Election Reform, Fraud,& Related News 06.13.06 Bob Herbert, NYT THANKS

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Op-Ed Columnist
Those Pesky Voters
By BOB HERBERT
Published: June 12, 2006

http://select.nytimes.com/2006/06/12/opinion/12herbert.html?_r=1&tsType=try&ocid=81&incamp=ts:chall_article_trial&ocids=82|81&headline=Those%2bPesky%2bVoters&

Mr. Kennedy's article echoed and expanded upon an article in Harper's ("None Dare Call It Stolen," by Mark Crispin Miller) that ran last summer. Both articles documented ugly, aggressive and frequently unconscionable efforts by G.O.P. stalwarts to disenfranchise Democrats in Ohio, especially those in urban and heavily black areas.

The point man for these efforts was the Ohio secretary of state, J. Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican who was both the chief election official in the state and co-chairman of the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio — just as Katherine Harris was the chief election official and co-chairwoman of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Florida in 2000.

No one has been able to prove that the election in Ohio was hijacked. But whenever it is closely scrutinized, the range of problems and dirty tricks that come to light is shocking. What's not shocking, of course, is that every glitch and every foul-up in Ohio, every arbitrary new rule and regulation, somehow favored Mr. Bush.

<snip>

The right to vote is supposed to mean something in the United States. The idea of going to war overseas in the name of the democratic process while making a mockery of that process here at home is just too ludicrous.

THANK YOU BOB HERBET. DU THANKS YOU!!!

Never forget the pursuit of Truth.
Only the deluded & complicit accept election results on blind faith.
Denying that 2004 was stolen is like denying global warming.

Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News June 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.
Please

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for the Greatest Page

http://electionfraudnews.com/

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1. CO: Voting Records Found!!!! Well 58% Found – 42% LOST!!!!

Found…well found most of ‘em…well a little more than half. What a crock of shit. Fire all of these people and investigate for fraudl.

Rocky Mountain News
Missing voter records found (lie, 42% still lost)

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/elections/article/0,2808,DRMN_24736_4769161,00.html


By Alan Gathright and Lou Kilzer, Rocky Mountain News
June 12, 2006

Denver Election Commission officials said today they located nearly 87,000 of 150,000 missing voter records.

The documents were sitting in a plastic box at the commission’s former headquarters building, which the agency moved out of four months ago.

But the discovery may not head off a move to change governance of the controversial commission, which has gained a reputation for bungling.

At tonight’s City Council meeting, Councilwoman Marcia Johnson is expected to propose reorganizing the commission along the lines of the Denver Water Board, a semi-independent agency.

Yet, election officials were relieved with the discovery of about 58 percent of the missing microfilm records, which may indicate that the remaining information was simply misplaced during the February move -- not stolen -- and may still be located in one of the agency's buildings.

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2. Stolen Election 2004: MSM-CM Coverage of Ohio-Kennedy

Not bad, AP is covering the story using the Ohio election of Supreme Court Justice Resnick as the hook. She’s the subject of a parallel US Supreme Court case on dirty campaigning. Finally…

Associated Press
Analysis: Bush, Resnick Elections Won't Die

By JOHN McCARTHY , 06.12.2006, 02:11 PM

President Bush is almost midway through his second term and Ohio Supreme Court Justice Alice Robie Resnick is in the last months of her final term, but the elections that got them there are still the subject of contention in Ohio courts and political circles.

Bush's 118,000-vote victory in Ohio - out of more than 5.5 million cast - raised a firestorm in 2004 among those who had predicted that the Republicans would try to steal the election.

Losing Democrat John Kerry conceded the day after the election, convinced he would not receive enough votes when provisional ballots were counted. However, the candidates for the Green and Libertarian parties paid for the votes to be recounted, then took the state to court, saying the recount was mishandled. The lawsuit was dismissed in February.

But a case filed by the League of Women Voters claiming Ohio's election system discriminates against minority voters is still in U.S. District Judge James Carr's court in Toledo. Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, the state's top elections official and this year's Republican candidate for governor, says the election was run fairly.

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3. Stolen Election 2004: MSM Ohio – List of Outlets Carrying Above AP Articl

Here’s more of the AP article. Not ½ bad for a start. They don’t take sides. Note the smarmy Prof. Tokaji, legal eagle who defeated Blackwell in a Federal law suit – result, DRE’s in OH forever. Nice work fellows, you are quite a team. Tokaji is doing his work again arguing against a stolen election.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=2065736


I think it's pretty clear, based on the original evidence, the (2004) outcome wasn't affected," said Daniel Tokaji, an assistant professor of law at Ohio State University. "It's much less important than focusing on the problems with the election systems ... that haven't been fixed yet."

The lessons learned in 2004 are valuable as Ohio moves into the electronic voting age, said Cliff Arnebeck, a lawyer who was active in some of the lawsuits focusing on the 2004 race.

"The framing I have in mind for litigation is to look at what is being set up for '06 and say we're not speculating that people are willing to suppress the vote, we have the proof," Arnebeck said. "It's a positive view of the evidence of fraud in '04."

Peg Rosenfield, elections specialist for the League of Women Voters of Ohio, said her group never challenged Bush's election, just the way it was run.

"The whole point of our lawsuit was to look toward the future," she said.

HERE'S A GOOGLE FROM THIS AFTERNOON ON THE AP STORY. IT'S GOT LEGS!!!

Analysis: Bush, Resnick Elections Won’t Die
Newsday, NY - 9 hours ago
... evidence of fraud in '04.". Peg Rosenfield, elections specialist for the League of Women Voters of Ohio, said her group never challenged Bush's election, just ...

Analysis: Bush, Resnick Elections Won’t Die
WJLA, DC - 9 hours ago
... evidence of fraud in '04.". Peg Rosenfield, elections specialist for the League of Women Voters of Ohio, said her group never challenged Bush's election, just ...

Analysis: Bush, Resnick Elections Won’t Die
Mcalester News Capital, OK - 9 hours ago
... evidence of fraud in '04.". Peg Rosenfield, elections specialist for the League of Women Voters of Ohio, said her group never challenged Bush's election, just ...

Analysis: Bush, Resnick Elections Won’t Die
ABC News - 9 hours ago
... "It's much less important than focusing on the problems with the election systems … that haven't been ... "It's a positive view of the evidence of fraud in '04.".

Analysis: Bush, Resnick Elections Won’t Die
Contra Costa Times, CA - 10 hours ago
... evidence of fraud in '04.". Peg Rosenfield, elections specialist for the League of Women Voters of Ohio, said her group never challenged Bush's election, just ...

Analysis: Bush, Resnick Elections Won’t Die
Seattle Post Intelligencer - 10 hours ago
... evidence of fraud in '04.". Peg Rosenfield, elections specialist for the League of Women Voters of Ohio, said her group never challenged Bush's election, just ...

Analysis: Bush, Resnick Elections Won’t Die
phillyBurbs.com, PA - 10 hours ago
... evidence of fraud in '04.". Peg Rosenfield, elections specialist for the League of Women Voters of Ohio, said her group never challenged Bush's election, just ...

Analysis: Bush, Resnick Elections Won’t Die
San Francisco Chronicle, USA - 10 hours ago
... evidence of fraud in '04.". Peg Rosenfield, elections specialist for the League of Women Voters of Ohio, said her group never challenged Bush's election, just ...

Analysis: Bush, Resnick Elections Won’t Die
Guardian Unlimited, UK - 10 hours ago
... evidence of fraud in '04.''. Peg Rosenfield, elections specialist for the League of Women Voters of Ohio, said her group never challenged Bush's election, just ...


Analysis: Bush, Resnick Elections Won’t Die
Times Picayune, LA - 10 hours ago
... evidence of fraud in '04.". Peg Rosenfield, elections specialist for the League of Women Voters of Ohio, said her group never challenged Bush's election, just ...

Analysis: Bush, Resnick Elections Won’t Die
Los Angeles Times, CA - 10 hours ago
... evidence of fraud in '04.". Peg Rosenfield, elections specialist for the League of Women Voters of Ohio, said her group never challenged Bush's election, just ...

Analysis: Bush, Resnick Elections Won’t Die
Washington Post, United States - 10 hours ago
... evidence of fraud in '04.". Peg Rosenfield, elections specialist for the League of Women Voters of Ohio, said her group never challenged Bush's election, just ...

Analysis: Bush, Resnick Elections Won’t Die
San Jose Mercury News, USA - 10 hours ago
... evidence of fraud in '04.". Peg Rosenfield, elections specialist for the League of Women Voters of Ohio, said her group never challenged Bush's election, just ...

Analysis: Bush, Resnick Elections Won’t Die
Forbes - 10 hours ago
... evidence of fraud in '04.". Peg Rosenfield, elections specialist for the League of Women Voters of Ohio, said her group never challenged Bush's election, just ...

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36. LINK for AP ARTICLE

http://www.forbes.com/entrepreneurs/feeds/ap/2006/06/12/ap2809021.html

This is the article in Forbes and all the publications in the attached message above.

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4. Stolen Election 2004: Ohio commentary

More from Ohio

Comment on this story.
Questionable rules

http://www.timesreporter.com/index.php?ID=55015

“I didn't see anything new in there," says Eva Parziale, Associated Press Ohio bureau chief, who held that post in 2004 when the election occurred. "They were things we already reported on and issues we did not see to have substance."

Ohio’s election system has come under fire repeatedly in recent years, no doubt because of the state’s pivotal role in deciding the 2004 presidential election.

Repeated snafus, such as problems in May with Cuyahoga County and its new electronic voting machines, have only fueled such criticism.

The harshest attack has come from Robert Kennedy Jr. in an article in a recent issue of Rolling Stone magazine in which he questions whether the 2004 presidential election was stolen by Republicans. He singles out Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell for much of the blame.

[mod mom]

27. PLS LEAVE A COMMENT ON THIS OP-ED @ THE LINK!

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5. Stolen Electoin 2004: National Review Online Uses Salon’s Manjoo

Wow, National Review really investigated. Why should they bother, Salon and Mother Jones have already done the hatchet job on the stolen election truth. They have a one liner then quote the Columbus Dispatch. They’re the folks whose pre election poll had a 60-30 to 30-60% reversal in the special measures election last year and said nothing other than, “Master may I have one more.”

Democrats were in on it

If Republicans did rig the Ohio vote in 2004, Democrats were in on it...including John Kerry's legal team. From the Columbus Dispatch :

If you read Kennedy's story, make sure to go to Salon.com and read the rebuttal by Farhad Manjoo, a Salon staff writer, who spent a year exhaustively studying the Ohio election rather than, a la Kennedy, dipping his toe into it 19 months later. Writes Manjoo, "If you do read Kennedy's article, be prepared to machete your way through numerous errors of interpretation and his deliberate omission of key bits of data."

That warning is echoed by my colleague Mark Niquette, who closely covered and dissected the election aftermath. Cutting through the swirl of conspiracy theories about how Blackwell helped Republicans steal the election, Niquette told me that the critics conveniently neglect one crucial fact: Stealing the Ohio election for Bush would have required widespread complicity by Democrats.

Ohio has a bipartisan election system with an equal number of Democrats and Republicans at the county level, where elections are actually run, Niquette said. For the massive fraud outlined in stories such as Kennedy's to have occurred without being exposed at the time, scores of Democratic election officials and hundreds of lawyers for Kerry in Ohio would have had to have been bought off, incompetent or both.

Kennedy rails about the woefully inadequate number of voting machines in Franklin County's inner-city precincts, but with bipartisan approval, a Democrat decided where the machines would be placed. Kennedy accuses Blackwell of twisting the rules on provisional ballots to help Bush block Democratic votes but neglects to mention that 32 other states have the same rules for counting such ballots – and that Ohio's rate for counting them was 77 percent, the third highest in the nation

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6. Accomplices to Crime Consulted Say No Crime Took Place – MSM in Ohio off t

OK, Ohio news papers are saying Kennedy’s stuff isn’t new. Well, why didn’t they report on it before? Oh, because they’re part of the cover up. Now they’re asked, real or unreal – stolen election 2004. Isn’t that like asking the accomplices to a bank robbery to sit on the jury and judge the other robbers? Nothing good out of that trial.

Editor and Publisher:
Some Ohio Editors and Reporters Criticize 'Rolling Stone' Story on 2004 Alleged Vote Fraud

http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002651747

By Joe Strupp

Published: June 12, 2006 1:15 PM ET

NEW YORK Did the press really miss the story in the 2004 presidential election of massive voter fraud and conspiracies to keep millions from casting ballots that a recent controversial piece in Rolling Stone has alleged? As the article's author, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., believes, did news outlets, both nationally and in the battleground state of Ohio, engage in a "media blackout" that ignored what he claims are "deeply troubling" aspects of the election that returned George W. Bush to the White House?

Bob Herbert added fuel to the fire on Monday in claiming in his New York Times column that, after the Rolling Stone report, "the integrity of the election process needs to be more fiercely defended in the face of outrageous Republican assaults. Democrats, the media, and ordinary voters need to fight back."

But for many in Ohio who covered the presidential race, which was not decided until the following morning after John Kerry gave up any attempt at challenging the Ohio results, the Rolling Stone allegations are unfounded.

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7. New Book: STEALING DEMOCRACY. Spencer Overton. DEMOS/NVRI!!!

http://www.ascribe.org/external/but_goo_logo.jp
Mon Jun 12 15:46:16 2006

DEMOS & Nat.Voting Rights Inst. (NVRI - Bonifaz founded it) NEW BOOK

This is a reliable source, NVRI. Along with Demos, they’ve allied on voting rights issues. A good bet.

New Book Sheds Light on Election Barriers in 21st Century America: 'Stealing Democracy: The New Politics of Voter Suppression,' by Spencer Overton

http://newswire.ascribe.org/cgi-bin/behold.pl?ascribeid=20060612.152129&time=15%2046%20PDT&year=2006&public=0

NEW YORK, June 12 (AScribe Newswire) -- This week marks the publication of a groundbreaking and timely new book, "Stealing Democracy: The New Politics of Voter Suppression" (W.W. Norton; on sale June 5, 2006), by Spencer Overton, George Washington Law School Professor who served on the Jimmy Carter / James Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform, and is a Board Member of Demos: A Network for Ideas & Action, a national public policy group focusing on democracy reform.

In "Stealing Democracy," Overton uses real-life stories and field research to illuminate how systemic problems with our election systems, and partisan efforts to influence the electorate and fix political outcomes, have eroded American democracy. Overton outlines a sophisticated matrix of overt and latent challenges to fair elections, including:

Arcane Voter Registration Procedures: Despite the ease and effectiveness of allowing voters to register in the days leading up to, and on, Election Day, in most states registration is closed weeks before an election--just as debates and news coverage are motivating people to think and take action.

Contorted Congressional District Boundaries: In 36 states, state legislators draw their own election districts and the districts for U.S. House members. Following the 2000 Census, 49 competitive congressional districts were significantly redrawn. Ninety-two percent of incumbents representing these areas obtained safer districts and only eight percent received more competitive districts. Furthermore, in 33 states the secretary of state, or some other elections director, has a party affiliation, impacting how districts are drawn in rarely upholding neutrality but rather, ultimately, serving partisan interests and the partisan ticket.



Partial list of over areas covered:

Election Day Administrative Problems
Alarming Rollback in Voting Rights--Excessive Photo ID Requirements
Not Living Up To The Promise Of Time Served--Blocking Restoration of Voting Rights
Ballot Language Barriers:

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8. Recipe for a Fair Election. Steve Hill (CivilRights.Org & TomPaine.Com)

TomPaine.Com is doing penance for the lousy investigative reporting of Russ Baker – Mr. Gumshoe who couldn’t find the truth and said it didn’t exist if he counldn’t find it. Nice essay by Steve Hill…more of that and less of weak investigators.

Op-Ed Recipe for a Fair Election

http://www.civilrights.org/issues/voting/details.cfm?id=44205
By Steven Hill
TomPaine.com
June 12, 2006
Steven Hill is author of the recently published 10 Steps to Repair American Democracy and director of the Political Reform Program of the New America Foundation.

Part II of a two-part series, Part I appeared on June 5, 2006.

Heading into the 2006 congressional and state elections, fair election advocates need to remain vigilant, particularly in the handful of close races where a swing of a small number of votes could change an election outcome. Longer term, activists must turn their efforts to a more visionary agenda that will ensure fair and secure elections in the 21st century. Here are the reforms necessary for modernizing our elections and making sure that every vote is counted.

1. Nonpartisan election officials. At the top of the list must be creating a bureaucracy of impartial, nonpartisan election officials. We should have learned this lesson in the 2000 presidential election when Katherine Harris oversaw the Florida election as both secretary of state and co-chair of George Bush's election committee. If it can't be guaranteed that the partisan loyalties of election managers will play no role in deciding outcomes, then elections become a charade. Election protection advocates fearful of voting technology forget that fraud has occurred throughout American history with paper ballots, whether through ballot box stuffing or entire ballot boxes disappearing. It hardly matters if the voting technology is computerized voting or paper ballots if the election administrators themselves are partisan-motivated or crooked.

Yet for the 2004 election, it was as though Katherine Harris had cloned herself. The secretaries of state overseeing elections in the battleground states of Missouri, Ohio, and Michigan were all co-chairs of their states' Bush reelection campaigns; in West Virginia, the Democratic Secretary of State oversaw the election for his own governor's race. In Florida, a highly partisan Republican secretary of state once again ran the election, as did a partisan Democrat in New Mexico. A political scientist from Mexico City monitoring the 2004 U.S. presidential election told Business Week that election administration in the United States "looks an awful lot like the old Mexican PRI to me," referring to the notorious party that dominated Mexican politics for seven decades by rigging elections.

Did we learn this lesson in 2004? Not in Ohio, apparently. This year, notorious Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell is overseeing the election in which he is running as the GOP candidate for governor. The New York Times reports that already Blackwell is trying to rig voter registration laws to increase his chances by issuing rulings that all but squash get-out-the-vote drives that will register more poor and minority voters

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9. FL: Jail the Messenger-Dem Charging Fraud Arrested by Accused

So you find a crime, make a charge and the criminal arrests you. What else will we get from Florida. The state won’t allow locals to inspect voting machines (yesterday’s news), now this. More B.S.

RAW STORY:
Florida House candidate to face litany of criminal charges after alleging vote fraud

06/12/2006 @ 11:43 am
Filed by Miriam Raftery
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Florida_House_candidate_to_face_litany_0612.htm

F
In an exclusive interview with Florida House of Representatives candidate Charlie Grapski - arrested after he filed a lawsuit alleging voting fraud against Alachua County City Manager Clovis Watson, RAW STORY learns of corruption allegations that can only be described as not seen since the days of Boss Tweed.
Advertisement

Charlie Grapski, a Democrat running for the Florida House of Representatives, was arrested in April after filing a lawsuit alleging that City officials abused power and influenced the outcome of an election by manipulating the absentee voting process. The story, however, does not start or end with election fraud allegations. What Grapski tells is a tale that one cannot imagine occurring in a law abiding country, one of false arrest, intimidation, and a crony-business system all centered around money interests.

Clovis Watson is not only the City Manager of Alachua county and, as such, the defendant in Grapski’s lawsuit, he is also the Police Commissioner of Alchua, Florida, a town dominated by the Republican Party and pro-development Democrats. Watson, one website alleges, is funded by the Alachua County Republican Party, and declined to accept the Democrat of the Year Award because he is planning a switch to the Republican Party. The site also takes aim at Grapski.

According to Grapski, “Clovis Watson filed a sworn complaint as a police officer himself, and as City Manager he was the aggrieved party. As Police Commissioner, he was his own boss and accepted the sworn complaint from himself--and then instructed his subordinates on the police force to have me arrested.”

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10. Mexico: Government Official Calls Candidates on Slurs-Lousy Campaign

What’s with Mexican Election Officials, asking both candidates to follow therules.. How can we do business with a country that follows election rules?

International Herald Tribune
In Mexico, a campaign cleanup

By James C. McKinley Jr. The New York Times
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/06/12/news/mexico.php

Published: June 12, 2006
MEXICO CITY On the surface, this nation's presidential election looks a lot like modern campaigns in the United States - a battle of image makers wielding sound bites and attack ads with less truth than venom.

But in one crucial respect it is different: Mexico's referee, the Federal Election Institute, has waded into the fray involving the three candidates, ruling that some television spots are too false to be on the air and others just too rude.

It has also enforced an order of silence on President Vicente Fox, telling him not to interfere with the campaign, even to help his party's candidate.

"This council must maintain its tradition of saying yes to freedom of expression, yes to the maximum amount of criticism, but yes to criticism based on truth and yes to legitimate questions," said Luis Carlos Ugalde, president of the institute. "We must say no to defamation, no to denigration, no to things taken out of context and to misinformation."

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11. UT: Utah Officials Witness Fraud in Mississippi

Lord, Utah officials got to MS to see machines in action and notice a ton of problems. Can’t make this stuff up;) We've got some great fraud busters out in Utah!!!

KSL.COM
Utah Election Official Witnessed Problems in Mississippi

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=304901

June 12th, 2006 @ 6:52am
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- A Utah election official observed the Democratic primary election in Mississippi last week and saw things go wrong.

Mississippi used the same touch-screen voting machines that will be used in Utah's June 27 primary. "I wanted to learn from the experiences they were having," said Joe Demma, chief of staff to Utah's lieutenant governor.

However, Demma said that despite small turnouts, the state saw problems in nearly every county, and many polling places fell back to paper ballots.

"In every single precinct I visited there was a different problem happening," Demma told The Salt Lake Tribune. "But they were all related to poor training and communication."

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12. Reprise: Palast & . Martin Luther King III-Jim Crow Revived in Cyberspace

Jim Crow Revived in Cyberspace
by Greg Palast & Martin Luther King III
Baltimore Sun

http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=306&row=2

Tuesday, May 13, 2003
E-Mail Article
Printer Friendly Version

In Honor of Martin Luther King Day, we reprint this article from the Baltimore Sun by Greg Palast and Martin Luther King III, son of the slain civil rights leader.

Birmingham, Ala. – Astonishingly, and sadly, four decades after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. marched in Birmingham, we must ask again, "Do African-Americans have the unimpeded right to vote in the United States?"

In 1963, Dr. King's determined and courageous band faced water hoses and police attack dogs to call attention to the thicket of Jim Crow laws – including poll taxes and so-called "literacy" tests – that stood in the way of black Americans' right to have their ballots cast and counted.

Today, there is a new and real threat to minority voters, this time from cyberspace: computerized purges of voter rolls.

The menace first appeared in Florida in the November 2000 presidential election. While the media chased butterfly ballots and hanging chads, a much more sinister and devastating attack on voting rights went almost undetected.

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13. Wilms: Lehto (pictured) i- Vendors Won't Guarantee Machines

Wilms Donating Member Mon Jun-12-06 11:41 PM
Original message
Lehto: Vendors Commonly Refuse to Promise That Their Voting Machines Work

Edited on Mon Jun-12-06 11:46 PM by Wilms
E-voting Vendors Commonly Refuse to Promise That Their Voting Machines Work
(By contractually disclaiming “implied warranties” that are supposed to apply to all sales of goods under the Uniform Commercial Code)

Actual Picture of Lehto Below
(and this is on a good day..don't piss him off;)

By Paul R. Lehto, Attorney at Law (Washington State)
[e-mail]

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: By their own admission in the words of their signed contracts with government agencies, voting machine vendors “disclaim” or refuse to stand behind their products. The voting machine vendors also refuse to promise that their products will work or that they will be fit even for ordinary uses or for any particular purpose that the vendor knows very well or has reason to know is the purpose for buying the machines. Because these “disclaimers of implied warranties” routinely appear in contracts to purchase voting machines, activists and government officials should not allow or approve such low standards to be brought into our election processes. This point is of sufficient strength and importance in making points concerning both the importance of elections as well as the low quality of voting machines that citizens may consider holding an “intellectual sit-in” so to speak and simply keep asking the question in different forms over and over again: How could the government agree to run our elections without obtaining a promise or warranty that the machines will work? How could the vendors think they should be allowed to present these kinds of risks to democracy if they’re not willing to stand behind their products 100%? Does this constitute recklessness? Corporate favors? What’s going on here?

Also discussed is the status when the implied warranties are disclaimed as above, but a short term limited warranty is provided in place of the implied warranties, which is still a woefully insufficient state of affairs for elections, which are supposed to be highly reliable “fail safe” events involving ballot collection and simple acts of addition. The FTC explains the implied warranty of merchantability (which vendors deny they are making when selling voting machines to our governmental officials, as follows:

“{The implied warranty of merchantability means that the goods} will do what they are supposed to do and that there is nothing significantly wrong with them. In other words, it is an implied promise that the goods are fit to be sold. The law says that merchants make this promise automatically every time they sell a product they are in business to sell.”
See http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/warranty.ht... (click “understanding warranties” link, paragraph 4 in the “understanding warranties” section)
Voting machine vendors are most definitely “merchants” under the law. The following more extended discussion explains this in more detail, and suggests how citizens can use this law to frame questions and objections to voting machine sales.


http://electionfraudnews.com/LegDoc/ZeroGuarantee.pdf

or

http://electionfraudnews.com/LegDoc/legal.htm (and look for Lehto) lots of other stuff

[Wilms]

15. Discussion

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x433440

[mod mom]

28. very flattering picture of Lehto...I mean landshark!

;)

[Joe Chi Minh]

33. In the UK, quite apart from any manufacturer's warranty, there is

a statutory requirement for goods to be of merchantable quality.

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14. drm604 NYT Bob Herbert: Kerry 'almost certainly' won Ohio in 2004

drm604 Donating Member Mon Jun-12-06 04:52 AM
Original message
NYT Bob Herbert: Kerry 'almost certainly' won Ohio in 2004

Updated at 9:50 AM

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/NYT_Bob_Herbert_Kerry_almost_certainly_0612.html
In the 2004 presidential election, Senator John Kerry (D-MA) "almost certainly would have won Ohio if all of his votes had been counted, and if all of the eligible voters who tried to vote for him had been allowed to cast their ballots," writes columnist Bob Herbert for Monday's edition of The New York Times.

From the NYT article:
Republicans, and even a surprising number of Democrats, have been anxious to leave the 2004 Ohio election debacle behind. But Kennedy, in his long, heavily footnoted article ("Was the 2004 Election Stolen?"), leaves no doubt that the democratic process was trampled and left for dead in the Buckeye State. Kerry almost certainly would have won Ohio if all of his votes had been counted, and if all of the eligible voters who tried to vote for him had been allowed to cast their ballots.

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/NYT_Bob_Herbert_Kerry...

Of course, this is not news to most of us but the story is getting out there.

[Wilms]

16. How Can You Be Sure? That results are “plausible” is besides the point.

How Can You Be Sure?

Vendor Failures and Lax Security Procedures Call Election Results Into Question In States Across The Country

By Warren Stewart, VoteTrustUSA
June 11, 2006

snip

The fact that the official results are “plausible” in California’s special election is beside the point. In fact, if the corrupted results had been “plausible” in Pottawattamie County, there would have been no scrutiny and losing candidates would have been elected.

After a publicly observed hand count of the ballots, voters can be reasonably confident in the results of elections in Pottawattmie County. Without a similar hand count of the California special election, voters have no reason to believe the official results are accurate.

snip

http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1385&Itemid=26


Also...

Talking Points Memo On Elections

by Dave Berman

June 11, 2006

snip

1. Secret vote counting guarantees inconclusive outcomes. Whether it is paperless DREs or optical scanners with interpreted or proprietary code, votes are being "counted" in secret, without even a chance for voters, elections officials or the media to examine the process or verify the results.

2. Unverified voting means there is NO BASIS for confidence in the results reported. Blind trust is required to accept current election results.

3. The media should not report what it cannot prove or independently verify. We now have faith-based reporting about faith-based elections.

4. The Consent of the Governed is being assumed, not sought, under current election conditions. According to the Declaration of Independence, the "just Power" of government derives from the Consent of the Governed.

snip/more

http://wedonotconsent.blogspot.com/2006/06/talking-points-memo-on-elections-for.html


Discussion

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x433461

[JimDandy]

17. self-deleted --autorank had it covered already.

[rumpel]

19. I think what happened was June 12 was dated June 11

That is the one that has only 4 votes - people must have missed it.

on edit All's well on both. :)

[rumpel]

18. FL House Candidate to Face Litany of Criminal Charges After Alleging Vote

Fraud
Via Truthout

By Miriam Raftery
Raw Story

Monday 12 June 2006

In an exclusive interview with Florida House of Representatives candidate Charlie Grapski - arrested after he filed a lawsuit alleging voting fraud against Alachua County City Manager Clovis Watson, RAW STORY learns of corruption allegations that can only be described as not seen since the days of Boss Tweed.

Charlie Grapski, a Democrat running for the Florida House of Representatives, was arrested in April after filing a lawsuit alleging that City officials abused power and influenced the outcome of an election by manipulating the absentee voting process. The story, however, does not start or end with election fraud allegations. What Grapski tells is a tale that one cannot imagine occurring in a law abiding country, one of false arrest, intimidation, and a crony-business system all centered around money interests.

Clovis Watson is not only the City Manager of Alachua county and, as such, the defendant in Grapski's lawsuit, he is also the Police Commissioner of Alachua, Florida, a town dominated by the Republican Party and pro-development Democrats. Watson, one website alleges, is funded by the Alachua County Republican Party, and declined to accept the Democrat of the Year Award because he is planning a switch to the Republican Party. The site also takes aim at Grapski.

According to Grapski, "Clovis Watson filed a sworn complaint as a police officer himself, and as City Manager he was the aggrieved party. As Police Commissioner, he was his own boss and accepted the sworn complaint from himself - and then instructed his subordinates on the police force to have me arrested."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/061206R.shtml

realize it's a dupe - but it's let's say also on TO

[understandinglife]

20. "Not One Line Of Software Between A Voter And A Valid Election."

Thank you, Mr. Herbert.

Finally.

Recommended.


pro-Bu$h = Anti-America

[rumpel]

21. MS: Diebold Tech fired in Lefore County - incorrect machine set-up/primary

Sun-Herald

Posted on Mon, Jun. 12, 2006
Technician fire over Leflore voting machine problems
Associated Press
GREENWOOD, Miss. - A voting machine technician has been dismissed due to problems with the Leflore County machines in last week's Democratic primary, officials say.

The touch-screen machines, made by Diebold, were being used for the first time in the Tuesday primary.

"The voting machines in Leflore County were not set up right," said David Blount, a spokesman for Secretary of State Eric Clark. "They were not set up for each voting precinct. That led to the problems we had. The technician, employed by Diebold, should have caught and corrected any mistakes. That's what they are for."

Edward Course, chairman of the Leflore County Election Commission, identified the technician as Lorenzo Millsaps of Canton. Millsaps could not immediately be contacted for comment on Monday.

After the polls opened, reports came in that machines weren't working throughout the county. Some machines were down for several hours, which forced election workers to use paper ballots.

Jesse Ross, chairman of the county Democratic Executive Committee, declined to comment on the firing.

On Friday, Ross and others finished certifying primary results. The new touch-screen system was used in 77 counties in the state for the primary. Each county was assigned a Diebold technician, Blount said.

Millsaps had been in Leflore County as a technician since May 6, Course said.

Course said the machines in the county were set up in a "post-election mode" when polls opened on Tuesday. For the machines to work properly, he said, they needed to be set up in "election mode."

http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/news/state/14801920.htm

[rumpel]

22. Judicial Watch Blog: Florida Election Fiasco To Continue

June 12, 2006

Tests conducted months ago by a Florida supervisor of elections exposed serious security problems with electronic voting machines and now embarrassed state officials want to pass a new law that prohibits such testing in the future.

You would think Florida officials would praise Ion Sancho, the supervisor of elections in Tallahassee’s Leon County, for exposing how easily the fancy and expensive Diebold Elections Systems machines could be hacked. Instead, irritated state officials retaliated by taking $500,000 in federal grant money away from Sancho’s office and now they want to stop election supervisors in the state’s 67 counties from running any kind of voting equipment test without clearance from the state.

Makes you wonder what Florida officials are afraid of. Perhaps what Sancho discovered in his county is widespread in the Sunshine State. Black Box Voting, a nonpartisan election watchdog, called it the most serious “hack” demonstration to date, pointing out how the Diebold machines succumbed quickly to alteration of the votes. This demonstrates that Diebold made misrepresentations to secretaries of state across the nation when it claimed votes could not be changed on the credit card-sized ballot box used by computerized voting machines.

http://www.corruptionchronicles.com/2006/06/florida_election_fiasco_to_con.html

[rumpel]

23. TX: In high-tech e-voting age, glitches usually low-tech

Austin American Statesman

Lack of training, shortage of workers, human error often the root of problems.
By Laylan Copelin
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Six thousand ballots were cast and counted electronically this spring before the first Travis County voter stepped into a voting booth.

No, it was not the digital equivalent of Box 13, the "missing" South Texas ballot box that allowed a young Lyndon Johnson to squeak into the U.S. Senate in 1948. Instead, it was a test, just one of the many checks and balances that Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir uses to safeguard the ballot box in an electronic age.

"It's tedious and grueling," DeBeauvoir said of the process in which election workers cast thousands of test ballots over 12 hours. "But it's necessary."

Interest in ballot security has sizzled on the back burner this year as Texas passed a Jan. 1 federal deadline to put at least one electronic machine in every precinct. As some politicians, election lawyers and critics of electronic voting — the self-proclaimed "black box" crowd — warn of voter fraud, the problems so far have been more of the low-tech variety.

More times than not, it's the people — with a lack of training, a shortage of workers or human error — at the root of problems.

The push to improve the speed and accuracy of voting came from the hanging chads of the 2000 Bush-Gore presidential standoff in Florida. But a primary purpose behind the federal Helping America to Vote Act is also to put at least one electronic voting machine in every precinct so people with disabilities can easily vote.

snip

Rice University professor Dan Wallach is a computer security expert who is skeptical of electronic voting.

He said he has testified in election contests where he has found test votes — the kind Travis County used — wrongly included in election day totals. In another instance, Wallach said, election workers cleared out the electronic ballots from some machines to get ready for a runoff election, erasing the ability to double-check the election day returns.

Wallach said the state has contributed to the problems by barring the public from attending the state's initial review of electronic voting systems.

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/06/13vote.html

[Algorem]

24. "Poodle Doug Clifton of the Plain Dealer whines about RFK's article "

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2675265&mesg_id=2675265

"Poodle Doug Clifton of the Plain Dealer whines about RFK's article

He didn't bother to read it, but he doesn't think its true anyway. What kind of idiotic crap is that coming from the editor of a newspaper? He didn't read it, but doesn't think its true?.

So how the hell did you form an opinion, Doug?

The idea that the GOP whore news media in Ohio is slavishly spinning about election fraud here means you can bet they plan on trying it again in November. They'll probably give Ted Strickland a pass, since he's getting bought off by more and more corporate donors every day, but they'll nail Sherrod Brown and Dems running for Congress in hopes of keeping GOP control.


"Doug Clifton, editor of The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, said he had not read the Rolling Stone piece, but stressed that all of the arguments raised since the election have been properly reviewed. "We tracked down every allegation and we did as much checking as you can check," he said. "In the end, there were some problems, but they were not of the magnitude that would have made any difference."

http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002651747

Yeah, Doug, we trust you. We trust you and Taft's press secretary's husband at the Columbus Dispatch, too. About as much as we trust Blackwell to count the votes.

Join me in sending him an email and telling him RFK, Jr is right [e-mail]


Visit OzarkDem's Ohio Politics Journal "

[eomer]

25. FL: Elections hacks don't guard us against hackers

Elections hacks don't guard us against hackers

BY FRED GRIMM
[e-mail]

-snip-

Of course, the new rules aren't really about protecting the integrity of elections. Only one Florida supervisor of elections allowed outside experts to test his voting system security. And when Ion Sancho's hackers discovered they could alter the outcome of an election and wipe out all trace of the tampering last year, it was a huge embarrassment to the Secretary of State's office. Instead of trying to fix the flaws, state officials and Diebold -- a maker of voting machines -- went after Sancho, disparaging his findings and suggested that he ought to be tossed from office.

Then California -- not Florida -- directed a panel of computer science experts to look into the Leon County findings. The panel found the same flaws and more. Florida election bureaucrats were humiliated.

''The new rules are designed to make sure that they're never embarrassed again, '' Sancho said Monday.

Florida first priority is to protect the vendors. We'll let California worry about the damn voters.

Read the rest of Fred Grimm's column

[autorank]

26. Local news media headline of the year;) n/t

[katinmn]

29. K&B! Thanks, Bob Herbet!

Now you will be vilified by your peers for suggesting Americans deserve to have confidence in their elections. You're a brave man.

[Nothing Without Hope]

30. ***FREE LINK*** to this important Bob Herbert column:

http://64.226.238.78/PA/bh/bh210.shtml

...and K & R.

[Patsy Stone]

31. GA: New judge appointed in redistricting lawsuit

Associated Press

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/14807156.htm

ATHENS, Ga. - A new judge has been appointed to hear arguments to redraw Athens' state Senate lines, which split in half the Democratic stronghold.

Senior Judge Arthur Fudger was appointed Monday and will take the bench Thursday. Fudger's appointment comes after another specially appointed judge, John Girardeau of Gainesville, recused himself when he learned two of the dozens of court officials named in the lawsuit have worked as bailiffs in his courtroom.

A total of 38 elections officials from several northeast Georgia counties are defendants in the case in which three voters asked to overturn a Republican-backed redistricting plan that split Athens-Clarke County into two Senate districts.

One of Athens' current state representatives, Democrat Jane Kidd, is considered the biggest loser in the redistricting, which made it harder for her to win a race for the Senate District 46 seat. But Kidd is not a party in the local lawsuit.

[Patsy Stone]

32. WA: "Divisive" politics prompt King County elections chief to leave

By Keith Ervin and Sharon Chan
Seattle Times staff reporters

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003058667_weblogan13.html

King County's embattled elections chief, Dean Logan, resigned Monday to become deputy elections registrar in Los Angeles County.

His resignation, tendered to King County Executive Ron Sims on Monday, is effective July 14.

"It's time to move on from the partisan and divisive dynamic that seems to pervade anything related to elections in King County," Logan said. "Hopefully, that will be a good move for me as well as the organization."

Logan had survived intense public criticism over the flawed 2004 gubernatorial election, only to resign one week after some Metropolitan King County Council members objected to his absence from a meeting at which the council was expected to vote on Logan and Sims' plan to move to all-mail voting. The vote was delayed because of unanswered questions.

Logan's statement in .pdf: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/news/local/links/resignation.pdf

[Joe Chi Minh]

34. The resourcefulness of fraudsters leads to the most surreal

scenarios of the darkest humor, which in some ways could be mirror images of each other.

I've just been reading Hunter S Thompson's account of the military coup in Peru he reported on some years ago.

Out of a few million votes in the recent election, apparently some 70 were deemed to have been fraudulent. Hunter writes:

"Gen. Perez has impressed foreign journalists in Lima with his unique feeling for words and their fundamental meanings. He is no mean orator, and in his first statement after the takeover he explained it this way:

'We have seen a fraudulent election process in which not even the most basic and elementary rights of the citizens have been respected. The armed forces have seen with pain, with anxiety, with tight lips and dry eyes, this sacrifice of our people, our country, of our future.'

The fact that the armed froces had been able to dig up only seventy fraudulent ballots out of a total of some two million did not deter Gen. Perez from going on TV to amplify and reiterate his feelings.

'To the humble, to the forgotten worker, to the voter who has been deprived in many cases of the elementary social, economic and culutual benefits, it is now being attempted to take from him also his only hope - that of gaining the progress and social justice he deserves, to wipe out his liberty to vote by fraud.

We will not consent to it. A military imperative forces on us the hard obligation of assuming the functions of government that normally should be in civilian hands, in order to establish peace, order and respect for the laws that rule the republic.

Wow! I mean just Wow! Freedom was on the march in Peru that day, long before even your Neocons developed that burning, paramessianic passion of theirs for freedom in the US and Iraq. And for Gen. Perez, read, the Supreme Court of the United States.

[autorank]

35. The perfect analogy and summation of our current state...

...I am humbled. Oh, General Perez, where art thou?

[Joe Chi Minh]

37. Democracy's a bit like villages isn't it? You have to kind of

eliminate them, to save them.

[Joe Chi Minh]

38. Don't trust him, Auto. There's something about him.. I don't know..

just makes me feel a bit uneasy. Can't quite put my finger on it.

But seriously, I wonder if John Stewart could persuade him to come on his show, and ask him if he'd stage a coup for us - to save democracy? Maybe invade... Freedom on the march and all that.

[texpatriot2004]

39. Thank you Bob H. for this article. nm