VOTER’S WATCHDOG: TOP TEN PROBLEMS WITH EXPANDING ABSENTEE VOTING
Printer-friendly versionAbsentee voting has been expanded in 25 states. This reduces public controls and expands opportunity for election fraud. By guest columnist Bev Harris, Founder www.BlackBoxVoting.org October 13, 2009 — Risky electoral conditions are being introduced because someone says "Why don’t we just mail ballots?" Election officials are pitching vote by mail as convenient and safe. Journalists don’t always obtain an opposing point of view before publishing stories on this risky new trend. Half the USA has now shifted to no-fault absentee voting. Here is an opposing point of view, along with sources and citations for vote-by-mail incidents. No-fault absentee voting is now enabled in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, and Wyoming; Forced all-vote-by-mail is in place in Washington and Oregon; no-fault vote-by-mail is proposed but not yet passed in Alabama, District of Columbia, Indiana, Missouri and Wisconsin. A federal bill (Universal Right to Vote by Mail Act: H.R. 1604) proposes to enforce no-fault absentee voting nationwide. Areas with need-based absentee voting typically average about 12% absentee voting, including overseas, military, sick and shut-in, elderly, and out-of-towners. Areas with "no-fault absentee" gradually increase from about 25% (early stages) to over 50% (after no-fault absentee used for several years), increasing the size of the at-risk vote pool. TOP TEN PROBLEMS WITH EXPANDING ABSENTEE VOTING: 1. Absentee voting conceals who actually casts the votes. A real person doesn’t show up to vote, eliminating a crucial public control for elections. 2. Absentee voting has difficult challenges for ballot chain of custody. Even locations that claim to use video surveillance sometimes turn off cameras, send them out for maintenance, or decide not to use them while elections are in progress.(1)(2) 3. Absentee voting has a history of inside tampering by election officials.(3) 4. Absentee voting uses unregulated and concealed software to authorize votes. The unregulated "VoteRemote" software purchased by Diebold/Premier was designed by convicted embezzler Jeffrey Dean, who spent four years in prison for computer fraud. Court records show that Dean began working on VoteRemote for King County, Washington while still in prison, on a work release program.(4) 5. Absentee voting eliminates ballot privacy when used in combination with ballot tracking or incorrectly designed ballot authentication software. A ballot tracking program used in San Juan County (Wash.) removed voter privacy and altered ballot approvals during the canvassing period and even after the canvassing period had expired, and misreported who had voted and who had not.(5) 6. Absentee voting expansion has a partisan history: Nearly all legislation to expand vote by mail and no-fault absentee is introduced by Democrats, and nearly all sponsors in both state and federal pro-absentee voting legislation are Democrats. 7. Signature comparison isn’t what people think: It uses electronic facsimiles, not physical signatures. These can be swapped and altered electronically, and in fact, signatures do not need to match at all! In Lake County Indiana, a set of rejected absentee ballots were simply changed to "accepted" after the matching process.(6) All this requires is replacement of "no" with "yes" in a database, which can be done after signature checks. In Washington State the paw print of a dog named Duncan passed signature checking for two elections in a row.(7) 8. Vote by mail is sold to the public using questionable data. Contrary to what supporters claim, vote by mail does not necessarily increase turnout. According to data from the US Election Assistance Commission, all vote-by-mail Oregon was squarely in the middle of the pack for voter turnout.(8) Also, Oregon reports impossible numbers: Out of 2.5 million ballots mailed in the 2006 general election, Oregon reported zero ballots returned undeliverable, and Oregon says only 54 were received after the deadline.(9) 9. Ballot printers have a history of mailing wrong ballots, omitted ballots, and late ballots. During the crucial 2008 general election, Sequoia Voting Systems reported to Denver County (Colo.) that it had mailed 21,450 ballots, when it actually only mailed 10,364 ballots.(10) Only when voters complained did Sequoia admit that it never sent the ballots. In Sutter County (Calif) Sequoia mailed absentee ballots missing ballot questions, but only for some voters.(11) 10. Absentee voting enables cheat-peeks: Computer logs from Pima County, Arizona show that election workers were printing absentee results before election day; e-mails obtained with public records requests show they were passing early results around like baseball scores, giving unfair advantage to those candidates selected to receive them. SOURCES: (1) Scripps Newspaper Group – Aug. 14, 2008, By Elliott Jones: Indian River County elections office security cameras shut down – …The cameras oversee the mail-in ballots, which are kept in a vault. [Public records show that video cameras were out of service for a month.] (2) Sun Sentinel – Aug. 2008: Elections supervisor installs security cameras – … The cost for installing the cameras, she said, is estimated at $300,000; [Records requests from Black Box Voting following a ballot snafu in August 2008 elicited the response that they had never installed the system and didn’t plan to until after the election.] (3) North Jersey Conservative Examiner – Aug. 4, 2009, by Mark Impomeni: Campaign workers indicted in election fraud case; " …At least one of the defendants was in a position to impact elections on a regular basis. Gianine Narvaez worked in the office of the Essex County Superintendent of Elections." (4) Jeffrey Dean prison papers http://bbvdocs.org/dean.pdf and court transcripts http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/board-auth.cgi?file=/2197/14323.html (5) Related to this case, a lawsuit was filed by Washington citizens Tim White and Alan Rosato in July 2009 seeking redress on some of these issues. Here is a video as they describe their discovery of theft of voter privacy and alteration of authentications: http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=9179686114813589881 (6) WJOB News – May 28, 2007: Lake County Ballots Accidentally Manipulated from Outside System – Lake County election officials say they
ASSEMBLYMEMBER SALAS HOSTS VETERANS HEALTH & RESOURCE FAIR OCT. 17
Printer-friendly versionOctober 14, 2009 (Otay) – Assemblymember Mary Salas, Chair of the Assembly Veterans Affairs Committee, will host a Veterans Health and Resource Fair at Southwestern College 900 Otay Lakes Road, Chula Vista, CA 91910. Over thirty representatives from health organizations and Veterans service organizations will be in attendance offering information, body mass index, blood pressure checks, and glucose screenings. “My goal as Chair of the Assembly Veterans Affairs Committee is to connect as many Veterans with the benefits they so rightly deserve. By bringing as many of these organizations and resources together in a one stop shop for Veterans services we are able to connect these brave men and women who sacrificed so much for our freedom to the benefits and services they have earned,” stated Salas. To RSVP please contact (619) 409-7979. WHAT: Veterans Health and Resource Fair WHEN: Saturday, October 17, 2009 from 9:00 am to 12:30 pm WHERE: SOUTHWESTERN COMMUNITY COLLEGE – Student Union East 900 Otay Lakes Road Chula Vista, CA 91910 This event will also feature two town hall meetings: GI Bill Town Hall at 9:30 am in Room 751 PTSD Town Hall at 11:00 am in Room 751 Printer-friendly version
FREE DOCUMENT SHREDDING SATURDAY
Printer-friendly version October 13, 2009 (El Cajon)- To help prevent identity theft, San Diego County Credit Union has announced that free shredding services will be available from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 17, at its El Cajon branch, located at 312 West Main St. The public is invited to bring a maximum of two boxes containing personal and confidential information and have sensitive documents shredded on the spot at no charge in the parking lot of the SDCCU El Cajon branch. Boxes must be no larger than approximately 10 by 12 by 15 inches. Since 2007, SDCCU customers have brought in a total of 163,405 pounds to be shred, saving a total of 1,363 trees (every 120 pounds shredded represents one saved tree). “SDCCU is happy to provide this Shred Day service to our members and consumers of Southern California,” said Irene Oberbauer, San Diego Credit Union president & CEO. “This is the consumers’ first line of defense against identity theft, and we are proud to assist in this effort. The first rule in preventing identity theft is: if you don’t need it, shred it, and we are help to help. Shredding sensitive documents is an excellent way to reduce your risk of becoming a victim of identity theft.” Printer-friendly version