Election Reform, Fraud & Related News 02/13 + Land Shark Appreciation!!!

[autorank]

Land Shark Day on ERD News—Celebrating a Great Victory by Attorney Shark which helped chase Sequoia Voting Systems out of the State of Washington.
THANK YOU LAND SHARK.

"Whenever there is electronic vote counting, there is
no basis for confidence in the results of elections. You have
no right to believe in those elections."- Paul Lehto, Attorney

Paul Lehto questioned the legality of the voting system in his 350,000 person county after 2004. Fortunately for the citizens, Lehto took it upon himself to sue in behalf of the people – for their right to know that their votes actually counted. In the process, politics took over, the county dumped the voting machine company Lehto was suing, largely due to attention Lehto focused on the issue, and Snohomish County, Washington State is now an all paper ballot state. In the process, he also took the time to help election fraud researchers and activists all over the country through his contributions here, which have been exceptional. A motivated, smart, persistent citizen with intellectual honesty made a difference.

Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News February 13,2006

All members welcome and encouraged to participate.

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

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



Previous daily threads are available here:
http://www.independentmediasource.com/DU_archives/du_2004erd_el_ref_fr_thr_calenders.htm
Please

"Recommend"

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

[mod mom]

1. Glad to give a woo hoo to Landshark!

Dear Landshark,

:yourock:

[autorank]

2. WA: Land Shark, Paul Lehto Vanquishes Sequoia

Well, he’ll tell you he didn’t do it alone but he sure as hell started it all and he gets my awarded for DUer of the year. Way to go. You sent the machine people scrambling and you did it as a citizen, not a lobbyist or behind-the-scenes guy. It’s all on record.



Sequoia, Snohomish County, And The Constitutionality of Electronic Voting Machines
http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=909&Itemid=51
By Paul Lehto
February 11, 2006

The following report is from Paul Lehto (pictured below), an attorney in Everett, Washington. Paul is a complainant in a lawsuit against Snohomish County, WA , of which Everett is the county seat, and Sequoia Voting Systems. The pleadings in the lawsuit can be found here.

The story of my lawsuit against Snohomish County, Washington and Sequoia Voting Systems began on election day, 2004, when I was an attorney volunteer at a polling station that was historically favoring one particular political party. However, in 2004 as I saw the touch screens print out their election results after hours, I was surprised to see the other party win every contested race that could have been won within reason. This led to a series of FOIA or Public Disclosure Act requests, and ultimately to a scientific paper co-authored with Dr. Jeffrey Hoffman. The upshot of the paper is that Snohomish County had a relatively unique setup where optically scanned paper ballots were used side by side with touch screen DREs, but then because of the nation's closest gubernatorial election in history, the paper ballots were subjected to hand recounts to eliminate their counting errors while the DREs were not recounted or recountable. Thus, a natural laboratory situation was set up where side by side differences between paper ballots and touch screen electronic ballots could be compared.

The paper ballots showed the Democratic candidate winning by 2000 votes, while the touch screens (handling only 32% of the total vote) showed Republican winning by over 8500 votes. The chances of this happening based on voters being randomly assigned to voting technologies, with 68% assigned to paper and 32% to touch screens was far more than one in a trillion. Though statisticians debate exactly how *many* trillions, they all agree on the word "impossible".

To be fair, however, discrepancies like these are routinely written off by pundits, who posit things like "late surges" and better absentee ballot organizing by one party or the other to explain why absentee ballots might differ from polling place ballots. However, this is what I maintain is the "claim to fame" of the study: we excluded all the touch screen machines that malfunctioned so badly that they were pulled out of service with fewer than 30 votes on them. These malfunctions consisted of observed candidate-flipping where a vote pressed as D would show up as R, as well as freezeups.

[autorank]

3. GA: Ralph Reed – a Fraud Running for Election in Georgia (Remember GA 200

What a pity. Ralph was Mr. Values (like Bennett) and holier than thou for years. Now it turns out that he’s been into the pockets of gambling interests and associated with you-know-who, Abramoff. REMEMBER GA 2002 – Cleland and Barnes had net shifts of 10% and 16% respectively from polls just a day or two before the election. Coincidentally, a Diebold service tech put a patch on all the voting machines just before the election. We never found out what the patch was. Maybe it was the “Screw the Democrats Patch.” Reed is a bum period.

This article from the Virginia Pilot takes Reed apart as only the guy’s hometown paper could (he’s from Portsmouth).

Ralph Reed's questionable coalition

By BILL SIZEMORE, The Virginian-Pilot
© February 12, 2006

Ralph meet Jack; Jack, Ralph.
You guys were made for each other.

“I thought I might get that question,” Reed began with a smile. He then launched into the same response he has been giving, nearly word for word, to audiences all over the state for the past two months.

“Seven years ago I was approached by a longtime friend … who asked me if I’d be willing to work on campaigns to stop the expansion of casinos with the understanding that I would not be paid with any revenues that derived from gambling. I relied on those assurances.

“If I knew then what I know now, I obviously wouldn’t have done that work. On reflection, I should have turned it down. And to the extent that it caused me difficulty with the pro-family movement, I’ve stated that I regret that and I’ve accepted total responsibility for it.

“But let me tell you what I don’t appreciate and what I think the voters of Georgia are going to reject, and that is the unfair attempt by the liberal media and others to engage in guilt by association and to associate me with the misdeeds of others. It’s wrong.”

[autorank]

4. Nation: Scoop Nails it again—Maureen Farrell Editorial Blasts Crooks

Nation: Scoop Nails it again—Maureen Farrell Editorial Blasts Crooks
This Maureen Farrell editorial is outstanding, a great starting point for new folks or just about anybody out there.

Thursday, 9 February 2006, 12:29 pm
Opinion: Maureen Farrell

G.W. Bush Conspired with Others to Steal the 2000 and 2004 Elections.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0602/S00087.htm



While some believe a coup began on Sept. 11, others will tell you it began with the 2000 election. Even though George Bush's first cousin declared him the winner and his brother Jeb assured him he'd won Florida, many Americans remained unconvinced.

First there was the surreal sight of the Bush family on national TV, as staged and phony as Susan Smith's tearful plea to return her "kidnapped" children. Then came the well-groomed thugs, sent on Enron and Halliburton planes to stop the Florida recount. But it wasn't just James Baker's ploys or the Supreme Court's ruling that signaled something was amiss -- it was the attitude of ordinary citizens who were more concerned about their "team" winning than about democracy itself.

Unless you rely solely on FOX news (the modern equivalent to "living under a rock"), the shenanigans that occurred in pre-election Florida are now old news, and have been dissected at length in documentaries, magazines and to some degree, in the mainstream press. A St . Petersburg Times op-ed later deemed the election "stolen," the Associated Press reported that Florida had "quietly" admitted "election fraud," and Vanity Fair devoted a sizable portion of its Oct. 2004 issue to exactly how Team Bush pulled it off. By the time CNN sued the state of Florida for its ineligible voters list in 2004, the underbelly of the beast was plainly visible.

But in Nov. 2001, when Greg Palast uncovered then Secretary of State Katherine Harris' role in the shameful voter roll purge in Florida, the news was explosive. The New York Times -- the paper that would later print front page disinformation to sell the war in Iraq -- took a pass, however, until three years later, when it was too late to do anything about it.

[autorank]

5. VA: Town of Appalachia – Rampant Election Fraud & Town Corruption

This is a microcosm of the larger impact of election fraud on the entire country. Why can’t we get an investigation there.
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?brd=1283

Election fraud case continues in Appalachia
By LAURENCE HAMMACK, The Roanoke Times February 06, 2006
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=1283&dept_id=158551&newsid=16077415&PAG=461&rfi=9

A state police investigation into election fraud in Appalachia has reached past the town's 2004 elections and into its town hall, its police department and the homes of its top officials.

Armed with a dozen search warrants, police officers swarmed into Appalachia Monday morning to seize potential evidence from government buildings.


No charges have been filed. But court records indicate that authorities are looking into both election fraud and subsequent government corruption that it spawned.

Among the claims: that some votes were bought with promises of cigarettes and six-packs of beer, that absentee ballots were stolen from voters' mailboxes and fraudulently cast, and that one of the candidates for the town council went on to head the town police department, now suspected of illegally seizing drugs, money and property.

[autorank]

6. Haiti: Wrong Guy Winning – Therefore a 4 day count, wrong guy just short!

Wow, another one of those Republican squeakers. Well, that’s not the case because this is Haiti. But, and I know you’ll remember, in my last news post last week I pointed out that the USA, Canada and the Organization of American States were setting up the “cleanest” election in Haiti’s history. But when Rene Preval was in the lead, it just so happened that it took 4 days to count the vote and it looks like Preval will not gain the necessary 51% to win outright. What a “coincidence.”
http://www.theage.com.au/news/World/Protesters-demand-Haiti-election-results/2006/02/12/1139679463696.html#

Protesters demand Haiti election results

February 12, 2006 - 9:04AM
NewAge.com Australia

Hundreds of people marched in Haiti's capital on Saturday in support of ex-president Rene Preval, and some accused elections officials of trying to steal the first vote since Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted two years ago.

Preval, the one-time Aristide ally was leading with just over 50 per cent of the vote - the majority he would need to avoid a second round of voting on March 19.

Four days after the election, less than two-thirds of the votes had been counted, creating suspicion among residents of Preval's stronghold in the Cite Soleil slum that the vote was being manipulated.

<snip>

A victory for Preval could prove unsettling to the United States, which worked to push Aristide from power two years ago. On Friday, Washington urged Preval, who maintained a low profile in his mountain hometown of Marmelade in the north, to oppose Aristide's return from exile in South Africa.

[autorank]

7. OH: Two more Taft Aids indicted; ties to Noe.

The Ohio legal establishment better get off its ass quickly or the state will go down the tubes forever. I find this appalling. Ohio is a great state. You’d think there were enough sane people there in power to realize that Taft, Petro, and Blackwell are more appropriately seen in a chain gang than in public office.

Ohio scandal snares 2 more ex-aides to governor

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002800204_ohio12.html

By ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS

The Associated Press

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio's corruption scandal widened as two former aides to Gov. Bob Taft were charged Friday with failing to report loans and other favors from a coin dealer at the center of the case.

Douglas Talbott, 41, and Doug Moormann, 38, became the third and fourth former Taft aides charged with ethics violations over their relationship with Tom Noe.

Noe, also a top Republican fundraiser, is under investigation over his handling of a $50 million state investment in rare coins. Up to $13 million is unaccounted for; investigators suspect Noe stole some of it.

In 2005, Taft pleaded no contest to accepting golf games and other unreported gifts.

[autorank]

8. OH: Blackwell is Attacked by Opponents in OH Governor Primary

Secretary of State Blackwell, author of our massive discontent in 11/04 is finding out what it’s like to run in a real campaign. He can’t hide behind the Ohio Supreme court anymore. He has to take grief in public. Watch for a meltdown.

Blackwell, Strickland step up attacks in governor's race

JOHN McCarthy
Associated Press Posted on Fri, Feb. 10, 2006

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Republican Kenneth Blackwell and Democrat Ted Strickland focused on criticizing each other Friday at a forum among five candidates for governor, with Blackwell belittling the congressman's lack of statewide experience and Strickland accusing the secretary of state of lacking leadership.

Strickland, whose district includes Ohio's farthest eastern and southeastern counties, said Blackwell's November ballot issue to limit state spending and get voter approval for tax increases would shackle officeholders whose job it is to lead.

"I disagree with much of what I heard from Mr. Blackwell," Strickland said at the forum sponsored by the Ohio Newspaper Association. "What leadership means is the ability to set an agenda, to craft a vision and to mobilize the people to move toward that agenda. Ohioans more than anything else today are hungering and thirsting for political leadership."

<snip>

Blackwell's plan also was criticized by the other candidates at the forum, Republican Attorney General Jim Petro and two Democrats, state Sen. Eric Fingerhut and

[autorank]

9. LAND SHARK IN THE PRESS—Attorney Prevails over voting machine company!!!

That’s right. Take a look below. This is an amazing story. Land Shark did this on his own, without any request or expectation of compensation. And he won!!!

Activist Attorney Paul Lehto Makes a Strong Case
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0510/S00003.htmhttp://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0510/S00003.htm">”SCOOP” Independent Media.
The initial day's activities centered three key themes: the political rationale behind the voting rights-election-fraud movement; the technical rationale; and getting the message out through available media. Activist and attorney Paul Lehto of Snohomish County Washington framed the core rationale for those challenging the legitimacy of the 2004 election and seeking solutions to prevent future electoral travesties.

Lehto is currently suing Sequoia voting systems as a result of clear failures to produce an accurate vote count during the 2004 presidential election. He outlined a simple syllogism: the software used by voting machine companies to capture votes on electronic voting machines is "proprietary" software developed and owned by the companies; these companies keep the software and methods a trade secret; therefore, the results of our elections can no longer be trusted or accepted as legitimate since we have no way to review software, performance, and security guarantees.

[autorank]

10. The Case and Legal Motions

The Case and Legal Motions

http://www.votersunite.org/info/lehtolawsuit.asp

I. INTRODUCTION

1.1 This case arises out a dispute concerning a contract between defendants Snohomish County and Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc. for the purchase of Sequoia touch-screen voting computers employed in the 2004 elections (hereinafter “the Contract”). The Contract is appended hereto as Appendix ‘A.’ Plaintiffs make claims under the Uniform Declaratory Judgments Act for specific declarations respecting the Contract and its provisions and for such other and further relief as may be necessary or proper.

1.2 Plaintiffs Wells and Lehto, as citizens and voters, object to provisions of the contract between Snohomish County and Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc. attempting to shield from public view and verification the means by which votes are recorded, counted, tabulated, and reported on the grounds that they contain “trade secret,” “confidential,” or “proprietary” materials. Plaintiffs contend, among other things, that provisions of the contract ought properly to be set aside based upon contractual, statutory, Constitutional and public policy grounds.

1.3 This case implicates questions concerning the proper balance to be struck between a free people and their government, recognizing the inherent tension between appropriate delegation of regulatory and administrative functions respecting the conduct of elections by the people to the agencies of their government, on the one hand, and the danger that lack of transparent, accurate, and verifiable elections could undermine accountability and lead to rule by self-perpetuating incumbents with the resulting damage to our democracy, on the other.

1.4 Access to Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc. information is essential to insure the transparency and verifiability of elections at the precise nexus of the exercise of the voting franchise (vote counting) and the essential legitimacy of government (i.e. election results). Accordingly, the court must apply strict scrutiny to all acts or contracts tending to impair the right of the people to supervise and review their elections in order that public confidence is sustained respecting the accuracy, integrity, transparency, and verifiability of voting systems. Such scrutiny supports the public policy of Washington State, as stated in RCW 42.30.010:

The people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created.

1.5 This action seeks to vindicate the proposition that no contract, public or private, shall be permitted to undermine Article I, Section 1 of the Washington Constitution: “all political power is inherent in the people”. Plaintiffs seek relief herein based upon past damages sustained and the threat of future injury.

[autorank]

11. Lehto’s Political Victory

Lehto’s Political Victory

Lehto’s law suit began the entire process of this 300,000 plus county looking at its voting machines. Based on a real disaster in the 2004 election and his ability to smell a skunk when it’s walking down the road, Lehto began the legal process described above. During that process, the politics of Snohomish County changed. Voting rights became an issue of prime concern. Control of the County board changed from Republican to Democrat, and Sequoia was gone. This was the final straw. They’ve left Washington State. It’s all paper now, thanks to a process Lehto started as a citizen and a lawyer.


Published: Thursday, January 5, 2006

County OKs all-mail voting
Snohomish County joins 33 other counties in Washington that hold all-mail elections.

By Jeff Switzer
Herald Writer

Facing high election costs, the Snohomish County Council voted Wednesday to close its polling places and switch to all-mail elections starting in September.

In an anticipated 3-2 vote, the council's new Democratic majority approved the change, endorsed by Democratic County Executive Aaron Reardon and Auditor Bob Terwilliger.

How many voters are there in the county? 349,672.

The move saves the county from buying $1 million in state-required paper audit equipment to go with its electronic voting machines.

Snohomish County becomes the 34th of the state's 39 counties - and the most populous - to go to all-mail ballots.

[autorank]

12. Lehto was right: “I see dead people...voting!”

Lehto was right: “I see dead people...voting!”


Published: Friday, January 27, 2006

Official asks for ballot probe
Snohomish County Councilman Gary Nelson wants to know if any ballots have been cast in the name of dead voters in recent elections.
http://heraldnet.com/stories/06/01/27/100loc_b1ballot001.cfm
By Jeff Switzer and Scott North
Herald Writers

Snohomish County should investigate whether any of 1,463 apparently dead voters just purged from voting rolls have cast ballots lately, Republican County Councilman Gary Nelson said Thursday.

"I want to determine when was the last time they voted, and if it was subsequent to their death, I know someone else voted for them," Nelson said.

"I have never seen a deceased voter come into the polls," added Nelson, a critic of the county's scheduled shift to all-mail elections in September.

On Thursday, Nelson e-mailed the County Council and county Auditor Bob Terwilliger, who oversees the county elections division, asking for an investigation of local voters found in a statewide computer sweep intended to remove duplicate or deceased voters.

[autorank]

13. Lehto’s Principles Influence other Cases

Lehto’s Principles Influence other Cases

February 09, 2006

Rutgers University

NJ Appeals Court Reinstates Lawsuit Challenging Constitutionality of Electronic Voting Machines
http://www.newark.rutgers.edu/news/index.php?sId=viewArticle&ArticleID=4972&prevTitle=Top+Stories&prevURL=index.php


Newark, NJ, February 9, 2006 – The New Jersey Appellate Division announced today its agreement with concerns raised by the Constitutional Litigation Clinic at Rutgers School of Law-Newark that all electronic voting machines used in New Jersey may violate New Jersey’s Constitution and election laws.

In its decision, the Appellate Division reinstated a lawsuit filed by the clinic in 2004 that challenges the ability of New Jersey’s electronic voting machines to count votes accurately, in compliance with voting rights laws. The Court reinstated the lawsuit even though, as a result of judicial and legislative efforts led by the clinic, all voting machines in the state must be equipped with a voter verified paper ballot component by 2008. The Court was concerned with protecting the hundreds of millions of votes that would be cast on voting machines between now and 2008. The Court also expressed its concern that the Attorney General’s office would use a loophole in the statute and issue waivers to the 2008 voter verified paper ballot requirement – further jeopardizing the franchise.

The lawsuit is the first in the nation to successfully challenge electronic voting machines. Professor Penny Venetis, associate director of the clinic and lead counsel on the case, commented, “This shows that our courts take very seriously their role in protecting our most fundamental of all rights – the right to vote. Despite clear evidence that New Jersey’s voting machines are insecure, the other branches of government failed to take appropriate action. That is why the Court stepped in,” Venetis added.

The same voting machines used by almost all of New Jersey’s five million registered voters have been found too insecure to use and have been de-commissioned by California, Ohio, Nevada, and New York City. New Jersey does not check the software of electronic voting machines to determine whether they have been tampered with or whether they are faulty.

[Wilms]

14. NY: May fall short of voting guidelines

N.Y. may fall short of voting guidelines

State officials say missing mark for new machines is very likely

Joseph Spector
Staff writer

(February 11, 2006) — State elections officials are just about conceding that they won't be able to meet federal guidelines that require new voting machines for this year's election.

Lee Daghlian, spokesman for the state Board of Elections, said this week that the timeline to buy new machines and have election inspectors trained by the September primary is simply becoming too tight.

"We're going to try, but I don't think there is going to be enough time for training and such," he said.

If the deadline is blown, the state faces losing some of the roughly $220 million designated by the federal government for the machines and training. It also means that the old mechanical lever machines that date back decades will once again be used this year.

snip

http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060211/NEWS01/602110321/1002/NEWS

[Wilms]

15. IO: Our System Of Voting – The Bedrock Of Our Democracy – Is In Jeopardy

Iowa: Our System Of Voting – The Bedrock Of Our Democracy – Is In Jeopardy

By Carole Simmons, Iowans for Voting Integrity

February 12, 2006

The Help America Vote Act of 2002, or HAVA, was intended to make voting easier and more accessible following the Florida election fiasco of butterfly ballots and hanging chads. Unfortunately, in the rush to implement HAVA, the need for transparency and security in the voting process have been left behind.

Billions of federal dollars have been allocated to the states for purchase of electronic voting systems that are prone to error and vulnerable to fraud. This is not the opinion of some conspiracy theorist, but rather the considered judgment of computer scientists at leading universities – Stanford, Johns Hopkins, and our own University of Iowa - and these concerns are echoed in a September 2005 GAO report. Current standards and testing procedures are inadequate to reveal security flaws that could subvert an election.

Yet, as mandated, all 99 counties in Iowa have now contracted for new voting equipment. Eighteen counties will rely solely on paperless Direct Recording Electronic (DRE or touch screen) machines. Most of the other counties will have a mixed system, where any voter who wishes may use a DRE. The voter using these paperless machines has no way to see what the machine recorded when they voted – no way to verify their vote. Their "ballot" is just a chunk of computer code internal to the machine.

This is not just a hypothetical concern: There have already been cases where DREs have been misprogrammed, or miscounted votes. There is no way to do a meaningful recount with such a system. If your vote for candidate A was wrongly coded for candidate B, that code is not going to be corrected if there is an electronic "recount."

snip

http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=911&Itemid=113

[Kurovski]

16. singing Candy-Gram for Land Shark!

Oh the shark has

Such sharp teeth, dear.

And he keeps them

Pearly-white.

[Land Shark]

17. I hope one day to give a good photograph! ; ) Thanks Autorank!

[autorank]

18. Thank YOU for EVERYTHING...all the hard work but also for the smarts!

This is huge and all the more impressive since it's citizen generated analysis, work, and perseverance.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but you didn't have a big staff go out and do a study, conduct a pilot and pay for a "focus group." You basically did this because you saw a problem that needed to be fixed. That's the great part, no inordinate delays, no paralysis by analysis, just reforming action.

You're inspiring me to pro se work!!!

The Shark pictures are fine here and also Wlms article!!! My sig line pic before Al Gore is actually
me (can you imagine?;) Talk about bad photographs!

THANKS!!!

[Land Shark]

20. Sharks don't set out to form organizations, first,

Though they may occasionally swim in packs or schools, sharks don't set out to form their own sharky organization as a condition precedent to taking action. Instead, they are like the pit bull on the pantleg of opportunity.....

[understandinglife]

21. Thank you LS!! K&R.

Peace.

[EFerrari]

22. Thank you, Land Shark. It's good to win.

:)

:grouphug:

[Bushfire]

19. Thank you Paul Lehto

and thanks for keeping the voting integrity issue alive autorank