E-VOTING UNDER MICROSCOPE: Election Reform, Fraud, & News Sunday 07/22/07

[freedomfries]

Election Reform, Fraud, & News Sunday 07/22/07




All members welcome and encouraged to participate.

Please post Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News on this thread.
:patriot:
If you can:
:argh:
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.
Please "Recommend" for the Greatest Page.
:patriot:

[freedomfries]

1. CA: State puts E-voting under microscope

State puts E-voting under microscope
Elections: Worries of tampering prompt California to conduct rigorous testing.

Steven Harmon, Staff writer
Press Telegram, Long Beach, CA
July 21, 2007 05:38:01 PM PDT
http://www.presstelegram.com/news/ci_6433742

SACRAMENTO - In a nondescript storage room, tucked deep behind layers of security doors, a handful of computer experts are wrapping up an intense two months of hacking or otherwise manipulating electronic voting systems.

The rigorous testing for vulnerabilities in touchscreen voting machines are part of an unprecedented "top-to-bottom" review ordered by Secretary of State Debra Bowen to ensure that the state's voting systems are secure - and whether or not they should be certified for use.

She is expected to issue a report on Aug. 3 - six months before the Feb. 5 presidential primaries, a timeline that is making election officials nervous.

Bowen is fulfilling what her supporters and voting security advocates consider to be the mandate she received from last year's election, in which she clashed with her predecessor, Bruce McPherson, over how much scrutiny the state's electronic voting and tabulations systems needed. She won in November amid a national outcry over fears of hacking, vote flipping and election rigging with suspicions squarely aimed at touchscreen voting systems.

"Voting machine companies are quaking in their boots," said Brad Friedman, the author of BradBlog.com, which is devoted to voting security issues. "She's doing exactly what she was elected to do. I will be stunned if they find systems that don't have enormous, gaping vulnerabilities."

Three vendors - Diebold Elections System of Texas, Sequoia Voting Systems of Oakland, and Hart InterCivic of Texas - are awaiting the outcome of the review, as are county registrars, who worry that any decertification could lead to chaos on Election Day.

Bowen's team of hackers have worked around the clock in the Secretary of State building's third-floor storage room to intentionally try to alter votes and manipulate how they are counted. The level of testing, said Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, which monitors elections across the state, is beyond what has been done in any other state or in federal testing.

"Previous testing looked at whether the systems work the way vendors said they're supposed to work," Alexander said. "It didn't include scenarios that would crop up in real elections, such as a software attack or the taking down of a polling place through technical manipulation."
http://www.presstelegram.com/news/ci_6433742

[freedomfries]

7. CA: Bills target voter intimidation

Bills target voter intimidation
Assembly measures mandate penalties in bid to halt harassment

Aurelio Rojas
Sacramento Bee
Sunday, July 22, 2007
http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/285294.html

Assemblyman Jose Solorio displays a poster warning Spanish-speaking voters that voting could lead to deportation from the country in his Capitol office on Friday.

One day last October, Jose Solorio was sorting through his mail at his home in Orange County when he came upon a letter written in Spanish that stunned him.

The mailer -- which he later learned was sent to 14,000 other naturalized citizens with Latino surnames -- warned immigrants who vote they are committing a crime punishable by jail time and deportation.

As a Santa Ana city councilman, former state Senate fellow and graduate of Harvard University's School of Government, Solorio knew that isn't true.

Indeed, once naturalized citizens register to vote, they are substantially more likely to do so than native-born voters.

"I wasn't intimidated," said Solorio, who has since been elected to the state Assembly. "But what about families who are fed up with politics and don't want people harassing?"

The latest episode of voter intimidation in Orange County prompted Solorio, a Santa Ana Democrat, to introduce Assembly Bill 122. It would require election officials to give candidates a copy of provisions of the law that prohibit voter intimidation and the criminal penalties.

Another bill, AB 288 by Assemblyman Curren Price, D-Inglewood, would require people convicted of voter intimidation to pay a restitution fine, in addition to any existing fines, with the money to be used for voter education campaigns.

"Current law doesn't provide for any reimbursement by the party convicted of intimidation," said Price. "So the state and counties end up paying for public information to dissuade such acts."

While both bills are moving through the Legislature, a third voter intimidation bill has stalled for the session in the Assembly Appropriations Committee.

AB 46 by Assemblyman Van Tran, R-Garden Grove, would have turned voter intimidation into a felony-only offense. Under existing law, prosecutors have the option of filling misdemeanor charges.

The bill languished in the Appropriations Committee amid concerns by a rare alignment of Democrats, Republicans and the ACLU that it would limit the flexibility of prosecutors and contribute to prison overcrowding.
http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/285294.html

[freedomfries]

2. NJ: Study: 2008 election paper trail unreliable

Study: 2008 election paper trail unreliable
Electronic voting records can fail, NJIT says

Kevin Coughlin
The Star Ledger, NJ
Saturday, July 21, 2007
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/jersey/index.ssf?/base/news-7/118499337617870.xml&coll=1

Computer scientists have identified 33 flaws in three printer models intended to ensure the accuracy of electronic voting machines used across New Jersey.

The problems, found by the New Jersey Institute of Technology and posted online yesterday by the state elections division, potentially could compromise voter privacy and election security, according to the experts' reports.

Vendors of the gear contend the problems are easily fixed and stem largely from NJIT misinterpretations of new state guidelines for the printers.

"They're all very workable. A lot of things were taken out of context," said Michelle Shafer, spokesperson for Sequoia Voting Systems.

By January, all electronic voting machines are required by state law to include printers so voters can verify that their ballots are recorded accurately, and so officials have a "paper trail" to recount.

At the state's request, NJIT has spent several weeks scrutinizing printers for the Sequoia AVC Advantage and Sequoia AVC Edge voting machines, along with a printer for the Vote-Trakker, a machine from Avante International Technology Inc. in Princeton. The printers were tested against criteria devised by the state, and simulated both a 14-hour election day and a 1,200-vote election.

The public can examine the printers during hearings next week, from Tuesday to Friday at the New Jersey National Guard Armory in Lawrenceville. If a state panel rejects the printers, New Jersey could face the costly task of replacing touch-screen voting machines statewide with devices that scan pen-and-ink ballots.
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/jersey/index.ssf?/base/news-7/118499337617870.xml&coll=1

[freedomfries]

3. SC: Accessibility Isn’t Only Hurdle in Voting System Overhaul

Accessibility Isn’t Only Hurdle in Voting System Overhaul


Christopher Drew
Herald-Journal, Spartanburg, SC
July 21, 2007
http://www.goupstate.com/article/20070721/ZNYT02/707210358/-1/LIFE

Democrats in Congress who are trying to redesign the nation’s voting system generally share the same goals: an affordable, easy-to-use system with durable paper ballots that can be used by the disabled without help from poll workers.

But yesterday, as House leaders failed for a second day to reach agreement on the outlines of a new system, the tension reflected in those competing needs was clear. The desire to make every voting machine accountable is running head-on into other needs, from the desires of the disabled to the budgets of states and localities.

Given the tensions, voting analysts say, the decision disclosed Thursday by Democratic leaders to put off the most sweeping changes until 2012 — four years later than planned — was easy. Congressional leaders are reluctant to tell states to junk hundreds of millions of dollars of relatively new voting equipment until it is clear when better technology will emerge.

But questions also arose yesterday about other aspects of a proposed compromise now being negotiated. Voting experts criticized a stopgap proposal to add spool-like printers to thousands of computerized touch-screen machines for 2008 and 2010, saying it would not be feasible in some states.

Some critics also said that efforts to guarantee equal access to disabled voters could slow a broad shift from touch-screen machines to optical-scan systems, which use sturdier paper ballots filled out by the voters themselves. Prompted by growing concerns about the reliability and security of the touch screens, about half of the nation’s counties now use the scanners, and most analysts had thought that any federal legislation would fuel this trend.

But aides to Representative Rush D. Holt, Democrat of New Jersey and the original sponsor of the bill, said yesterday that language inserted by House leaders seemed to expand the guarantees to disabled voters in a way that could discourage other states and localities from buying the scanners.
http://www.goupstate.com/article/20070721/ZNYT02/707210358/-1/LIFE

[Rene]

4. For 2004 election ....I read an article about Ohio's State tabulating computers being switched to

an RNC data center in Tennessee(same place where all the mysterious White House email accounts were going). Kerry was ahead at the time of the switch and was behind when the system reverted back.
They technically rerouted by DNS entry change or something like that.....so it was transparent to State employees who were working with the system. It continued to look like the State Web site.....but it had been switched from state computers to the RNC controlled company's system, long enough to change figures.
Was that ever followed up on????

[tbyg52]

17. Here you go: Did Ohio Election Data Run Through Republican Servers?

By Kim Zetter April 24, 2007

Slashdot is renewing a controversy that popped up previously but has been re-energized by the recent White House e-mail scandal.

Back in 2004 during the presidential election, the Ohio secretary of state web site, which reports election results after they come in from counties on election day, routed through a hosting company called Smartech Corporation in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Smartech also hosts a range of sites for the Republican National Committee, among them the controversial gwb43.com domain that some White House officials are said to have used for correspondence to evade having their emails disclosed through public records requests.

As a Netcraft search shows, the Ohio SoS site was hosted by Smartech in Tennessee on November 3, 2004 (the election was November 2nd) but then reverted to a different Ohio-based host on November 5 through February 6, 2006.

More:
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/04/did_ohio_electi.html

[tbyg52]

19. Same info, different source: The GOP's cyber election hit squad

By Steven Rosenfeld & Bob Fitrakis
Online Journal Guest Writers

Apr 24, 2007, 01:32

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 websites, 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://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2004.shtml

[tbyg52]

20. Oops: self-delete

I knew it was a different URL, but I didn't realize until too late that it was the exact same story.

There's more out there, but I think the two I posted are the best.

[freedomfries]

21. thanks tbyg52

expluribus media did the research on this, found the GOP mirror server to the SOS 0H website on election night.
:hi:

[tbyg52]

23. Yeah, I think that's the dupe I deleted!

Leave it to me to delete the original source, but the one above says the same thing.

[freedomfries]

5. OH: Return to paper ballots has hefty price

Return to paper ballots has hefty price
Provisional-voting rule to cost county $1 million

Barbara Carmen
The Columbus Dispatch, OH
July 21, 2007 3:27 AM
http://www.columbusdispatch.com/dispatch/content/local_news/stories/2007/07/21/BOEWOE.ART_ART_07-21-07_B1_T77BD0J.html

Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has barred the use of electronic ballots for provisional voting.
Franklin County spent $14 million for its fleet of high-tech, touch-screen voting machines. Now, officials plan to spend another $1 million for the latest in accurate and secure equipment:

Paper ballots.

"We're going backward and spending money to do it," said Matthew Damschroder, director of the Board of Elections.

A recent state directive bans provisional voting on electronic machines and requires paper ballots.

Provisional votes, usually cast when voters don't have valid identification or have moved and not updated their address, are increasingly being challenged in tight races. They became an issue in Ohio's 2004 presidential contest and, last year, in the race for Ohio's 15th Congressional District.

In her directive, Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner orders provisional ballots to be cast on paper and sealed in an envelope. That envelope, bearing a name and address, is discarded once the voter is verified -- forever protecting the anonymity of the ballot. With electronic machines, the voter's identification code remains on a ballot printout.

"The biggest concern I have here, which I am trying to protect, is the secrecy of the voter's ballot," Brunner said. "I've got to make sure the system is one people have absolute trust in."

Franklin County already had solid privacy precautions, Damschroder said. "It's very unfortunate that, after spending $14 million on electronic voting machines, we've got to spend another $1 million to accommodate paper.

"We're looking at about $1 million in an agency with a total annual budget of $6 million," he said.

Records linking voters' names and identifying codes are kept separately -- in buildings miles apart -- from voting machine paper tapes printed with those identifying codes and voters' ballot choices, Damschroder said.

In a memo to the county commissioners, he requests buying 900 secure ballot boxes and 2,000 folding privacy booths so there are enough for all 834 precincts.

Commissioner Mary Jo Kilroy, whose slim loss in the 15th Congressional District spotlighted the importance of provisional ballots, said Brunner's directive makes sense.

"They offer more privacy and security," she said, adding that she wants to make sure paper ballots "aren't left floating around."

To that end, Damschroder proposes spending about $500 each on the ballot boxes. Franklin County had 766,552 registered voters last November; 19,585 cast provisional votes.

Ballots and booths must be ready for the Westerville library special election on Aug. 7.

Damschroder is not the only elections official feeling the pinch.

Janet Brenneman, deputy director of the Delaware County Board of Elections, estimates that serving that county's 105,000 registered voters with paper provisional ballots will cost at least $60,000.

She, too, faces an August special election.

"We asked (Brunner) for a waiver, and she declined it," Brenneman said. "To me, the touch screen did all that we needed to do."

But Brunner's office cited eight other Ohio counties that bought electronic machines but still use paper ballots for provisional voting.

The privacy issue hit Trumbull County officials when they started using the electronic machines, said Rokey Suleman, deputy elections director. "We had eight recounts in November 2005. And we began to realize that all these provisional votes are going to be on (the paper record) and there's going to be a permanent way to trace those back."

Trumbull County, which has 140,000 registered voters, sliced expenses by recycling old punch-card ballot boxes and buying clipboards for voters to fill out the paper ballots.

But Cliff Arnebeck of Common Cause Ohio said Brunner's directive wouldn't be necessary if lawmakers quit trying to disqualify voters, forcing them to cast their ballots provisionally.

"In order to better preserve the ability of provisional ballots to be respected and counted, we support having them cast on paper," Arnebeck said. "The real answer is: There should not be these burdens."
http://www.columbusdispatch.com/dispatch/content/local_news/stories/2007/07/21/BOEWOE.ART_ART_07-21-07_B1_T77BD0J.html

[freedomfries]

11. BradBlog: Holt Bill Death Watch: Jim Dickson Bullies His Way Through Congress Again

Holt Bill Death Watch: Jim Dickson Bullies His Way Through Congress Again

As The New York Times Fails to Report on the Payola He and His Group Have Received from the Voting Machine Companies...
BLOGGED BY Brad Friedman ON 7/21/2007 1:54PM
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4851#more-4851

Christopher Drew at New York Times follows up his article yesterday on the possible/pending death of the Holt Election Reform Bill (HR 811). In today's piece, however, he begins to report on the fact that there are alternatives to DRE touch-screen machines which offer the same interface for disabled voters, but without the dangers, as I opined about yesterday.

Of course, even that option --- an electronic assistive device that offers touch-screen voting and/or audio voting for disabled and blind voters --- is not good enough for Jim Dickson of the American Assoc. of People with Disabilities (AAPD), who is quoted by the Times as continuing to use his considerable access and ability to bully Congress members into sticking with DREs only. What the New York Times fails to report when mentioning Dickson is that he's received thousands of dollars from voting companies such as Diebold who also prefer that every American be saddled with their shitty, unaccountable, inaccurate, easily-hackable DRE technology.

Christopher Drew and the NY Times have a responsibility to disclose that point when quoting Dickson as a source in their stories. They were the ones, after all, who reported on Dickson and the AAPD having "received $26,000 from voting machine companies" in 2004 alone.

Instead, Dickson is reported by the Times only as "a lobbyist for the American Association of People with Disabilities...whose group prefers the touch-screens."

That Dickson --- Vice President for Governmental Affairs of AAPD, "a broad coalition of 36 national disability-related organizations," according to his bio page --- is, again, hijacking election reform and the inevitable move to paper ballots for the entire country ought to be the actual lead in Drew's otherwise well-researched piece today. Unfortunately, it's not even mentioned.

That he and Ralph Neas --- President of People for the American Way (PFAW), the staunchest and most well-moneyed supporters/hijackers of Holt's legislation, who fought a dishonest battle to keep the bill from banning DREs from the get-go --- are well-aligned from their days together at the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR) is also an important detail that has been largely absent from the what little mainstream coverage there has been about the entire affair.

As well, Farhad Manjoo at Slate has more details today on the latest insider battles now going on concerning the bill. Of note, even VerifiedVoting.org, who had previously been staunch supporters of the Holt bill, are now coming about against the proposed compromise legislation that would require paper trails added on to DREs. That's good to see, but one wonders how they could have been so supportive of previous versions of the bill which also did exactly that.
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4851#more-4851

[freedomfries]

6. FL: Jennings to Run Again for Congress

Jennings to Run Again for Congress

The Ledger, Lakeland, FL
Friday, July 20, 2007
http://www.theledger.com/article/20070720/NEWS/707200494/1004

Christine Jennings, the Democrat who made international headlines by challenging the accuracy of electronic voting machines that recorded her narrow loss in a southwest Florida congressional race, announced Thursday she will run again in 2008.

Jennings said her decision to run for Florida's 13th Congressional District next year does not affect the appeal she filed with Congress to overturn the November election results that put her Republican rival Vern Buchanan in office by a margin of 369 votes.
http://www.theledger.com/article/20070720/NEWS/707200494/1004

[freedomfries]

8. WA: : Here we go again...

Officials examine possible voter fraud

Keith Ervin
Seattle Times
July 21, 2007
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003799262_acorn21m.html

Pierce County authorities are investigating whether hundreds of voter-registration cards were fraudulently filled out by paid canvassers before the 2006 election.

The criminal investigation, acknowledged Friday by Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Al Rose, comes on top of a continuing probe in King County. The King County investigation began after election workers in October spotted apparently forged voter-registration cards turned in by the community-organizing group ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

Rose said he expects to conclude the investigation in about a month. He declined to provide details about the possible fraud except to say it involves about 400 registration forms returned to election officials as undeliverable.

The new registrations have been flagged so the registrants won't be allowed to vote unless they first prove their identity, Rose said.

Many, if not most, of the suspicious registrations used the address of the Tacoma Rescue Mission. Rick Shields, a shift manager at the shelter for homeless people, said a large amount of mail from the elections office arrived one day last fall addressed to newly registered voters.

"There were several that were in there that were legitimate" and were picked up by people who either stayed in the shelter or picked up mail there, Shields said. The rest of the mail was returned as undeliverable after 30 days.

Shields said it was clear when the mail arrived that some names weren't legitimate. "They were like cartoon characters' names and football players' names. ... We had a piece of mail coming for Joe Montana. He lives in California; he don't live here."

Pierce County Auditor Pat McCarthy could not be reached for comment Friday.

In King County, election officials said in February that many of the 1,829 registration forms delivered by ACORN last October appeared to have been forged by a few people.

An ACORN attorney in March gave King County prosecutors the names of three temporary employees he said should be investigated for possible registration fraud. The attorney, Brian Mellor, said ACORN was considering filing civil lawsuits against the workers.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003799262_acorn21m.html

[freedomfries]

9. Online Journal: Ohio, the DOJ scandal and "Thor," the god of voter suppression

Ohio, the DOJ scandal and "Thor," the god of voter suppression


Bob Fitrakis
Online Journal Guest Writer
Jun 20, 2007, 01:02
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2104.shtml

The current scandal involving the firing of U.S. attorneys cannot be separated from the Bush administration's scheme to suppress black, poor and working class voters. In order to divert attention from its voter suppression tactics that won Bush the White House in 2000 and 2004, the Bush administration created the myth of "voter fraud." Using fake "voting rights" organizations, obscure groups to finance civil suits and pressure the U.S. Department of Justice to bring criminal charges against voter registration organizations, Karl Rove and his political operatives like Mark F. "Thor" Hearne have succeeded in undermining the United States' democracy.

"Hearne was one of the most important Bush operatives that almost nobody in America has ever heard of. He applied his vote-suppressing trade from coast to coast, behind the scenes, in a well-funded systematic effort to undermine democracy and keep voters -- Democratic voters -- from exercising their legal franchise," Brad Friedman, Editor of Bradblog, told the Free Press. Bradblog was the first to reveal Hearne's masquerade as a voting rights advocate.

Hearne's name recently surfaced in the scandal surrounding the White House's firing of U.S. attorneys, causing the mainstream media to begin scrutinizing his past political activity. The National Journal has pointed out that Hearne is a "common denominator" in the firing of Arkansas U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins and western Missouri U.S. Attorney Todd Graves. At the time of the firings, Cummins was investigating Republican Governor Matt Blunt's administration, and Graves had refused to indict when partisan charges were brought against the Association of Communities Organizing for Reform Now (ACORN) for a voter registration drive just prior to the 2006 election.

Hearne "believed that the U.S. attorney . . . Todd Graves was not taking seriously allegations that ACORN workers were registering people who did not qualify to vote," noted the National Journal. Also, Republican attorney William Mateja, "repeatedly contacted" Cummins during the Blunt investigation " . . . at the behest of Hearne, whose law firm had retained Mateja on Blunt's behalf," wrote the Journal.

After Graves' dismissal, he was replaced by Bradley Schlozman, who issued an indictment against ACORN workers less than a week before the 2006 election. Cummins was also replaced by Karl Rove operative Timothy Griffin.

The National Journal also reported that two other fired U.S. attorneys, David Inglesias and John McKay, said they believed they were fired because "Republican activists in their states complained that they weren't doing enough to pursue voting-fraud cases."

Who is scrubbing the Thor Hearne websites?

As the heat is turned up on Hearne, his past appears to be vanishing from the Internet.

As Bradblog noted on June 12, "Mark F. 'Thor' Hearne must really want to hide something about his discredited past as the frontman for the GOP front group calling themselves the American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR)."

Hearne testified before Congressman Bob Ney's Committee on House Administration hearing in Columbus on March 21, 2005, as general counsel for the newly formed "voting rights" group, the ACVR. Incorporated a week before the hearing, the ACVR was ordained by Rep. Ney as a legitimate voting rights group, despite the fact that Hearne served as election counsel to the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign and had no references on his resume to any non-partisan voting rights groups. Congressman Ney is now known as federal prisoner #28882-016 for corruption as a result of his taking gifts from Jack Abramoff, among other charges.

In February 2005, at the urging of Karl Rove and the Bush White House, Hearne founded the ACVR, according to the National Journal. Co-founder Jim Dyke is a former Republican National Committee (RNC) communications director. The ACVR was a "non-partisan" 501(c)(3) legal and educational center committed to defending the rights of voters and working to increase public confidence in the fairness and outcome of elections, stated their website. The long-standing voting rights group, the League of Women Voters, charged that the ACVR was a Republican front organization.

Hearne's testimony at the Ney hearing was placed on the Moritz College of Law Election Institute website along with Professors Ned Foley and Dan Tokaji. Hearne was given equal billing with Norman Robbins, the head of a non-partisan voting rights group from Cleveland.

Not only does Hearne's Wikipedia page no longer refer to the controversial ACVR, but Hearne's testimony before the Ney hearing is no longer linked to the Moritz College of Law Election Law Institute website. Also, the ACVR website recently disappeared and the National Journal reported, "The group now appears to be defunct."

Hearne and the myth of voter registration fraud

As the Free Press reported in 2005, Hearne, with the help of Republican attorney Alex Vogel, concocted a story that the main problem with the 2004 elections in Ohio was that the NAACP was paying people with crack cocaine to register voters. Based on scant evidence and an incident of a volunteer being linked to crack use, Hearne pushed a version of voter fraud in Ohio that directly attacked not only the NAACP, but ACORN, the AFL-CIO and ACT-Ohio. By attacking this combination of groups, Rove and Hearne were targeting the leading forces for registering blacks, poor, union workers and young people in Ohio -- those most likely to vote Democratic.
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2104.shtml

[freedomfries]

10. WI: OP: Touch-screen voting should be banned

Touch-screen voting should be banned

A letter to the editor
The Capital Times
July 20/2007 10:44 am
http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/letters/202147

Dear Editor: The proposed Holt bill does not address the real problems with electronic voting.

It is not just the open invitation to fraud. Election after election, thousands of reports show that such voting machines are disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of voters across the country. Voters are confused over how to use them. They stand in line for hours because the machines are broken down, or they leave because they don't have time to wait. Poll workers, even with careful training, don't know how to help when something goes wrong, and something often does.

You can't audit a memory chip, especially where its contents can be secretly changed at any time. Congress should follow Florida's lead and outlaw this fundamentally flawed technology.

We must make the ban on touch-screen voting national.
http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/letters/202147

[papau]

12. Can anyone explain why the election reform activists on DU shot down the Holt bill?

Todays rumor is that Holt has given up on any bill that will affect the 08 election - seems the DUers that opposed his bill produced enough stop Holt messages to stir up enough election workers and Sec of States that the Bill may not be passed in time to affect the 08 election

[freedomfries]

14. Edwards of American Council for the Blind: "DREs fit for no one"

Florida Voters Coalition and Florida Council of the Blind Announce Strategic Alliance

Florida Voters Coalition
May 16, 2007
All Voters Deserve Paper Ballots - Voters With Disabilities Must Not Be Left Behind
http://votetrustusa.org/index2.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2449&Itemid=113&pop=1&page=0#

The Florida Voters Coalition (FVC) and the Florida Council of the Blind (FCB) today announced a strategic alliance calling on Florida state and county officials to provide paper ballots for all voters in all elections. “This is an historic day,” said FVC Co-Founder, Dan McCrea, “when those demanding the security of paper ballots and those demanding HAVA compliant accessibility for voters with disabilities speak with one unified voice. Listen up, state and county officials. No voter should be left behind, especially in the name of equality. That is simply absurd. It’s time to scrap your DREs and replace them with non-tabulating ballot marking devices, providing all voters paper ballots – no exceptions.”

“No exception needed or wanted for voters with disabilities,” said Paul Edwards, former President of the American Council of the Blind, speaking for the Florida Council of the Blind, the state-wide chapter. “The very purpose of HAVA Section 301 was to provide an equal opportunity to voters with disabilities. ’Equal’ doesn’t only apply to the ability to cast a private and independent ballot – something precious to blind and other disabled voters - it also applies to the ability to cast a secure ballot. Only optical scan paper ballot systems are secure in Florida today. Florida’s newly passed legislation requires paper ballots for everyone then provides an exception for voters with disabilities. Until 2012, counties can choose to provide us paperless electronic DREs. Our message today is, NO THANK YOU. We don’t want them and should not be forced to use them. Paperless electronic DRE voting systems are fit for no one.”

“For years,” McCrea said, “proponents of paperless electronic DRE voting systems have claimed that their systems are the only solution for voters with disabilities. That’s just not true. Non-tabulating ballot marking devices provide superior touchscreen, audio, tactile, sip-and-puff, and other interface facilities to allow voters with disabilities to cast a private and independent vote, and they are HAVA compliant. But unlike failed DRE systems, they allow all voters to vote on one uniform, paper-ballot-based, secure voting system. Surely that is the intent of both federal and state law.”
http://votetrustusa.org/index2.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2449&Itemid=113&pop=1&page=0#

[papau]

15. So how does killing Holt for 08 and 10 help the no DRE folks?

[robinlynne]

16. because HOlt's bill allows for direct recording devices, touch-screen voting and

counting. And continue to allow private companies to control our voting software. Putting paper on the touch-screen voting machines will not make anything better. Noone knows what the machines are doing inside. It would LOOK like something had been done, when in fact we would still be voting on proprietary software on electronic voting machines.
So in reality there would be no change from what we have now, only a semblance of change. In addition, instead of doing the vote counting correctly the first time; it counts on audits/recounts. And in all the contested 2006 elections (most anyway), judges decide whether or not a recount will occur, and they have been deciding NO. (see san diego and florida 2006 congressional races, for example )
There are several more reasons; this is a simplification, but it is enough for me...

[livvy]

13. Ooops.... k'n'r

Error: You've already recommended that thread.

How about a couple of more votes?

[FogerRox]

18. KNR for the Sunday shift

[Land Shark]

22. TX: 50 Indictments for Mail-in balloting fraud

http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/mail_78573___article.html/ballot_county.html