Homer Votes...

Save Wisconsin's Vote... Investigate the WI GOP

Perhaps you have heard about the absentee ballot applications the WI GOP has sent out to Wisconsin residents.

They have, in may instances, sent a ballot application with an incorrect return address. In one instance, a local Winnebago County Democratic Party member received an absentee ballot form from the WI GOP with a return address to go to the Town of Neenah clerk, when she lives and votes in the Town of Menasha.

I have several instances of this happening.

What are the results of this? Our member, if the application is sent in, may be denied the vote. By applying for voting in the incorrect town, she will not receive a ballot. When the ballot is not received, it will be too late to apply for another one. Her only option would be to vote the day of the election.

Then, this elderly woman would have to potentially stand in line for hours to vote. Her knees are not that good, maybe she would decide not to wait that long.

The other consequence would be for the local clerks to sort out the problem. Something our stretched thin municipal governments can not handle. The hours spent correcting the WI GOP mailing will eat into needed hours to prep for what could be the highest turn-out election in Wisconsin history.

Whether the WI GOP address problem was a mistake or a dirty election tactic, they are setting up the mass disenfranchisement of absentee voters, and a chain reaction that will lead to havoc on Nov 4th.

This issue needs to be investigated now. If the WI GOP cannot prove there was a mistake made, there should be prosecution.

One Wisconsin Now has a petition online about this issue, you can sign it with the links in this message:

Dear Jef, Hundreds of thousands of legal voters are at risk - but utter silence from the McCain campaign. Media are reporting Wisconsinites have received absentee ballot applications from the John McCain for President campaign with incorrect return addresses, which would likely prevent registration and processing from being completed. We need answers about this McCain mailing immediately and we need a full investigation by law enforcement. Sign the petition and demand an investigation today! Visit http://www.SaveWisconsinsVote.org. Not only could this lead to voters failing to receive their absentee ballots, it also could cause chaos on election day as those who did not receive their ballots scramble to cast their vote. The easy solution would seem to be: check the records, inform people who received an incorrect application and make sure no one is disenfranchised. But the McCain campaign refuses to tell us the exact number and won't even be interviewed about the scope of the problem. A top Republican Party of Wisconsin official said "hundreds of thousands" of absentee ballot applications have been mailed by the McCain campaign. Hundreds of thousands of voters at risk. No answers. Draw your own conclusions. Act now and sign the petition demanding an investigation into the faulty McCain absentee ballot applications. We need a formal investigation. Just last week, Attorney General JB Van Hollen and Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm announced a new task force focusing on election issues. While the prudence of having Van Hollen, the McCain campaign state co-chair, is certainly up for question, the task force must investigate this matter and assure the public their right to vote is not being compromised by an intentional disenfranchisement scheme by the McCain campaign. Fair and clean elections are a critical issue for the state of Wisconsin and protecting the right to vote is essential to our Democracy. Act now and sign the petition to the Task Force and the Government Accountability Board below calling for an immediate investigation of the mailing. They must get to the bottom of this as soon as possible. Time is critical, please act today. Scot Ross Executive Director One Wisconsin Now P.S.--Nothing will happen unless you act today. Sign the petition and help preserve Democracy. Visit http://www.SaveWisconsinsVote.org.

One Quote Says It All

"This is really unbelievable, let everyone vote and see what happens," said Bob Spindell, election commissioner for the city of Milwaukee and chairman of the GOP's 4th Congressional District. "This could be the presidency of the United States on the line here."

We wouldn't want to let everyone vote?

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.
...
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.
...
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.
...
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.

Voter ID - Nuns Can't Vote!

About 12 Indiana nuns were turned away Tuesday from a polling place by a fellow sister because they didn't have state or federal identification bearing a photograph.

Sister Julie McGuire said she was forced to turn away her fellow members of Saint Mary's Convent in South Bend, across the street from the University of Notre Dame, because they had been told earlier that they would need such an ID to vote.

The nuns, all in their 80s or 90s, didn't get one but came to the precinct anyway.

...

Late Tuesday, Secretary of State Todd Rokita was unapologetic.

"Indiana's Voter ID Law applies to everyone. From all accounts that we've heard, the sisters were aware of the photo ID requirements and chose not to follow them," he said in a statement released by his office.

More costs for county voting machines...

We have a resolution before the board tomorrow:

TO THE WINNEBAGO COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS:
WHEREAS, a new help desk support feature has recently been added by Premier Elections to the County Clerk’s election equipment costing $3,250; and
WHEREAS, this feature provides much improved technical support to the department and eliminates per hour charges for calls; and
WHEREAS, memory cards had to be purchased for the voting machines costing a total of $17,000; and
WHEREAS, a hands free telephone would be beneficial when long phone conversations are needed with municipal clerks and election vendor help during very busy elections; and
WHEREAS, these costs were unknown or not anticipated when the 2008 budget was prepared; and
WHEREAS, there are insufficient funds in other accounts in the County Clerk Department to cover these additional costs.
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED by the Winnebago County Board of Supervisors that it hereby appropriates $20,600 from the General Fund Undesignated Fund Balance to the following accounts of the County Clerks 2008 budget:

Defense Contractors Counting Votes?

From the NYTimes Editorial Blog:

There has long been good reason to worry about Diebold voting machines. Many are “black box” electronic machines that do not produce paper records, so voters have to accept the results they report on faith.

Diebold, however, has not inspired much faith. It has been accused of illegally using uncertified software on its voting machines, exposing elections to possible tampering, and of making glitchy machines that misrecord votes.

Then there’s the little matter of the company’s CEO signing a letter before the 2004 election — in which his machines would be counting many of the votes — saying that he was committed to helping deliver Ohio to President Bush.

(The Onion has a hilarious video up on Youtube, a mock news report about Diebold accidently releasing the results of the 2008 presidential election before the voting occurs. View it here.)

Now, there’s a new reason to worry that Diebold plays such a large role in presidential elections. United Technologies has made an unsolicited $3 billion bid to take over Diebold.

United Technologies is one of the nation’s leading defense contractors, which means it has an enormous corporate interest in who gets elected President.

When we heard the news, we couldn’t help thinking of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s famous warning, in his farewell address, about the dangerously increasing influence of the “military-industrial complex.” (Watch a video of a key part of the speech here.)

Eisenhower told the American people that

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

Given his blunt warning, we suspect that Eisenhower would be appalled to learn that a defense contractor could be counting the votes in the next presidential election.

More troubles with electronic voting - in Winnebago County

Some residents were unable to vote in Tuesday's presidential primary after they mistakenly selected the nonpartisan designation on the electronic voting machines and submitted their ballots without correcting the error.

City Clerk Patty Sturn said some voters didn't realize that they were required to select a party designation if they wished to vote in the presidential race.

Presidential primaries are party races and there are no nonpartisan presidential candidates. If voters did not select a party designation, they were able to vote only for the school board.

Ohio Election May Have been Stolen

Ohio Secretary of State confirms 2004 election could have been stolen

Ohio's Secretary of State announced this morning that a $1.9 million official study shows that "critical security failures" are embedded throughout the voting systems in the state that decided the 2004 election. Those failures, she says, "could impact the integrity of elections in the Buckeye State." They have rendered Ohio's vote counts "vulnerable" to manipulation and theft by "fairly simple techniques."

Indeed, she says, "the tools needed to compromise an accurate vote count could be as simple as tampering with the paper audit trail connector or using a magnet and a personal digital assistant."

In other words, Ohio's top election official has finally confirmed that the 2004 election could have been easily stolen. Brunner's stunning findings apply to electronic voting machines used in 58 of Ohio's 88 counties, in addition to scanning devices and central tabulators used on paper ballots in much of the rest of the state.
...
The final official tally for Bush---less than 119,000 votes out of 5.4 million cast---varied by 6.7% from exit poll results, which showed a Kerry victory. Exit polls in 2004 were designed to have a margin of error of about 1%. In various polling stations in Democrat-rich inner city precincts in Youngstown and Columbus, voters who pushed touch screens for Kerry saw Bush's name light up. A wide range of discrepancies on both electronic and paper balloting systems leaned almost uniformly toward the Bush camp. Voting procedures regularly broke down in inner city and campus areas known to be heavily Democratic.
...
Brunner has now recommended that all Ohio's voting be done on optical scan ballots, with reliance on central tabulation. Voters with disabilities could use AutoMark machines with bar coding devices that allow the marking of ballots with little or no additional assistance.

Multiple Voting Scandal?

Here's a good one. I wonder if we will see the same thing on Wisconsin Eye?

Hat tip to the Chief.

Republicans and Voter ID in Cartoon

It's here.

Good Coverage of Republican Efforts to Supress Votes in 2004

Brew City Brawler covers it here in relation to the Biscupic case.

I had the Dem voter protection lawyer for our area working out of my place that day. I heard him talking about the "HAVA Volunteers" in Milwaukee and Racine.

--Paying individuals $160 to wear orange "HAVA Volunteer" T- shirts and patrol polling places. In large part these individuals (who were not volunteers) knew nothing about the Help America Vote Act, and several wrongly suggested that HAVA required an alreadyregistered voter to produce identification in order to
vote.
--Impersonating authorities at the polling places. The Reports reflect instances of orange-shirted observers stating that they were authorities, and instances of persons claiming to be "election officials" and giving out incorrect information about the registration process.
-- Walking up and down voting lines with printed lists in hand and suggesting that persons "not on the list" were not allowed to vote.
--Using attorneys to lodge challenges to voters pursuant to S 6.925, Wis. Stats. In many cases Republican attorneys would lodge a challenge, disrupt the voting process, and then abandon the challenge, after forcing a voter to answer questions under oath, by refusing to execute sworn statements supporting the claimed challenges.
-- Challenging the authority of election inspectors during every step of the election day process, including: (a) challenging the use of special deputy registrars for same day registration (despite an October 27, 2004 City of Milwaukee Elections Commission resolution authorizing the process); (b) challenging inspectors' attempts to continue to process votes during machine breakdowns; (e) asking an inspector to sign a form stating that a machine was not inspected; and (d) challenging the use of volunteers to help process same day registration cards.
-- Using law enforcement agents to harass Election Protection volunteers attempting to assist voters standing in line. For example, at about 5:30 p.m. at Holton School, four men, one with visible handcuffs, walked through the polling place and told Election Protection volunteers not to assist voters attempting to locate the correct polling place. Threatening to "call the authorities" if election inspectors did not act as instructed by Republican attorneys.
--Challenging any absentee ballot that did not have a Wisconsin- return address in the certificate, despite the fact that an out- of--state return address is legal and
appropriate for out-of- state absentee voters.
-- Challenging valid student registration with photo IDs matched to student directories, and thereafter challenging any student who corroborated another student's residence.