Joan Posner, Anne Rubin on WHVW in a.m., Rhinebeck Dems re: voting integrity below...

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Joel Tyner

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Oct 24, 2008, 10:09:59 PM10/24/08
to Real Majority Project

Hi all...

If you can, tune in tomorrow (Sat.) morning 7 to 10 a.m. for our "Common Sense" show on WHVW 950 AM-- Dem candidates Anne Rubin (citizen activist extraordinaire for Assembly) and Joan Posner (superbly qualified for Family Court Judge) will be our guests!...(feel free to call in yourself at 483-9489 to be part of the mix on the air; see http://www.JoanPosner.com , http://www.AnneRubin.net for more)...

Scroll down for voting integrity update < Rhinebeck Dems (courtesy of Andi Novick); also these three:

Democracy Now this morning re: voting machine funny business in Pennsylvania:

"Protect This Election" by Andrew Gumbel:

"Sorry, I Can't Find Your Name" [NYTimes editorial yesterday]:

And-- click on this for a picker-upper if there ever was one:

More-- "Why Obama Pulled Ahead on Economy" by Marc Weisbrot-- http://www.truthout.org/102408R ...


strong case to vote for Obama (not third party) here: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/10/24-4

"Union Card or Master Card: How a Nation of Workers Became a Nation of Debtors" by Frank Joyce
http://www.alternet.org/workplace/103863/union_card_or_master_card_--_how_a_nation_of_workers_became_a_nation_of_debtors/

"Will Right-Wingers Stand in the Way of the Bailout 'Main Street' Desperately Needs?" (Joshua Holland)
http://www.alternet.org/workplace/104200/will_right-wingers_stand_in_the_way_of_the_bailout_%22main_street%22_desperately_needs/

"U.S.-Iraq Agreement Severely Flawed" by A. Pal-- http://www.progressive.org/mag/wxap102308.html

Blacksmith Institute: pollution killing millions-- http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2008/10/24-6

Case Against Continued Occupation/Escalation of War in Afghanistan: http://www.truthout.org/102408L

Joel
489-5479
876-2488

p.s. Don't forget-- from DutchessForObama <dutchess...@gmail.com>
Subject: UPDATE: Obama Rally Saturday~SPREAD THE WORD!
Dutchess Women for Obama and Dutchess Young Democrats present
YES WE WILL! Rally for Barack Obama
Saturday, October 25th, 2008 12pm-2pm
Riverfront Park Beacon, NY
(In case of rain, the location will change to:
Chill Wine Bar, 129 Main Street, Beacon, NY)
~Featured Musical Artists~
Dan Einbender    Melissa Ortquist   Karen Brooks
Lydia Davis   Sarah Underhill  Kathy Byers  Jeff Haynes
Speakers:
Connie Hogarth, Activist and Founder of the Connie Hogarth
Center for Social Change, Manhattanville College
Clare Coleman, CEO and President of The Mid-Hudson Planned Parenthood, Inc.
Fran Knapp, Dutchess County Democratic Elections Commissioner
Jane Barber Smith, Chair of the Dutchess Democratic Committee
Rev. Frank Alagna, St. Andrews Episcopal Church
Steve Gold, Mayor of Beacon
mmediately following the Rally, join us for:
 Phonebanking to the Battleground States at:
The Muddy Cup, Main St, Beacon, NY
The MLK Cultural Center, 19 South, Beacon, NY
The Poughkeepsie HQ, 320 Main St. Poughkeepsie, NY
Canvassing to Get Out The Vote
John Hall for Congress & Jonathon Smith for State Assembly campaigns
Honk for Hope, Rt 9, near the Walmart in Fishkill, NY.
For more info:
Angela Valles at 845-797-9810  Email: anval...@aol.com
Tracy Givens-Hunter at 845-238-7592  Email: 1754...@optonline.net

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Also-- this came in to us Weds. from "Rhinebeck Democrats" (rhinebeck...@gmail.com)...

Subject: Write Back- They're wrong: PUSH PLAN "L": Levers - Love em or Lose em

Dear friends,
 
This important message is forwarded from Andi Novick, who has been waging a critical battle on behalf of verifiable voting. The right to vote is worthless if those votes aren't counted.
 
Thanks to all of you who have followed thru with letters to the State Board of Elections. We must be having some success because a pat response was prepared in order to respond to all of you, in which the SBoE erroneously stated that HAVA required we get rid of our levers. That's not true. It is deeply disturbing that those entrusted with protecting the integrity of our elections and complying with the law don't know how to read the law.
 
Section 301of HAVA sets forth 5 requirements that each voting system has to meet. NY has met all of them now that we have ballot marking devices (BMDs) in place. Indeed our own SBoE Commissioner Kellner testified in 2004 that: "Our lever machines satisfy all but one of [HAVA'S] standards, that there be at least one machine at each poll site that is 'accessible for individuals with disabilities."  http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_andi_nov_080315_open_letter_to_ny_ci.htm
The accessibility standard has now been complied with. You will see a ballot marking device in every poll site when you go to the polls next month.
 
Maybe the SBoE needs to hire Pat Lamana of the Dutchess Peace Coalition, who is not an attorney but is able to read and understand English. Here's what she wrote back to the SBoE:
 
Please allow me to differ.  HAVA does "not" require us to give up our lever machines as long as we make provisions for individuals with disabilities, which we have already done.  We are free to use lever machines, or the good old-fashioned hand-written, hand-counted ballots which are surprisingly efficient and the most reliable form of voting.  And it's worth using the simplest, cheapest form of technology, if that's what will preserve our democracy!

Thank you,
Pat Lamanna
 
In a nutshell-  HAVA DOES NOT BAN LEVERS.  NY is hiding behind their unconstitutional legislation.
Let me tell you what's really going on.  Let's say your child's school tells her she needs a calculator.  There is a perfectly good calculator at home, but she goes out and spends $500 on a new one.  You object to your money being wasted. Her defense is, the school said we had to buy this one.  The school didn't say that and the calculator you have at home works well (although old, its proven highly reliable). What would a responsible parent do? Tell her she can keep the calculator, even though it immediately showed itself to be unreliable (miscalculating arbitrarily) or do you tell her to return it and use the one at home.
 
NYS took about $221 million dollars under HAVA of which roughly $48 million was to replace the levers. The State knows the levers are secure and the computers aren't, but either doesn't want to give back the $48 million or can't read. HAVA says, if you take the money and don't replace the levers, give back the portion of the money that was to replace the levers.  Now what would a responsible State do? 
 
It's our money (all taxpayer dollars). Tell the State to give it back before they kill our democracy and cost us far more money -see yesterday's Times Herald reporting that Ulster residents' taxes will rise 4-5% just for the 2009 elections- for the privilege of voting on unreliable new voting machines-
http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081020/NEWS/810200315/-1/NEWS.
       
Let them know you're paying attention and you know they're wrong. Tell them to give back the $48 million and keep our levers now while we are still fortunate to have the only secure voting system left in the United States. Don't permit the forfeiture of your sovereignty because of your government's incompetent or unconstitutional behavior. Public elections require public observability-essential for our democracy to survive.  How dare they impose secret vote counting on us.  This is the time to be outraged and constructive.  If you remain passive, you'll be left with your outrage and your servitude.
 
And if our efforts fail to persuade the State- well that's why we're bringing the lawsuit to have the court declare NYS's (not HAVA's mind you) requirement that we replace the levers, unconstitutional.
 
 
Your name will be listed shortly after you sign, so we know if you didn't care enough to take a few minutes to prevent your disenfranchisement. Just kidding, but seriously if you don't care, who will? Pass this on widely.
 
thanks,
 
Re-Media Election Transparency Coalition
 
This is all of our responsibility. Please take the time to send copies of your letters to your:
--  local election commissioners - http://www.elections.state.ny.us/CountyBoards.html ,
 --  state representatives - www.congress.org for email addresses,
 
Let's see if we can't get them to respond to our letters too--Get the word out now while there's time...

--
Rhinebeck Democrats
Warren Smith and Elizabeth Spinzia, Co-Chairs

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Again-- did you know that all these Dutchess County voters have signed on to Andi Novick's petition?...


Among the 581 endorsers from across the state, Dutchess supporters from here include the following:

Rhinebeck's Debi Duke, Guy and Mary Hathaway, Joel and Kate Kopp, Susan Nagel, Carl Parris, and Barb Whan; Clinton's Bronwyn Bevan, Ann Scibenski, Doug and Elizabeth Smyth; Hyde Park's Joan Grishman and Doris Kelly; Poughkeepsie's Jim Beretta and Doreen Tignanelli, Rosemarie Calista, Kurt Hornick, Gary Kenton, Carolann Koehler, Pat Lamanna, Joanne Lukacher, Gerald Mahoney, Doug McComb, Carol Miyake, and Karl Volk; Beacon's Tom Baldino; Milan's Jose Reissig; East Fishkill's Lena Smolon; Wappinger's Rich McHugh, and Red Hook's Doris Soroko (and yours truly)...

All of those folks agree with Andi Novick and the Election Defense Alliance to endorse this statement:

"The following New York residents are opposed to concealed vote counting on software-driven voting systems and support the litigation to declare this practice unconstitutional, insisting on their right to a secure, transparent voting system, which our lever machines provide."(!)

[click on this link to see all 581 names from across NYS on board in support of Andi's lawsuit; see:
http://www.electiondefensealliance.org/nypetition/signatures.php?pageNum_Recordset_levers=0&totalRows_Recordset_levers=581 ]

Fact: Despite what you may have read in the papers lately, and despite what some are saying-- it ain't over on this 'til it's over, folks-- the fact is that there are tons of elections commissioners across NY who still very much want to hold on to their lever machines-- and many optical scanner machines recently tested in Nassau County failed miserably; thousands of defects found...(recall recent Dutchess Beat)...

[see post to http://re-mediaetc.blogspot.com on exactly this, in fact]

Fact: Paper ballot optical scan (PBOS) voting machines can be hacked into just about as easily as touchscreen (DRE) voting machines; recall this from 12/21/05 "Wired" magazine article: "Election officials spooked by tampering in a test last week of Diebold optical-scan voting machines should be equally wary of optical-scan equipment produced by other manufacturers, according to a computer scientist who conducted the test...Hugh Thompson, an adjunct computer science professor at the Florida Institute of Technology, and Harri Hursti, a Finnish computer scientist, were able to change votes on the Diebold machine without leaving a trace. Hursti conducted the same test for California secretary of state's office Tuesday." [ http://www.Wired.com/politics/security/news/2005/12/69893 ]

But that's not all folks-- check out these few links below re: problems w/optical scan machines in FL:
3,400 Ballots Missing in Florida Election: Recount Flips Race
By Kim Zetter September 03, 2008

[also see K. Zetter's Oct. 7 update post: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/10/florida-countys.html ]

Palm Beach County, Florida, is in the news again for another election mishap. This time the culprit isn't the county's infamous butterfly ballot that made headlines in the 2000 presidential race. Instead, the problem is ballots used with the county's new $5.5 million optical-scan machines made by Sequoia Voting Systems.  More than 3,000 optical-scan ballots have mysteriously disappeared since the county held an election last Tuesday.
According to tallies a week ago, a total of 102,523 ballots were cast in the election. But according to a recount of one of the races, which was completed this last Sunday, the total number of cast ballots was only 99,045 -- a difference of 3,478...

Test Shows Palm Beach Optical Scan Voting Machines Not Accurate October 2. 2008

Tests run yesterday in Palm Beach County Florida show there is a real problem with their voting machines.  The optical scan machines, made by Sequoia, can't count the same ballots the same way two times in a row! They get a different count each time.  Washington DC, another customer of Sequoia, is also having trouble with their voting machines, high speed optical scanners.  Earlier this month, "DC's machines somehow managed to inflate the vote totals in some races by more than 100 percent, making up thousands of write-in votes and adding thousands of votes to the totals of candidates on the ballot." according to Government Computer News. Pierce County Washington found problems with their Sequoia precinct optical scanners and could not allow them to be used to count their Instant Runoff Voting ballots. San Francisco uses the same machines for IRV. What can be done to protect the voters in these districts, come November?...

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Finally-- this posted a bit earlier this week to TheNation.com...


Protect This Election
by ANDREW GUMBEL
This article appeared in the November 10, 2008 edition of The Nation.
October 22, 2008

Not so long ago, when Karl Rove was still dreaming of a permanent Republican majority based on his "50 percent plus one" model for fighting and winning elections, 2008 was shaping up as possibly the dirtiest election season yet.

The plan was straightforward: to use every legislative and executive lever available to the GOP to suppress the votes of minorities, students, the poor, the transient and the elderly; and to denounce any attempt by the other side to level the playing field as a monstrous exercise in systemic voter fraud.

A lot of pieces of that plan are still in place and could still pose a threat to the integrity of the November 4 elections if any one of them--a crucial Senate race, say, if not also the race for the presidency--turns out to be remotely close.

Voter ID laws passed by GOP-majority legislatures in Georgia, Indiana and elsewhere serve as thinly veiled mechanisms for suppressing opposition voters, because those without driver's licenses or other forms of government-issued identity cards are more likely to be Democrats.

In several states, the Republican Party has made plans to challenge the legitimacy of thousands of voters, in some cases using a notorious, legally dubious technique known as "caging," whereby the party sends out nonforwardable mail to low-income or minority households (the people likely to move frequently or to be victims of subprime mortgage foreclosures) and uses returned envelopes to question the eligibility of the addressees.

Some Republican-run states, most notably Florida, have introduced absurdly strict standards for the admission of new voters to the rolls, making it likely that thousands, if not tens of thousands, of them will have to go to extraordinary lengths on election day to prove that they have the right to cast a ballot. History suggests many of these new voters will either give up when challenged or fail to show up at all.

Most serious, the Republicans have sought to use the Justice Department to legitimize these efforts and, in some cases, to extend them--by paying close attention to the (mostly nonexistent) problem of individual ballot fraud while showing little or no interest in protecting the rights of minority voters, as the Voting Rights Act mandates that the department do.

The GOP has been laying this groundwork over the past several election cycles--using each technique either as a means to squeak ahead in tight races or as a pretext for challenging results in the event of a narrow loss. We know, for example, that in 2004 the party investigated the eligibility of more than half a million voters across the country, challenged 74,000 of them directly on election day and had a plan in place to challenge tens of thousands more in such swing states as Nevada, New Mexico, Florida and Pennsylvania in the event that John Kerry came out ahead of George W. Bush in the race for the White House. (An e-mail trail setting out these plans was uncovered after the election by the PBS program Now.)

In 2008 the techniques for challenging voters this way--or for deterring or disenfranchising them in the first place--have become more widespread and sophisticated. Just look at the way the Republicans have demonized ACORN, the low-income advocacy group that works to register new minority voters.

In every election cycle since 2004, ACORN has been put through the wringer for supposedly aiding and abetting voter fraud--usually in ways designed to sway the public against the Democrats in the days before a key state vote. While ACORN has had well-advertised problems getting its low-wage workforce to produce reliable voter registration lists, those lists have not been shown to result in a single fraudulently cast ballot.

This year, that demonization has taken on vast new proportions, presumably connected to ACORN's claim to have registered 1.3 million new voters. The FBI has launched an investigation that smells, once again, of political interference in the electoral process by the Justice Department. Republican operatives have accused ACORN, absurdly, of perpetrating the subprime mortgage lending crisis [see Peter Dreier and John Atlas, "The GOP's Blame-ACORN Game," page 20] and of being a "quasi-criminal organization"--hinting darkly that ACORN-registered voters may not be eligible. One think tank that sees its mission as bashing ACORN on behalf of its big-business backers, the Employment Policies Institute, even calls it "a multi-million-dollar, multinational conglomerate."

The strange thing about this and the rest of the GOP attack machine is that somewhere along the way, the wheels started coming off. This is partly a result of straightforward political warfare: the groundwork laid by GOP operatives may be more extensive than in the past, but so are the campaigns to denounce their efforts, from the likes of Common Cause, the Century Foundation, the Brennan Center for Justice and other organizations that have issued report after report exposing the dirt and incompetence in the electoral system and calling the Republicans' bluff on the supposed scourge of individual voter fraud. It certainly helps that the denunciations are now coming from well-known groups with serious academic credentials and a commitment to accurate research--a welcome change from the days when hardworking but underqualified Internet campaigners were breathlessly denouncing nonexistent political plots cooked up by the Republicans and the makers of touch-screen voting machines.

The change of mood is also a reflection of broader political realities. Barack Obama is ahead in the polls, the public is of a mind to view Republican maneuvering of all kinds in a less than favorable light and attempts to deter or suppress Democratic voters are up against the remarkable surge in enthusiasm and voter registration behind the Obama ticket. The Republicans were reported to be thinking about mounting a vote-caging operation against the former owners of foreclosed homes in one Michigan county, only to deny any such intent when the plan became public. In Montana, an attempt to disenfranchise 6,000 people in Democratic-leaning districts has sparked similar outrage. Dirty electioneering, in other words, may boost a party headed toward a narrow victory, as it did for the Republicans in 2004, but it can sink a floundering party like a stone. Voters can smell the desperation, and they don't like it.

The Republicans also made the mistake, as they have in so many policy areas, of overreaching and alienating even their own supporters. The US Attorneys scandal was probably the starkest example, especially since at least two if not more of the fired federal prosecutors were given the boot for their failure to pursue individual voter fraud. David Iglesias, the New Mexico prosecutor at the eye of the storm, described in his memoir In Justice earlier this year how the White House first went after Todd Graves in Missouri, to see if there would be a backlash, and became emboldened when they didn't detect much of a reaction. Another eight fired Attorneys later, the new Democratic majority in Congress was alarmed enough to start investigating--and expose the Bush administration's gross political manipulations. Iglesias, interestingly, was a staunch Republican but refused to file unsubstantiated voter fraud charges when he knew any half-serious judge would throw them straight out.

More Republicans standing on principle have surfaced in the heat of the McCain-Obama battle. In October, Montana Lieutenant Governor John Bohlinger declared publicly he was "appalled at the leadership of my political party" for vote suppression activities that have "no place in a democracy."

It would be a mistake, though, to count on other John Bohlingers coming forward to denounce every piece of skulduggery. In fact, for those with a mind to be alarmed, 2008 is already sounding several warning bells. Republicans in at least three states--Ohio, Florida and Wisconsin--have sued the electoral authorities to try to expand their power to challenge voters. (The Supreme Court thwarted those efforts in Ohio, but the other cases are still open.) In plenty of others they have telegraphed their intention to go after voter eligibility among certain choice demographic groups--students in Virginia, for example. Several swing states have tried to pass laws specifically outlawing caging and other vote-challenging techniques, but none, in the past couple of years, have successfully pushed them through their state legislatures and onto the desks of their governors.

Usually, vote suppression efforts come to light only in the last couple of weeks before election day. This time, though, the reports of foul play, or attempted foul play, started to pour in unnervingly early. "It's exhausting from this end," says one of the country's leading voter protection activists, Jonah Goldman of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. "Every day we get another three or four things we need to investigate. From a political perspective, the campaigns understand the mechanisms of elections a lot better than they ever did before. At the same time, we have by far the most robust and sophisticated voter protection program we've ever had. We've matured very far, on both sides of the issue."

Goldman is no apologist for the Democrats. On the contrary, he sees plenty of flaws to go around in the two-party system and in this country's massively devolved, loophole-ridden electoral system. The only reason the Democrats aren't causing more trouble of their own this season, he feels, is that they aren't as scared of losing. That said, voter suppression is typically a Republican tactic, going back decades. (Democrats, when they cheat, prefer to pad the rolls with supporters rather than purge them of their adversaries.)

Some of the possible vote suppression stems as much from organizational chaos as from ill will. This year, several states have struggled with a federal mandate to streamline their voter databases, leading to wide concern that eligible voters are being purged. The New York Times has found that tens of thousands of names were being struck from lists or blocked from registering in six swing states--Colorado, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina--in apparent violation of federal law. In three states--Louisiana, Michigan and Colorado--the number of people who have died or moved out of state is far exceeded by the number of names taken off the voting rolls.

In a report on voter purges published earlier this year, the Brennan Center denounced a process it said was often "shrouded in secrecy, prone to error, and vulnerable to manipulation." Sometimes a highly technocratic point, like Florida's insistence that every voter registration form should provide an exact match of the name on existing state records, can have profound political ramifications. If a lot of people are going to get disqualified, it is probably the wealthier, more comfortable voters who will have time to present the proper paperwork and get themselves reinstated on election day. More transient voters, or voters with inflexible low-wage jobs, are likelier to give up once they have been told they can vote by provisional ballot only.

We can expect similar chaos with the allocation of voting machines, especially in new battleground states like Virginia and North Carolina, where the turnout for the presidential election is likely to break records. The voter registration problem and the machine allocation problem can be related, since new registrations are often a guide to likely turnout on election day. Since Virginia has a backlog on processing its registration forms, its chances of finding enough machines to satisfy demand look even dimmer. "Virginia is not preparing well," Goldman said.

To the extent that the problems affect minority voters, one might expect some sort of oversight or intervention by the Justice Department. Under the Bush administration, of course, the department has taken the opposite tack--rushing to find individual voter fraud where it doesn't exist but filing no voter intimidation suits under Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act, except for one case in Mississippi where the aggrieved minority just happened to be whites. There's still a chance the department will clean up its act--for example, it could choose to deploy teams of lawyers to problem areas in the South, as opposed to sending staffers, as it did in 2004, to keep an eye on crucial battleground states like Ohio. Typically, the Justice Department doesn't announce its observation plans until two or three days before the election. "We'll have to wait and see whether there has been an improvement or not," says a cautious Kristen Clarke of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. We probably shouldn't hold our breath.

In the end, even the most insidious vote suppression technique makes just a marginal difference--one half-percentage point here, another there--and comes seriously into play only in a close race. Such tactics can't prevent an Obama landslide, if that is what we are about to see, or overturn a two- to three-point victory in any given state. Anyone who cares about fair elections, though, should be looking beyond just this presidential election. The Republicans who have dreamed up these techniques are thinking long-term strategy over many cycles, not just short-term advantage. The day may also come when Democrats are tempted to play dirty in their own ways--although they have never attempted anything on a national scale as Republicans have. It will take many years of work to repair America's tattered voting system. Keeping a close eye and exposing as much of the dirt as possible in this election, though, is a good place to start.
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