Voting

Just the latest of the rash of states trying to save our democracy. Add Diebold stock to the death-watch list.

This was an interesting exchange on Bill Maher last night:

So because companies like Diebold create very unsecure machines that means the voter must be put through the ringer and provide ID - that according to Tony Snow.

Here's something that isn't talked about enough on Voter ID - a poll tax. Most states require a fee for a state issued ID or drivers license. Since this is required to vote that means we have to pay to vote. Also considering the new requirements they are putting in requiring citizens to have these IDs no matter what then it can also be considered a tax. Looks like the Republicans are the party of increasing your taxes - in the form of required government bullshit.

And this is a hack on a different type of machine - not the Diebold machines using Windows. This hack is swapping out the ROMs inside the unit (the computer chips which actually hold the programming code).

I have raised this question before; why does Diebold choose Microsoft for their voting machines over Linux? Linux is much more secure, much more customizable, and, possibly the biggest reason, much cheaper (Linux is free). We find this week that this question still needs to be raised:

Problems found in an audit of Diebold tabulation records from an Ohio November 2006 election raise questions about whether the database got corrupted during the tabulation of election results, says a report released today (pdf).

The document, from a team of researchers tasked with auditing the November election in troubled Cuyahoga County, have called for a thorough examination of the database to determine if corruption did occur and the extent to which it may have affected the election results.

Among the report findings:

Vote totals in two separate databases that should have been identical had different totals. Although Diebold explained that this was part of the system design for separate vote tables to get updated at different times during the tabulation process, the team questioned the wisdom of a design that creates non-identical vote totals.

Tables in the database contained elements that were missing date and time stamps that would indicate when information was entered.

Entries that did have date/time stamps showed a January 1, 1970 date.

The database is built from Microsoft's Jet database engine. The engine, according to Microsoft, is vulnerable to corruption when a lot of concurrent activity is happening with the database, such as what occurs on an election night when results are uploaded and various servers are interacting with the database simultaneously. This is why Microsoft advises against using the Jet engine in a complex environment:

So again - why is the very basic foundation of our democracy put in the hands of such a flawed system? You even have Microsoft, the manufacturer, saying their database has flaws.

Today we find out that the firings of the United States Attorneys went all the way to the oval office:

The White House was deeply involved in the decision late last year to dismiss federal prosecutors, including some who had been criticized by Republican lawmakers, administration officials said Monday.

Last October, President Bush spoke with Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales to pass along concerns by Republicans that some prosecutors were not aggressively addressing voter fraud, the White House said Monday. Senator Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, was among the politicians who complained directly to the president, according to an administration official.

The president did not call for the removal of any specific United States attorneys, said Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman. She said she had “no indication” that the president had been personally aware that a process was already under way to identify prosecutors who would be fired.

Josh points out that these claims of voter fraud by the Republicans have been nothing more than a red herring used by Republicans for years. One of the fired U.S.As, David McKay, said he is "stunned" at this revelation and that  "There was no evidence, and I am not going to drag innocent people in front of a grand jury.".

Patrick Leahy has also spoke out about Gonzales lying under oath to the Senate Judiciary Committee by saying "“I am outraged that the Attorney General was less than forthcoming with the Senate while under oath before the Judiciary Committee". It sounds like it is time to pursue perjury charges against Alberto on this.

It is time for Congress to take this investigation a step further. It now appears as though the White House was wanting prosecutions brought forth without evidence to back those crimes. Considering the issue at hand is voter fraud, this could easily be summed up as a form of voter intimidation at the highest levels of government. It is even more troubling when you hear cases of serious problems with electronic voting machines and numerous people presenting that evidence and the Justice Department and White House ignore them.

If this is proven to be what I have said then there is no option but impeachment and charges against all parties involved (including George Bush). A democracy can not survive if the leader of the nation is trying to suppress it. Considering the nature of the war we are in, you can not help but think that these alleged actions in some way help our enemies. If this is the case then charges of treason should also follow. If Congress don't act now then what will happen in 2008? 

One factor that helped push Democrats over the top last week was the campaign ads. The Republicans took to their typical negative campaign ads, as well as new stunts such as the automated robo-calls. This pissed off a lot of voters and they showed their dissatisfaction with these tactics at the polls.

Now we have a Democratic Congress and they are planning on putting their new found majority to work to help rid our democracy of these vile problems:

With their new power, Democratic leaders want to craft a constitutional way to stop voters from being flooded with robo-calls peddling deceptive information. They are floating the notion that authorizing calls with fraudulent content should be a crime. "These robo-calls, somehow, constitutionally, we are going to have to find some way to stop this," Reid said.

Schumer said he and Rep. Rahm Emanuel -- the boss of the House Democratic campaign committee, who is expected to be elected to a leadership spot today -- made a list of what they consider abusive campaign practices. In some cases, the volume of calls that went out to targeted likely Democratic voters was so heavy as to constitute harassment.

In other examples, the calls peddled disinformation -- whether about a candidate or the location of a polling place. Criticizing the robo-call dirty tricks, Schumer was blunt. "It's despicable" and the perps "should go to jail for 10 years."

Schumer said he and Emanuel are looking at legislation applying criminal penalties to certain kinds of campaigning and creation of a separate unit at the Justice Department to prosecute.

This is very good news for America as a whole. If a candidate can only run on smears, then they have nothing to offer. If they can only win by tricking voters or suppressing them, then they have already lost the battle.

We are supposed to be the definition of democracy, but we act like a third world nation. This step will be the first in many to put us back on the right track to becoming the beacon of democracy. Hopefully once this is done, the Democrats will start working on campaign finance reform, something I feel should be public, and problems with voting machines. There is a lot of work to do and only a couple of years until the next Presidential election, so the new Congress will have to get busy and not spend all their time off - something else this article addresses:

As of Wednesday, the House this year has met only 96 times -- and 23 of those days involved votes that did not happen until after 5:30 p.m. As a practical matter, many House members fly in late Tuesday and escape Thursday afternoon. The Senate was only a little better, scheduling votes on only 129 days. According to a study by Paul Blumenthal of the Sunlight Foundation, the last time Congress spent so little time in Washington was at the end of World War II.

[SNIP]

"We're going to work long hours," Reid declared Wednesday at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast, introducing his leadership team to reporters. That's Reid and Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the income majority whip/assistant majority leader; Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, conference secretary, and Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, in the newly created slot of vice chair of the conference, a reward for running the Senate Democratic political operation. "We're going to work more than Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday," Reid said.

Pelosi has been saying for months that she wants to increase the amount of time House members are in Washington. Evidence of that commitment will be clear when the previously light January will become weeks of workdays.

To put it nicely, the Republican controlled Congress was lazy. They spent a record number of days off and when they were in session, their legislation amounted to gifts to the corporations, ultra-wealthy, or deciding on the fate of a single woman (Terri Schiavo). To add insult to injury, they even gave themselves a raise. They used the American people. We were all victimized by the 109th session of Congress and we can not allow that to happen again.

If the Democrats want to secure their newly found majority, then these steps are definitely in the right direction. Let the people see that we have a Congress actually working for the people and not spending their time off on trips paid for by lobbyists. Let the news agencies have to change the story every couple of days instead of being stuck on the same one for weeks, something easily obtained by drastic and bold new moves in Congress. This will show the American people which party truly cares about them and wants to make America better for everyone, not just a few. Then perhaps the Republicans will learn and play catch up or be left out of the American political system. This is our country and we are now taking it back.

I just got back from voting and we suffered from a "glitch". As I was voting, my ballot started off with governor and then worked down through the list. After voting for all the politicians, up next were the issues. My first issue was State issue 1, an issue dealing with Ohio's Worker Compensation. I was expecting to see this, but knew my vote didn't count on it:

In most elections, ''State Issue 1'' is something highly significant and its outcome closely watched. However, in Ohio today, Issue 1 doesn't count, literally.

That's because the issue, a referendum on changes in Ohio's Workers Compensation law, died in a legal challenge that determined the measure lacked sufficient valid signatures on petitions to put it before the voters. But that ruling didn't come until it was too late to remove Issue 1 from the ballot, both absentee and electronic.

So today, when you go into the voting booth, you will see Issue 1 on your ballot, even though it isn't a valid ballot issue anymore.

So after my voting experience went smoothly, the person I went down with had her turn to cast her ballot. She had the same ballot, the same ballot (iso) card, and the same machine, but her ballot did not appear the same. Instead her ballot started out with a blank blue screen and then went onto the candidates and the state issues, but issue 1 was not on her ballot. She called the poll worker over who said that "this has been happening on some machines". Well our polling place only has three machines and she was on the same machine as I just got done voting on, and this problem did not happen for me.

After we got done we did immediately call the Democrat hotline (1-888-DEM-VOTE) to report the problem. They connected us with a local person, who was very interested in the problem.

The most interesting thing I kept thinking of was Ken Blackwell on CNN this past weekend saying the machines do not have any problems, it was the poll workers. Well this poll worker did everything the same as she did with me (programmed the card for ballot 84), yet our ballots appeared differently. This machine was a Diebold touch screen machine, and as a programmer I can tell you that it is a definite software glitch. The poll worker did the exact same thing she did for me and all the end user variables were the same.

While this might not seem like a major problem, it is a problem all the less. Everyone must be vigilant today and make sure that any glitch, no matter how small it may seem, gets reported. While Ohio Issue 1 has been invalidated in the courts, it was still suppose to be on the ballot. Why was it removed from the ballot (on some machines) after telling people in Ohio that it would still be on the ballot, but your vote just won't count on it? Sounds like another way to add to voter confusion.

On a more positive note, I have voted in this precinct for four years now and this was the busiest I have ever seen it. 10:00 on a rainy Tuesday morning and there was a line in this rural area.

Seems like the Republicans still love their dirty tricks. From Matt Stoller:

Terry Nelson, an unindicted co-conspirator in the TRMPAC Tom Delay scandal, and the boss of Jim Tobin, the convicted felon in the NH phone-jamming case, is the head of opposition research for the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee. So it's not a surprise that these kinds of unethical dishonest tactics are being used.

Sources in Bergen County are reporting that an autodial robocall is being made that starts out sounding like a positive Bob Menendez message. If you hang up, it repeatedly calls you back. If you listen all the way to the end, it finishes by saying that Menendez is an embezzler and under criminal investigation.

This is a voter suppression tactic being used nationwide by the GOP. Initially callers will think they are hearing a call from the Menendez campaign asking for support. If they hang up, it will repeatedly call them back. The intention is to annoy the voter so much that they no longer support the candidate. For those who actually listen to the entire call, they are presented with a series of lies and smears against Menendez, also with the intention of suppressing turnout. It's a win-win tactic for them.

The NRCC is doing the same exact thing in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and at least 53 other races across the country.

Terry Nelson is a key GOP operative, a senior advisor to John McCain and someone heavily involved with both Tom Delay and Karl Rove. This guy breaks the law and gets rewarded for it. Democrats should make election reform a very core part of their agenda for a lot of reasons, but the rampant criminal nature of the Republican operative class is a pretty good rationale...read on

Josh Marshall has also been on top of this story.

Already we have heard about countless voting nightmares around the country - and the election isn't for three days yet!. Absentee ballots are playing a major role in the problems of our democracy this year, and this is one that is really bad:

If you got your absentee ballot in the mail and it looks suspiciously like a photocopy of a regular ballot, that's because, well, it is.

Unusually high demand and a printing order that wasn't filled fast enough caused the San Diego County Registrar of Voters to run short of absentee ballots this week. About 5,000 photocopies were mailed out instead, said Registrar of Voters Mikel Haas.

But there's nothing to fear, Haas said. “Their votes will be counted.” When those ballots are returned, registrar's employees will copy voters' choices by hand onto regular card stock ballots that can be run through the optical scanners that count the votes.

Photocopied ballots were mailed in the same envelopes as regular absentee ballots. As with all absentee votes, the envelopes must be signed by the voter and verified by the registrar's office.

Although barely more than 1 percent of the 427,000 absentee voters will be affected, it has caused consternation in an election season that has seen a growing mistrust of new electronic voting machines.

“I just think it's bizarre that they literally transfer people's votes from one piece of paper to another,” said San Diego County Democratic Party Chairman Jess Durfee. “Any time you do that, there have got to be mistakes.”

So people in San Diego are supposed to trust someone to "transfer" their vote to a ballot? WTF? No sensible person trusts the system anymore and a move like this will really disenfranchise what little trust their might be.

A note to the government - you keep pushing the people like this and the people will push back. They get their chance to push back on Tuesday, but if the election process is screwed up again, then other means to push back might be sought. You are putting this nation on a collision course with disaster.

CHEAT!

 A recently distributed guide for Republican poll watchers in Maryland spells out how to aggressively challenge the credentials of voters and urges these volunteers to tell election judges they could face jail time if a challenge is ignored.

Democrats said yesterday they consider the handbook, obtained by The Washington Post, evidence of a Republican effort to block people from voting Tuesday.

"The tenor of the material is that they are asking folks, if not directing them, to challenge voters," said Bruce L. Marcus, an attorney for the state Democratic Party. "It's really tantamount to a suppression effort."

Advocacy groups including the National Campaign for Fair Elections, Common Cause and the NAACP, as well as a George Washington University professor who is an expert on voter suppression, agreed with that assessment.

Once again we are presented with more proof that the GOP hates democracy. Considering democracy is the very basis of our government under our constitution, perhaps we should start charging people with treason who attempt to interfere with our democracy. If convicted - death. A good public hanging of a few of these assholes might make a change.

How long have we been talking about problems with voting machines now? Funny how when an election grows near that could cost the Republicans their control of Congress, the federal government now looks into them:

In the debate about the reliability of electronic voting technology, the South Florida parent company of one of the nation's leading suppliers of touch-screen voting machines is drawing special scrutiny from the U.S. government.

Federal officials are investigating whether Smartmatic, owner of Oakland, Calif.-based Sequoia Voting Systems, is secretly controlled by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, according to two people familiar with the probe.

In July, a Treasury Department spokeswoman disclosed that a Treasury-led panel had contacted Smartmatic, and a company representative said his firm was ''in discussions'' with the panel. At the time, those discussions were informal. The government has now upgraded to a formal investigation, the two sources said.

Sequoia's electronic voting machines operate in 17 states. In Florida, the machines are used in four counties: Palm Beach, Indian River, Pinellas and Hillsborough.

Miami-Dade and Broward use other technology.

Concerns about Smartmatic are keen on the eve of the Nov. 7 election, given fears that someone with unauthorized access to the electronic system could create electoral chaos. Some critics believe that if the Venezuelan government is involved, Smartmatic could be a ''Trojan horse'' designed to advance Chavez's anti-American agenda.

Now think about this for a minute. Our government is admitting that they may have very well put our democracy into the hands of another nation. A new Democrat controlled Congress must add these voting machines to their agenda, and it must be a very high priority. We are only two years away from the next Presidential election and if these machines need replaced then we must start on it right away. If we continue to ignore the problem then it will get worse.

With 2 weeks to go, this is very bad news:

As if there weren't enough concerns about the integrity of the vote, a non-partisan civic organization today claimed it had hacked into the voter database for the 1.35 million voters in the city of Chicago.

Bob Wilson, an official with the Illinois Ballot Integrity Project - which bills itself as a not-for-profit civic organization dedicated to the correction of election system deficiencies - tells ABC News that last week his organization hacked the database, which contains detailed information about hundreds of thousands of Chicago voters, including their Social Security numbers, and dates of birth.

"It was a serious identity theft problem, but also a problem that could potentially create problems with the election," Wilson said.

So when will our leaders wake up and put an end to this? They don't care. Bush, Cheney and all those Republicans could care less about our democracy. Hell with them around the terrorists have run.

Don't forget about the current poll regarding this very issue. You can vote here or on the left.

[poll=10]

We get more proof that our own democracy is under attack:

Some U.S. states have placed laws to make it difficult to vote instead of reforming ballot problems. The study looked into 10 states with reported ballot difficulties.

The study cited proposed laws in Arizona and Georgia, that call for a government-issued photo identification card and proof of citizenship before voting.

Tova Wang of The Century Foundation think tank said that although both state laws were denied by judges, "the damage has already been done." The proposals confused voters and delayed voter registration drives.

The lack of definite electronic voting policies and machines were also mentioned saying that it could lead to longer voting lines in the upcoming midterm contest.

"There were long lines because there were inequitably distributed voting machines," Wang said.

Florida and Washington, for example, have no formula for determining the number of voting machines in each precinct, the study said.

After the 2004 incident in Ohio, a law was approved providing one machine for every 175 registered voters although it will not be enacted until 2013.

The study concluded that, "none have come close to addressing in full the major problems that plagued the system during the last federal election."

The states included in the survey were Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin.

Isn't it great to be in the "beacon of democracy"? If we continue down this road then we might as well rip up the Constitution and start over.

As presented by Princeton University

The Workers' Comp scandal here in Ohio is getting more involved. The number of victims are also increasing in this scandal:

Hundreds of injured workers temporarily received less in state benefits than they deserved because of poor record-keeping at the state insurance fund for injured workers, according to a memo released Monday by Gov. Bob Taft.

The memo's disclosure was the latest twist in the scandal surrounding the Ohio Bureau of Workers' compensation. Taft released the 4-year-old document three days after the Ohio Supreme Court narrowed the governor's right to shield certain internal reports.

State Sen. Marc Dann, a Democrat running for attorney general, sued for the memos to learn more about problems at the bureau. The agency is still recovering from a scandal that revealed an unorthodox $50 million investment in rare coins and a $215 million hedge-fund loss.

The scandal led to Taft's historic no contest plea last year on charges he failed to report several golf outings, and has given Democrats hope of breaking a Republican lock on state political offices.

Bob Taft is the first governor in the history of Ohio to have been convicted of a crime while in office and also the first to have his powers limited by the state Supreme Court, which is a Republican majority.