NYTimes Profiles 3 Elections Where Voting Machines Could Have Made the Difference

A Tale of Three (Electronic Voting) Elections

Electronic voting has made great strides in reliability, but it has a long way to go. When reformers push for greater safeguards, they often argue that future elections could produce the wrong result because of a computer glitch or be stolen through malicious software. That’s being too nice.
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1. The 2002 Georgia Senate and Governor Races — Senator Max Cleland, who lost three limbs in Vietnam, was defeated for re-election and Gov. Roy Barnes, a Democrat, was unseated. Polls had suggested that both men would win.
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2. The 2006 Congressional Race in Florida’s 13th District — The machines said that Republican Vern Buchanan defeated Democrat Christine Jennings by 369 votes. But in Sarasota County, a Democratic area, up to 18,000 ballots, about 13 percent of the total cast, did not record a vote for Congress. That is extraordinarily high; in Republican Manatee County, only 2 percent of ballots didn’t contain a vote for Congress.
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3. Alabama’s 2002 Race for Governor — Former Gov. Don Siegelman has been in the news because it appears that federal prosecutors may have put him in prison for political reasons. The controversy has brought attention to the odd way he lost the governorship.

Read it all here.

WCDP Announcement

Hello members and Friends of the Winnebago County Democratic Party!

We need you to volunteer for a shift at the Winnebago County Fair!
Can you sign up? There is a schedule as it stands when this email was sent attached. I will update it online as it fills in here:

http://jef4wi.com/files/Fair08.pdf

Please sign up! We will have free passes for volunteer hours.


Get deputized to register voters in Oshkosh!
Want to work with the Winnebago Dems/Obama campaign to register voters? Sign up for a registration class on Thursday, August 7th. It will be at the HQ. Let Casey know if you want to sign up (Casey Giltner: 920.410.6668). You must live in Oshkosh.


Help staff the office for the Gallery Walk.
Oshkosh’s Gallery Walk is this Saturday, August 1st. We need people to staff the office and talk to voters. Please be there (480 N Main st, Oshkosh) between 6-10PM.


Volunteer for the Obama Campaign:
Casey Giltner: 920.410.6668
Caitlin Hurley: 781.254.5555

Let me know if you have any questions!

Jef Hall
Chair, Winnebago County Democratic Party
2nd Vice Chair, Democratic Party of WI
224a Scott Ave, Oshkosh, WI 54901
920.203.6883
jef@jefhall.com
www.winnebagodems.com
www.jefhall.com

Authorized and Paid for by the Winnebago County Democratic Party – Jef Hall, Chair.

What Does Randy Hopper Stand For?

Interviewer: Are there any areas in which you break with the core Republican values?

Candidate Hopper: No. And I think that’s important.

There you have it, Randy Hopper is not going to be an independent voice in Madison. Candidate Hopper is going to be yet another partisan tool for the discredited Republican agenda.

Do you want higher health care costs? Do you want stagnant wages? Do you want lower taxes for the top 5% of Americans, while we see service and infrastructure cuts for all Americans.

If so vote Hopper, there is no single way in which he breaks with that agenda.

Are you happy with republican rule? From Bush to Katrina to our own do-nothing Assembly, we have seen the failure of the GOP agenda. Randy Hopper does not break with that at all.

I think that is important to know as well.

Another Quote From the Hopper Interview: Does WI have too few workers & too many manufacturing jobs?

In the words of candidate Randy Hopper: another greatest hit from the WI Eye interview:

Mercury Marine is critical to our economy. We need to be able to entice people to come to our community so they have a healthy workforce to choose from because the last thing you want is them going, you know what? We’re going to have an employee shortage in Fond Du Lac County in the next 10 years due to baby boomers retiring.
..
What happens when one shift shuts down because there are not enough workers to work that shift and those jobs go someplace else, whether overseas or elsewhere in the country. That will give the business owners pause to think, “Well, I can operate at full capacity in this facility so why don’t I take one more shift?” Then pretty soon you’ve got one shift and that operate says that it is not cost effective for us to run here and the jobs go elsewhere.

Maybe I am a little off here, but I do not think that the problem with Mercury marine right now is that there are not enough workers:

FOND DU LAC, Wis. -- Boat engine maker Mercury Marine said it will cut 60 jobs and temporarily shut down production in Fond du Lac.

The company has already announced layoffs at other facilities in the U.S.

Spokesman Steve Fleming said slow boat sales and the poor economy have forced the company to cut costs. He said more layoffs could be coming, but he didn't know how many.

Along with the layoffs announced Monday, Mercury Marine will shut down production for three weeks starting Aug. 28. Fleming says a two-week shutdown had been expected but a third week was being added.

He said salaried employees will keep working during the shutdown. Hourly workers will not.

Mercury Marine is a subsidiary of Brunswick Corp., based in Lake Forest, Ill.

We need someone in office that understands the forces at work in our local economy.

Voting History

In his interview with Wisconsin Eye, 18th Senate District Republican Candidate Randy Hopper claims that he is involved with local governments:

I’ve been around Fond Du Lac County and I’m working with the County Executive to direct me into different divisions. It’s amazing to me how no one from the state is listening to the municipalities. They’ve got more efficient and effective ways to do the jobs that are required by the state but no one is asking them what those more efficient and effective ways are.

Who are these people that are not concerned with local government? Well, one of those people are not Candidate Randy Hopper...

Voting records are open records. And it seems that Candidate Randy Hopper has not voted in an April (or municipal) election in this century.

These are open records, feel free to check them and contact me if you have questions...