Election Integrity has a new professional web designer, Jeff Bastan of Web City Pages, and we are soliciting your design ideas, material and involvement. We would especially value:

The alternative is to act together as a community, develop collective expertise and work proactively.

Few of us in this movement like the idea of corporations telling us what to do. But any alternative requires that we intelligently and collectively tell ourselves what to do, i.e., that we self-organize. Unfortunately, few of us even recognize or understand this need, let alone develop the individual and collective abilities to do it. The US has become a corporate subsidiary largely by default; no serious organizational alternative exists.

Virtually everyone in this movement is bright and independent. That's what has enabled you to see through the haze of public proclamation. But few effectively utilize their abilities toward productive public ends.

To begin to move towards self-organization, to begin to actually provide an alternative to corporate control rather than simply lament it, requires that each of us seriously evaluate both the larger needs and what we ourselves can do individually. If you want to contribute money or resources, that's wonderful; we sorely need it and gratefully welcome it. But if you want to (also) contribute intellectually, you need to contribute specifically. What specifically will you take the time to learn well and communicate well? These possibilities are endless, but here are a few examples:

Generally a niche emerges and changes over time, so don't worry about trying to nail it from the onset. Think about what you've already been paying attention to, or how it might relate to a professional or personal interest. Or simply begin by writing a single blog, designing a webpage, or putting together a list of materials.

Democracy in America really does depend on you. And on working together effectively.

To begin, reply below or send a private message to me.

This is a breathtakingly tepid warning from the NYTimes, but they seem to be breaking new ground in acknowledging that the "public rightly mistrusts" this"industry," and citing the "numerous studies" re.vulnerability. Perhaps a few LTEs will help them take that next dreaded babystep and actually call for a remedy. Their view of ES&S and Diebold in"robust competition" is a real knee-slapper, but try to keep astraight face everyone. Letters@nytimes.com(150 words or less).

Thanks all--Jonathan Simon (EDA)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/26/opinion/26fri3.html?th&emc=th

The massive Operation Aurora cyber attack last month, apparently launched from command and control server computers in Taiwan, is part of a larger and sustained effort that has been stealing data for years.… Public details about the cyber attack on major corporations in the United States are scanty as the companies try to assess the damage.

The Department of Defense held a conference with top computer security experts last week in St. Louis, Missouri to discuss the problem. One of the participants, Mandiant, a security consulting firm, has released a report on its findings. … “The scale, operation and logistics of conducting these attacks--against the government, commercial and private sectors--indicates they are state-sponsored. The Chinese government may authorize this activity, but there is no way to determine the extent of its involvement. Nonetheless, we have been able to correlate almost every APT [Advanced Persistent Threat] intrusion we have investigated to current events within China.”

I got a very bad computer virus this week, even with all my protection. My computer person says they are happening everywhere. I have never had a virus in all my years on computer  I am writing to tell you, if you don't already know, that you should not be using Internet Explorer, except in those few cases where you have to.

49 years ago today, American's greatest war hero, commander of the allied forces in the worst war in history, and a two-term Republican president chose in his final message to the world from public office to warn of two threats: a new military-industrial complex and the new scientific-technological elite.

In his farewell address President Dwight D. Eisenhower observed the creation of a new armaments industry and its conjunction with a new immense military establishment that bore "little relation to that known of any of my predecessors in peacetime, or, indeed, by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.” He warns:

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. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Much like the Oceania of George Orwell’s novel 1984, the US has ever since been on a perpertual war economy. (Eisenhower's speech was, in no small measure a rejoinder to Democrat JFK's assertion of a “missile gap.”) For decades, Communism and the Soviet Union remained a useful, through increasingly implausable, threat to justify ever-increasing military budgets. Even after the USSR imploded, military budgets under new Democrat, Clinton, continued ever upwards. And now, again we have a Democrat mandated with “change,” yet America, without enemies among the major nations of the world, will for the first time in history spend more than one trillion dollars on military expenses this year, considerably more than the entire rest of the world combined.

Eisenhower's warning of the military industrial complex is not generally well known. In twenty two years of formal education, I never heard mention of it. But at least the term permeates the general American conciousness. In contrast, there is virtually no awareness of the second threat, that

… in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

With regard to elections, both of these concerns have been borne out beyond Ike’s wildest nightmares:

• Voters now must place absolute faith in "the man behind the curtain" to cast and count their ballots in accord with their intention. The new election industry is now almost completely technologized, and election industry programmers and CEOs are the wizards reporting the bytes. Ordinary citizens (i.e., everyone else) cannot peak behind the curtains even when the numbers are patently ludicrous (e.g., Ohio 2004, Ohio 2005, Sarasota 2006, New Hampshire 2008, etc...)
  

• The military industrial complex now not only influences elections with vast sums of money, but has surreptitiously – bizarrely – become deeply embedded in in voting processes and legislation, lobbying to ensure further election technologization (and thereby these trillion dollar annual budgets).

The 50 year anniversary of this speech may be our last best chance to get Ike's warning out, to take a first step toward creating an alert and knowledgeable citizenry. Any thoughts on how we might reach out to the public? Dramatize his prophecies with regards to elections? Ideas most welcome. For now, read, listen to, or view the speech.

Federal Court Lawsuit Settlement Brings Ohio Into Compliance with National Voter Registration Act; Hundreds of Thousands of Low-Income Ohioans to Benefit

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: November 30, 2009

Contacts: Tim Rusch, Demos, (212) 389-1407, trusch@demos.org
Stacie B. Royster, Lawyers' Committee, (202) 662-8317, sroyster@lawyerscommittee.org
Amy Teitelman, Ohio ACORN, (513) 257-9813, ateitelman@acorn.org
Michael McDunnah, Project Vote, (202) 905-1397, mmcdunnah@projectvote.org
 
Cleveland, OH--Low-income Ohio citizens will be ensured access to voter registration at Ohio public assistance offices as a result of a settlement agreement submitted to Federal District Court Judge Patricia A. Gaughan over this past holiday weekend.  
 
The settlement successfully resolves a three-year old lawsuit filed against the Ohio Secretary of State (SOS) and the Director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services (ODJFS) in September 2006 by Lorain resident Carrie Harkless, Cleveland resident Tameca Mardis and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) charging widespread violations of the federal National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). Section 7 of the NVRA requires public assistance agencies to provide voter registration opportunities to their clients.
 
Extensive pre-suit investigation and discovery in the case revealed that many of Ohio's county public assistance offices were ignoring their responsibilities to provide voter registration to their low-income clients. Currently, only 71 percent of low-income Ohioans are registered to vote compared to 90 percent of affluent Ohioans.
 
Before the lawsuit, there was no state official overseeing the state's compliance with the federal law.  Although Ohio has designated the Secretary of State as its chief election official responsible for NVRA compliance, at the time the lawsuit was filed, then-Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell contended that the state's obligation to provide voter registration services to its low-income residents was satisfied by the maintenance of a toll-free hotline for public assistance offices to call. ODJFS claimed that Ohio law prohibited it from ensuring compliance by county offices.  
 
"As a result of the steps the Secretary of State and ODJFS director will take, we expect hundreds of thousands of voting-eligible low-income Ohioans to be registered to vote," said Lisa Danetz, senior counsel in the Democracy Program at Demos and co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs. "We applaud the integration of voter registration into agency processes as well as the planned monitoring of the county public assistance offices."
 
The case was filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, and after a decision by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, the case returned to the district court where it settled after extensive fact discovery.   The Court of Appeals decision established an important precedent that state officials have ultimate responsibility for compliance with this federal law, even when local agencies also have day-to-day responsibility for administering public benefits programs.
 
"The changes made under this agreement represent a long-overdue recognition of the need for an active program of voter registration at public assistance offices in Ohio" said Jon Greenbaum, legal director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.  "With nearly a full year before the next federal general election, we believe that the implementation of these improvements will bring many thousands of Ohio citizens who would otherwise be unregistered to the polls on election day 2010."
 
As a result of the agreement, the provision of voter registration services will be institutionalized within the office procedures at county DJFS offices, and both the SOS and ODJFS will make sure such services are provided.  In particular:
 
-- voter registration application integrated within each agency's benefits forms
-- voter registration incorporated into the statewide computer system used by caseworkers
-- training program for those employees with voter registration responsibilities
-- reporting and monitoring of important data from the statewide computer system, county boards of elections and county DJFS offices
-- at least 20 unannounced spot checks of local agencies each year
-- follow up with counties not providing voter registration services
-- review of voter registration services, using the same mechanisms that it employs to oversee the local provision of food stamps
-- designating the Department of Veterans Affairs, in its administration of medical services and services for homeless veterans, as a voter registration agency
-- work with the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction to encourage voter registration among recently released offenders.
 
"This settlement is good news for all citizens in Ohio and especially the low income communities we serve.  The fact that the state of Ohio will honor its duty under the law by assisting people to register to vote when they are in government offices will help more citizens become voters," said Mary Keith, a member of Ohio ACORN's board of directors.  
 
"Across the country, the people least likely to be registered to vote are those from low-income households," said Teresa James, election counsel for Project Vote. "Our hope is that other states that have been ignoring the NVRA will not wait to be sued to fulfill their obligations to these millions of unregistered Americans."
 
"We are delighted to have worked with our co-counsel and Ohio officials to ensure that Ohio citizens receiving public assistance will be afforded a greater opportunity to register to vote and participate in the democratic process," said Neil Steiner, a partner at Dechert LLP.
 
The groups have filed similar lawsuits in Indiana and New Mexico, and in 2008 successfully settled a lawsuit in Missouri that has led to a vast increase in voter registration applications submitted at the state's public assistance offices. In fact, agency-based registrations in Missouri skyrocketed from 8,000 a year to more than 100,000 in just eight months after the court-ordered settlement. It is estimated that proper implementation of the NVRA's public assistance provisions nationwide could result in 2-3 million additional voter registrations per year.
 
The plaintiffs in the Ohio case are represented by Demos, the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Project Vote, Dechert LLP and Cleveland attorney Donna Taylor Kolis of Freedman, Domiano & Smith. The full settlement agreement can be viewed at www.demos.org <http://www.demos.org> . 

Thousands of U.S. companies and special interest groups attempt to influence government through campaign donations in ways never before documented, a joint project by two of the nation’s premier government watchdog groups now reveals. The project, conducted by the National Institute on Money in State Politics and the Center for Responsive Politics, also provides an unprecedented resource: Profiles of these organizations' political giving patterns during the 2008 election at both the state and national level.

The “Top National Donors” project integrates the Institute’s state contributions data with the Center for Responsive Politics’ federal contributions data – something never before accomplished. “Innovative policy ideas often flow between the states and the U.S. Congress. For the first time ever, this resource is available and will allow users to see who is trying to exert influence on multiple levels," said Edwin Bender, executive director of the National Institute on Money in State Politics.

"Whether you’re a reporter, activist or ordinary citizen, this data mash-up allows you to explore the extent to which specific interests may be battling over policy armed with political I.O.U.s," said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics.

It reveals, for example, that companies and organizations with piqued interest in the federal debate over health care reform are at the same time attempting to bend state-level lawmakers to their corporate and special interests on the same topic. The CRP/Institute study uncovers that several historically active federal-level campaign donors also gave a collective $15.1 million to campaigns in 47 states. They include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Pfizer, American Medical Association, American Hospital Association, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, AARP and Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America.

While plenty of large, nationally notable companies and organizations top the list – National Education Association, Service Employees International Union, AT&T – others prove less renowned. The Pechanga Band of Mission Indians and Clean Energy Fuels Corp., for example, also rank highly, in large part because of their state-level ballot measure activity. These and a host of other results are available online in a publicly accessible database.

State donors were selected by their total contributions to state-level candidates, party committees and state ballot initiatives during the 2008 election cycle. Federal donors were selected by their total contributions to federal candidates, leadership PACs and party committees in the 2008 election cycle. The totals listed for an organization include contributions from its PACs, employees and subsidiaries. This unique data mash-up is funded by a grant from the Ford Foundation. The work forms the foundation for expanded independent investigation of nationwide influence-peddling trends.

ABOUT THE CENTER FOR RESPONSIVE POLITICS

The Center for Responsive Politics is the nation's premier research group tracking money in U.S. politics and its effect on elections and public policy. The nonpartisan, nonprofit Center aims to create a more educated voter, an involved citizenry and a more responsive government. CRP's award-winning website, OpenSecrets.org, is the most comprehensive resource for campaign contributions, lobbying data and analysis available anywhere. CRP relies on support from a combination of foundation grants and individual contributions. The Center accepts no contributions from businesses, labor unions or trade associations.

ABOUT THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR MONEY IN STATE POLITICS

The National Institute for Money in State Politics is the only nonpartisan, nonprofit organization revealing the influence of campaign money on state-level elections and public policy in all 50 states. Its comprehensive and verifiable campaign-finance database and relevant issue analyses are available for free through its website, FollowTheMoney.org.

Contact: Dave Levinthal, 202-354-0111 (CRP); Edwin Bender, 406-449-2480 (National Institute on Money in State Politics)

By Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman / The Rag Blog / September 24, 2009

Unless U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder intervenes, your electronic vote in 2010 will probably be owned by the Republican-connected ES&S Corporation. With 80% ownership of America's electronic voting machines, ES&S could have the power to shape America's future with a few proprietary keystrokes.

ES&S has just purchased the voting machine division of the Ohio-based Diebold, whose role in fixing the 2004 presidential election for George W. Bush is infamous.

Critics of the merger hope Holder will rescind the purchase on anti-trust grounds.

But only a transparent system totally based on hand-counted paper ballots, with universal automatic voter registration, can get us even remotely close to a reliable vote count in the future.

For even if Holder does void this purchase, ES&S and Diebold in tandem will still control four of every five votes cast on touchscreen machines. As the U.S. Supreme Court seems poised to open the floodgates on corporate campaign spending, the only difference could be that those who would buy our elections will have to write two checks instead of one.

And in fact, it's even worse than that. ES&S, Diebold and a tiny handful of sibling Republican voting equipment and computing companies control not only the touchscreen machines, but also the electronic tabulators that count millions of scantron ballots, AND the electronic polling books that decide who gets to vote and who doesn't.

Let's do a quick review:

1. ES&S, Diebold and other companies tied to election hardware and software are owned and operated by a handful of very wealthy conservatives, or right-to-life ideologues, with long-standing direct ties to the Republican Party;
2. As votes will be increasingly cast on optiscans, touchscreens or computer voting machines in the United States in 2010, the scant few so-called paper trail mechanisms that are in place will offer little security against electronic vote theft;
   
3. The source code on all U.S. touchscreen machines now used for the casting and counting of ballots is proprietary, meaning the companies that own and operate the machines -- including ES&S -- are not required to share with the public the details of how those machines actually work;
4. Although there are official mechanisms for monitoring and recounts, none carry any real weight in the face of the public's inability to gain control or even access to this electronic source code, whose proprietary standing has been upheld by the courts;
   
5. With the newly merged ES&S/Diebold now apparently controlling 80% of the national vote through hardware and software, this GOP-connected corporation will have the power to alter virtually every election in the U.S. with a few keystrokes. Unless there is a massive, successful grassroots campaign between now and 2012, the same will hold true for the next US presidential election;
   
6. Aside from its control of touchscreen machines, the merged Diebold/ES&S also controls a significant percent of the electronic optiscan tabulators to count cards on which voters use pencils to fill in circles, indicating their vote. Accounts of fraud, rigging, theft and abuse of these optiscan systems arewell-documented and innumerable. Any corporation that prints these ballots and runs the machines designated to count them can control yet another major piece of the US vote count;
7. The merged ES&S/Diebold now also controls the electronic voter registration systems in many counties and states. With that control comes the ability to remove registered voters without significant public accountability. In the 2004 election, nearly 25% of all the registered voters in the Democratic-rich city of Cleveland were purged, including 10,000 voters erased "accidentally" by a Diebold electronic pollbook system. So in addition to controlling the vote counts on touchscreen and optiscan voting machines, the merged Diebold/ES&S and sympathetic hardware and software companies that service computerized voting equipment will control who actually gets to cast a vote in the first place.

From Bev Harris [bev@blackboxvoting.org]
Sent: 26 May, 2009 7:08 PM

SUFFOLK (NY): OBSERVERS BOOTED OUT TO COUNT VOTES IN SECRET (you can discuss this here: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/8/80408.htm )

Mainstream press is picking up on accurate framing of the issues. A New York location decided to count votes in secret; a local reporter called them out on it. We need to recognize that laws which prohibit the public from observing the vote count are in fact improper and invalid, because they transfer the power from the public to government insiders. This goes for the party-centric models as well, where political party observers are allowed but not the public.

Now, as for nonpartisan elections, we already know that some locations have taken the position that no observation by anyone -- including the parties -- will be permitted in the nonpartisan elections. Pima County Arizona took this position just a few weeks ago, blocking both the public and party observers from observing the count and the poll closing (tallying and reconciliation activities).

Regardless of whether it's (arguably) legal, we need to call secret vote-counting what it is, out loud, and advocate for roll-back of undemocratic vote-counting laws and practices. 

I am very pleased to see mainstream reporters getting involved in the right-to-know aspects in election reform. Here's a short but dead-on article, which shows that our efforts to insert the "rights" frame into election coverage are working:

The Suffolk Times - May 21, 2009: Counting votes behind closed doors is wrong

"A strange thing happened Tuesday night in Oysterponds. District officials decided to count the votes cast in Tuesday's election in secret . . . Even Oysterponds school board president Ted Webb was ushered out of the room on election night. . . . The count should be a public act. But oddly, that's not what New York state law says. According to John Conklin, a spokesman for the state Board of Elections, it's perfectly legal to exclude the public and the press from the room when votes are being tallied.

"But Bev Harris, founder and director of the Seattle-based nonprofit BlackBoxVoting.org, said a public counting process is fundamental to our system of government, based on the Declaration of Independence. 'You can't have liberty without self-government. You can't have self-government if you count votes in secret. Liberty and self-government are considered by the Declaration to be inalienable rights, endowed by our creator. You can't pass a law that takes away these freedoms," she said. "Having government insiders count votes in secret effectively transfers power from the people to the government.'"

[LET ME CLARIFY: The reporter quotes me as saying "you can't pass a law that takes away these freedoms" -- obviously, you CAN pass a law, but the law is invalid. We had laws allowing slavery, but these were ultimately deemed invalid and, even while they were in place, many citizens realized that these laws violated this nation's founding principles upon and, in actions like the Underground Railroad, acted outside those laws.]

Mainstream news article about New York secret vote-counting: http://www2.timesreview.com/ST/stories/T052109_edit