Someone might want to save it to check against 501(c) reports later.
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/cgi-bin/dcforum/dcboard.cgi?az=show_thread&omm=0&om=84&forum=DCForumID4410About 20 people wrote to me with questions after the Randi Rhodes show. I spoke with one of Randi Rhodes’ producers this morning, and had a very good conversation. There was a misunderstanding, and we discussed ways to deal with it.
Some of Rhodes’ listeners asked for an accounting of donations. Here is more information:
I founded
Black Box Voting in June, 2004, and to provide its seed money, I donated my revenues and the rights to the Black Box Voting book. In addition, I persuaded two benefactors to provide $10,000 each. This yielded just under $30,000, and the entire organization survived on that for many months -- two full-time salaries, supplies, travel, investigations, press conferences, web site development and all.
I knew it would be a tough go of it to take an organization with almost no funding (and therefore no infrastructure -- no administrative support, no equipment, no development director, no business manager, no secretary) and turn it into a viable long-term organization to do consumer protection for elections.
I was fortunate to find six courageous, ethical, and committed people to serve on the board of directors. A well-known author, Will Pitt, has apparently been reporting that three members of the board are my family members. This is incorrect, but I am lucky enough to have one member of my family on the board, Thalia Dudley, my sister-in-law. She is a tremendous asset to the board. Other board members were chosen for the combination of strengths they possess, and are not related to me whatsoever.
We believed that our organization would survive, because in the 12 weeks before and after the election, interest would peak and we could, hopefully, obtain enough donations to put in an infrastructure and get some basic computer and telecommunications equipment, in addition to some administrative staff. We are also aware that for our organization, this kind of fund raising will happen only every four years, and it will be a challenge to stay alive in the mean time.
From September through November, members of our organization did over 300 interviews, including international wire service stories and TV spots on CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, NBC, and many local stations. We also provided interviews for over 100 print media outlets, like newspapers and magazines. Five members of Black Box Voting conducted interviews, many of us nonstop for months on end. Randi Rhodes was one such interview, and of course I appreciate what she did to fund raise.
One thing that caused a miscommunication, I think, is that I did not know that Randi Rhodes was going to do the fund raising. I learned about it after it started, when I was in a meeting, when to my astonishment my phone lost its mind. Apparently my cell phone number was being given out over Air America.
The fund raising was specifically for Freedom of Information requests, and was never for the purpose of overturning an election. I am confident that Randi Rhodes was accurate about that, because the letters we got with donations had notes saying "heard about you on Randi Rhodes, this is for the FOIA."
American people were hurting, because they saw that the election was not transparent or accountable. Some people began to hope that Black Box Voting would reverse the>presidential election.
Now, let's look at this idea for a moment: John Kerry literally ran away from the idea of doing any auditing or recounts, and only grudgingly agreed to be involved at all. He invested none of millions that he had raised from his donors was "to make sure every vote counts."
Instead, our small organization, with just two full time employees and a volunteer, were supposed to bootstrap our way into overturning a presidential election -- without the support of the candidate himself -- something that has never been done in history, and an activity that our nonpartisan nonprofit 501c(3) status specifically prohibits.
I hear the angst in America, from people who know this election was not trustworthy. I do believe that the person most responsible for failure to get an accountable election is John Kerry himself.
A handful of people mailed us checks with the words "for a recount" on them. I think this was due to the proximity, I’m sure accidentally, of news about the Ralph Nader recount with news about Black Box Voting’s FOIA request and auditing.
We were careful to identify those checks, and made arrangements for these to go to Help America Recount, a 527 organization that is set up for this purpose. Our nonprofit status does not allow us to become involved in recounts.
I am also confident that most people donated for exactly what we do, because most checks -- when they say anything -- say "for auditing" or "for the FOIA" or "help restore clean elections."
Our financial statements will be released with a precise accounting, but here are interim figures as of the end of November:
Donations tagged to Randi Rhodes show: $23,800 All donations, some of which we have allocated to building infrastructure and off-election funding droughts: About $300,000
We have spent or committed about $19,000 of the $23,800 Randi Rhodes money. This was for FOIA requests and related legal expenses.
(By "committed" I mean that Palm Beach County has assessed $4,400, but is now saying we can't have all the records, so of course we haven't handed over the money yet, and Snohomish County, which wants $2500, suddenly got caught up in a hand recount for the governor's race and couldn't deliver some of the documents).
--Our board of directors has taken no compensation at all.
--Kathleen Wynne -- bless her! -- has taken no compensation at all, though she has devoted week after week of 14-hour-a-day work specifically for our organization. We have offered her a position. She has more than earned it!
-- My salary is $60,000 per year, about half what I was making before I took on this mission.
--Andy Stephenson was making $48,000 per year.
We are replacing the Associate Director position with two people: A media specialist/investigator and an administrator, and we will incur considerable expense in our end of year accounting. We are putting in infrastructure, including more permanent office space, a decent phone system, a decent computer system, a high speed scanner to get the FOIA documents on the Web, and a much better Web site under new hosting.
This will add one salary, and will add fixed cost for office space and additional accounting. In addition, we need to bring in a development director to write grant proposals and set up a permanent fund raising structure.
In our travels, I have learned that this is truly a nonpartisan issue. Everyone wants clean elections, and everyone realizes that having a wholly independent organization, completely funded by the grass roots for the purpose of acting as a watchdog for elections, is a very important thing to do.
Now, as to why I did not travel to Ohio: I have testified in front of the legislature many times. Each time, I was asked to do so. I was not asked to go to Ohio and testify, and I certainly wouldn’t just barge in without an invitation. I did let people of influence know that I would be happy to go to Ohio to do whatever is needed. I am not printing their names here, because that seems like an invasion of privacy. One is a lawyer who has been helping with the recount, one has been involved in strategy, and one is a leading Ohio voting integrity group head.
I remain willing to go on Randi Rhodes show, go on Keith Olbermann’s show, or go to Ohio for the hearings, but I do need an invitation to do so.
I hope this answers at least some of your questions.
Have a blessed day,
Bev Harris
Black Box Voting
http://www.blackboxvoting.org