White loses recount, Stick files challenge (Austin)

http://www.statesman.com/metrostate/content/auto/epaper/editions/tuesday/metro_state_14ca82ee233e32840004.html
(snip)
A recount concluded by Travis County election officials on Monday showed Rep. Todd Baxter, R-Austin, defeating Democrat Kelly White by 147 votes. White is not challenging the results. In January, Baxter will begin his second term representing District 48, which includes parts of western Travis County and west Austin.

Rep. Jack Stick, an Austin Republican upset by Democrat Mark Strama, faxed a challenge to the secretary of state on Thanksgiving day. He is asking the Texas House of Representatives to review his 569-vote loss in District 50, which includes northeast Travis County.

But Stick's allegations of problems "reconciling" voter information from Election Day has Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir stumped.

"It's a false accusation," she said. "I just did a recount (for White)."
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I am so sorry for Kelly. I was hoping that the recount would at least bring her closer but it looks like the count is exactly the same as certified.

WTF? "I don't know Jack" Stick thinks he can challenge his 569 vote loss in the House? What is this wacko smoking? I wonder if they think they can distract the Travis voters so they can steal Vo's seat without Travis in the mix. Think again pukies.

Sonia

Heflin, you lost, too!

Only if they say the vote is accurate, is the vote accurate. When they lose then there was obviously fraud. When Democrats lose, they tell us they have a mandate, the people have spoken, God decided it, and by the way get over it losers.

They sure can dish it out but they can't take it.

On a related note there has been a bill filed to make Texas have verifiable paper ballots on e-voting systems by 2006. Yeah Aaron Pena and Eliot Shapleigh!!

http://www.valleystar.com/localnews_more.php?id=55767_0_19_0_M
Legislator’s bill would mandate change for electronic voting machines
AUSTIN — A Rio Grande Valley representative filed a bill Tuesday that would require electronic voting machines to give voters a paper receipt.

House Bill 166, filed by state Rep. Aaron Peña, D-Edinburg, would require that electronic voting machines produce a paper ballot that allows voters to confirm on paper the choices they made on the machine. It would go into effect Jan. 1, 2006.

Peña wants to make sure election officials don’t waste money on expensive electronic voting machines only to find out later that they need paper trails, he said.

In the Valley and around the country, many middle-aged and elderly voters have a distrust of computers or are not comfortable using them, he said. A paper trail would help make for fairer elections, both in perception and in reality, he said.
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Sonia

The secretary of state says that Texas has the hardest certification test for vendors who sell the e-voting machines. If I remember correctly I thought I saw that TX requires each voting machine produce an audit log.

The problem, just like most of our statues, there are too many loop holes, for example TX requires schools limit classroom size to 30, but school can apply for an undue hardship wavier. The loop hole for electronic voting machine vendors is the same as undue hardship loop hole. In short, if the requirements to make modifications on the voting machines produces an undue hardship the SOS can wave any requirements producing the undue hardship.

So what happened, on July 2004, our previous SOS waived the required audit logs because there is "little time to integrate this new technology without causing unintended chaos at the polls."

http://www.sos.state.tx.us/about/newsreleases/2004/07132004.shtml

Got to love this State and the "undue hardship" loop holes. :puke:

I know a little bit about this ChicanoPwr, because a few of us DUers here in Austin have been working Texas Safe Voting. http://www.safevoting.org and we've been to several forums with both the SOS people, our local registrar and computer experts like Dan Wallach and Adina Levin. Wallach and Levin by the way absolutely say the certification process is suspect. In fact they have a lawsuit currently against the SOS for certifying these DREs in secrecy. And our own DU expert Bev Harris also came to Texas to campaign for verified paper ballots this year. Ask Bev Harris what an Independent Testing Authority means. Or better yet go read about ITAs at http://www.blackboxvoting.org Read down to where the picture of Shawn Southworth from Alabama is shown. Bev and Andy call tell you real live first person stories about the bullshit that certification means.

And an audit log is just simply software code. If the code is malicious i.e. unsafe and is written to say for every 2 votes to candidate x (Dem) subtract one and add to candidate (y) instead. What is the audit log going to prove? All it essentially produces is the number of votes for candidate X and candidate Y. It can not produce a real audit. For example let's say there were unique voting number, you would think you should be able to reproduce that ballot on screen exactly by that specific voting code number. Hart Intercivic who produces e-slate and was there for both of the forums, said it was not possible. Pretty lame huh?

I'll give you even more bullshit on "hardship" rules that the state uses for partisan means. I went to a Latino voting conference recently and the representative for the SOS basically was lying to cover for the office. They had $5.5M in unspent education HAVA monies sitting in the bank on Nov. 3rd. A coalition of organizations helping minority churches are suing them for failure to provide training materials to them this year. They repeatedly asked in writing for brochures they could pass out in their churches to show voters how to use these machines. The SOS filed a HAVA hardship rule saying they needed to hold back the money to distribute more in 2006. These coalition of organizations represented about 50,000 people and they only wanted at least one brochure per church to post in their lobbies. They asked for 1,500 the SOS office gave them 15. That's right just fifteen. They did a FOIA request and found out that SOS printed 25,000 sometime in August but just didn't have any left in Sept.

Do I think the new SOS is going to be better than Geoffrey Conner? Hell no, he'll be worse. He's only interested in further promoting the repuke party. He's a fundraiser. Laws, when do they respect the law if they can subvert it to their goals?

Sonia

I am pretty sure you know and thank God for these blogs, what ever real news that happens in the Capitol gets filtered in the other cities. I would ask my sister since she is doing her Residency at Austin's Children Hospital, but she is way too busy to keep up. But I kind of figured there was something fishy with the States HAVA education program. It is more like Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Considering I work in one of Houston's barrio, there wasn't a single presentation, flier or announcement talking about voting rights and HAVA. Right before the election, I had to go up to Austin to educate myself on HAVA only because Democracy for TX emailed me about the training. During the training we found out there were some contradictions between the States HAVA fact sheet and what we told by the trainers.

I totally agree with Wallach and Levin in believing the certification process is suspect. Hell, I couldn't believe how each examiner could grant certification the pieces of worthless junk these vendors were trying to pawn off, especially ES&S and Diebold. I read all the vendor's Examiners Certification Review Report. Every examiner said the same thing, their are serious problems on regarding security and how it could easily be hacked. One examiner really criticized the ES&S and Diebold machines and their potential dangers to the voting process. He could have grabbed his fucking balls and stand his ground and deny ES&S and Diebold certification, but NO he still allowed it to be certified. I just can not believe every examiner allowed every vendor to be certified. WERE THE HELL IS THE OUTRAGE? WHAT HAPPEN TO OUR INVESTIGATIVE REPORTERS? Over here in Houston, our media stations love to tell us the numerous awards they get for best investigative journalist. I can not see how they are willing to go up against our law enforcement - knowing that our current police state can create trouble to any reporter - and not stand up against ONE FUCKING POLITICAL PARTY.

What I didn't know and I am glad you informed me that there is a current lawsuit against the SOS. This is big time news and it should be reported. I am elated you informed me because those of us who do care and are active but unfortunate to live in Austin, at least I do, feel the overall message that is currently being told - nobody in Texas cares about this issue and we must shut-up and accept the fact that Texas will always vote those damn Repukes. For example, the meeting I went too last night, you can tell that a good majority of the people there are not aware of the rigged voting machines and TX's shitty certification process. They were more concerned on how to turn out more voters. I felt like yelling at the top of my lungs, WAKE THE HELL UP. We need to focus on a current short term goal: repair the current electronic voting machine certification process during the next legislative session because if we don't it will not matter how many Democrats we turn out to vote, the Repugs will always manipulate the vote count. The one thing I do envy about you and the other DUers like you, you all live in Austin.

I agree with you 100%, our new SOS will be ineffective. It's just plain and simple, he will not be any different from Perry's last three SOS appointees. The only valid question worth asking, how long will this guy be our SOS before Perry appoints another one?

We need more people like us all over the state. The real living fire breathing Democrats to defend our Democracy. The sleepers need to be awakened. I totally agree that the media is a silent partner for the government these days. You and I and many others do get it and WE ARE OUTRAGED. One of my favorite bumper stickers is the "If you aren't outraged, you haven't been paying attention"

The SOS lawsuit was brought by ACLU and is about open meetings act as it relates to these certification vendor meetings
http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2004_08.php#001823

As of the Latino Voter forum here at UT last week no settlement or trail date has been set.

The lawsuit the minority groups will be filing will be handled by Texas Civil Rights Project and it will also be against the SOS.

We'll keep you posted on their progress as it happens.

You help keep the information flowing to Houston. We need all of Texas back.

Sonia