Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News Tuesday, 12/26/06

Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News Tuesday, 12/26/06

Salon Person of the Year: S.R. Sidarth

Hooray for him!!! He Helped get us the Senate!



The Virginia native and son of Indian immigrants changed history with a camcorder and introduced Sen. George Allen -- and the rest of us -- to the real America.

Today's featured article/ Person of the day is in the first post... but here is another link in case you fast clickers get ahead of me again...:)
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/12/16/sidarth/



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Salon Person of the Year: S.R. Sidarth
The Virginia native and son of Indian immigrants changed history with a camcorder and introduced Sen. George Allen -- and the rest of us -- to the real America.

By Michael Scherer


Photo courtesy of the Webb campaign


S.R. Sidarth at Sen. Jim Webb's campaign headquarters Aug. 14 in Arlington, Va. Inset: A screen shot of Sen. George Allen pointing at Sidarth.

Dec. 16, 2006 | Sometimes, for just a moment, nothing makes sense. The senator who would be president stands on the dais. It is a bright summer day. The branches of trees, still green, sway gently in the breeze. Republican George Allen is feeling good, and the crowd likes him. Almost everyone thinks he will win reelection. Then he says something. "Let's give a welcome to macaca here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia." No one knows what has happened.

But the confusion does not last long. Over the next week, people consult dictionaries in several languages. They find that the word "macaca" is a term for monkey, used in some places around the world as a racial epithet. At first, the senator recoils from the claims of insensitivity, refusing to apologize. Then he apologizes hesitantly, then profusely. At first, the senator's advisors say the word was a nickname for a mohawk haircut. Then they say the word meant nothing at all.


As days stretch into weeks, a video of that moment, with the senator onstage, spreads over the Internet like a sickness, entering popular culture and political history. Months later in the fall, when the votes are counted, it becomes clear that a successful politician has stumbled badly over a 20-year-old with a camcorder. The career of George Allen, the former front-runner for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, is in shambles. And when he finally concedes defeat two days after the 2006 election, he has not only lost a seat that was considered safe but also handed Democrats control of the Senate, completing their takeover of both houses of Congress.

It must be said that the young man, Shekar Ramanuja Sidarth, is not much of a cameraman. In the macaca footage, his hand shakes, though he manages to hold Allen in the frame as the senator points him out, an Indian-American in a crowd of whites. But in the weeks that follow, Sidarth does not shy from the spotlight that surrounds him. He undergoes a transformation of sorts, appearing on CNN and the network news, giving long interviews to the pen-and-paper press. He becomes a symbol of politics in the 21st century, a brave new world in which any video clip can be broadcast instantly everywhere and any 20-year-old with a camera can change the world. He builds a legacy out of happenstance.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/12/16/sidarth/

Hail Macaca!

Political junkies will be arguing for years to come over what influence Macaca-gate had on the Virginia senatorial race (and by extension, Democratic control of the Senate). For many observers, George Allen's bizarre comments opened a window on his long record of racist behavior, and in an election that turned on just a few thousand votes, the gaffe was pivotal.

For Indian-Americans, many of whom are now rejoicing at the election results, the macaca slur was more than just the most recent revelation of Allen bigotry. It was a cultural turning point -- a crystallizing moment of identity politics. Where the rest of the world saw dumb racism, Indian Americans saw themselves, on the global media stage -- a sight both disheartening, because of the circumstances, and invigorating, because of the result.

At Ultrabrown, Manish Vij, who has been blogging every twist and turn of Macaca-gate with the same intensity that right-wing bloggers stalk Hillary Clinton, summed up his take this morning:


One of the most lasting effects of this campaign is that slurring desis is now seen as a political live wire, just as insulting blacks has been since the Civil Rights Movement and slurring East Asians has been for the last couple of decades. Mandarins sitting around campaign war rooms will tell ghost stories to even the most insensitive of candidates. "Watch what you say about Indians," they'll say. "You remember what happened to Allen."

http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2006/11/09/macaca_mutiny/index.html

Newsmaker of the Year: The Macaca Guy Did More Than Turn an Election

by New American Media (reposted)

Tuesday Dec 26th, 2006 9:39 AM
It’s getting to that time of the year when various Indian American newspapers and magazines nominate their Indian American newsmakers of the year. Will it be Sunita Williams, only the second woman of Indian origin who just went to space? Or Congressman Bobby Jindal who romped home to re-election in Louisiana, one of the few Republicans to resist the November rout? I am sure quite a few will select Brooklyn-resident Kiran Desai whose novel The Inheritance of Loss just won the Mann Booker prize, making her the youngest woman to ever win it.

They are all stellar achievements but my vote would be for S. R. Sidarth, the young man who was called a macaca by Sen. George Allen, which marked the beginning of the end of his senatorial campaign. With a little help from YouTube. Time magazine has already acknowledged that when it nominated You, as in YouTube watching, FaceBook-having, MySpace-living you, as its Person of the Year. Salon responded by nominating 20-year-old S.R. Sidarth as the person of the year for building a “legacy out of happenstance” and becoming “a symbol of politics in the 21st century.” By the way, the would be senator Allen, was CNN’s political turkey of the year.

Hopefully Indian-American magazines who typically look out for the “first Indian American congressman” or the “spelling bee champions” or the “ hotshot lawyer who makes a splash arguing in the Supreme Court” will take note as well. They will probably skip another Indian who made big news in America this year. Sanjay Kumar, former CEO of Computer Associates was sentenced to 12 years in prison for $2.2 billion accounting fraud. He might be just the most high-profile Indian American white-collar crook. The sentence though is a little shorter than what the head honchos of Enron and Tyco and WorldCom received. But still I think it shows that our community is steadily moving up the corporate ladder!

Those who nominate Sidarth because he might have helped turned the tide on that election, and ultimately tip control of the Senate, would be justified in doing so. But according to reports on the South Asian Journalists Association forum. Asians turned out in big numbers for that election and they overwhelmingly voted for Allen’s opponent.
I’d say Sidarth’s achievement was just holding on to his camcorder as he recorded George Allen calling him a macaca. It wasn’t easy. Listening to that clip, what makes me queasy - more than Allen’s comments - is the loud laughter of all those listening to him. I’d nominate Sidarth for not running away when confronted with that wave of mocking laughter. I know I would have.

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/12/26/18340971.php

Politicians Gone Wild: Scandals of 2006
Tuesday, December 26, 2006

By Melissa Drosjack

WASHINGTON — Political scandal cast a long shadow over Washington in 2006, forcing some lawmakers who began the year sitting in cushy offices in Congress to finish the year sitting in jail, rehab or back home where they came from.

In a year tarnished with corruption, voters booted problem-plagued incumbents out of office while others resigned before the November election amid headlines of bribery, corruption and fraud.

Political scandal weighed on the minds of voters and they responded at the polls, said Melanie Sloan, executive director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group.
"It dominated the elections. There were exit polls that showed voters were more concerned with more corruption," Sloan said. "It was the year of corruption."

The October surprise of former Rep. Mark Foley's e-mail and instant messages with teenage congressional pages wrapped up a year tainted by scandals involving ex-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Louisiana Democratic Rep. William Jefferson, and former Republican Reps. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Tom DeLay and Bob Ney.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,238763,00.html

Not a Banner Year for Freedom
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By Steve Chapman
Dec 24, 2006

When John Kerry came in second in the presidential election, he had to go back to the U.S. Senate, where having a defeated candidate around causes some awkwardness. That was nothing compared to the discomfort felt by Ayman Nour, the 2004 runnerup in Egypt's first multicandidate presidential election.

Sentenced last December to five years in prison on a dubious forgery conviction, he was charged in February with slandering the victorious incumbent, Hosni Mubarak, by calling him "a loser" -- which is not only untrue but, as long as Mubarak is president, impossible.

That was the story in much of the world this year, where the movement toward democracy often stalled or yielded unpromising outcomes. The planet is freer and more democratic today than it was five or 10 years ago, but not notably more so than 12 months ago.

Things were going the opposite direction in Russia, where democracy looks like a direct route from repressive autocracy to . . . repressive autocracy. President Vladimir Putin outlawed foreign funding of nongovernmental organizations, made it a crime to slander public officials and ended the year under suspicion in the poisoning murder of a dissident living in Britain -- the latest of several Kremlin critics to meet an untimely end.

http://www.nationalledger.com/artman/publish/article_272610613.shtml

"That was the story in much of the world this year, where the movement toward democracy often stalled or yielded unpromising outcomes...."

Not true in South America! Early this year, Bolivia's first indigenous Andes Indian president, socialist Evo Morales, was inaugurated (elected in late 2005)--a tremendous victory for leftist (majorityist) government and democracy, and we ended 2006 with another remarkable election, of Rafael Correa, a young leftist economist, as president of Ecuador, with nearly 60% of the vote--a major blow to the Bush Junta and global corporate predators--and, also, with the re-election of Hugo Chavez, as president of Venezuela, with over 60% of the vote--yet another blow to fascists and corporatists. South America now has leftist (majorityist) governments in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador--and, in the next election cycles, Peru and Paraguay will likely join them, making it a near total leftist revolution in South America (Colombia will be the only dinosaur left--bribed as they are by $1.5 billion in military aid from the Bush Junta over several years). In addition, leftist Daniel Ortega (leader of the Sandinista revolution) was elected president in Nicaragua. And a huge leftist movement is in progress in southern Mexico and Mexico City.

I'd say it was a very good year, indeed, for democracy in Latin America. Despite the setback of a corporatist stolen election in Mexico, and brutal repression of the peaceful, democratic uprising in Oaxaca (in Mexico), this trend toward democracy and truly representative government in Latin America is here to say. It cannot be decapitated. It is a groundswell--coming from the grass roots, and taking advantage of great work by the OAS, the Carter Center, EU election monitoring groups and local civic groups on TRANSPARENT elections. It is unstoppable. And it represents the coming to political power, at last, of the vast poor, often indigenous population, so long neglected, repressed and brutalized by US-backed dictators.

And they have an agenda--best summed up by the opening of talks among these new leftist leaders in South America of a South American "Common Market," with its own currency, like the euro (to get off the US dollar). Other common themes are economic justice, the use of the region's rich natural resources to benefit the people who live there, self-determination, regional political and economic cooperation in many spheres, and opposition to exploitative US-style "free trade" (global corporate predation), and to World Bank/IMF enslavement.

The excitement in South American politics is palpable. It is the result of a great increase in participation in politics and government, by people who were previously excluded--and new leaders arising who are in sympathy with the poor and believe that government should serve everyone. The elections of Evo Morales and Rafael Correa solidified this great revolution in the Andes region. Both of them were actively opposed by the Bush regime. They are friends with Chavez. (In fact, Correa repeated Chavez's UN remark that Bush is "the devil" during his campaign, and it obviously gained him votes). Chavez was expected to win. What was remarkable in his win was how big it was, and also that everything went peacefully--no more disruptions and coup attempts by the rightwing opposition.

Silly Wampsville... HAVA is not a Good thing....




County in bid to recover voting machine funds
By LEANNE ROOT, Dispatch Staff Writer 12/26/2006

WAMPSVILLE - On Wednesday Madison County supervisors will discuss a resolution asking Congress to reinstate lever machine replacement funds, and if the funds are no longer available, urge New York state to provide the lost funds.


According to the resolution, "because the implementation decisions were made by New York state, New York counties, including Madison County, have had no control over the process and are in no way responsible for the potential loss of those funds."



Because New York state didn't meet the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) deadlines for replacing voting machines, the state lost out on $46.9 million. Madison County's share of that was $202,918.


Supervisors will also discuss accepting $70,494 in HAVA grants meant to help with costs associated with replacing the lever machines for ones more accessible to people with disabilities, but not the actual cost of the machines.

http://www.oneidadispatch.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=17635589&BRD=1709&PAG=461&dept_id=68844&rfi=6

Maybe this could become a trend? :evilgrin: Bye Bye, Sequoia... :hi:

DU discussion here...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x463352




December 26, 2006
Smartmatic to Bail From E-Voting Business
By Michael Hickins


It looks like one time through the unruly U.S. electoral cycle was one time too many for Smartmatic.

After suffering through a difficult year on both regulatory and public relations fronts, the Boca Raton, Fla.-based technology vendor announced that it will try to find a buyer for its Sequoia Voting Systems unit, which it acquired in March 2005.

Antonio Mugica, president of Smartmatic, said the company reached this decision in light of the debate over foreign ownership of the voting systems vendor.

"Given the current climate of the United States marketplace with so much public debate over foreign ownership of firms in an area that is viewed as critical U.S. infrastructure -- election technology -- we feel it is in both companies' best interests to move forward as separate entities with separate ownership," Mugica said in a statement. "As part of this process, we plan to sell our Sequoia Voting Systems ownership."

http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3650936

http://government.zdnet.com/

Venezuelan firm to sell off e-voting company

Smartmatic Corp., a Venezualan company, has agreed to sell Sequoia Voting Systems, the third-largest e-voting manufacturer in the US, The Washington Post reports. Smartmatic bought the company from a British concern last year and the the company had been the subject of a federal investigation into its ties with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez.

Concerns about the purchase arose this year in the media and in Congress, which prompted a review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). … This time, the concerns focused on whether, through its complex corporate structure or former business arrangements, the company had benefited from relationships with the government of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a foe of President Bush.

US politicians used the connections to question the validity of Venezuelan elections that re-elected Chavez. Ironic, because these same politicians laugh off the idea that partisans could besmirch American elections using e-voting machines. Sequoia equipment was used in more than a dozen states in November.

"Given the current climate of the United States marketplace with so much public debate over foreign ownership of firms in an area that is viewed as critical U.S. infrastructure — election technology — we feel it is in both companies' best interests to move forward as separate entities with separate ownership," Antonio Mugica, Smartmatic chief executive officer, said in a statement.

http://government.zdnet.com/?p=2797

trust the electronic voting machines. And every one of their machines HAS paper ballot backup.

Know how much we recount? 0% to 1%, depending on how much of a stranglehold Bush's buds at Diebold and ES&S have on local/state legislators and election officials.

0% to 1%!!!!!!!!!

And many states/counties in the U.S. don't even have a paper ballot, or a "paper trail" of any kind (30% in '04). They are NOT recountable AT ALL!

------------------------------

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1901

------------------------------

"US politicians used the connections to question the validity of Venezuelan elections that re-elected Chavez." (--quoted from above)

US politicians have their heads up their asses.

KCBS All News 740 AM Oakland

Oakland to Switch to Instant Run-Off Voting



SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) -- Oakland is following San Francisco’s lead to switch to ranked choice, or instant run-off voting. Voters overwhelminly passed a measure to change the system so that voters rank candidates in order of preference, instead of picking just one.

Advocates told KCBS’ Melissa Culross the system offers voters more flexibility, and will make races closer.

"Instead of just picking one candidate, with these systems you get to rank a first choice, a second choice, or a third choice. If your first choice can't win, then your vote goes to your second choice as a back up choice," said Steven Hill, political reform director of the non-partisan New America Foundation.

"It's going to make the elections much more competitive. It's going to give voters a range of choices, to their left, to the right, and no matter where you are on the political spectrum, you'll have choices."

http://kcbs.com/pages/152104.php?contentType=4&contentId=263540

Election tab rises by $3 million
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Tuesday, December 26, 2006


SANTA FE — Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron has requested an additional $3 million to help pay for last month's elections.

That includes $1.3 million to print ballots, $560,000 for advertising, $88,000 to print the constitutional amendments and bond questions and $225,000 for supplies.

Vigil-Giron said most of the money would help pay for the state's switch over to paper ballots.

Under a law enacted this year, all 33 counties in New Mexico switched from a patchwork of voting methods to a single paper ballot system.

http://www.abqtrib.com/news/2006/dec/26/election-tab-rises-3-million/

County Commissioners to Seek Early Voting in Ohio

By JOSELYN KING



ST. CLAIRSVILLE — Early next year, Ohio’s county commissioners will lobby state lawmakers for legislation permitting early voting on touchscreen machines in Ohio — just like in neighboring West Virginia.

Belmont County Commissioner Mark Thomas, a board member for the County Commissioner Association of Ohio, said the county’s cost to provide elections is escalating each year, and that much of that is due to the price of no excuse absentee voting in Ohio by mail.

The optical scan ballots used for absentee voting in Ohio are expensive to print — nearly $2 a ballot. Postage also is necessary to send out the absentee ballot applications, and to mail the actual ballot. It costs the board at least $3 to send an absentee ballot to a voter.

The cost escalates when a county the size of Belmont County sends out 3,000 absentee ballots for an election, officials noted.

http://www.news-register.net/community/articles.asp?articleID=14245

Clint Curtis Files Congressional Challenge to Election of U.S. House Opponent Tom Feeney

We hinted at this last week when Florida's corrupt Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Abramoff) expressed his obnoxious indignation about the democratic (small "d") Congressional election challenge filed by Christine Jennings (D) against Vern Buchanan (R) in the FL-13 U.S. House race where Buchanan was certified the winner by the state of Florida by 369 votes even though some 18,000 votes seem to have disappeared altogether on Sarasota County's paperless ES&S touch-screen voting machines.

The challenge brought Feeney slithering out from under his rock to charge that Jennings's Constitutional request that Congress not seat Buchanan --- who appears to have "won" only due to failures in Sarasota's voting equipment (which even ES&S's own "expert witness" seems to have admitted while on the stand during a hearing on the election contests filed by both Jennings and voters in Florida) --- amounted to "total political dictatorship."

At least that's what Feeney told the Orlando Sentinel at the time.

What he didn't seem to have told them was that he too was the object of a similar Constitutional challenge in Congress by his own opponent, Clint Curtis, in the race for U.S. House in Florida's 24th district.

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3947

Here is a good idea!!! adding precincts instead of consolidating... Good idea PA!!



Ever-growing Carbon County prepares to add election precincts

2 Penn Forest districts have so many voters that balloting is slow.

By Bob Laylo Of The Morning Call

Thirteen years ago, Carbon County election officials were concerned about a growing number of registered voters in Penn Forest. So they divided the township, created two precincts with about 650 registered voters in each and thought that was that.

But now it's again time for officials to worry about an ever-growing number of registered voters in Penn Forest and some other precincts.


POPULOUS PRECINCTSThe Pennsylvania election code says there should be no more than 1,200 registered voters in a precinct ''without good cause.'' Carbon County has seven precincts over that number. They are:

Penn Forest east: 3,044.

Penn Forest west: 2,066.

Lower Towamensing: 1,684.

Towamensing Township south: 1,651.

East Penn: 1,620

Palmerton middle: 1,431

Mahoning: 1,394.

The state election code says a precinct should not have any more than 1,200 voters ''unless for good cause.'' Carbon now has six precincts over that number.

http://www.mcall.com/news/local/lehighton/all-b2_1votedec26,0,5254660.story?coll=all-newslocallehighton-hed

Orlando Sentinel Editorial: Drop Touch-screens
By Orlando Sentinel
December 25, 2006
Our position: It's time to pull the plug on the failed experiment of electronic voting.

This editorial was posted December 24, 2006 in the Orlando Sentinel.

Nothing is more sacred or vital to the survival of democracy than the ability to cast a vote with the confidence that vote will be counted accurately.

And yet the very foundation of this principle was shaken by the fiasco in Sarasota County on Nov. 7, when ATM-styled touch-screen machines showed more than 18,000 voters made no choice in one of the most hotly contested congressional races in the country. After a ridiculous "recount" in name only, the official returns show that Republican Vern Buchanan defeated Democrat Christine Jennings in District 13 by 369 votes out of 238,249 counted.

But that result isn't worth the paper the electronic ballots were not printed on. Without paper trail to independently validate the electronic vote, the mandatory recount amounted to hitting the rewind button and replaying the machines' sad song.

Ms. Jennings is suing to challenge the election. Congress should do more than pay close attention to the case; it ought to mount its own investigation. The most fair resolution may well be holding a new election.

http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2147&Itemid=113

Trading Alphabet Soup for Code Words

By Michael Richardson

Three dozen "election integrity" groups have joined together to urge Congress to mandate paper ballots in federal elections. The self-congratulatory praise for the newfound unity amongst the previously splintered movement has been buzzing on the internet. Finally, there is some agreement about the worst security aspects of electronic voting machines and maybe some relief from the jargon that surrounds the machines.

The mess in Florida's 13th Congressional district seems to have flagged attention to the DRE (Direct Record Electronic) machines, which lack a VVPAT (Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail) and instead rely on an ECVR (Electronic Cast Vote Record) which is part of the EVCS (Electronic Vote Capture System) which could have been tested by an ITA (Independent Test Authority) except that they only report to the machine vendors.

Now the Florida machines will undergo testing. Will there be a FCA (Functional Configuration Audit) or only a PCA (Physical Configuration Audit). And what about HASH? A trip to the NIST (National Institute for Standards and Technology) explains all about electronic voting machine HASH.

"Algorithm that maps a bit of string of arbitrary length to a fixed-length bit string. Approved hash functions satisfy the following properties: (a) it is computationally infeasible to find any input that map to any prespecified output, and (b) it is computationally infeasible to find any two distinct inputs that map to the same output."


http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_michael__061221_trading_alphabet_sou.htm

Thanks to cal04 for the post and the DU discussion here...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x463344

(Original message)
State To Investigate Robo Calls
Edited on Tue Dec-26-06 05:21 PM by cal04
A new investigation into harassing robo calls from November´s election may lead to the National Republican Campaign Committee (NRCC).

The Nebraska Public Service Commission has launched an investigation into one of one of the more egregious examples of attempted voter suppression this year. In the 3rd District there, voters reported receiving repeated (often back-to-back) calls featuring a recorded voice that seemed to belong to Democrat Scott Kleeb. The calls, which went out to an unknown number of Nebraskans, prompted a flood of complaints to Kleeb´s campaign office.

Kleeb, who was leading Republican Adrian Smith in polls just before the election, ultimately lost by approximately 20,000 votes, garnering only 45 percent of the vote.

Since the low-quality calls reportedly sounded like a recording of a recording of Kleeb´s voice, Kleeb´s camp suspects that the perpetrators simply taped one of Kleeb´s calls and then used it to harass potential voters. People reported getting the calls sometimes six times in a row, sometimes late at night or very early in the morning.

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002230.php

Was Major Lobby Firm Behind Nasty Robo Calls?
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002234.php

State looks at calls during congressional race
http://journalstar.com/articles/2006/12/22/news/nebraska/doc458b547e021fd010085627.txt

A 90 year old grandmother born in the age of the horse and buggy, before telephones and TV, who has never used a computer, needs to understand not just how to cast her vote but ALSO how her vote is counted. Otherwise it is not a democracy. Enough with this Alphabet soup of voting technology! Voting should be something that everyone can understand. PAPER BALLOTS HAND-COUNTED AT THE PRECINCT LEVEL. Or, temporarily--if we cannot immediately remove the vast corruption that electronic voting has wrought among our election officials--a 100% handcount audit of the optiscan machines (as a check against fraud in the optiscans and central tabulators), and ban the touchscreens. The right to vote involves two parts: casting the vote, and getting it counted. Both must be understandable and VISIBLE.

poll workers being 70 years of age. That is the Average age... wonder what that curve looks like?
http://argusleader.gns.gannettonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061025/ELECTIONS/610250302

Older adults are not the most computer savvy demographic so I do have concerns when they are the help and the supervision of electronic voting. Although, older folks are getting to be the fastest growing new niche of computer users.

edit clarity