Accurate vote counts shouldn't be so hard

People have voted on slips of paper -- or rocks or some other tangible, countable resource -- since the beginning of civilization.

So, in 2008, why is it so daunting for public officials who can't get their acts together on electronic machines to print up some ballots and have us all vote by putting our hand to pen to paper? Have you ever seen anyone other than for-profit newspapers and broadcast stations say they care whether the results are announced an hour after the polls close or a day afterward?

Today's Asbury Park Press has this must-read editorial: "Will the winner be the winner?"

Who is this Nina Mitchell Wells and how did she become the all-powerful N.J. secretary of state that gets to pull the levers behind the curtain in Oz?

Can't make this stuff up

Last week we learned Princeton experts aren't good enough to look at the software Sequoia uses to count my vote in Ocean County. Sequoia threatened to sue Princeton if they touch it.

Bradblog now is reporting Sequoia has the solution.

This guy Mike Gibbons of Kwaidan Consulting, whose quest in life is to find a "well endowed blonde nymphomaniac ... that likes to be under the influence of Jim Beam whiskey in a dimly lit room at least 3 times a week" and shares his curiosity about the fundamental differences between Kierkegaard and Right Guard (or maybe InfraGard?), is the one and only trustworthy "expert" the voting machine company will trust to look at its product -- independently, of course. Here he shows himself in an undated grip-and-grin with Poppy Bush.

He and his friend Starbuck (his only Myspace friend, so sad) are surely more trustworthy than those clowns at Princeton University. Geez! That's Starbuck in the photo. Hotter than Gibbons, no?

Because, after all, Gibbons hails from Sugar Land, Texas, the same Houston suburban where disgraced former Rep. "Hot Tub" Tom Delay made a name for himself as a pest exterminator, literally.

Kwaidan Consulting's address, 2510 Stephens Grant Drive in Sugar Land, is the address Raymond Michael Gibbons signed on a Securities Exchange Commission filing for Suntron Corp. in 2001 as an employee of K*TEC Electronics Corp. of Sugar Land and Kent Electronics Corp. of Houston. Gibbons is listed as Suntron's executive vice president for new business development.

Gibbons created Kwaidan in March 2005 and listed Sanjuro Corp. of Dallas as its general partner. Texas Secretary of State records show Sanjuro ceased to exist as part of a tax forfeiture in February 2007. Now, what enterprise seems more stable for the public to expect accountability for its report on our county voting machines: Princeton University or Kwaidan Consulting, LLC, LLP? (cough cough)

I have to say, his interest in Schroedinger’s cat, referring to the quantum physics genius who won the Nobel, seemed kind of creepy because of 1) the analogy between him inspecting these black boxes and the Schroedinger’s cat paradox and 2) the woman who filed a lawsuit claiming George W. Bush raped her was Margie Schoedinger (all but one ‘r’) of (cue the “Twighlight Zone” music) of Sugar Land, Texas.

Back in the box

Rep. Rush Holt's, D-N.J., flawed voter integrity bill is back to committee for rewrite. Let's hope it comes out fixed this time.

Update July 21: The Star-Ledger is reporting NJIT found 33 flaws in three printer models expected to be used next time around under a new state law designed to ensure accuracy of electronic voting machines across New Jersey. The experts say these flaws could compromise voter privacy and election security.

Meanwhile, Bradblog found out the disabilities "advocate" who's a big proponent of the corruptable DRE-only machines was paid $26,000 last year by the DRE companies that want us to just shut up and let them tell us how we voted ... and we'll be expected to believe them, for no good reason.

What the hell is the matter with Rep. Rush Holt?

In an interview just now with Richard Green on the Clout show on Air America Radio, our congressman tried to defend his now-indefensibly bad electronic-vote protection bill. He kept saying, "Voters can feel safe now with this bill," HR 811.

No, we can't feel safe with this bill. Anyone who thinks we'll feel safe just because Holt keeps parroting that senseless line is wrong!

Holt seems like a brick wall, incapable of listening to anyone on the black box voting issue. He says Rep. Dennis Kucinich supports this bill; the Democratic presidential candidate yanked his support weeks ago because the bill is so bad.

We, the voters, and the nonpartisan experts who've studied this are in virtual unanimous agreement the bill stinks after the meddling amendments. I'd rather see no bill than one that gives false security leading up to the crucial November 2008 presidential election.

Holt's bill is unacceptable. There's no reason to think random recounts of buggered black boxes will produce anything but buggered confirmations.

This bill at the onset was promised to ensure paper ballots. Scrutiny showed Holt didn't understand that printouts of what the machines read are not confirmation from voters that the machine recorded their votes accurately. We all expected that to be corrected in committee, not eroded even further with garbage such as sanctions of DREs.

I urge my readers to really study this, because this is the most essential issue now to our democracy. Our federal government is presently an anarchy, any way you slice it. We must correct that in 2008, once and for all. We can't do that if our votes aren't counted. The tabulating machines can be hacked in any number of ways, including as demonstrated by a monkey in a matter of a minute or so, literally, and by wi-fi diddling from anywhere within a quarter-mile radius of a poll machine.

How can we get through so Holt "can hear us now"? I want to see a piece of paper I must confirm before it goes into a secured paper ballot box that will be counted in any challenge of the count, not random recounts the meaningless bill promises.

Doin' the voter fraud shuffle

I did a double-take on Monica Goodling's testimony in Congress on Gonzogate Thursday.

"I believe the deputy (Paul McNulty) was not fully candid about his knowledge of White House involvement in the replacement decision, failed to disclose that he had some knowledge of the White House's interest in selecting Tim Griffin (former RNC research director) as the interim U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Arkansas, inaccurately described the department's internal assessment of the Parsky commission, and failed to disclose that he had some knowledge of allegations that Tim Griffin had been involved in vote caging during his work on the president's 2004 campaign."

I was shocked no one on the House Judiciary Committee seemed to ask her anything about Griffin "caging." Caging is illegal. It's a.k.a. voter suppression, preventing targeted groups, usually black people, from voting. Caging was one of the tricks the Republican National Committee used in both 2000 and 2004 to succeed in overturning the true elections of Al Gore and John Kerry for president. Caging is reportedly the reason the White House snuck a clause into the Patriot Act renewal to bypass Senate confirmation on U.S. attorneys, because they couldn't risk Griffin being asked about his '04 caging.

BBC reporter Greg Palast, as always was on top of this, has his well-written report at Bradblog. Lawyers at Balkinization have a good post, too. The day after: Palast blasts both barrels at a troll making Internet mileage criticizing his research.

Griffin’s sending this email to Goodling while he’s a sitting US prosecutor. How dumb can you get? This dumb: He adds, “The Republican State Parties wanted to show that thousands of fraudulent voter registrations had been completed. They ultimately did.”

Oh, no they didn’t. And that brings us full circle: to the prosecutor firings. None of the honest US Attorneys found a single “fraudulent voter” in the hundreds of thousands that were challenged as a result of ‘caging.’

See, what Griffin's caging crew "found" was that they prevented registered voters -- targting black populations -- from voting, which does not mean those votes wouldn't have been valid. None of those who didn't vote, or whose vote is among more than 100,000 in Ohio alone still sitting uncounted from the '04 presidential election, has been proved to be an illegal vote, which is what "voter fraud" would be. Indeed, the New York Times has reported that despite the DOJ's 2002 attorney training specifically to nail "voter fraud," virtually no voter fraud was found, try as they might.

Griffin's activities described in his own emails should have him now sitting charged with federal felonies, but instead he's sitting as Arkansas' top federal law enforcement official. This is just nuts, and evidence neither party in Washington is representing "we the people." If corporate sugar daddies could be denied a vote, we'd see fists up.

Flashback to our post on New Jersey "voter fraud."

Curious that New Jersey U.S. Attorney Chris Christie was on the firing list from January to November 2006. In September 2005, then-candidate Assemblywoman Jennifer Beck did Rove's dirty work crying Democratic foul on the enigmatic "voter fraud" claim. It's no wonder Christie was put on the firing list in January 2006. It's not really hard to speculate what got him off the list in November, either, with that political ploy in what appears -- at least until he comes up with an indictment and conviction in this now stale case -- to be abuse of his power to undermine now-Sen. Bob Menendez's campaign.
It all seems so strategic, doesn't it?

Think about it: If Christie's "Menendez under federal investigation" stunt had worked, Republicans would have the majority in the Senate today and would control every piece of legislation in committee. This wouldn't be investigated in a Sen. Arlen Specter's Senate Judiciary Committee.

Extra credit: Are they going to steal the '08 election? They already did, Palast says.