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| 5/24 |
| 2006/11/7-8 [Politics/Domestic/California] UID:45212 Activity:nil |
11/7 Josh Marshall's got lots of nice vote suppression stories. Sounds like
lots of e-voting machines may be broken in poor districts. Go GOP!
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061107/ap_on_el_ge/eln_voting_problems
\_ Go Democrats! http://www.soundpolitics.com/archives/003472.html
\_ Can you explain how it is the GOP's fault? Does the GOP run these
district's vote machines? Train the staff? Purchase the machines?
Send evil haxx0rz out to break them? |
| 5/24 |
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| www.talkingpointsmemo.com interview, Shimkus said that both he and the Clerk of the House saw the actual emails sent by Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) to a congressional page when they conducted their "investigation" of Foley last fall. official version of events put out late yesterday by his fellow Illinoisan, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, whose internal investigation found that Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-LA) declined to provide the emails in question out of respect for the page and his family, who desired privacy. It's about to require a flow chart to keep this all straight. local paper that, no, he didn't (emphasis is mine): Shimkus was unavailable for comment, but through his spokesman, Steve Tomaszewski, he acknowledged speaking to Foley last year after being notified about one of the e-mails that Foley had sent to a page assigned to the office of a Louisiana congressman. Shimkus "did not see personally any e-mail a year ago when he dealt with the issue," Tomaszewski said. Hastert's internal investigation says Shimkus never saw the emails. link) Former House Majority Leader Tom Delay was known for--indeed prided himself and built his power upon--his encyclopedic knowledge of the House GOP caucus: members' likes and dislikes, their personal and political strengths and weaknesses, their pressure points. Mark Foley (R-FL) and a congressional page first came to the attention of the House leadership last fall, Delay was still majority leader. Now the broad version of events being put out by Hastert and Company is that this all came to their attention when Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-LA) brought the concerns of the page and his family to the leadership. No one can get their story straight about what happened after that, but that is the starting point for the story, or so we are told. But if Foley already had a "reputation" among congressional pages, you can bet his reputation extended to staffers and probably to congressmen themselves. One thing that seems to be missing from the GOP reaction is shock or surprise. Maybe I've simply overlooked them, but I haven't seen any quotes along the lines of what you usually expect when something like this breaks: the befuddled reactions of those who knew the alleged perpetrator but had no idea he was even capable of what he is being accused of. I'm thinking of those standard quotes from serial killers' neighbors: he was quiet, kept to himself, seemed completely normal. It's a small world up there on the Hill, and you just don't get the sense that this is a bolt from the blue. I'd be surprised if some reporters didn't already have the low-down on Foley's "over-friendly" ways. The peccadilloes of congressmen is the black market currency on the Hill. Mark Foley to one former congressional page might be just the tip of the iceberg, the leader of an alumni association for former congressional pages told Scripps Howard News Service on Saturday. While Foley resigned this week after published reports of "friendly" e-mails to one 16-year-old male page and the pending broadcast of more sexually explicit instant messages, similar graphic messages from him were received by at least three other teenage boys who once worked in the page program, said Matthew Loraditch, a Maryland college senior who runs the US House Page Alumni Association's Internet message board. Loraditch said during his time on Capitol Hill, Foley was one of the members of Congress who expressed what appeared to be a sincere interest in the young pages, often visiting the areas where they congregate in the corner of the House of Representatives chamber to chat or offer stories and advice. Loraditch said he and other pages viewed Foley as gregarious and "flaky" at the time, and that he offered several of them, not including Loraditch, his personal e-mail when they were graduating from the program and saying goodbyes. After Loraditch returned to Maryland and began attending college at Towson University, several male former pages told him they had received Internet messages that were similar to the graphic messages first reported by ABC News last week. We have also asked for the creation of a toll-free telephone number for House Pages, parents, grandparents, and staff to confidentially report incidents of concern. I'm sure this will inspire a lot of confidence in the operation they're running, that the leaders of the House have set up a toll-free number for pages to report sexual advances by members of Congress. link) Foley: "If I were one of these sickos, I'd be nervous with America's Most Wanted on my trail." Mark Foley and America's Most Wanted's John Walsh discuss Foley's new anti-child predator legislation. We continue to hear that the initial conversations about Rep. The House Clerk, who played a key role in what happened and interviewed Foley along with Rep. Trandahl resigned from his position as Clerk around the time this was all happening. And the first public mention I can find of his departure was in statement released by Speaker Hastert on September 30th, 2005. Rodney Alexander's (R-LA) office suggest the page first contacted Alexander's office on August 31st. Trandahl became Executive Director of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. More clarity on just when these events occurred could quickly rule out his departure being tied in some way to the Foley imbroglio. But it seems quite probable the events in question took place early in September 2005. Regardless of the reasons behind his leaving the Clerkship, Trandahl is probably in a better position to shed more light on this matter than almost anyone. I believe the Clerk is given a large degree of responsibility for the pages under House Rules. And of all the players in the drama he's the only one who is at least notionally independent. That is, not a member of the House nor a staffer working for a particular member. To the best of my knowledge no one has yet gotten Trandahl on the record. link) Early this evening I was starting to think that Foleygate might truly be the scandal that dare not speak its name. He's apologized, resigned and, I imagine, will soon face criminal indictment under laws he helped write. of cover-up and enabling that reached its way through the highest reaches of the House Republican leadership. Early this evening neither the Post nor the Times had devoted a story specifically to the contradictory stories coming out of the House leadership. And usually you've got to really pore over the details to find the inconsistencies and contradictions. So I'm not sure I've ever seen this big a train wreck where leaders at the highest eschelons of power repeatedly fib, contradict each other and change their stories so quickly. Just consider, Denny Hastert has repeatedly said he didn't know anything about the Foley problem until Thursday. But two members of the leadership -- Boehner and Reynolds -- say no, they warned him about it months ago. Rodney Alexander brought the matter to the Speaker's office. results of a detailed internal review of what happened in which they revealed that no member of the House leadership -- not Hastert or Shimkus or the House Clerk -- had actually laid eyes on the emails in question. Only Hastert's office apparently didn't touch base with Rep. Louis Post-Dispatch in which he described how he and the Clerk had read the emails. What makes this even more comical is that, according to the AP "Shimkus, who avoided reporters for hours, worked out his statement with Speaker Dennis Hastert's office." At present, the Speaker is committed to portraying himself as a sort of Speaker Magoo. We're supposed to believe that pretty much everyone in the House GOP leadership knew about this but him. These fibs and turnabouts amount to a whole far larger than the sum of its parts. Even the most cynical politicians carefully vet their stories to assure that they cannot easily be contradicted by other credible personages. When you see Majority Leaders and Speakers and Committee chairs calling each other liars in public you know that the underlying story is very bad, that the system of coordination and hierarchy has broken down and that each player believes he's in a fight for his life. Ma... |
| news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061107/ap_on_el_ge/eln_voting_problems AP Poll workers struggle with vote machines By ANICK JESDANUN, Associated Press Writer 23 minutes ago Programming errors and inexperience dealing with electronic voting machines frustrated poll workers in hundreds of precincts Tuesday, delaying voters in several states and leaving some with little choice but to use paper ballots instead. FBI after several voters complained about getting phone messages that sent them to the wrong precincts. Many of the voting machine problems surfaced as the polls were opening. In Cleveland, voters rolled their eyes as election workers fumbled with new touchscreen machines that they couldn't get to start properly. "We got five machines -- one of them's got to work," said Willette Scullank, a trouble shooter from the Cuyahoga County, Ohio, elections board. In Indiana's Marion County, electronic optical-scan machines that read paper ballots initially weren't working right in more than 100 precincts. Poll workers had trouble using a computer port to connect those machines to new touchscreen models, which handicapped voters use, County Clerk Doris Anne Sadler said. In Colorado, Democratic Party officials said they would ask a state judge to keep Denver polling places open an extra two hours Tuesday because of long lines. Power failures in the area had knocked out laptops used to verify voter registration, forcing workers to call the central office for information. Jonah Goldman of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law characterized the troubles as systematic -- small problems that cropped up across the nation but didn't become catastrophic breakdowns in any one location. He said a national Election Protection coalition logged 9,000 calls by noon on hotline. Some machines in Miami County, Ohio, jammed when they were turned on. In Sugar Land, Texas, one location suspended voting for 45 minutes because it received the wrong machine. In Kentucky, a school board race was inadvertently left off the touchscreen ballot in two precincts in Bourbon County, requiring the county clerk to make paper ballots on the spot, officials said. In Illinois, some voters found the new equipment cumbersome. "People seem to be very confused about how to use the new system," said Bryan Blank, a 33-year-old librarian from Oak Park, Ill. But voting equipment companies said they hadn't seen anything beyond the norm and blamed most of the problems on human error. "Any time there's more exposure to equipment, there are questions about setting up the equipment and things like that," said Ken Fields, a spokesman for Election Systems & Software Inc. spokesman David Bear said he knew of no problems preventing people from voting or affecting the core technology. "It was much clearer on what you were voting for and you made sure you absolutely were voting for what you wanted to vote for," said Cathy Schaefer, 59, of Cincinnati. In a few places, the voting problems that surfaced had nothing to do with machines. In Columbus, Ohio, a break-in at a school that doubles as a polling place delayed voters while police investigated. About 100 North Carolina voters ended up waiting nearly an hour at a church because the person with the key was late. In Virginia, the State Board of Election asked the FBI to investigate after it got a series of complaints about phone calls to voters giving them the wrong polling place information or telling them they couldn't vote. New Mexico Democrats had reported similar complaints earlier. In Ohio, the Athens County prosecutor also warned voters there to be wary of fraudulent calls about precinct changes. In suburban Pittsburgh, some locations opened late because the machines couldn't be zeroed out, so workers weren't sure votes from past elections had been cleared. Republicans in Passaic County, NJ, complained a ballot had been pre-marked on some machines with a vote for the Democratic Senate candidate; Although turnout generally is lower in midterm elections, this year was the deadline for many of the election changes enacted in the wake of the Florida balloting chaos of 2000. The 2002 Help America Vote Act, among other things, required or helped states to replace outdated voting equipment and establish voter registration databases. Control of Congress is also at stake this year, and because individual congressional races are generally decided by fewer votes than presidential contests, any problems at the polls are more likely to affect the outcome. According to Election Data Services, a Washington, DC, consulting firm, 32 percent of registered voters were using equipment added since the 2004 elections. Nearly half of all voters were using optical-scan systems that ask them to fill in blanks, with ballots then fed into a computer. Thirty-eight percent were casting votes on touchscreen machines that have been criticized as susceptible to hackers. Just getting to the right polling place with the right identification posed a challenge for some voters. Mark Sanford was turned away the first time because he didn't have a voter registration card. Social Security data with voter rolls, sometimes simply because of a middle initial. But election officials say they avoided their worst fears. "As of right now things are rolling smoothly," said Florida Secretary of State Sue Cobb. "We're not real happy with the weather but it's not so bad and we hope that everybody will go out and vote." President Casts Ballot in High-Stakes Election President Bush casts his ballot in Crawford, Texas, capping-off a week of intense GOP campaigning ahead of today's midterm election. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. |
| www.soundpolitics.com/archives/003472.html book on vote fraud, John Fund is apologetic about mentioning that, because he wants to make a general argument. Here's how he begins the discussion: A note about partisanship: Since Democrats figure prominently in the vast majority of examples of election fraud described in this book, some readers will jump to the conclusion that this is a one-sided attack on a single party. I do not believe Republicans are inherently more virtuous or honest than anyone else in politics, and I myself often vote Libertarian or independent. He then notes that Republicans have had less chance to commit vote fraud because they controlled fewer "local and administrative offices". Republican base voters are middle-class and not easily induced to commit fraud, while "the pool of people who appear to be available and more vulnerable to an invitation to participate in vote fraud tend to lean Democratic." Some liberal activists that Sabato and Simpson interviewed even partly justified fraudulent electoral behavior on the grounds that because the poor and dispossessed have so little political clout, "extraordinary measures (for example, stretching the absentee ballot or registration rules) are required to compensate." Paul Herrnson, director of the Center for American Politics at the University of Maryland, agrees that "most incidents of wide-scale vote fraud reportedly occur in inner cities, which are largely populated by minority groups." Democrats are far more skilled at encouraging poor people -- who need money -- to participate in shady vote-buying schemes. I was hungry that day," Thomas Felder told the Miami Herald in explaining why he illegally voted in the Suarez-Carollo mayoral election. A former Democratic congressman gave me this explanation of why voting irregularities more often crop up in his party's back yard. "When many Republicans lose an election, they go back into what they call the private sector. When many Democrats lose an election, they lose power and money. They need to eat, and people will do an awful lot in order to eat." These points are, as I said at the beginning, not something most informed observers would quarrel with. But I think, before going farther, that I should make it clear how far my argument goes. That more Democrats commit vote fraud than Republicans does not mean that most Democrats commit vote fraud. I am sure that very few Democrats commit vote fraud in fact -- but even fewer Republicans. Some readers will prefer direct evidence to the conclusions of experts, however well informed. I do not know of a single major Republican vote fraud scandal in the last ten years. But it is easy to find major Democratic scandals in such cities as Baltimore, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Milwaukee, and New Orleans. in 2000, a Democratic socialite was caught exchanging cigarettes for the votes of the homeless. Of these cases, only the Nevada case was purely Republican. When vote fraud is detected, those caught are nearly always Democrats. Either Democrats are much less skillful at fraud, which seems implausible to me, or they commit far more of it, just as the experts say. Nearly always, when the two parties split on election rules, the Republicans want more checks on fraud and the Democrats want fewer. The infamous 1993 "Motor Voter" Act, which did so much to make fraud easier was opposed almost entirely by Republicans and had been vetoed by the first President Bush. I don't say that all supporters of the legislation (including Washington's Maria Cantwell) even knew that it would make vote fraud easier, but some of them did. Like the anonymous liberal activists, they see some fraud as a reasonable price for getting more representation for the victim groups they identify with. It is telling, I think, that there is one group, military voters, for whom Democrats tend to prefer tougher rules and the Republicans easier rules. Military voters generally back Republicans, at least in recent years. That Democratic leaders prefer rules that make cheating easier (for everyone except military voters) is understandable if they think they gain from the cheating, but hard to explain otherwise. What's the relevance to the election, if any, since no allegations of fraud have been made in this race by the appellant? And you must have a really short memory for Republican fraud, or just blinders. Larry Russell resigned from his position supporting GOTV for the GOP in South Dakota for registration irregularities, then he and his team were promptly moved to Ohio for the general election. Thune's nephew got into trouble for handling absentees and falsely claiming he was a notary. Jim Tobin, the head of BC04 New England, was indicted on voter fraud for suppression activities in 2002, for which two men have been convicted, naming Tobin as the ringleader. Nathan Sproul is in all kinds of trouble for running a front registration outfit for the GOP, misrepresenting his affiliations and destroying registration forms. torridjoe on January 12, 2005 01:38 PM 4 South County, that's what I thought too. or so I googled "voter fraud" and noted the first 40 hits I got. By a large margin, many more of the stories were about fraud allegedly committed by Democrats. I never did see any mainstream press picking up on that pattern. Deborah on January 12, 2005 01:46 PM 7 Since everyone agrees that fraud is unacceptable and that incompetence is almost as bad, how about the following? We the people of the State of Washington, being throughly disgusted with the conduct of the 2004 Governor's Election, do hereby set forth the following voter referendum: 1) That all voters shall be required to show picture identification in order to register to vote. In the case of an individual who desires to register and who does not have a picture ID, that individual shall be required to demonstrate legal standing as a resident of the State of Washington and shall be required to submit and register a copy of their fingerprints prior to being added as a registered voter in the state. In the case of absentee ballots, a photocopy of a picture ID conforming to election board standards or a notarized certification of the voter's signature shall be included with the absentee ballot. If this identification is not included, the ballot shall be invalid and may not be counted for any reason. The courts shall have no discretion to reduce this sentence: Voting more than once in a given election; Voting or attempting to vote using the registration of a deceased person or using the registration of any person other than the voter himself making false statements in order to register to vote falsifying or tampering with election results. If, after 60 days, this number remains unreconciled beyond the below listed tolerances, the following remedies will apply: Votes reconciled to within less than 2/10 of 1% of the number of voters - no action Unreconciled votes to voters from 2/10 of 1% to less than 1/2 of 1% - a special investigation of the errors shall be made by the State Attorney General with a report to the public made within 120 days after the election unreconciled votes to voters of 1/2 of 1% or more - all paid County elections officials shall immediately be terminated for gross negligence. Said terminated employees shall be ineligible for any State or State Agency job for a period of five years. Accepting a job with the State or with a State Agency in violation of this clause shall result in a prison term of not less than 10 years. If the Military Absentee Ballots have not been mailed out prior to this deadline, for any reason whatsoever, the offending county shall be fined $1,000 per late ballot with the funds used to offset the elections costs of all Washington State counties in compliance with this provision in proportion to the number of votes cast. Bostonian on January 12, 2005 01:50 PM 9 Deborah, are you admitting for Stefan that this is an entirely partisan blog, only for people who think like he does? Are you attempting to construct for yourself a world where the only information you take in, is that provided by people who already think like you do? I'm definitely in the right blog, if I want to find o... |