SOURCE: Black Box Voting Below are the editorials from Black Box Voting, Open Voting Consortium, VotersUnite.org, and Nancy Tobi of Election Defense Alliance and Democracy for New Hampshire opposing and rebutting the latest incarnation of Holt's perpetually flawed proposal for election reform, currently known as "The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2009 (HR 2894)"

STATEMENT OF BLACK BOX VOTING AGAINST HOLT BILL

We are in agreement that DRE voting machines need to be eliminated, but not at the expense of human rights. We don't need a "Holt Bill." What we do need:

PROTECT AND DEFEND PUBLIC ELECTION PRINCIPLES

(1) Protect and enforce right to know for every essential component of our public elections -- eliminate practices which allow government insiders to conduct key parts of elections in secret;

(2) Protect and enforce required checks and balances -- strengthen compliance, remedies and enforcement.

(3) Restore necessary mechanics for public elections: Require voter-marked paper ballots unless assistive device is required.

Greetings:

This is the seventeenth edition of the New Hampshire Progressive Newsletter for 2009.

In this issue:

Item 1: House and Senate negotiators have reached a budget deal. There will be no slot machines, no estate tax, no capital gains tax, no gas tax increase. The meals and rooms tax will go from 8% to 9%, the cigarette tax will increase another 45 cents a pack, and the auto registration fee will increase $30. $25 million will be cut from the state payroll, but how to do that will be left to the Governor.

Item 2: As Congress looks for ways to pay for universal health insurance, the President is pressured to tax health benefits, despite his campaign promise not to.

Item 3: Paul Krugman finds the financial regulation plan of the Obama administration to be lacking. He argues for limits on executive compensation, which has been structured in a way that encourages executives to take big risks with other people’s money. He also argues the plan is short on measures to reform the rating agencies, which routinely rated subprime mortgage securities as low risk.

Item 4: The US Supreme Court says there is no constitutional right to a DNA test to prove your innocence, if you’ve already been found guilty.

As you decry the alleged election fraud in Iran, keep in mind that the majority of the nation's election officials - like NH's state election officials - have knowingly approved fraud-friendly and defective vote counting computers. Across the nation, the vast majority of our local election officials, have long ceased to fulfill their constitutional duties. In NH, most of our election officials prefer to let LHS Associates and Diebold Corporation take over - and I do mean takeover - our democracy. Forget Iran; it's time to say "NO" to concealed vote counting here in America.

---

The New York Times has come out with yet another editorial in support of concealed vote counting in America, hyping it up as "trustworthy" computerized vote counting and encouraging Congress to pass yet another version of Congressman Rush Holt's (D-NJ) corporate-backed computerized voting bill.

Democratic loyalists are acting as though the Republican demise is an accomplishment on their part. It is as though their understated -- but very complicit -- support of the Republican policies of empire and wealth transfer to the ultra wealthy will go unnoticed.

The Binary Fallacy and The End of Both Parties

06/06/09

SOURCE: The People's Voice, BY: Michael Collins

(Wash., DC) The results of eight years of Bush-Cheney at the helm make the demise of the Republican Party an easy call. Our financial system is on life support. The major banks are insolvent, according to banking and legal authority William K. Black. If they're not, they're in intensive care. No matter how many trillions of dollars worth of infusions they receive, they're not making loans. The economy is in a free fall with growth down 6% a quarter and job losses running at nearly 600,000 a month. We're stuck in two catastrophic wars. Despite President Obama's election, we're viewed with suspicion and disregard throughout the world.

Greetings:

My announcement of my candidacy for Congress delayed this newsletter, but I will try to keep them coming.

This is the sixteenth edition of the New Hampshire Progressive Newsletter for 2009.

In this issue:

All of the talk in Concord is about the budget and gambling. For those legislators who have opposed expanded gambling, don't let anyone tell you that because your favored revenue solution (estate tax, capital gains tax, business tax increase or whatever) is ‘dead,' you must now accept gambling. You ALWAYS have the power to say no, and force a new round of negotiation. I say this from sad experience. During the education funding crisis of 1999, the legislature concluded that an income tax for education was the best alternative. Governor Shaheen said no, and killed the income tax with a veto threat. The legislature then reluctantly voted for a statewide property tax as the only remaining option. If we had stood our ground, and rejected the statewide property tax, it would have put us back at square one with all options on the table.

Item 1: Rep. Timothy Butterworth writes an excellent analysis of the capital gains tax favored by the House.

Item 2: What do you know? The US Government actually MADE money on some of the bailout.

Item 3: Sen. Kennedy unveils his universal health care proposal.

Item 4: A proposal for competitive bidding within Medicare.

Item 5: President Obama now favors a mandate that people buy health insurance.

Item 6: Cuba agrees to talks with the US

Item 7: The increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is making the oceans more acidic, endangering many types of sea life.

Mark

Resolve It or Relive It: Ohio Election Fraud 2004

Contact person: Paddy Shaffer, Director, Ohio Election Justice Campaign, (614) 266-5283

Please note: Links at the end of summery for the court case, exhibits (evidence, records, research), articles, and a video.

The below summarizes the unresolved election fraud situation in Ohio, then goes into depth with a synopsis, further background, and research resources. Your help is urgently needed before the statute of limitations expires.

Please contact US Attorney General Eric Holder at 202-353-1555 and ask him to work with the Ohio Election Justice Campaign (OEJC) and other supporting individuals and organizations to quickly initiate a special grand jury investigation into the 2004 election before it is too late.

Summary

SOURCE: BlackBoxVoting.ORG

(US) 5/09 - NATIONAL: FORMER FED BIGSHOT CASHING IN ON INTERNET VOTING -

YOU CAN DISCUSS THIS HERE:
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/8/80431.html

For must-read, original reporting by Brad Friedman, with crucial details omitted by the Hawaiian press, hit this Bradlink: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7184.

And now, the BLACKBOX BACKSTORY on the BRADSTORY:

During the 1980s, local mom & pop election vendors, who were selling their local services and goods to local election officials, began to come under centralized control through corporate consolidation under Business Records Corp (BRC), later acquired by Election Systems & Software (ES&S).
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf

SOURCE: OpEd News

Secret Vote Counting and the Lost Art of Democratic Elections

In February 2009 Allison Kilkenny reported that "The Obama administration on Friday told a federal judge it would not deviate from the Bush administration's position that detainees held at a U.S. air base in Afghanistan have no right to sue in U.S. courts."

In early May 2009 the Wall Street Journal issued another troubling report from the "change we can believe in" administration:"The Obama administration is weighing plans to detain some terror suspects on U.S. soil -- indefinitely and without trial -- as part of a plan to retool military commission trials that were conducted for prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba."

Why is the Obama administration continuing to erode civil liberties in the manner so cynically embodied in contemporary governmental acts like the Patriot Act?

---

"God grants liberty only to those who love it and are always ready to guard and defend it." -Daniel Webster

---

While Connecticut implements checks and balances on the private corporate entity programming its elections, NH practices NO oversight at all on this same corporation - leaving nearly 90% of our votes under the secret, private control of LHS Associates. This situation is so anti-democratic that Black Box Voting, America's premier election watchdog organization, declares: "New Hampshire falters so badly in every area when compared with Connecticut that Black Box Voting now advocates removing New Hampshire's "first in the nation" status for the presidential primary."

SOURCE: BlackBoxVoting.ORG

Connecticut, we should note, is the "best of breed" in New England. However:

"We know of no other area of business or government where something labeled an 'audit' is this far from independent," citizens group CT Voters Count reports. Connecticut released an "audit" (not really an audit) on May 12, 2009 -- more than six months after the Nov. 2008 election, and long past any possibility of rectifying errors, if found. Yet even this belated "audit" was procedurally flawed, and even this flawed belated "audit" uncovered "ridiculous, unacceptable, unconscionable" problems. For example: Depending on how you calculate it, nine percent, or as many as 29 percent of all memory cards (programmed by LHS Associates) contained unexplained "junk data."

SOURCE: wtic.com

Election Audit: Some Cards Faulty; Devices Used Were Correctly Programmed

Matt Dwyer Reporting

Click here to read the full Post-Election Audit of Memory Cards for the November 2008 Elections

Click here to read the full Statistical Analysis of the Post Election Audit Data 2008 November Elections

A UConn Voting Technology Research Center audit finds all of the memory cards actually used in electronic voting machines during the November, 2008 election in Connecticut were correctly programmed, and most of the hand recounts matched the machine counts.  

But the audit found about 9 percent of the memory cards could not be used because of problems found before they were put in place.  Replacement cards had to be rushed to one voting location, when none of the original cards would work.

In America today, nearly 90% of the nation's voters have their voting rights violated in just about every single election: local, state, and federal.

To quote the popular bumper sticker: "If you're not outraged you're not paying attention."

Consider the grassroots civil rights struggles that forged meaningful voting rights reforms in our nation's history:

• In 1868, with Blacks representing 14% of the American population, the 15th Amendment prohibited voting rights discrimination "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude".
• In 1920, with women representing 49.75% of the voting age population, the 19th amendment prohibited voting rights discrimination "on account of sex".
• In 1965, with minorities representing 12 % of the American population, the Voting Rights Act reinforced the 14th and 15th amendments, prohibiting the use of various previously legal strategies that prevented Blacks and other non-white Americans from exercising their right to vote.

In each of these instances civil rights activists spoke the language of liberty, self governance, and the right of every citizen to vote in free and fair and open public elections.

We rose up to enforce the civil rights for 11%, 14%, and 50% of our people. So where is the movement to protect 90%?

Written by Michael Collins

Friday, 01 May 2009

The Senate Millionaires turned down even limited mortage assistance to those facing foreclosure.  The magic Democratic majority in the Senate could produce only 45 Yea votes while 51 voted Nay.  Michael Collins goes behind the scenes of another rigged defeat or the interest of the citizen brought to you by inept leaders.

May 1, 2009 – Washington, DC (electionfraudnews.com) – The United States Senate took a swipe at the spirit of May Day in a spectacular show of callous indifference when it voted down a bill to provide limited assistance to citizens at risk for losing their homes.  The final vote was 45 in favor, 51 opposed to Senator Richard Durbin's (D-IL) mortgage assistance bill.  The original version of the bill covered some but not all of those requiring assistance.  The final version was even more restricted.  It applied to only homeowners currently in foreclosure as a result of actions prior to the start of 2009.

SOURCE: BlackBoxVoting.ORG

One of the nation's leading election integrity watchdogs, John Gideon, 62, passed away Monday April 27. Gideon was editor of the very widely distributed "Daily Voting News," featured on Bradblog. Together with Ellen Theisen, he co-founded the prominent election integrity Web site VotersUnite.org. In the early days of Black Box Voting, John Gideon played an important role by corresponding with each and every new member in our forums. He also helped assist VerifiedVoting.org when it was a fledgling organization.

He succumbed rather suddenly to bacterial meningitis. He passed away with his family by his side.

John Gideon earned a reputation for painstaking accuracy. He developed a breadth of knowledge about certification processes and all major voting machines. Yet more impressive (for some of us middle-aged folk), he had an amazing ability to remember details whenever needed, synthesizing knowledge from thousands of articles, research papers and visits.

SOURCE: BlackBoxVoting.ORG

Bev Harris: Faulty results from the statewide voter list caused inappropriate purge letters to be sent out to many Wyoming voters. More than 13 percent of all Goshen County voters were about to be purged from the list because the computer said they didn't vote, though in many cases, they had voted. Further review of this incident shows this was a statewide issue, not limited to Goshen County.

These automatic purges (if voters don't respond and protest) add a burden for voters to keep themselves on the list if they opt not to vote in a federal election. But in Wyoming, this extra burden was also imposed -- incorrectly -- on voters that DID vote.

It's important to find out more about the subset of voters affected by this "glitch." The computer identified them in some way that caused the inaccurate pre-purge letters to be sent to certain voters. What was the selection criteria that caused this "glitch"? Where they lived, what party they were affiliated with, how they choose to vote (ie. absentee or polling place), how old they were?

Greetings:

This is the twelfth edition of the New Hampshire Progressive Newsletter for 2009.

In this issue:

Item 1: The NH House passes a difficult budget that makes many cuts, increases some existing taxes, and proposes three new taxes on capital gains, large estates, and gambling winnings. Predictably, Republicans have criticized it as bloated, but the increase in spending of state revenue is just 3%, which is probably less than expected inflation and population growth. (The overall budget increase is higher, but that is because the overall budget includes one-time stimulus money from the federal government.) Also predictably, the critics have not said where they would make additional cuts.

Item 2: New earmark rules in Washington mean that members of Congress and the Senate must post their requested earmarks on their web sites. Earmarks will be limited to an amount one-half of the earmarks passed in 2006.

If you've ever wondered what it would look like if a state attorney general's office were to actually investigate a voting machine tampering incident, here's an up front an personal report on just that. This breaking report from Jim March, a founding member of the board of directors for Black Box Voting, reveals a lot. You may post comments here: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/80002.html

by Jim March

RTA ELECTION FRAUD INVESTIGATION SITUATION REPORT
aka: The Official Chronicles Of The Bored To Tears

The total hand count of what are alleged to be the 2006 Pima County Regional Transportation Authority bond measure ballots are being counted right now in Maricopa County, Arizona. Eight teams of three people each (all Maricopa Elections Division employees) are doing the "sort and stack" method to pile ballots into three piles for each question.

Greetings:

This is the eleventh edition of the New Hampshire Progressive Newsletter for 2009.

In this issue:

Item 1: Probably no one is happy with the proposed State budget that has been prepared by the House Finance Committee. Jobs and programs are being cut, and even with those cuts, several tax increases are part of the plan (cigarettes, gas and the rooms and meals tax). The plan also includes two new taxes: a capital gains tax and a return of the estate tax. I spoke with a Republican the other day, and he said the two new taxes would be terrible for the NH economy. He thought the property tax would be a better way to raise the needed funds. Someone please explain to me why some people think that a progressive tax is bad for the economy, while regressive taxes are good for the economy?

Item 2: A good summary of the budget from AP

Item 3: Op-ed advocating for the estate tax, written by a former state rep who apparently is well off.

This is the tenth edition of the New Hampshire Progressive Newsletter for 2009.

In this issue:

It was a busy week in the legislature last week! So as not to make this newsletter too long, I have excerpted the first three articles. Those wanting to read the whole article can click on the link.

Item 1: NH House approves medical marijuana

Item 2: NH House votes to repeal the death penalty. The Governor promises to veto the bill is if it passes the Senate.

Item 3: NH House votes for gay marriage

Item 4: NH Senate approves a constitutional amendment to make the governor's term four years, which makes great sense. No one political risks are taken in a election year. Two-year terms is too short for the executive to get a program into place before going back to the voters.

Item 5: The results of other bills before the NH House: ban texting while driving, no to abortion limits, reduce the interest rate on overdue taxes.

Tell NH Congressional reps Shea Porter and Hodes to NOT support the Holt "Voter Confidence" bill.

Congressman Rush Holt (D-NJ) is getting ready to introduce his 2009 electronic voting bill. Interested readers can review the 65-page proposal here. Holt has been trying for several years to pass one version or another of this bill.

The federal Voting Rights Act requires observable vote counting. Many state constitutions demand a public voting system with public vote counts. The Holt Bill mandates computerized voting systems, and enforces concealed vote counting.

Concealed vote counting violates our voting rights.

The Holt Bill extends the federally sponsored 2002 e-voting Ponzi scheme, when Congress, through the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), invested $4 billion taxpayer dollars into a fraudulent e-voting promise, causing the states to scoop up computerized voting machines and voting registration systems that turned out to be as fraud-friendly as the firm of Madoff Investment Securities.

Dear Friends of Open Voting:

What if we create a structure for administering elections that puts the President of the United States in charge of the voting system? Would that be a good idea? What if we put in place a certification process that says it is okay to put a delete button on electronic audit logs, and allows systems that can easily lose whole stacks of ballots, "accidentally"? Clearly, these things would be insane to do. However, these are, in fact, part of the "improvements" put in place after the election fiasco in 2000! These bugs are now considered features.

In case you are not aware of it, the Help America Vote Act of 2002 created the Election Assistance Commission (EAC). Unlike other commissions where the commissioners can only be removed by well-documented procedures, this one exists purely at the pleasure of the President of the United States. Secret voting software and secret testing procedures are enshrined and protected by the EAC.

The delete features in the Diebold system were the subject of a hearing last week at the Callifornia Secretary of State's office 1. The system was certified in 2004 and remains certified and in use today. How many audit logs and how many ballots have been deleted by this system? Who knows. About 200 ballots were discovered -- after the election totals had been officially certified -- to have been deleted The problem in Humboldt County was discovered using an open source audit tool written by Mich Trachtenberg -- a hero of the open source voting movement.