McPherson's written Q & A with rules committee

[yurbud]

In the California forum:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=141x8952

[JunkYardDogg]

1. The questions were totally scripted-Like a Bush Press Conference

I was looking for Jeff Ganno on the Committee
There were little or no questions about Electronic Election Protection issues
He gave a somewhat vague answer to HB1438 compliance, nothing was mentioned about the Jan 21, 2005 Standards, see:
http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/ks_dre_papers/avvpat_sta...
which are NOT in the Election Code
nothing was said about Grandfather clauses,
nothing was said about post ponding SB1438 Compliance
it was spoonfed questions
No mention of Diebold's Fraudulent Business practices in sales and misrepresentation of uncertified Equipment in California.
McPherson seems to be extremely impressed by Bradley Clark, Alameda County RoV who used UNCERTIFIED Software in 2 Elections and when asked about it- his reply was that it was just a matter of shuffling papers. McPherson plans on giving this guy a lot of power within the SoS. Clark has gotta go.
Good Job
YurBud

[CAcyclist]

2. Something else I found on Shelley and his accusers

http://www.lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=1652&IssueNum=88

Take Dawn Mehlhaff, who worked on voter outreach and elections management before leaving last spring. She claims she was given direct instructions to use office funds and resources to work on Shelley’s personal campaign fundraising efforts – something her superiors have vehemently denied. I have no reason to doubt Mehlhaff’s good faith in making this allegation. But one should not overlook the fact that she showed considerable accommodation toward the most troublesome of the voting machine vendors, Diebold Election Systems, telling a public meeting in October 2003 that Diebold’s new TS-x touchscreen system had been certified for use when in fact it had not – a confusion that persisted right up to the March 2004 primary when Diebold machinery throughout California turned out to have been running on uncertified, and therefore illegal, software.

[Helga Scow Stern]

3. Excellent find.

Looks pretty suspicious.

Good Shelley coverage:

Shelley’s actions proved influential beyond state borders: Nevada introduced a paper trail in time for November, and many other states either passed their own legislation or initiated full-scale investigations. Largely because of Shelley’s actions, the profitability of Diebold’s election equipment subsidiary went into freefall, and the British owners of Diebold’s rival Sequoia Pacific started making noises about selling.

Shelley not only upset the plans of county registrars like McCormack, who had hoped to throw $100 million at a Diebold touchscreen system but was forced to put her plans on hold (for which L.A. County taxpayers should be inordinately grateful, especially since the incomparably cheaper InkaVote optical scan system appears to work just fine). He also put a wrench in the chummy, back-scratching relationship which had previously existed between the Secretary of State’s office and the voting machine manufacturers. Shelley’s predecessor, Bill Jones, took up a consultancy with Sequoia almost as soon as he left office, and two of his subordinates accepted full-time jobs with the same company. Since then, however, the revolving door has clanged shut.

It is almost impossible to overstate the shock triggered by this no-nonsense attitude in Sacramento. It is also hard to believe this did not have something to do with the rapidity with which Shelley’s friends and associates deserted him. If you are going to shake as many trees as Shelley did, it’s a good idea to keep your personal and professional ethics beyond reproach. Clearly, he was either too naïve or too arrogant to do that. And so his humiliation has been breathtaking in scope. After he launched a legal defense fund last November to offset a $100,000 mortgage he took out on his house, he received precisely one donation, for a drop-in-the-bucket $250, from one of his closest aides. Everyone else treated him like he had leprosy. Even the HAVA-created Election Assistance Commission in Washington felt obliged to jump on the investigate-Shelley bandwagon, even though it is woefully underfunded and does not yet have an inspector general to do the investigating.



Oh, and I love the title:

WHEN REGISTRARS ATTACK!

[Einsteinia]

5. McCormack wants to stick with Inkavote

This is what I'm told. Does anyone know if she's getting royalties for her stint at Inkavote.

[Einsteinia]

6. "Washington's EAC"??? The EAC is dominated by the

GOP and is working against us with these deadlines. Everyone needs to see what the EAC is doing--they are little understood--yet very powerful. We're talking millions of HAVA $$$$ to be funneled somewhere in short order--with their guidance.

[Helga Scow Stern]

11. The EAC is not at all trustworthy.

They are Republican dominated, even though Hillman has the "appearance" of being a Dem. She hangs out with Conny McCormack.

Just their actions wrt Shelley vs Blackwell proves their intention. But what can we do?

Alerting the Assembly members who seemed interested might be a start.

[Helga Scow Stern]

12. Wilms has said that her husband had something to do with its invention,

but I don't know anymore about it.

Plus, don't they use GEMS tabulators, which are Diebold, and could be used for mega-cheating?

If the interest is in stealing elections, the way it is done may not matter so much. Conny has been such a protector of Diebold, leading the charge for the Diebold counties to sue Shelley, etc., that she may be allowed to keep her preferred software.

EAC was with her both on recall election night, and on November 2, 2004.

[JunkYardDogg]

14. Hubby told somebody that he came up with the idea for InkaVote

The Inka Vote Part is only a $3 Million Dollar deal,
the Opti-cal Scanners and Tabulators are the bigger money.
Inka Vote is owned by a company on No. San Diego County, with 3 layers of companies, all in the same place.

The parent company makes betting equipment for Horse Race tracks.
Not too sure right now which scanners & Tabulators they use,
I have to look it up on SoS site

[yurbud]

13. Anyone in Senate or Assembly working on closing the revolving door?

McCormack shouldn't be able to go from public sector to contractor she worked with and back.

It should be a relatively simple legislative job to say that you can't work for anyone you dealt with as a contractor when you leave the public sector or any of their parent corporations.

[JunkYardDogg]

15. McCormack never worked for Diebold

She began her illustrious career in Dallas, Texas, in the 1980's, where there was a questionable election she ran, in which during the counting, the power went off, and upon its return, lo and behold, the vote count went from the Dem's favor to the Repug's favor.
It was 1st investigated by the County DA, who did not have the manpower to investigate it properly, then it went to the State Attorney General, who couldn't find anything.

http://www.itl.nist.gov/lab/specpubs/500-158.htm

TEXAS INVESTIGATES VOTE DISCREPANCIES
Elections in Dallas, state at issue

By Chris Kelley The Dallas Morning News (DAL) + _____
Published September 23, 1986
"If there is a problem, it's a computer problem,' Mrs. McDaniel said.
Terry Elkins, who managed Goldblatt's bid against Taylor, said Monday night that she has given state officials 18 months of research documenting the discrepancies. Chief among the discrepancies, she said, is a claim that there were more votes cast than there were voters' signatures.
"The allegation is that the computer used to count the votes was given new instructions after it calculated that Max Goldblatt was leading Starke Taylor by 400 votes,' Ms. Elkins said. "What happened in that computer on April 6, 1985 -- that is the focus of the attorney general's investigation..."
"Dallas County Election Administrator Conny McCormack defended the county's election system, saying the votes for each candidate had been counted correctly. The city of Dallas contracts with the county to conduct the city's elections. "
She has some history of involvement in Texas election fiascos.

From:
http://www.geocities.com/stoutdem/z0209archive.html

“…She presided over the 1982 ballot debacle in Dallas County, where amidst the long recounts (I was there on the recount committee) suddenly extra ballots turned up on a desk in her offices. She then went to Orange County, California, and presided over a disaster of a Congressional election that was fought out in courts and Congress for years. –Stoutdem”



As the Dallas County Elections Administrator, she also presided over the disputed 1985 Dallas election.
http://www.ecotalk.org/SaltmanIrregularitiesList.htm

and an excerpt from:
http://www.dallasobserver.com/issues/2000-02-10/news/sc...

“Our own municipal history offers an instructive case in point: In 1985, Pleasant Grove hardware-store owner and perennial gadfly Max Goldblatt, who was then 74 years old, came within fewer than 500 votes, or a tenth of a percentage point of the overall vote, of forcing A. Starke Taylor, the Citizens Council candidate for mayor, into a runoff."

"Goldblatt was an old, funny-looking, not terribly well-spoken guy who raised pathetic money to run against a very smooth, well-known, lavishly funded, silver-haired golf-cart guy. But Dallas people thought Max Goldblatt was clean, and they stormed the polls to vote for him."
"In 1988, the Federal Institute for Computer Sciences and Technology published a report on computerized voting in which the 1985 Goldblatt-Taylor race in Dallas was described in some detail. The report explained how Goldblatt actually had been winning on election night when suddenly the vote-counting computer in Dallas experienced an unexplained power failure. When the power came back on, Starke Taylor had moved mysteriously ahead during the downtime. It should have been impossible for the computer to change its mind while it didn't have any electricity."

"Subsequent re-counts produced even stranger results, according to the report. When the Texas Legislature tried to investigate the Goldblatt election, Dallas officials reported that all of the ballots had been prematurely destroyed. The Goldblatt election was an important factor in laws passed later by the Legislature requiring tighter security measures for ballots and voting equipment.”

After Dallas, Mc Cormack went to San Diego, where she was RoV there.
I could not find any info on her there.
I do not think that she was ever O.C. RoV.

[Einsteinia]

4. Shelley never misused HAVA millions--here's the whole story

First, here’s a diary I wrote for the Daily Kos that shows what instigated the Shelley’s “Ken Star” treatment:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/12/18/14525/599

I also attended the audit hearing of Shelley and despite the headlines in the papers that kept reading, “SHELLEY MISUSED HAVA MILLIONS. . .” that was never true--and it was purposefully misleading. The truth was there are millions of HAVA dollars and Shelley misused maybe $2,000, but more likely, under $1,000. Not a catchy headline, but absolutely true.

I suggest that everyone read the audit report where you’ll see what they were really angry about--he refused to funnel $35M of HAVA funds into republican beholden e-vendors. This issue of not spending money on time was the thrust of the hearing. The GOP’s EAC (the protocol and guidelines commission implementing how HAVA is interpreted) is trying to force us all into a use it--the HAVA millions (before we have good, secure, ceritifed options) or lose it. There is a push to make us all a “Georgia.” Here’s what I’m talking about:

Doug Chapin of Electionline.org (a non-profit group that compares how various states are implementing the HAVA mandate) spoke at the Audit Hearing on January 10, 2005.  He said that the EAC (the "Election Advisory Commission") was behind schedule in providing its mandated protocols to provide Secretaries of State with clear guidelines on how to navigate the complexities of the new HAVA rules.  Without this clear direction, Mr. Chapin said there were states, such as Georgia, that he characterized as "jaywalkers" who went out immediately and spent millions of dollars worth on paperless e-voting equipment that is now not acceptable.  On the other extreme of the spectrum, New York, as of January 10, 2005, had adopted a "wait and see" position and had spent absolutely nothing.  Chapin said that California, in terms of spending its HAVA money, was somewhere in the middle of these two extremes.  Instead of castigating Shelley for his restraint, shouldn't we be commending  his discretion by not wasting OUR federal funds?

The actual audit reports findings can be found here, under “Secretary of State:”  http://www.bsa.ca.gov/bsa/reports/q_z.html

Here’s my summary of the findings:

-He had a sloppy office (no wonder when you’re trying to run an operation with no less than 5 government entities investigating you)

-He used $661,000 for legal fees to extricate California from contracts with Diebold. (No one questioned the amount or that the work was done--instead they quibbled over the fact that when you have an amount over $500,000 you need to get another bureaucratic form filled out.

--After auditing the office for an entire year, it was discovered that two outside contractor staff had tried to comply with the HAVA mandate to do outreach by attending a few democrats only events AND a few of republican dominated business roundtables. Yep, you’ve got it--two democrat only events. I was told by a Shelley staff that the money amount on this time sheets was definitely under $2,000 and likely under $1,000. Yep, Shelley misused our HAVA MILLIONS!

--Somewhere along the way, someone used HAVA outreach money to write a speech or two for Shelley. (Since part of Shelley’s job was outreach and public education on new laws about provisional ballots--it would seem HAVA could pick up the tab for this; and if not, it would seem to me to be a fairly minor infraction.)

After attending this long hearing I wondered what the Sacramento Bee was going to say this time, when there was nothing to blast Shelley about, but I knew they’d find a way to frame in in the most negative light, but what, what? The next morning I couldn’t wait to get the San Francisco Chronicle and the Sacramento Bee, and I wasn’t disappointed:

SHELLEY IS A NO SHOW!

Well, if you had gone to the hearing you would have known that Shelley had never been specifically invited, though his presence would have been appreciated. No doubt he didn’t want to go to this inquisition if he didn’t have to--he knew they were going for blood. So, he had sent his HAVA specialist, the SoS’s civil servant attorney Tony Miller. Tony Miller said that it was he who actually knew all the specific nuts and bolts about the complexities of the SoS’s HAVA compliance that they were seeking, but that Shelley did not. BTW, the auditors did not require anyone to speak under oath, except Tony Miller.

I just called the auditor’s office for old time’s sake to confirm my interpretation of the events and I was told I was correct. I was told that the auditor’s final conclusion was at worst, an appearance of impropriety.

[Einsteinia]

7. UPDATE: SF Chronicle toda,y 4/8/05, basically

exonerated Shelley of the charges of money laundering with Julie Lee. The only standing issue is that pesky $2,000 misdemeanor charge of accepting a contribution in his office. (Something tells me this is a commonly overlooked law.)

So the 7 entities investigating him have ALL come up with something equivalent to Tom DeLay blowing his nose. Interesting, the SF Chronicle has a summary table of all the 7 entities investigating him and the only one that comes up with anything is again this bogus "SHELLEY MISUED HAVA MILIIONS. . . ." A purposefully totally incorrect statement.

Interestingly, Attorney General Lockyer says he still might pursue him on the $2,000 misdemeanor charge.

& ABOUT THE McPHERSON TESTIMONY-- You'll notice that he is trying to lay the foundation to spend that $180M HAVA millions on republican beholden slot machines RIGHT AWAY, because for these suspicious reasons:

1) The EAC says he has to. (Well, the EAC is controlled by the GOP who are trying to get us to buy these slot machines right away--before someone comes up with an alternative--OR--we'll lose the funds. This is a false dichotomy. (Interestingly, in the same breath elesewhere they're trying to say we don't have enough money or time to comply with the new paper requirements.)

2) We must help disabled & non-English speakers. (Well, as a post yesterday on the DU showed, Diebold gave $1M to the blind. Isn't it interesting that the blind are leading the charge that they must have e-voting right away. I say these disenfranchised are better off taking a trusted friend into the poll booth than trust these GOP slot machines. Let's just say I'm dubious about this new found GOP concern for the disenfranchised. )

[Helga Scow Stern]

9. So we were right about those charges being phony.

And that makes it all the more worrisome that they wanted a Republican SoS. Is that so they can steal more elections? Is that your take?

[Einsteinia]

16. Uh, YES! CA is going Red--& I don't mean communism

The worst case scenario going on here is this:

1) Recall of Gray Davis soon after he's been elected. The first thing Schwarzenegger does as Gov. is dismiss Enron lawsuits. (Also, it is well documented he met with them before running for office.)

2) Shelley takes a maverick position and implements paper trails and decertifies an entire line of Diebold products--also he refuses to funnel $35M into republican beholden e-voting vendors. Then, soon thereafter he is investigated by SEVEN government entities. (Hmmmm, how many are investigating super evil Tom DeLay?) After Shelley's out, it turns out. . . well. . .he really didn't do anything all that terrible.

3) McPherson, Mr. Nice guy republican gets passed the CA Senate, then announces his team packed full of pirates--people with conflicts-of-interest with decisions to be made in the SoS's office in the coming year.

The SoS is our State's election "clean roon" that now houses the foxes that will determine if Shcwarzenegger has enough petition signatures to get his special election--these are the same folks who raised $70M for that effort. Also, soon he will be forced by the GOP EAC to spend $180M and isn't it handy that his Transition Team has people who are not computer scientists who know about software shenanigans, but e-voting vendor people.

4) Call me a conspiracist, but there does seem to be a logical flow to these actions that appear to be an old fashioned power grab to turn out State red by hook or crook.

[yurbud]

10. great post--any idea why dems folded then?

[Einsteinia]

17. I have a strong opinion as to why they folded--

I'm writing it up and will post it tomorrow. I've been fuming all week to write about it, but I realize I'm not going to calm down. Here's a hint: Nunez got into office as the terminator of the Terminator, but he basically forced the Assembly to fall into line lest they give the media a reason to tar and feather them as obstructionists--and further give Schwarzenegger another reason for his special election--featuring redistricitng as the entree.

Nunez: If you don't know how to play chess--get out of politics. You don't give up your best player to assure clean elections in CA without a fight!

There's more. . . .

[Helga Scow Stern]

18. Can't wait to see it!!!

I hope you will post it here.

[nicknameless]

20. Don’t forget!

The person overseeing California’s use of the HAVA funds is CA’s Finance Director, Donna Aduoin (Republican) -- A WOMAN WHO WAS JEB BUSH’S *GIFT* FROM FLORIDA!!!

Here is a DU thread about this from 2004:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=836579

[JunkYardDogg]

8. Hearing: McPherson was spoonfed Gannon Questions

The Repugs fed him sugar coated questions about spending HAVA money and he told them was going to print all the Pamphlets he could and get E-Voting Equipment for Everybody
No mention that he would not allow Grandfathering nor was there ANY mention of compliance to the Jan 21, 2005 AVVPAT Standards
They subtly emphasized that he would do and spend money on everything that Shelley didn't.- BFD
McPherson EMPHASIZED that he was infinitely more concerned with placating Registrar of Voters and that he was going to give them anything that they wanted.
The demands of the RoV's were more important than the Sanctity of the Vote of American Citizens to this guy.
I got the feeling in that Room that every one of those Repugs knew that the Machines would Screw us
The hearing was ALL about the Machines
and not about Voting Integrity
And McPherson is putting Bradley Clark, who has used UNCERTIFIED software in 2 Elections into an Operational Manager's Position in the SoS.
Bradley Clark has proved and demonstrated that he is incapable of
doing due diligence in the application and adherence to any form of Election Integrity whatsoever.
This is Upward Failure.
McPherson's Right Hand Man in the SoS is a man who has exhibited no
respect whatsoever for any level of Election Integrity.

[Helga Scow Stern]

19. Kick for Einsteinia's report.