’t trust that machine,” she said on her way out.

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/070122ta_talk_widdicombe

[Melissa G]

12. EAC scandal grows--Sarasota's "undervote" voting machine models certified by banned lab, Ciber,

Thanks to kster for the post and the DU discussion here...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x464627


EAC scandal grows--Sarasota's "undervote" voting machine models certified by banned lab, Ciber,
before untested upgrades.

by Michael Richardson

Ciber, Inc. is the nation's largest independent testing authority of electronic voting machines certifying machines used by 68.5% of registered voters in 2006. However, last year the Election Assistance Commission secretly pulled Ciber's interim accreditation for failure to perform quality assurance testing and documentation of security testing.

Included in the long list of improperly tested or untested electronic voting machine models were the ES&S machines used in Sarasota, Florida, where a staggering 18,000 votes in a Congressional race were reported as "undervotes". Florida, which does not require federal certification, boasts, "Florida's voting systems standards and certification program are recognized as the most stringent in the nation."

Because Florida has its own certification program and because the Sarasota voting machines had upgrades that apparently lack federal approval, Ciber did not have the last word on the accuracy of the "undervote" machines.

However, in a March 3, 2006 "technical advisory" to county election officials Dawn Roberts, Director of Elections, relied on "Ciber Laboratory's Source Code Review and Functional Testing reports" to warn against "potential system vulnerabilities".

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_michael__070115_eac_scandal_grows__s.htm

[Melissa G]

13. Please post evidence of influence-purchasing efforts of voting machine companies

Request from Fly by night
Please post help or comments on this DU discussion thread...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x464657
Original message
Please post evidence of influence-purchasing efforts of voting machine companies
Here in the Orange State, we have just established an ethics commission to oversee the actions of our state government. (Perhaprs the indictments and convictions of a handful of sitting legislators had something to do with this.) Our election reform group, Gathering To Save Our Democracy, would like to meet with this commission to discuss how improper influence has continually been brought to bear to get our State Election Coordinator, Brook Thompson, to push DREs down our throats. We know that Brook is on the Board of Directors of The Election Center (the only state election official on that Board) and we know a lot about TEC's funding base, etc. We also know that Brook has attended every national meeting of state election officials, at which the voting machine companies lavish their affections on officials with open bars, free meals, cruises in the Pacific and Potomac, etc.

What I am looking for in this thread is more detailed evidence of the quantity and variety of "freebies" that voting machine companies have given to election officials at these national meetings and elsewhere. You can post information from state-level experiences in your own state, or from other national meetings of relevant public officials (e.g., national meetings of secretaries of state). Any influence-peddling you are aware of would help us build our case here in Tennessee for our ethics commission.

Thanks for sharing (your information).
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x464657

[Melissa G]

14. Want to vote? You may soon need ID

one more repub ploy to suppress voter turnout...



Want to vote? You may soon need ID
By Scott Rothschild

Tuesday, January 16, 2007



Topeka — The chairman of a committee that deals with election law has proposed a measure that would require voters to provide photo identification before their ballot would count.

“I am certain these integrity measures will enhance the confidence of the citizens of Kansas in our election process,” state Sen. Tim Huelskamp, R-Fowler, said.

snip
Huelskamp, who is chairman of the Senate Elections and Local Government Committee, said he suspects illegal immigrants are voting, but he added he has no proof that they are.

snip
The measure also would require new voters to provide photo ID before registering. The secretary of state also would be allowed to participate in a national program to verify citizenship of voters.

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2007/jan/16/want_vote_you_may_soon_need_id/?politics

[Melissa G]

15. Give Us The Ballot

National Issues



Give Us The Ballot
By Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
January 15, 2007
The following passage is excerpted from a speech that Dr. King delivered before the Lincoln Memorial at the March on Washington, on May 17, 1957, three years after Brown v. Board of Education and eight years before the enactment of the Voting Rights Act.



Three years ago the Supreme Court of this nation rendered in simple, eloquent and unequivocal language a decision which will long be stenciled on the mental sheets of succeeding generations. For all men of good will, this May 17 decision came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of segregation. It came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of distinguished people throughout the world who had dared only to dream of freedom. It came as a legal and sociological deathblow to the old Plessy doctrine of "separate-but-equal." It came as a reaffirmation of the good old American doctrine of freedom and equality for all people.

Unfortunately, this noble and sublime decision has not gone without opposition. This opposition has often risen to ominous proportions. Many states have risen up in open defiance. The legislative halls of the South ring loud with such words as "interposition" and "nullification." Methods of defiance range from crippling economic reprisals to the tragic reign of violence and terror. All of these forces have conjoined to make for massive resistance.

But, even more, all types of conniving methods are still being used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters. The denial of this sacred right is a tragic betrayal of the highest mandates of our democratic traditions and its is democracy turned upside down.

So long as I do not firmly and irrevocably possess the right to vote I do not possess myself. I cannot make up my mind — it is made up for me. I cannot live as a democratic citizen, observing the laws I have helped to enact — I can only submit to the edict of others.
http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=743&Itemid=26

[Melissa G]

16. Hacking debate gains traction

Oh, I like the idea of throwing away machines! There must be some good environmentally friendly use we can think of for them...




Hacking debate gains traction


Nicole C. Brambila
The Desert Sun
January 14, 2007

Could a computer programmer hack into Riverside County voting machines in 15 minutes without any tools?
Supervisor Jeff Stone bets not.

snip
But that was before the group hired Finnish computer programmer Harri Hursti - who successfully tampered with a Diebold voting machine for the HBO documentary "Hacking Democracy" - to attempt the hack.

Now Stone has thrown a couple of ground rules into the mix - no tools and no dismantling the machine. And, the hacker has to infiltrate the system in 15 minutes, the estimated time it takes a voter to do his or her civic duty.

Tom Courbat, executive director of Save R Vote, contends the risk does not reside with the 15 minutes when voters are in the booth - but when the machines are left unattended at voting precincts or unsecured in the county's warehouse.

snip
"If there's somebody that can demonstrate that they can hack into the machines we want to know about it," he said. "And, then we'll be throwing away a lot of machines."
http://www.thedesertsun.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070114/NEWS0301/701140319/1006

[Melissa G]

17. 'No choice?' Good choice

'No choice?' Good choice
Click-2-Listen
Palm Beach Post Editorial

Monday, January 15, 2007

The Legislature could eliminate the chance of another Sarasota County-style election controversy by requiring a simple addition to the ballot: "None of the above."

"None of the above" wouldn't be some '60s-style guerrilla ambush sprung on today's politicians. It would be a way to make sure that voters have indicated their intention when they leave the voting booth.

A bill sponsored by Sen. Mike Bennett, R-Bradenton, would add the choice to every race. If "none of the above" had been on the Sarasota County ballot, voters who didn't want to make a choice in the U.S. District 13 House race between Vern Buchanan and Christine Jennings would have had to make their intent clearly known. Those among the 18,000 who skipped the race - decided by 369 votes - because they didn't notice it on the same screen as the governor's race would have been forced by the touch-screen voting system to go back and make a choice. Those who wanted to skip it simply could have pressed "none of the above."

Under existing rules, touch-screen systems don't require voters to make a choice. The machines block overvotes, the tendency of some voters to pick more than one candidate. That, combined with the confusing Palm Beach County butterfly ballot in 2000, cost Al Gore the presidency. But undervotes still can happen. The computer screen offers a gentle reminder but can't stop voters from skipping a race. With "none of the above," it can.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/content/opinion/epaper/2007/01/15/a20a_noneoftheabove_edit_0115.html

[autorank]

18. Excellent!!!!!!!!!! KR

[Kurovski]

19. Kick to the top, and thanks, Melissa G!

:kick:

[Melissa G]

20. Thanks Kurovski and others! I appreciate the K and R's!

It's cold down here...we only get snow and or ice every few years :hi:


This is not my pic but it does look like my house with my kids' stash of snowballs around the icy palm trees and the tropical mexican fans... The kids are hoping for another snowy day off tomorrow.
They may get it yet!

[Kurovski]

21. It's been cold here too. It ain't normal I tells ya.

Even had an outdoor water pipe burst.

[Wilms]

22. Keeping Up Appearances: The EAC Does Damage Control

Keeping Up Appearances: The EAC Does Damage Control

By Warren Stewart, VoteTrustUSA

January 16, 2007

The Election Assistance Commission has released a statement that “strongly encourages”
voting machine testing laboratories “to adopt policies that prohibit the organization and its employees from engaging in activities that may create the appearance of a conflict of interest or partisan bias.” (emphasis mine)

The directive from the EAC no doubt comes in response to concerns expressed in a New York Times article about the recent engagement of Brian Phillips (pictured at left), president of SysTest Labs, as an expert for the campaign of Republican Buchanan in the legal challenge to Florida's 13th Congressional District election.

Last week, a Denver Post article quoted incoming EAC chair Donetta Davidson saying, "When there's a conflict over an election, like there was in Florida, we don't want (these companies) to be hired by one party or another."

However, a conflict of interest statement is already present in the interim certification document signed by Wyle and SysTest. The statement was signed 'under penalty of Federal law'. Phillips would appear to be in clear violation of a law that he had to know he had signed and was in effect at the time he went to work for ES&S in Sarasota County.

Why hasn't the EAC enforced this law?

snip

http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2191&Itemid=26

Discussion

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x464728

[Kurovski]

23. Kick(nt)