Progressives Get "VVPB" Bill in and Dem Governor's Crony Disses it

[KoKo]

by putting in a Repug Operative!

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Alert! NC Progressives Voted for VVPB...But Dem Governor and his Cronies


have now thwarted all our efforts to get that Bill passed to require a "Verified Voter Paper Trail."

"They" have appointed Keith Long in charge of "certifying ALL NC voting equipment purchases of DRE's" thereby circumventing the bill we fought so hard to put in place.

Here's Keith Long's Background from his "Disclosure Agreemen" signed with the NC Board of Elections just now:

1. As a North Carolina State Board of Elections Independent Contractor helping with the current RFP and an resulting contract as to voting systems, I am filing this Disclousre Agreement to fully inform the North Carolina State Boaard of Electiions, the State of Noerth Carolina, ITS and the general public of my previous business relations with the following vendors, testers and produers of voting systems and election related products:

Diebold Election Systems
Sequoia Voting

Hart InterCivic
Computere Elections Systems (ceased independent operation in the 1980's and was absorbed into the current vendor ES&S)

Systest Labs (and independent testing company)

(Google any of Keith Long's affiliations and you will see the guy is a Rove "Put up Job." He moves from Maryland to Georgia and now to the "budding Blueing" of NC to promote his evil machines.

......

Long's "Disclosure Agreement" goes on to state that he is no longer employed by these folks, and his previous business relationships with these afore listed would cause him not to pperform his taks and duties as not to promote the best interests of the public.

etc...etc....etc...

YET this guy was involved in the purchase of ALL THE GEORGIA "DRE" MACHINES which threw out Max Cleland...and in the Maryland purchase of the DRE's and has been on the Boards of the "Fake" testing companies who can't even CERTIFY THESE MACHINES!

This is what we are dealing with here. I know that no one is interesed in this anymore...but if NC who has a Dem Governor is appointing "Elections Commissioners" who appoint someone like Keith Long who has already screwed up two states when so many of us fought so long for a BILL TO STOP THIS...WHAT DOES THAT SAY?

Keith Long is someone who has to go...BEWARE...it's coming soon to YOUR STATE!

[Bill Bored]

1. Hey, we're very interested!

The question is, did the VVPB bill become law or is it just a bill and can the Gov veto it and can legislature override the veto?

Sure there are Democrats who are failures when it comes to this issue, but the law is the law. So is VVPB the law in NC or not?

The last time I read your bill, it looked pretty good!

[KoKo]

2. The Bill passed but what we could get through was necessarily weak

enough to allow this crap to happen. We tried so hard...and faced so many obstacles and so many gave up work time and donated time and money to producing documents...

Now this... We need lawyers for this. We need big help. And BIG GUNS.

It's a slap in the face to have a Dem Governor allow this to go on. But, he's a DINO we just re-elected because we thought a Repug would be worse.

We are going to try to fight it with research. But, we need Dem Lawyers. Who has money or time to fight this though. They know that we have limited resources and gave up everything we could to get the Bill passed.

We will do what we can. I was hoping one of the BIG VOTING SITES might help us if anyone is reading DU and could lend a hand they could PM me...

[Bill Bored]

4. Don't give up on this.

There ARE lawyers who will work on things for free, although of course I'm not volunteering anyone in particular! ;)

But one thing I'm not clear about:

They are hiring an ex-Diebold guy. So what? I mean what did you expect? There aren't that many people with expertise in this field. Most of them are frankly, amateurs like us! I guarantee that many BoE officials know less about e-voting than most of us on this forum do.

The question is: Is this guy going to do anything against your laws? If they end up with Diebold machines, with VVPATs, will the VVPATs be audited in accordance with the law or will the law be ignored?

You were able to fix that clause that had allowed the PATs to be hidden from the voters. That was a huge victory! At least now the paper will be visible and the record will be contemporaneously voter-verified.

So the question is:

Who will do the ballot definition programming and how will THAT be audited? This can screw up your DREs big time and the VVPATs won't necessarily show it.

And also, who will count the VVPATs and WHEN and HOW?

Vigilance!

One more thing, you can stop Diebold machines by demanding that the VVPATs not be traceable to individual voters. This means either:
1. No paper rolls because they preserve the sequence of the votes
2. More than one DRE per polling place whether you need them or not, and THIS will cost MONEY.

So when the choice of equipment is made, you can raise these issues. It may force the choice of another vendor, or possibly Op Scan.

BTW do you have any copies of poll tapes you'd be willing to email me? I'm looking for some results reports from a state that has straight party voting.

[autorank]

3. I'm sure that the NC Gov would get along very well with Bill Richardson NM

http://www.zdf.de/ZDFde/img/3/0,1886,2359171,00.jpg

WTF FELLAS...YOU HAVE SOME PROBLEM WITH FAIR ELECTIONS

KoKo01, you're giving us the critical information. This is really not a partisan issue at this point. Easley (D) hires a hoplite in the infantry of Diebold's long march to destroying democracy. Richardson (D) refuses a recount then allows his election officials to refuse an inspection of "the machines" after agreement to such an inspection. And then there are the Democrats in the CA leg who allowed Kevin Shelley, D, Scty of State,m to be crucified on false charges. What a crew. Maybe DNC will do a report with 100 pages proving that the above mentioned are really losers. I'd support that. With Democrats like these two, who needs Karl Rove.

When our AG race in VA was real close, less than 900 votes, on election night, Gov. Mark Warner pounded the podium and shouted, "We're fighting for every vote" and then told the press and Republicans that they'd better stop calling it for the Robertson clone Republican AG candidate, or else (they stopped). That's what my type of Democrat does. These others are LIEbermans!

[Bill Bored]

5. Warner sounds interesting.

He's been discussed as a possible 2008 Pres candidate.

What else did he do for voting in VA with regard to machine oversight or anti-election-privatization legislation or voting rights? Anything?

In other words, ya got any PAPER there Capt?

[autorank]

7. Regretably no paper. This was not a priority of his because

there were no glaring problems until 2003 when the Republicans actually got screwed by lousy machines, "WinVote." They demanded that source code be opened up and a Republican House of Delegates member runs the VVPB chapter in VA. They go after the old fashioned 'voter fraud' stuff pretty well, mostly in small towns with a history of it. They're getting a quick study on 'electronic voting,' however. When they do the recount for A.G., they'll find that there really can't be a recount. They're getting good information from a varietiy of sources.

I liked the fact he just shouted out, 'don't f' with me!' He's a very quick study and this will be incorporated into his presidential campaign. Kaine will get hip to this much sooner as a result of the recount here.

Long way of saying, not a big record, fine with VVPB, and he's a tech guy originally so he understands all the arguments.

Very capable guy, could run the country, might do so in crisis, in which case I'd be comfortable with him. He's more than happy to let others get credit or originate ideas. Refresshing sounding isn't it.

[Bill Bored]

9. Anybody but yet another Bush!

I think Warner was some kind of dot com guy, wasn't he?

Trouble with some techie types is that they may not understand that voting is not like other transaction processing applications because of the secret ballot. Mike Bloomberg may not get this either, or may not care. Jury's still out on him. Wrong party too!

BTW he won with a narrower margin than expected which I think is good. We like to keep our Republicans on a short leash in NY!

[autorank]

10. Warner is a smart tech guy. Ever heard of Nextel.

He ran the state well enough to have it rated the "best managed" state in the union by an independent rating group that does it every year. The last time we won that was w/Dem Gov Doug Wilder. We were a mess prior to Warner with Gov's Allen and "Enron" (the latter named because he hid a $3.0 billion deficit, a nono in state government).

He made money on real revenue opportunities. He treated employees very well, and he went into public service when he could have become a billionaire several times over. He brought health services to the uninsured and worked to equalize work and education opportunities around the state. We have the lowest unimployment in the state.

He's the real deal. But most importantly, when faced with the election fraud possibility, he spoke up immediately and forcefully, not something Democrats are known for. He's a good guy and will move left if he goes for the presidency.

[kster]

6. A guess

"This is what we are dealing with here. I know that no one is interesed in this anymore...but if NC who has a Dem Governor is appointing "Elections Commissioners" who appoint someone like Keith Long who has already screwed up two states when so many of us fought so long for a BILL TO STOP THIS...WHAT DOES THAT SAY?"

That the people in our Government that are paid to protect us from this sorta sh*t ARE NOT DOING THEIR JOB.

[autorank]

8. Precisely...but how do you like those pics upthread.

I mean Easley could sell sub prime loans anywhere in the country. A future Zel Miller.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

12. our state board of elections is the source of the problem

I do not trust them farther than I can throw them.
Our Executive Director of the SBOE weighs at least 300 lbs,
so that isn't far (that I can throw him).

These people would have to be living in another universe to
honestly not see all of the problems with paperless voting, yet they
seek to perpetuate it.

They were our worst opponents to VVPB. And they have a majority of Dems on the State Board. Dogs!

Oh well, the SOS of Georgia is supposedly a Dem, and they are covered with Diebold machines. No paper.

The SOS probably expects the machines to be rigged to make her governor.

A friend of mine pointed out that no matter what we did with the law, as long as we had crooks in charge, it was going to be difficult
to have fair elections.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

11. we do have legal help, but we need to alert all NC dems and party chairs

something definitely is foul here...

NC Verified did contact www.Eff.org and has gotten the help of
an attorney, we filed a motion the other day that we hope will rein in
Diebold and their dirty little paws... stay tuned for those results.

Like the fix is in for 06

Long will be helping NC install it's new voting machines,
like he did for GA in 02?

Goodby Max Cleland?

Email Jerry Meek, NC State Party Chair,
[e-mail]

I know the Governor doesn't like him, but we need to warn the top strategy guy, he should be forwarned that the 06 results could be fixed.

And Diebold would like to get their crappy machines in so they could malfunction their way in 08 to get Jeb elected.

[MelissaB]

13. kicking because I was just googling this asshat

:kick: