Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News Saturday, Feb. 17, 2007

This statement by the lying weasel is probably the only truth he has ever spoken in his pathetic political career. "One of the problems -- not specifically on this issue, just in general -- let's put it this way, money trumps peace, sometimes." February 14, 2007


http://s11.photobucket.com/albums/a181/livvy2/Signs/

Never elected by the People. Never again. To open, honest, transparent, and accurate elections in the future, for all the People.

Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News

All members welcome and encouraged to participate.



Please post Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News on this thread.

If you can:
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http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x407240

3. Re-post stories and announcements you find on DU, providing a link to the original thread with thanks to the Original Poster, too.

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Please "Recommend" for the Greatest Page (it's the link just below).

Cathleen Allison/Associated Press

Gov. Jim Gibbons of Nevada is under investigation for his past relations with a software developer in Reno.

February 16, 2007
U.S. Looks Into Gifts to Ex-Congressman, Now Governor
By DAVID JOHNSTON

WASHINGTON, Feb. 15 — Federal authorities are investigating gifts and payments that Gov. Jim Gibbons of Nevada received as a congressman from an executive of a software company that got millions of dollars in federal contracts, government officials said Thursday.

Investigators are examining whether the gifts and payments to Mr. Gibbons, a Republican, were in exchange for his help as a member of the House Intelligence and Armed Services Committees.

The payments were from Warren Trepp, owner of eTreppid Technologies, based in Reno. The company was awarded contracts from several government agencies including the Air Force, the Special Operations Command and the Central Intelligence Agency.

Mr. Gibbons took office as governor last month after serving five terms in the House. A telephone call on Thursday to the office of his press secretary was not returned. Calls to Mr. Trepp and the office of his lawyer were not returned.

>snip

Some of the company’s no-bid contracts were classified, which meant that the size of the contract and its purpose were hidden in a budget process that was not made public.

>more

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/16/us/16gibbons.html?_r=1&ref=politics&oref=slogin

The 2008 Race
On Deck

Where you can find some of the potential presidential candidates:
Note: Some schedules subject to change due to Iraq vote scheduled for Saturday in the Senate.

Saturday
Mr. Richardson in Manchester, Concord, Portsmouth and Hampton, N.H.

Mr. Biden in Des Moines, Cedar Rapids and Davenport, Iowa.

Mr. Obama in Orangeburg, S.C., then Richmond, Va.

John Edwards in Las Vegas, then Davenport, Iowa.

Senator John McCain in Des Moines, Cedar Rapids and Davenport, Iowa.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in Dover, N.H.

Mr. Brownback in Orlando.

Sunday
Mr. Biden in Cedar Falls, Waverly, Allison and Hampton, Iowa.

Mr. McCain in Spartanburg, S.C.

Mr. Obama in the Las Vegas area.

Representative Dennis Kucinich in Barrington, Concord, Laconia and Hanover, N.H.

Mr. Edwards in Dubuque, Iowa.

Mr. Brownback in Orlando.

http://www.nytimes.com/ref/us/politics/2008-schedules.html?ref=politics

$82 Buys E-Voting Secrets
By Kim Zetter| Also by this reporter
02:00 AM Feb, 16, 2007

For a mere $82 a computer scientist and electronic voting critic managed to purchase five $5,000 Sequoia electronic voting machines over the internet last month from a government auction site. And now he's taking them apart.

Princeton computer science professor Andrew Appel and his students have begun reverse-engineering the software embedded in the machines' ROM chips to determine if it has any security holes. But Appel says the ease with which he and his students opened the machines and removed the chips already demonstrates that the voting machines are vulnerable to unauthorized modification.

Their analysis appears to mark the first time that someone who hasn't signed a non-disclosure agreement with Sequoia Voting Systems has examined one of its machine's internals.

Appel bought the machines from election officials in Buncombe County, North Carolina, who offered them for sale at GovDeals.com, a site for government agencies to buy and sell surplus and confiscated equipment. The county sold 144 machines in lots of varying amounts. It paid $5,200 for each machine in 1997. To buy the machines, Appel had to pay $82 and only needed to provide a name, address, phone number and e-mail address.

>more including images

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,72742-0.html?tw=wn_index_1

House Seat Hangs by a Byte

By Kim Zetter| Also by this reporter
02:00 AM Jan, 11, 2007

As the 110th Congress settles into the Capitol building this month, one congressman won't be able to get too comfortable in his chair, with a controversy over the electronic voting machines that put him in office boiling down to a battle over the source code.

Republican Vern Buchanan claimed Florida's 13th Congressional District seat last November by fewer than 400 votes, while some 18,000 ballots cast in Sarasota County mysteriously contained no vote either for Buchanan or his Democratic opponent Christine Jennings -- an anomaly that prompted Jennings to challenge the election results in a lawsuit against state election officials, Buchanan and the company that makes the machines.

The case brings to a head a long-running tug of war over how to handle the software code that increasingly runs U.S. elections. Advocates for transparent elections, including voting activists and some candidates, have sought to examine the source code for election software to ensure that machines are accurately presenting the ballots, recording and counting every vote. On the other side, voting machine companies like Election Systems & Software and Diebold Election Systems have consistently claimed their source code is a trade secret, a position to which U.S. courts have generally deferred.

Several states, including Florida, require voting machine companies to put their source code in escrow to help the state maintain the software if the company goes out of business, and presumably to examine the code if questions arise about its reliability. But election officials and voting companies have fought vigorously to prevent disputing candidates from examining the software.

>more

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,72452-0.html

Payment After Mayor’s Affair Is Questioned

By JESSE McKINLEY
Published: February 17, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 16 — In the latest development in a lingering political scandal, the city attorney here is investigating whether any laws were broken in a payment to a married woman who had an affair with Mayor Gavin Newsom.

The woman, Ruby Rippey-Tourk, worked full time in City Hall as the mayor’s appointments secretary until last May, when she took a three-month unpaid leave to seek treatment for a substance abuse problem.

While she was on leave, several unidentified city employees donated their sick time to Ms. Rippey-Tourk under a program that allows city employees to transfer sick time to other city employees. After she returned from leave, Ms. Rippey-Tourk formally resigned, and was paid out the cash equivalent of that accumulated time, a little more than $10,000.

Sam Singer, a spokesman for Ms. Rippey-Tourk, said he was not at liberty to say who had transferred their time, but that the mayor had not. Mr. Singer added that the payment was “acceptable and legal.”

>more

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/17/us/17newsom.html?ex=1329368400&en=f12136a9d2b393a8&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Elephants Are Red, Donkeys Are Blue

These politically active couples show their love for candidates with hefty checks.

By Lindsay Renick Mayer

February 13, 2007 | Software entrepreneur Paul Egerman courted his wife, Joanne, more than 25 years ago at a politician’s victory party. “From my standpoint, it was a great date to go on,” he said. “I didn’t have to buy her any food or anything.”

From that date on, however, politics has been an expensive activity for the Massachusetts couple. The Egermans contributed more than $225,000 to federal candidates, parties and political action committees during the 2006 election cycle, according to an analysis of Federal Election Commission records by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. That ranks them among the 15 most politically generous couples in the United States. (See chart below.)

In total, these 30 individuals gave more than $3.4 million over the last two years, two-thirds of which went to Democrats. Ranging from attorneys to car dealers, and clustered in wealthy areas around cities, these couples form a super-elite tier in the already tiny fraction of Americans who donate enough money to political campaigns for their identities to be known. And because of their largesse, these couples are courted by candidates, parties and other interests around the country.

For four of these top-giving couples, the wife contributed more than her husband, though, on average, men contributed about $11,000 more than their partners. Eleven of the 15 couples contributed almost exclusively to Democrats. In every case, both spouses supported the same party, suggesting that the couple that pays together stays together.

>more including chart of top contributors

http://www.capitaleye.org/inside.asp?ID=248

Updated at 5:24 p.m., Friday, February 16, 2007

Neighborhood Board elections to offer online ballots

Advertiser Staff
Honolulu residents will be allowed to cast ballots online for the first time in this year's neighborhood board elections.

The elections, held every two years, were previously held only by mail, and to save taxpayers money, ballots were not mailed out for uncontested races. In the 2005 elections, only 25 percent of the 198,405 ballots that the city mailed out were returned.

This spring's elections are being held to fill 444 seats on the 32 neighborhood boards, which serve as grassroots advisory bodies for government.

Paper ballots will still be mailed for contested races. Each paper ballot will include a voter number for those who wish to vote online. Beginning March 23, voters may begin voting at www.nbvote.com.

>a bit more
http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2007/Feb/16/br/br5489762013.html

Backup plan ordered for voting machines
Saturday, February 17, 2007
BY KEVIN COUGHLIN
Star-Ledger Staff

A judge told state officials yesterday to start making backup plans to replace electronic voting machines used by 18 counties if they cannot be equipped with paper printers by the start of next year.

Though she stopped short of pulling the plug on 10,000 Sequoia AVC Advantage machines, Superior Court Judge Linda Feinberg expressed doubts they will be upgraded by a January 2008 deadline set by the state Legislature.

"I can't wait until a month or two before" the deadline, Feinberg said at a hearing in Trenton. "I need to have a game plan in place."

Feinberg said options might include switching to optical scanners that count paper ballots -- a move Florida is pursuing -- or to another vendor's electronic machine that has a printer.

>more

http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/jersey/index.ssf?/base/news-6/117169079525890.xml&coll=1

February 17, 2007
Proof Sought on Reliability of Vote Units
By RICHARD G. JONES

TRENTON, Feb. 16 — A Superior Court judge on Friday gave New Jersey elections officials three months to prove that they had adequately tested the reliability of electronic voting machines or to remove them from service.

The judge, Linda R. Feinberg, said that beginning in early May she would hold public hearings into the security and accuracy of the machines, which are at the center of a lawsuit against state officials.

The suit, brought on behalf of critics of the voting machines, charges that the state did not properly certify the machines and that the equipment could not adequately protect against vote fraud.

The lawyer who filed the suit, Penny M. Venetis, said in court papers filed last week that a Princeton University computer science professor was within minutes able to circumvent the security measures on the machines.

>more

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/17/nyregion/17vote.html

February 16, 2007

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Florida issues


The Associated Press

The following are comments Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney made on Florida issues during and after a town hall meeting at The Villages in central Florida:

>snip

On requiring a paper trail in elections: "I must admit like most Americans, an electronic-only trail makes you somewhat nervous. That's something where I would sit down with technology experts and say 'What's the best course here' ... I'm all in favor of people feeling comfortable, no doubt about that, but one of the things we've learned is that in the most primitive voting systems with an X and a piece of paper, the opportunity for stuffing the ballot box or losing ballots is extraordinary, and in some respects having electronic records that are recorded in multiple places and can be checked for verification can be a plus."

You go, Mitt. You got your ducks in a row, and your head on straight, bud.

http://www.jacksonville.com/apnews/stories/021607/D8NB7KNO0.shtml

February 17, 2007

Complaints filed against campaign committees, treasurers

By TIM TALLEY
Associated Press Writer

OKLAHOMA CITY - Complaints have been filed with the Federal Election Commission against Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn's campaign committee and treasurer alleging they violated federal campaign finance laws by not properly identifying contributors in the days leading up to the 2004 election.

Similar complaints were also filed against the campaign committees and treasurers of two congressmen in other states, Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., and Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, R-Colo.

The complaints were filed by the nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

The campaign against Coburn was filed Friday after a federal audit uncovered several campaign violations by Coburn's 2004 campaign committee, including failing to file last-minute contribution reports and not disclosing enough information about some individual contributors. CREW said it did not learn of the violations until last month, when the FEC report was made public.

>more

http://www.jacksonville.com/apnews/stories/021707/D8NBFV280.shtml

INEC And the Perfection of Rigging - Professor Maurice Iwu, INEC Chairman

Daily Trust (Abuja)
COLUMN
February 16, 2007
Posted to the web February 16, 2007

By Adamu Adamu

Nigeria is a nation that has problem with numbers; its political and financial arithmetic never really seem to ever add up right. Figures of its population census are not generally accepted, and, in any case, even at the best of times are not known with any degree of certainty; and, figures of its election results are always disputed with so much vehemence; while the quantum of its foreign debt has for long been a matter of conjecture and guesswork.

This numerophobia and problematic arithmetic is there even in the area of calculating figures for the nation's top foreign-exchange earner-oil. Right now, nobody knows how many million barrels the multinational oil companies declare, how many they lift, how many they pilfer; and how many all the others bunker.

But while foreign debt may eventually be correctly calculated and paid off, and the nation's population accurately determined and accepted by all; and the exploration, production and sale of crude oil may ultimately be fully indigenized and oil revenue correctly known, democracy may never be known until we do get our election right.

Like advance fee fraud, rigging in Nigeria, which here can be taken to mean 'advance vote fraud,' has truly been elevated to an art form; and it is massively indulged in by all those who get the chance and have the ability. Between any two opponents in an election, it is often a question of who can outrig the other; and the winner, in the end, is determined by who had the better chance. Chance in this case usually means incumbency, or being in the party of the incumbent, or securing the cooperation of the security agencies while ability to rig usually means possession of money-lots of money-to give away.

For the moment Obasanjo seems to have a monopoly of both chance and ability-and the need-to rig. That is, if he finds it impossible to actualize his beloved third term dream. In addition, he has the will and the unmistakable design to massively rig the 2007 elections at all levels. And like on the previous occasion, he is going to do so with the full-and enthusiastic-cooperation of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC.

>more

http://allafrica.com/stories/200702160670.html