Pinellas voting gaffe uncovered

[sled]

Pinellas voting gaffe uncovered

http://tinyurl.com/6asoa

The 34,000-vote clerical error would not have affected the slot
machine initiative.

By JONI JAMES
Published December 3, 2004

TALLAHASSEE - On Election Night last month, the results were clear:
Pinellas County voters defeated by more than 17,000 votes an
initiative to legalize slot machines in South Florida.

But the official state record says the exact opposite, the result of a
clerical error by the office of Pinellas Elections Supervisor Deborah
Clark.

The mistake, largely unnoticed until highlighted Thursday by
unsuccessful opponents of Amendment 4, would not have changed
anything. The slot machine measure passed by more than 119,000 votes
statewide.

But in a state whose image is tainted by election problems, the
34,000-vote mistake underscores the fragility of a system that
ultimately relies on humans to get it right. It also is another
embarrassment for Clark, who never revealed the gaffe publicly.

(snip)

[catcatcat]

1. good find!!...

...maybe this should be contributed toward starting
something similar to the GAO's ohio collection:

http://www.spidel.net/ohblackwellltr12204.pdf

...i don't believe ohio was the only front.

[shirlden]

2. Thanks for posting that

letter. There were many more "cheap tricks" pulled here in Ohio by Repugs. This was an organized and concerted effort to fraud the vote by the Rep party. Wonder who the state mastermind was. It was not Blackwell......he is not that smart. Any Buckeyes out there who would like to hazard a guess? After seeing the obvious fraud in Perry County ( I used to live there), I think my guess has to go to Larry Householder, a Repug majority house leader, who has proved time and again that the "end justifies the means".
Blackwell, btw, was behind the Doma amendment in Ohio and I have info from an unimpeachable source that he sent his employees out to campaign for this on state time. Unfortunately this source is not in a position to step up front with this info.....too much to lose and I respect that.
Look for Blackwell to get a nice, safe high paying post in the Repug party. I do not see him running for Gov. He had too much competition from Petro and Montgomery and could not have won a primary, so I suspect he was only too happy to sell his soul to the evil ones.
:bounce:

[PATRICK]

4. One thing about 2000

that I thought was so obvious it was overlooked. The vaunted moral and righteous GOP discipline and GOTV was largely a sham supported by a HUGE variety of fraud techniques covering a gamut that neatly avoided criminal
prosecution. Obviously it is widespread and has been going on for some time. Even if the odd Dem precinct or county was up to bending things the same way, the massive amount of such methods showed a party wide complicity that no extra genius or planning needed to create from scratch.

All you had to do was clean up the system, regulate the states methodolgies, expose the fraud issue in toto. HAVA instead was an end run
hobbled by inadequate or tricky funding that also overlaid a NEW method of less hands but much bigger fraud potential. The battle to bend the game back to anything resembling reform or fairness was largely lost or an empty show. The OLD stuff just goes on and on and on, with the perps in the GOP being rewared for their elctoral accomplishments. Rehnquist got all the way from being a poll watcher blocking the Black vote. That hasn't changed yet.

Small wonder again that the GOP leadership is rife with immoral crooks. It is a fraud syndicate, not a legitimate party.

How do they justify that if they do at all? Well, they borrowed or matched so-called Dem fraud which is so old-fashioned and in decline as to be source nearly of derision whenever the GOP brings it up to stifle complaints. The power of money of course fuels it all, but the GOP power ladder requires a lot of "proving" oneself by dirty tricks.

Somehow our smart guys all got to be saints feeling slightly guilty about using their natural advantages. And always a silent step behind.

[soup]

3. Don't you just 'LOVE' that almost no matter what happens,

This little tidbit is there:

would not have changed anything anyway, so it doesn't matter?

---

Plus, the one time it DID matter and DID change the results, they just happened to 'find' about 78,000 absentee votes (I believe the wording was something along the lines of 'they just fell out of the sky') that were 94% for the amendment? 94%.

---

from the cited article:

>"State Rep. Randy Johnson, R-Celebration, the chairman for the anti-Amendment 4 group No Casinos, said the group had not decided whether to ask a court to intervene in state election results.

The group, hoping to trigger a recount statewide, is already challenging the counting of 78,000 Broward County absentee ballots. Only if the group prevails in that lawsuit would correcting the 17,000-vote mistake in Pinellas be relevant, because only then would it help the issue qualify for an automatic recount, he said."<

Trying to find an e-mail address for this Randy Johnson.

---

Oh, article failed to mention a few other problems with Clark
such as:

Some absentee ballots lacked St. Petersburg city initiatives
By MICHAEL SANDLER, Times Staff Writer
Published October 27, 2004

LARGO - About 250 absentee ballots mailed to voters in St. Petersburg did not include the second page of the ballot, officials for the Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections said Tuesday.
http://www.sptimes.com/2004/10/27/Tampabay/Some_absentee_ballots.shtml

Then there was the tiny little connection with the voting system Pinellas county adopted and her husband.

Wish I had more time to invest in this, but my son is here to help me haul the Christmas stuff down from the attic. Oh Joy, tis the season.

Thanks for the article, sled! added to my Flori-duh file.

[soup]

5. Correction: Clark's husband work(ed) (s?) for ES&S, not Sequoia

Sorry, got the wrong company. Too late to edit my post.

Elections firm has ties to Pinellas

The county elections supervisor's husband worked for and consults for ES&S, a maker of voting equipment that the county may buy.

By STEVE BOUSQUET and LISA GREENE

© St. Petersburg Times,
published July 12, 2001

>snip<
It was almost a month ago that Clark notified county commissioners that ES&S was one of her top two choices for the voting-machine contract.

A memo written by Clark indicated ES&S had the edge on price, saying it could provide touch-screen machines for $14.8-million while rival Sequoia Pacific Systems would charge $21.4-million.

The day before she wrote the memo, Clark asked for a state ethics commission opinion on whether her husband's ties to ES&S posed a conflict. Richard Clark quit ES&S a year ago to become a full-time independent contractor, now working solely for ES&S in Alabama.

The ethics commission said no conflict of interest existed because Richard Clark does not own or manage the company and that, under state law, marriage does not constitute a "contractual relationship."<
http://www.sptimes.com/News/071201/TampaBay/Elections_firm_has_ti.shtml

sorry 'bout that.