Election Reform and Related News: Saturday, May 12, 2007

[livvy]

Election Reform and Related News
Saturday, May 12, 2007

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. Re-post stories and announcements you find on DU, providing a link to the original thread with thanks to the Original Poster, too.

3. If you have information from an election reform activist organization outside of DU feel free to post (local or national)

4. Start a discussion thread by re-posting a story you see on this thread.

5. Election related sources
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph ...

Recommendations are always welcome!

[livvy]

1. Colleagues Cite Partisan Focus by Justice Official

May 12, 2007
Colleagues Cite Partisan Focus by Justice Official
By ERIC LIPTON

WASHINGTON, May 11 — Two years ago, Robin C. Ashton, a seasoned criminal prosecutor at the Department of Justice, learned from her boss that a promised promotion was no longer hers.

“You have a Monica problem,” Ms. Ashton was told, according to several Justice Department officials. Referring to Monica M. Goodling, a 31-year-old, relatively inexperienced lawyer who had only recently arrived in the office, the boss added, “She believes you’re a Democrat and doesn’t feel you can be trusted.”

Ms. Ashton’s ouster — she left the Executive Office for United States Attorneys for another Justice Department post two weeks later — was a critical early step in a plan that would later culminate in the ouster of nine United States attorneys last year.

Ms. Goodling would soon be quizzing applicants for civil service jobs at Justice Department headquarters with questions that several United States attorneys said were inappropriate, like who was their favorite president and Supreme Court justice. One department official said an applicant was even asked, “Have you ever cheated on your wife?”

>more

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/12/washington/12monica.html?hp

[livvy]

2. Breaking the Story on the DOH and Voter Suppression

Friday, May 11, 2007

Breaking the story on the DOJ and voter suppression

As many have noted, one of the main underlying stories behind the U.S. Attorney scandal was the Department of Justice's drive to dispose of staff who didn't enthusiastically embrace their program of battling "voter fraud" -- especially in areas that voted Democrat. McClatchy reporters (who have been doing great reporting on this issue) give the latest example in a dispatch today:

Only weeks before last year's pivotal midterm elections, the White House urged the Justice Department to pursue voter-fraud allegations against Democrats in three battleground states, a high-ranking Justice official has told congressional investigators.

In two instances in October 2006, President Bush's political adviser, Karl Rove, or his deputies passed the allegations on to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' then-chief of staff, Kyle Sampson.

Sound familiar? This is eerily similar to the DOJ's push before the 2004 elections to downplay voting rights issues, and play up voter fraud concerns -- an agenda with a clear outcome, to depress Democratic votes.

>more including an article written in 2004. Here's the first paragraph, and the rest is at the link. It's a long article, but I just finished reading the whole thing, and it's worth the time.

DOJ ACTIONS ON ELECTION LAW BENEFIT REPUBLICANS

By Jordan Green
Southern Exposure
October 29, 2004

Nanita Wilson, a registrar for the District of Columbia Board of Elections and Ethics, is frustrated. New voters have been registering in unprecedented numbers in the run-up to the 2004 elections, but her office has had trouble keeping up. Wilson says many people who think they’re registered might show up at polling places on Election Day and find their names missing from the voting rolls.


http://southernstudies.org/facingsouth/2007/05/breaking-story-on-doj-and-voter.asp

[livvy]

3. Fitrakis & Wasserman: The Globalization Of Electronic Election Theft

The Globalization Of Electronic Election Theft

by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
May 11, 2007

From Ohio and California to Scotland and France, the disputes surrounding electronic voting machines have gone truly global.

E-voting machines have already been extensively studied and condemned by a wide range of expert committees, commissions and colleges, including the General Accountability Office, the Carter-Baker Commission, Johns Hopkins University, Princeton University, Stanford University and others. Rigging of a recount in Cleveland has resulted in two felony convictions. The failures of e-voting machines have been the subject of numerous documentary films, including the aptly titled HBO special “Hacking Democracy.”

Now the secretaries of state in Ohio and California are subjecting e-voting to still more official review. Ohio’s Jennifer Brunner has announced she’ll seek bids to conduct independent studies of both touch-screen machines, which record votes electronically, and optical scanners, which tabulate paper ballots electronically.

Brunner has already removed the entire board of elections of Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) in part because of a major fiasco caused by new electronic machines in the state’s 2006 primary election. Voting rights activists vehemently opposed the $20 million purchase, but it was rammed through by Board Chair Robert Bennett and Executive Director Michael Vu.

>more

http://www.fraudbusterbob.com/blog/

[livvy]

4. The Ecology of Impeachment

The Ecology of Impeachment

by Patricia Goldsmith / May 11th, 2007

The American electorate is looking more and more like the polar bear stranded on a shrinking ice floe — still powerful but with democracy melting out from under our feet. Unlike the polar bear, however, we should be able to analyze our situation and take action. The first thing we have to do is accept that certain familiar features of our habitat, which we have depended on in the past, are just gone.

We now have more media outlets than ever before, but their mission seems to be to drown out any molecule of truth. And our inter-dependent voting and justice systems have been reduced to slivers of their former selves.

For example, as time has gone by, the true significance of the Supreme Court’s selection of George W. Bush as president has become more and more painfully clear, in spite of efforts on the part of the media and across the political spectrum to obscure the bald truth: In Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court shamelessly sided with a gang of Republican congressional aides swinging baseball bats who originally shut down the vote count and threw the case into the courts.

Jamin Raskin argued in March, 2001, in an article titled “Bandits in Black Robes,” that Bush v. Gore is easily the worst Supreme Court decision in history — even worse than Dred Scott, because in the case of Scott, justices could truthfully argue that the unamended 1857 (pre-Civil War) Constitution did regard black people as less than human. It was at least consistent. Not so with Bush v. Gore. Raskin says:

In a slapdash job of constitutional interpretation, the conservatives ravaged four foundational relationships in our constitutional system. It usurped the role of the Florida Supreme Court in interpreting state law. It usurped the role of the American people by halting the counting of ballots in a presidential election and effectively choosing the president for them. It usurped Congress’ powers to accept or reject the states’ electoral college votes. And it reversed the proper distribution of powers in federal government by having Supreme Court justices appoint the president rather than vice versa.

>more

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2007/05/the-ecology-of-impeachment/

[livvy]

5. House Waters Down E-Voting Code Disclosure Rules

House waters down e-voting code disclosure rules

By Timothy B. Lee | Published: May 10, 2007 - 10:39PM CT

On Tuesday, the House Committee on Administration approved Rush Holt's (D-NJ) e-voting reform bill by a 6-3 vote. The vote broke down along party lines, with the six Democrats supporting the legislation, and the three Republicans opposing it.

As we reported last month, the legislation includes several provisions on the wish list of e-voting critics. It requires a voter-verified paper ballot, dictates that those ballots be the official record in the event of a recount, and mandates random audits of election results. It also prohibits voting machines with wireless network capabilities or connections to the Internet.

Before approving Holt's legislation, the committee accepted an amendment by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) that made two important changes to Holt's original proposal. First, the amount of money made available to help states comply with the requirements of the legislation was tripled to a billion dollars. This was undoubtedly a response to the testimony of several state election officials who argued that the previous figure of $300 million would not be sufficient to allow the states to meet the legislation's requirements.
Limits on source code disclosure

Second, Lofgren's amendment significantly watered down the requirement that voting machine source code be made publicly available. Holt's original legislation had required that source code be "available for inspection promptly upon request to any person." The version approved by the House still requires vendors to disclose source code to an independent third party, but that third party may only disclose the source code to government officials, to parties in election-related litigation, or to a person "who reviews, analyzes, or reports on the technology solely for an academic, scientific, technological, or other investigation or inquiry concerning the accuracy or integrity of the technology."

>more

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070510-house-waters-down-e-voting-code-disclosure-rules.html

[livvy]

6. Conason: GOP's Reaganesque Tall Tales

Columns
Joe Conason

GOP's Reaganesque tall tales
May 10, 2007

Sensing their own smallness, contemporary politicians often seek to puff themselves up by appealing to myth and legend. For Republicans, there is no mythology more appealing than that of Ronald Wilson Reagan, as the party's presidential candidates eagerly demonstrated during their May 3 debate in the library that bears his name.

Those charmless imitators seem to believe that the late president's image can not only win primary votes but vanquish America's enemies. As Rudolph Giuliani explained, a Reaganesque glare should be enough to scare the Iranian despot into surrendering any nuclear ambitions: "He has to look at an American president and he has to see Ronald Reagan. Remember, they looked in Ronald Reagan's eyes, and in two minutes, they released the hostages."

Such belligerent invocations of the old actor are standard fare on the GOP primary circuit. The actual circumstances of American relations with Iran during the Reagan years -- and indeed of security policy in general back then -- were more complex and less inspirational.

The tough gunslinger described by the Republican candidates resembles the real Reagan about as accurately as his movie roles resembled his real life. It was strange to hear him mentioned in the context of Iran, the scene of the worst foreign-policy fiasco of his administration -- and the topic that most clearly demonstrates the distance between right-wing fantasy and historical reality.

>more

http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/16/2007/1540

[livvy]

7. Repost: The GOP's Cyber Election Hit Squad

Departments
Election Issues

The GOP's cyber election hit squad
by Steven Rosenfeld and Bob Fitrakis
April 22, 2007

Did the most powerful Republicans in America have the computer capacity, software skills and electronic infrastructure in place on Election Night 2004 to tamper with the Ohio results to ensure George W. Bush's re-election?

The answer appears to be yes. There is more than ample documentation to show that on Election Night 2004, Ohio's "official" Secretary of State website – which gave the world the presidential election results – was redirected from an Ohio government server to a group of servers that contain scores of Republican web sites, including the secret White House e-mail accounts that have emerged in the scandal surrounding Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s firing of eight federal prosecutors.

Recent revelations have documented that the Republican National Committee (RNC) ran a secret White House e-mail system for Karl Rove and dozens of White House staffers. This high-tech system used to count and report the 2004 presidential vote– from server-hosting contracts, to software-writing services, to remote-access capability, to the actual server usage logs themselves – must be added to the growing congressional investigations.

Numerous tech-savvy bloggers, starting with the online investigative consortium epluribusmedia.org and their November 2006 article cross-posted by contributor luaptifer to Dailykos, and Joseph Cannon's blog at Cannonfire.blogspot.com, outed the RNC tech network. That web-hosting firm is SMARTech Corp. of Chattanooga, TN, operating out of the basement in the old Pioneer Bank building. The firm hosts scores of Republican websites, including georgewbush.com, gop.com and rnc.org.

>more

http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2007/2553

[livvy]

8. Palast: Naked Neo-Cons: Perjury and the Big, Bad Wolfowitz

Departments
National Issues

Naked neo-cons: Perjury and the big, bad Wolfowitz
by Greg Palast
May 11, 2007

George Bush is trying to save Paul Wolfowitz' job as President of the World Bank even after the vulpine neo-con was caught slipping a load of World Bank loot to his love interest, Shaha Ali Riza.

Big deal. Yes, Wolfowitz shouldn't have been greasing his cookie sheet with government funds, but there are bigger reasons to toss The Wolf out the door.

Like, say, perjury and homicide? I haven't forgotten, Mr. Wolfowitz, that on March 27, 2003 you testified before the US Congress that the occupation of Iraq wouldn't cost the American taxpayer a penny.

You said, "There's a lot of money to pay for this that doesn't have to be U.S. taxpayer money." Oh, really?

When Wolfowitz laid down that line of jive, he and the Bushes knew that Americans just can't pass up a bargain, and here The Wolf was offering the sale of the century, a "free Iraq." Not "free" as in "self-governing" but "free" as in, we'll get their oil and their allegiance for nothing!

We can bomb Iraq and the Iraqis will pay for the bombs!

>more

http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/20/2007/2583

[livvy]

9. New York Files US Supreme Court Brief in Lopez Torres

New York Files US Supreme Court Brief in Lopez Torres
May 11th, 2007

New York state and its allies have now filed their briefs with the U.S. Supreme Court in N.Y. State Bd. of Elections v Lopez Torres, no. 06-766. Allied with the state on the merits are the New York State Republican Party, the Manhatten Democratic Party, the Association of State Supreme Court Justices, the Republican National Committee, New York’s Attorney General, and the Asian American Bar Association. Also, the Mid-Manhatten Branch of the NAACP and the Metropolitan Black Bar Association filed an amicus brief that seems to be neutral on the merits but argues that the relief ordered by the lower courts was wrong.

Groups that filed an amicus brief in the 2nd circuit on the state’s side, but did not bother to file an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court on the state’s side, are the Women’s Bar Association of New York, the Staten Island Bar Association, and the New York state legislature.

The issue in the case is the method New York uses to nominate Supreme Court Justices. Judicial district conventions choose party nominees. Delegates to the district conventions need 500 signatures, collected in 37 days from party members in their own county (judicial districts are larger than counties). While that sounds easy, there are hundreds of delegates chosen. Anyone who wants to be nominated, and who doesn’t have the support of party leaders who get the party-backed slates of delegates on the primary ballot, must get his or her own delegates on the primary ballots. The task is so difficult, virtually no one ever gets on the primary ballot except slates of delegate candidates backed by the party organization. Then, since there is no primary contest, that office is simply removed from the primary ballot.

New York and its allies don’t argue that collecting all these signatures is easy. They just say that the U.S. Constitution doesn’t protect ballot access in partisan primaries. Also they say that the system was never designed for someone who wants a judicial nomination to recruit slates of delegates and organize petition drives to get them on the ballot.

Lopez Torres’ brief, and amici briefs from her allies, are due in June.
One Response to “New York Files US Supreme Court Brief in Lopez Torres”

>This is the whole piece. Responses to it are at the link below. There are also several short news bits about election issues from the 10th including:

West Virginia Democrats Convert Presidential Primary Into “Beauty Contest”

Vermont Committee Passes IRV Bill

Virgin Islands Resident Loses Vote Lawsuit

http://www.ballot-access.org/2007/05/11/new-york-files-us-supreme-court-brief-in-lopez-torres/

[livvy]

10. NC: Congressman McHenry's Campaign aide Indicted

May 11, 2007


Congressman McHenry's Campaign Aide Indicted
Posted by Michael Rey

By Laura Strickler and Michael Rey
The CBS News Investigative Unit has learned a man who was a field coordinator in Congressman Patrick McHenry's (R-NC) 2004 campaign has been indicted for voter fraud in North Carolina.

The indictment charges that Michael Aaron Lay, 26, illegally cast his ballot in two 2004 Congressional primary run-offs in which McHenry was a candidate. The charges indicate that Lay voted in a district where it was not legal for him to vote.

At the time Lay was listed as a resident in a home owned by 32-year-old McHenry but campaign records indicate Lay's paychecks were sent to an address in Tennessee. McHenry won the primary by only 86 votes. According to Gaston County, North Carolina District Attorney Locke Bell, Lay was indicted on Monday, May 7 by a local grand jury.

CBS News has learned that these charges were first investigated by the North Carolina State Board of Elections up to two years ago. The results were forwarded to the previous Gaston County District Attorney Mike Lands. In January, Bell was elected the new district attorney for the county and pursued the indictment.



http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2007/05/11/primarysource/entry2793560.shtml

[livvy]

11. Controversy Hovers Over Graves' Ouster

Posted on Sat, May. 12, 2007
Controversy hovers over Graves’ ouster

The spotlight in the U.S. attorney firings has come to rest on Kansas City.

Todd Graves now says he was “pushed out” of his job as the U.S. attorney for Western Missouri in January 2006. That links him with at least eight other prosecutors dismissed by Justice Department officials in Washington.

Graves’ departure is especially interesting to critics of the Bush administration because of his interim replacement, Bradley Schlozman. As a top official of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, Schlozman had authorized a lawsuit accusing Missouri’s secretary of state of failing to clean up local voter registration rolls.

Graves had correctly declined to file the case, which a federal judge has since thrown out on jurisdictional grounds.

Schlozman’s move to Missouri fuels contentions that at least some of the U.S. attorney firings were engineered to affect 2006 elections in battleground states by linking Democratic officials to voter fraud.

>more

http://www.kansascity.com/340/story/103873.html

[livvy]

12. All Eyes on Monica Goodling

All Eyes on Monica Goodling
Jason McLure
Legal Times
05-14-2007

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales emerged mostly unscathed from last week's face-off with Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee over his role in the U.S. Attorney firings. And with Republicans on the committee offering Gonzales near-universal support, the tone on Capitol Hill shifted from "Gonzales is going" to "Gonzales is staying."

But there's one big wild card that's yet to be thrown into play, and that's Monica Goodling, Gonzales' former White House liaison. Last week, Chief Judge Thomas Hogan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia approved a House request to grant limited immunity to Goodling in exchange for her testimony.

Goodling, who resigned her post April 7, previously told the committee that she would assert her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. She now has the opportunity to shed light on her key role in a firing process that has remained shrouded in mystery, despite the release of thousands of Justice Department e-mails and the testimony of a number of top officials. According to congressional staffers, Democrats hope to have her testify publicly before Memorial Day.

"She's worked very hard," says John Dowd, a lawyer for Goodling at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld. "She'll do her level best to be candid and forward in her testimony."

>more (registration may be required)

http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1178874299251

[livvy]

13. Ties To Vote-Machine Makers Questioned

Ties to vote-machine makers questioned
By Craig Gustafson
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

May 12, 2007

A former sales representative for Diebold Election Systems – maker of San Diego County's electronic voting machines – has been hired to run elections countywide.

Deborah Seiler, 57, who is assistant registrar of voters in Solano County, will take over as San Diego County's registrar starting June 4. She will make $150,000 annually.

Walt Ekard, the county's chief administrative officer, said Seiler's experience will be invaluable as the registrar's office prepares for perhaps its busiest year ever in 2008.

But Paul Lehto, co-founder of Psephos, a nonprofit group that focuses on election integrity, questioned the hiring of Seiler based on her work with Diebold and Sequoia Pacific Systems, which also makes voting machines.

“Seiler is known as one of the best PR people or apologists for secret vote-counting that exists in the nation, and she's coming to San Diego County,” Lehto said.
Woot for Paul!

>more

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20070512-9999-7m12seiler.html

[livvy]

14. MI: Campaign Finance Reform Bogs Down in Legislature

05/12/2007
Campaign finance reform bogs down in Legislature

By Brian McGillivary

[email protected]

TRAVERSE CITY — State Sen. Michelle McManus gives herself an "A-plus” for her work on campaign and election reform, but her efforts thus far haven't impressed one of Michigan's top political watchdogs.

McManus, R-Lake Leelanau, is chairwoman of the Senate's new Campaign and Election Oversight Committee. In her first five months she held three committee meetings and passed one piece of legislation.

>snip

Her one piece of campaign legislation targets automated or "robo” political phone calls. If adopted, committees behind the calls or advertisements would have to be disclosed. No such requirement currently exists.

That's not much progress, said Rich Robinson, Executive Director of the nonprofit, nonpartisan Michigan Campaign Finance Network.

>more

http://www.record-eagle.com/2007/may/12finance.htm

[livvy]

15. Secret Trade Deal Battle: K Street vs. Middle America

Secret Trade Deal Battle: K Street vs. Middle America
By David Sirota
Created May 12 2007 - 9:28am

This is the second in a series of posts <1> following the announcement of a secret free trade deal between a handful of senior Democrats and the Bush administration.

Another long day as the reverberations continue to intensify after yesterday's press conference announcing a secret "free" trade deal <2> between a handful of senior Democrats and the Bush administration. In the interest of brevity, I have compiled the major news of the day, including new revelations about who is supporting the deal and who is opposing it, though remember - it is difficult to make any hard and fast conclusions because Democratic leaders and the White House continue to keep the details of the deal completely secret. That said, a look at who is supporting the deal and who is opposing it provides some key insights into what this deal is really all about. Already, the New York Times has reported that at least half of all House Democrats may immediately oppose the deal <3> because it seems to fly in the face of the Election 2006 mandate against lobbyist-written trade policy. And now, a day after the announcement, the battle lines are being drawn.

For reference, Public Citizen is calling for the public immediately contact Congress asking lawmakers to reject the deal, on the basis of what we already know about it. The organization has created a website for this purpose here <4>.

NEWS OF THE DAY

DEAL MAKES SURE TO PREVENT UNIONS FROM HAVING LESS RIGHTS THAN CORPORATIONS: Reuters <5> reports that the deal includes "a provision that would only allow national governments" - not unions - "to file a labor complaint under the pact," meaning Democrats complicit in the deal are effectively proposing that America rely on the Bush administration to make sure workers and the environment are protected. This provision in the deal creates a clear double standard that prioritizes corporate rights over worker rights <6>. Specifically, the provision stands in contrast to provisions already in America's current trade pacts that allow domestic and foreign corporations to file complaints against sovereign governments (including U.S. local, state and federal governments) when those governments pass environmental/consumer protection laws. These complaints have resulted in U.S. taxpayers alone being forced to pay roughly $1.8 billion in "damages" in international courts because of its own laws.

DEAL PREVENTS DEMANDS FOR U.S. TO RESPECT INTERNATIONAL LABOR STANDARDS AT HOME: Bloomberg News <7> reports that the deal appears to ensure that unions and other countries cannot demand enforcement of International Labor Organization standards in the United States. Specifically, "federal trade officials said they are confident that the wording protects against any possible litigation." This report is consistent with a statement from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which yesterday said key players in the deal have given K Street "assurances that the labor provisions cannot be read to require compliance with ILO Conventions." <8>

>more

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/7422

DU discussion in thread posted by babylonsister:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x281016

and another discussion posted by KoKo01:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x872359

[livvy]

16. Ex-U.S. Attorney Questions Own Firing

Ex-U.S. Attorney Questions Own Firing
WASHINGTON, May. 11, 2007(AP) A former West Virginia federal prosecutor said Friday the White House fired him in 2005 in the middle of a corruption and vote-buying investigation but never told him why.

Karl K. "Kasey" Warner said he has "concerns" and sees parallels between himself and eight other ousted U.S. attorneys. Congress and an internal Justice Department agency are investigating whether those firings were politically motivated.

The Justice Department rejected any suggestion of politics in Warner's dismissal.

"The notion that the termination was political is absolutely false," spokesman Dean Boyd said. "We encourage Mr. Warner to provide the department with a written privacy waiver and we will be happy to provide you with the reason for his removal."

Warner would not elaborate on what concerned him about his August 2005 firing but rejected the idea that he was fired over his performance.

"The facts speak for themselves. Look into how I ran my office. See how I managed the office," Warner said. "If they want to look at the cases I had and the corruption cases we have now, people can come to their own conclusions about why I was let go."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/05/11/ap/politics/main2793656.shtml

DU discussion in thread started by babylonsister:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x3261332

and a thread started by kpete:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x872271

[Melissa G]

17. Kick to the top! Thanks, livvy! n/t