----- Original Message ----- From: "Declan McCullagh" To: <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2007 2:15 AM Subject: [Politech] Black Box Voting report on touch-screen machines and influence-peddling [priv]
: : -------- Original Message -------- : Subject: From Black Box Voting: The road to Boondoggle is paved with : good intentions : Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2007 21:08:12 -0800 : From: Black Box Voting <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> : Organization: Black Box Voting : To: <[email protected]> : : (Warning: You might really hate this story.) This story represents : months of original research by Black Box Voting. We went into this : looking for the defense industry contractors we'd heard had lobbied for : the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). That legislation has been blamed for : the touch-screens (DREs) that showed up all over America. Well, that's : not what we found. The real story on who was behind HAVA may come as a : surprise to you. It was to us.. : : Permission to reprint and distribute granted, with link to : http://www.blackboxvoting.org : : THE ROAD TO BOONDOGGLE IS PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS: : HELP AMERICA VOTE ACT (HAVA) LOBBYIST LIST : : Question: What happens if you lobby a lawmaker for $4 billion in : expenditures for touch-screen voting machines and go back to that same : lawmaker two years later asking to dump DREs? : : Answer: You lose credibility. It might be hard to lobby for other : things. It's politically embarrassing. And your members, or funders, : might have a few questions to ask about the prudence of your lobbying : expenditures. : : BUT HOW COULD ANYONE HAVE KNOWN? : : The road to voting computers was paved with good intentions. No one knew : that some of the programmers for voting computers would turn out to be : convicted embezzlers. : http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/2197/14318.html : : No one realized that the main sponsor of the HAVA bill -- Rep. Bob Ney : -- would end up going to jail on corruption charges. : http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/8/46466.html : : Few realized that the federal testing labs, Ciber and Wyle, weren't : doing their jobs and their overseers -- NASED and now the EAC -- failed : to check their work. : Wyle failures (Bowen Hearing): http://www.blackboxvoting.org/itahearing.pdf : Ciber failures: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/8/46428.html : : HAVA bought a lemon. : : WHO BIT INTO IT? : : Progressive public interest groups. Labor unions. Civil rights groups. : : While many election reform activists are under the impression that : touch-screen (DRE) voting machines were some sort of Republican plot to : take over America, the truth is that lobbying for the DRE-seeking "Help : America Vote Act" came primarily from the foundation of the Democratic : Party itself. : : Activists throughout America have expressed surprise at the Democratic : Party's unwillingness to pull DREs off the shelf. One reason is simply : this: To do so would damage the credibility of those who lobbied for : HAVA. And those who lobbied for HAVA just happen to be the biggest : funders and activist workhorses for the Democratic Party itself. : : WHO INVESTED THEIR CREDIBILITY (AND MEMBERSHIP FUNDS) TO LOBBY FOR HAVA? : : 1. Public interest groups - mostly progressive : 2. Big labor : 3. Minority rights groups : 4. Disability rights groups : 5. Industry : : Of these, the first four tend to favor Democrats but the fifth group -- : industry, the group charged with writing the computer code that counts : America's votes -- is made of vendors that are more often close to the : Republican Party. : : Democrats lobbied HAVA in but to a large extent, Republican-affiliated : vendors executed the mechanics of the plan. Some would call this : comical; others, tragic. : : PUBLIC INTEREST GROUP HAVA LOBBYISTS : : 1. People for the American Way : 2. Common Cause : 3. American Civil Liberties Union : 4. League of Women Voters : 5. American Jewish Committee : 6. Hadassah : 7. American Association for Retired Persons : 8. Public Citizen : 9. American Network of Community Options and Resources : 10. Constitution Project (Georgetown University) : 11. Open Society Policy Center (Soros) : : LABOR UNION HAVA LOBBYISTS : : 1. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) : 2. Laborers International Union of North America : 3. International Brotherhood of Teamsters : 4. United Auto Workers : 5. American Federation of Teachers : 6. AFL-CIO : 7. UNITE (Industrial & Textile employees) : : Of the seven HAVA-lobbying groups above, five are among the Top-20 : largest donors of all time to any political party. All five donate : almost exclusively to the Democratic Party and its candidates. None of : the top 20 Republican donors lobbied for HAVA. : : According to OpenSecrets.org, the labor unions that lobbied for HAVA : have given nearly $150 million to support Democrats since 1989, and six : were in the Top-20 Democratic PAC funders for 2006-06. : : MINORITY RIGHTS HAVA LOBBYISTS : : 1. NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. : 2. National Council of La Raza : 3. Mexican American Legal Defense & Educational Fund (MALDEF) : : DISABILITY RIGHTS HAVA LOBBYISTS : : 1. American Foundation for the Blind : 2. The ARC of the United States : 3. National Disability Rights Network : 4. Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund : 5. United Cerebral Palsy Association : : Black Box Voting has been unable to locate the lobbying disclosure forms : for the American Association of Persons with Disabilities (AAPD) : featuring the vocal Jim Dickson, nor did we find any disclosure forms : for the National Federation for the Blind (NFB), the group that took $1 : million from Diebold. Misfiled? Misnamed? Overlooked? Omitted? : : Link for NFB $1 million from Diebold: : http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/73/36492.html : : COUNTY GOVERNMENT HAVA LOBBYING : 1. Riverside County, Calif. : 2. San Diego County, Calif. : 3. Ventura County, Calif. : 4. Miami-Dade County, FL : : INDUSTRY & BUSINESS HAVA LOBBYISTS : : 1. Accenture : 2. VoteHere : 3. Election Systems & Software : 4. AccuPoll : 5. Danaher : 6. Association of Assistive Technology Act Programs : 7. US Business & Industry Council : 8. Assocation of Technology Act Projects : : Not found on lobbying forms pushing HAVA: The SAIC, the ITAA, and Diebold. : : Diebold Election Systems Inc does not show up on the 2001-02 HAVA : lobbying forms, but did lobby for elections issues in 2004 and 2005. : : Also notably missing are the firms referenced by R. Doug Lewis of "The : Election Center" in an August 2003 meeting. In this tape recorded : meeting, he said that HAVA was put into place by an election systems : task force which included Lockheed, Northrop-Grumman, EDS, and Accenture. : : Of these, only Accenture shows up the lobbying forms, and there is no : entity called Election anything, except for Election System & Software : and another company, election.com, which lobbied for Internet voting. : (See Chapter 8 of Black Box Voting for more on the Saudi-owned : election.com, which was later taken over by Accenture - : http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf - See Chapter 16 for : more information on the tape recorded meeting: : http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-16.pdf ) : : What about Choicepoint? Choicepoint says it didn't lobby for HAVA. : Choicepoint says it hasn't had any involvement in elections. : : The lobbying forms don't show lobbying for voting machines, but a : lobbying firm called Fleishman-Hillard Government Relations filed a : registration form in 2002 indicating they planned to lobby for "Election : Reform" on behalf of Choicepoint. Muddying things up, no 2002 lobbying : form appeared showing that they did. In 2001, however, a lobbying form : clearly puts Choicepoint in the middle of HAVA lobbying, showing that : Choicepoint was involving itself in lobbying for the voter registration : component of HAVA. : : Choicepoint has repeatedly stated that they have "no involvement : whatsoever" in elections, and in rebuttal to a controversial article : that appeared for a short while on OpEd News, Choicepoint came on to : deny that they lobbied for HAVA. More on Choicepoint here: : http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/17778.html : : Choicepoint, a controversial database broker, clearly cannot state that : it has "no involvement in elections." : : Choicepoint stakeholder Donna Curling, wife of Choicepoint chief Doug : Curling, has continued to fund election reform lobbying by providing : funding for some of the activists working on the Holt Bill. : : THEY THOUGHT DRE VOTING MACHINES WOULD HELP THEM BUILD THE DEMOCRATIC BASE : : Those who lobbied for HAVA were convinced that the DRE machines would : solve problems, helping more people vote. : : 1. Many of the HAVA reformers believed that with DREs, people with less : education would be more likely to fill out the whole ballot. In fact, : they reasoned, the DRE machines would be easier to use for educationally : disadvantaged populations, minorities, non-English-speaking voters, and : the disabled. : : Few studies back these conclusions up, and those that do have generally : not been replicated, or were not peer reviewed, and sometimes show : methodology that is as flawed as the lemons HAVA bought. The occasional : studies that have been done -- even those prepared by DRE advocates -- : sometimes end up with troubling caveats. A Georgia study purported to : show that "most people like voting on the DREs" (but rarely mentions the : small print: The same study showed that the African-Americans surveyed : distrusted the touch-screens). : : 2. The citizens' right to oversee local elections -- and especially the : citizens' right to even get access to information -- has been all but : eliminated through the implementation of HAVA. The original civil rights : concept was virtuous. : : Federal Government is the entity that enacted civil rights, HAVA : reformers reasoned, so therefore let's ask the federal government to fix : our elections process. : : Be careful what you ask for. It just might get "fixed." : : REAL SOLUTIONS : : If federal government is going to correct anything, it should start with : enacting tougher standards to give citizens Freedom of Access to : Elections Information -- mandating that the system actually PRODUCE the : information needed for citizens to make sure the right candidate was : place in office, in a TIMELY manner, that is COST EFFECTIVE and USABLE, : prohibiting removal of the information through proprietary claims. : : And above all, local CITIZEN oversight must be protected. In almost : every case, discoveries of problems with elections and the computers : that count them have been discovered by ordinary citizens, not by : government oversight, auditors, consultants, certifiers, or experts. : : And if we are going to rid ourselves of the DREs, we need to get past : the -- er -- little "problem" of the threat to credibility if former : HAVA lobbyists take the courageous step of changing course. : : They couldn't have known. Perhaps a set of tough investigative hearings : can provide the evidence to brace those backbones for the change in : direction. Look to Calif. Secretary of State Debra Bowen's well-prepped, : no-nonsense hearings on the certification process for examples, and : start by issuing subpoenas to Diebold's master programmer, Talbot : Iredale, and Ciber's Shawn Southworth (who refused to show up for : Bowen's hearing). : : This thing can be done. It doesn't need a bandaid, it needs a disinfectant. : : SEE FOR YOURSELF HOW HAVA CAME TO BE: : : Photocopies of the lobbying forms are in the process of being uploaded : to the Black Box Voting Document Archive. You will find lobbying forms : for all of the groups listed above as they are uploaded here: : http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/2197/46539.html : : # # # # # : : ________________________________________ _______ : Politech mailing list : Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ : Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/) : ForumWebSiteAt http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Libertarian Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Libertarian/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Libertarian/join (Yahoo! 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