LAWYERS NEEDED IN MINNESOTA

Blackbox.org, on the Mike Malloy show, said they need lawyers for Minnesota to look at irregularities. Minnesota people, please spread the word.

MN doesn't use touch-screen voting machines (old optical scanners instead). I was an Election Protection volunteer and heard of no BBV or false vote count reports. And we did stay "blue," regardless. However, I'll check it out. If there are problems they have to be exposed.

areas like Oh and Fl? I sure wish they would.

to ensure that the massive fraud in the key states can't be written off because there ' is no pattern'.

up for re-election in 2006. If the repubs get 5 more of their own in the Senate we won't be able to filibuster. The Supreme Court will go right down the toilet.

I begged him to please help. Others please contact Mark, too.

I haven't seen ANYTHING in this thread about WHAT the supposed problem IS!

sw

...just said they needed attorneys in MN.

but at least you also have the paper ballots you stick into them so you can verify the count.

software. The ONLY "saving grace" for optical scan is that they have an inherent paper ballot involved, but that's only useful if they're used in a recount.

......that present the real opportunity to steal votes. :evilgrin:

this year. There were widespread problems with it - there were hearings on the issue and Kiffmeyer failed to attend them.

Lawyers! Please flock to Minnesota asap! We've got a Dem Senator up for re-election in two years - Mark Dayton, who is a bulldog on every issue - we can't let them knock one of our good people out!

Kiffmeyer's rush creates worry
http://www.spokesman-recorder.com/news/Article/Article.asp?NewsID=47971&sID=4

Last week, we described widespread concerns over the implementation of a controversial new voter registration system in Minnesota, many of which were aired at an August 24 hearing of the State Senate Elections Committee. This week, state senators react and the secretary of state responds.

Senators on the committee were appalled, particularly John Hottinger, John Marty, and Linda Higgins.At different times, Hottinger said, “We’re trying to do too much too fast,” and “We shouldn’t be leading the way in voters backed up” in the system.

Marty was critical of Minnesota Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer’s failure to attend hearings, saying that he has repeatedly heard of the secretary of state’s office making things harder for counties rather than easier.

About the “time out” feature in the computer system, Higgins said, “There’s no reason on God’s green earth to time people out... It’s an unnecessary control... It’s a waste of time and taxpayer’s money, and it’s got to stop... It’s unacceptable.”

Higgins also questioned why Kiffmeyer had not sought a waiver to buy more time to make sure that the system works. Officials from Stevens, Nobles and Cook counties had sent emails complaining about technical problems.

snip - much more...

Elections officials press worries about new registration system
http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2004/09/30_ap_elx/

Dozens of county election officials say they're encountering significant problems with the state's new central voter registration system. Election workers say the system is unable to handle this year's unprecedented volume of new voter registrations, and that they've had to work extended hours to overcome the system's shortcomings. Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer introduced the new system this year. She says her office is working diligently to address complaints and that voters have no reason to doubt the system's performance.

snip

Forty other states have received waivers to postpone the federally-mandated systems until after November. Kiffmeyer says Minnesota was far enough ahead of the curve not to require a waiver.

Beth Fraser of the Minnesota Alliance for Progressive Action directed a survey of county staff that shows two-thirds of respondents encountered error messages or slow response times while using the new system. Fraser says it's not enough that the system will improve with more troubleshooting.

"It's great to hear that the counties think this is going to be a good system. But it needs to work now. There's not time to work out the bugs anymore. So it has to be fixed so that it stops kicking users off, timing them out, leading to lost data and frustration," Fraser said.

http://www.votersunite.org/

This page lists tons of machine problems, including optical scan machines (my precinct in MN used ES&S op scans - others use Diebold):

http://www.votersunite.org/info/previousmessups.asp

We gained 13 Democratic seats (YAAAAY!) in the state legislature, and gave our electoral votes to Kerry. There were DFL lawyers at polls all over the state, including my own tiny rural precinct which includes part of an Indian reservation and where I was an election judge.

And as the other poster already stated, we have NO black box voting machines in our state. Are you sure you've got the right state?

SW

Mary Kiffmeyer is a Repuke operative who is the NATIONAL director of the Secretaries of State!!! She has been pulling shit in Minnesota left and right. If we didn't have such a big GOTV effort here she would have succeeded.

The optically scanned ballots are a problem because once the ballots have been digitized via tabulator, the data can be hacked too.

I brought this up with my representative Michael Paymar back during the primaries and wrote him several letters complaining about it. THEY DID NOTHING as far as I know.

The point is, IS THERE AN ACTUAL REPORT OF SUSPECTED PROBLEMS ON ELECTION DAY?

Just posting that OMG, the S.O.S. is a Republican and the optical scan machines might be manipulated is useless.

My state rep is Bill Hilty. He's been THE leader for keeping bbv's out of Minnesota. We already have very good people who have been on top of this issue for years.

I still haven't seen ANY reason given for this call for lawyers.

sw

i agree it has to be shown it wasnt just votes in critical states, it was nation wide, expanding his popular vote so he could say man date

THAT'S THE goal. Also, Bush wasn't worried about statehouses.

Stupid little prick. We're about to divest you of your political capital.

This also needs to be in the presidential election and results forum.

Thats a big reason they need lawyers in Minnesota.

It's not terribly relevant unless someone can find a report about trouble DURING the election.

I've read the local papers and watched all the local news shows and I've not heard one thing about any major problem. On our local Public TV political talk show earlier this evening, the chairman of the DFL party, the DFL state house minority leader, AND Senator Mark Dayton were all interviewed and not one peep was made about election problems.

In our Minnesota state forum here on DU, no one has posted anything about any problems. We all know that Kiffmeyer is nasty piece of work, but we have a DFL attorney general, and ALOT of watchdog activists.

I really do think that if any major issues were being raised about our election here in Minnesota that I would have heard about it.

sw

get our butts in gear and get on top of it. They know what they're doing and have more info than we do.
Any problems they are referring to most likely are not going to be published in the Strib or Pioneer Press. Just because innocent voters don't notice anything blatant doesn't mean there aren't problems. VOTING FRAUD - the theft of our right to vote, for God's sake! We can't brush this off!

Here's what the Minnesota page, with all 85 counties having their own thread, looks like at http://blackboxvoting.org:

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/cgi-bin/dcforum/dcboard.cgi?conf=DCConfID98

I looked over the Minnesota forum at the bbv link. There are NO posts about election day problems.

This is ridiculous. Unless SOMEONE can present an actual REASON for Minnesota "needing lawyers", this is just alarmist nonsense.

I'm a county unit DFL party officer, an election judge, and a delegate to the DFL State Central Committee. As I posted before, Mike Erlandson, our state house minority leader, and Mark Dayton were all on TPT's "Almanac" this evening. Not a word about voting problems.

Not a word in my email, and I get emails directly from the DFL party, the Platform Commission and the Progressive Caucus. Not a word from my own state representive -- who's a personal friend -- and who was THE driving force to prevent the use of bbv's in our state.

I'm telling you, if there were some major voting problems here, I WOULD know about it.

sw

I was looking at another county that picked up 20,000 votes for Bush. Kerry picked up 5,000. But it was 1.3%, for both of them. The same percentage of Reps & Dems moved to the same county and registered to vote. In Ohio. Interesting, no? You know Minnesota, should it have been close? Can you compare some 2000 & 2004 counties, see where extra R votes were picked up and see if you can find a similar situation, where the percentage of growth was the same but the number for Bush was huge because it was a small right leaning area to begin with.

The only "surprises" were in Kerry's favor, besides the 13 state house repugs who got tossed out.

I have neither seen nor heard of anything suspicious in Minnesota. As I've explained in other posts here, I'm a DFL party officer -- I have something of an inside track. (connections, ya know)

I just haven't heard ANYTHING about any serious voting problems here -- outside of a minor glitch or two that were solved in a timely manner. No outrage, no complaints, no anecdotes. There are way too many DFL activists here keeping on top of stuff for something big to slip under our radar.

And as I already posted earlier, the DFL party had lawyers in precincts all over the place, particularily in minority areas. Word would have gotten out quickly if anything had been fishy anywhere.

sw

...talk to blackbox.org. They mentioned it. They said they need attorneys in Minnesota. If you are in Minnesota, find out why. I'm just reporting it.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=printer_friendly&forum=104&topic_id=2611336&mesg_id=2614629

She talked about Diebold optical scan machines being an "A list" concern, like machines in Florida.

Another broad reference for voting machine problems is here:

Voters Unite! Listing of Voting Machine Mess-ups
http://www.votersunite.org/info/previousmessups.asp

here are some samples from that page:

http://www.votersunite.org/info/content/mess-up_090804.asp
San Diego, California. March, 2004. Diebold.
Optical scanners miscount 2,821 votes.
Out of 208,446 ballots, the machines miscounted 2,821 votes in the Democratic presidential race and the Republican U.S. Senate seat.*

Most of the absentee miscounts occurred in the Democratic presidential race, in which 2,747 votes cast for John Kerry were incorrectly credited to Rep. Dick Gephardt. In the Senate race, in which Bill Jones won, 68 votes cast for Barry L. Hatch were credited to candidate Tim Stoen, and six votes cast for James Stewart were credited to Stoen.
The miscounts occurred because multiple scanners simultaneously fed the absentee ballot data into the computer tabulation system. The large number of ballots and candidates on them overwhelmed the system. ...
"These performance failures are unacceptable," Ekard wrote . "Having a reliable and trouble-free voting system is absolutely essential to the county. Your failure to provide such a system in the March election was extremely troubling and any issues that remain must be fully resolved long before the November election."**


http://www.votersunite.org/info/content/mess-up_092904.asp
Marblehead, Massachusetts. May, 2004. Diebold.
Manual count overturns results of optical scan count.
Machine count showed 1834 to 1836. Manual recount showed 1831 to 1830, overturning the election outcome.*

McNulty said new precinct totals would be available today. He said he was warned by the company that made the voting machines that, "When it's that close anything can happen."
The final decision was reached three weeks after the election, after a hand recount.


Washington State Lawsuit Seeks to Decertify Diebold Optical Scan System by Bev Harris
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0405/S00163.htm


Optical scan equipment problems in California
http://coloradovoter.net/bcv-archive/msg01090.html

Pro/Con List – ‘many memos talk about the problems getting optical scan to feed correctly on the Diebold machines’
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/cgi-bin/dcforum/dcboard.cgi?az=show_thread&omm=0&om=24&forum=DCForumID28

as of Friday night. I don't know what they're looking at, and could be, since the machines are the same, she wants to cross compare the results. Doesn't necessarily mean something went wrong in Minnesota. She may just be wanting to use it to cross reference anomolies they may be finding elsewhere. But who knows?

The bbv people have plenty of work to do in lots of other places. If they want to jump into a brawl with Kiffmeyer, I hope they will have the courtesy to deal with the people in Minnesota who are ALREADY on this issue.

sw

You're the one who posted in caps: "EVERYBODY LOOK AT POST #13". So I did, and it's nothing I haven't already seen, and NOTHING about anything that actually happened on election day that suddenly requires lawyers.

You're also the one who started this thread -- again all in caps. You raised an alarm about something for which you essentially had no information. I guess my argument with you is that I just don't find that very helpful.

sw

:kick: