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New York Times December 15, 2007

Ohio Elections Official Calls Machines Flawed
By BOB DRIEHAUS
CINCINNATI — All five voting systems used in Ohio, a state whose electoral votes narrowly swung two elections toward President Bush, have critical flaws that could undermine the integrity of the 2008 general election, a report commissioned by the state’s top elections official has found.

“It was worse than I anticipated,” the official, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, said of the report. “I had hoped that perhaps one system would test superior to the others.”

At polling stations, teams working on the study were able to pick locks to access memory cards and use hand-held devices to plug false vote counts into machines. At boards of election, they were able to introduce malignant software into servers.

Ms. Brunner proposed replacing all of the state’s voting machines, including the touch-screen ones used in more than 50 of Ohio’s 88 counties. She wants all counties to use optical scan machines that read and electronically record paper ballots that are filled in manually by voters.

She called for legislation and financing to be in place by April so the new machines can be used in the presidential election next November. She said she could not estimate the cost of the changes.

Florida, another swing state with a history of voting problems, is also scrapping touch-screen machines and switching to optical scan ones for the election. Such systems have gained favor because experts say they are more reliable than others and, unlike most touch screens, they provide a paper trail for recounts.

Ms. Brunner, a Democrat, succeeded J. Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican who came under fire for simultaneously overseeing the 2004 election and serving as co-chairman of President Bush’s re-election campaign in Ohio.

She ordered the study as part of a pledge to overhaul voting after problems made headlines for hours-long lines in the 2000 and 2004 elections and a scandal in Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland, that led to the convictions of two elections workers on charges of rigging recounts. Ms. Brunner’s office temporarily seized control of that county’s board of elections.

The study released Friday found that voting machines and central servers made by Elections Systems and Software; Premier Election Solutions, formerly Diebold; and Hart InterCivic; were easily corrupted.

Chris Riggall, a Premier spokesman, said hardware and software problems had been corrected in his company’s new products, which will be available for installation in 2008.

“It is important to note,” he said, “that there has not been a single documented case of a successful attack against an electronic voting system, in Ohio or anywhere in the United States.”

Ken Fields, a spokesman for Election Systems and Software, said his company strongly disagreed with some of the report’s findings. “We can also tell you that our 35 years in the field of elections has demonstrated that Election Systems and Software voting technology is accurate, reliable and secure,” he said.

The $1.9 million federally financed study assembled corporate and academic teams to conduct parallel assessments. A bipartisan group of 12 election board directors and deputy directors acted as advisers.

The academic team, made up of faculty members and students from Cleveland State University, Pennsylvania State, the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the University of Pennsylvania, said systemic change was needed. “All of the studied systems possess critical security failures that render their technical controls insufficient to guarantee a trustworthy election,” the team wrote.

In addition to switching machines, Ms. Brunner recommended eliminating polling stations that are used for fewer than five precincts as a cost-cutting measure, and introducing early voting 15 days before Election Day.

That would be Congressman Ron Paul on the Tonight show with Jay Leno.

Could it have something to do with the fact that his supporters sent in $4.5 million dollars on one day - November 5, 2007. On December 13, 2007 they launched a Ron Paul Blimp which is flying from North Carolina to New Hampshire. Next his supporters are planning another money bomb in December marking the Boston Tea Party anniversary. Too bad he is a Republican.

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AP Associated Press
New Jersey Assembly wants electoral votes for popular vote winner

By Tom Hester
Published December 13th 2007

TRENTON, N.J. - New Jersey may enter a compact that eliminates the power of the Electoral College to choose a president.

The Assembly voted 43-32 on Thursday to approve legislation delivering the state's 15 electoral votes for president to the winner of the national popular vote, although the measure could result in the electoral votes going to a candidate opposed by Garden State voters.

The goal is to ensure the national popular vote winner becomes president.

Democrats who sponsored the bill have noted how Democrat Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000, but President Bush won the electoral tally.

Sponsors Assemblymen Joseph Cryan, D-Union, and Reed Gusciora, D-Mercer, contend the agreement would ensure all states are competitive in presidential elections, make all votes important and guarantee the person who received the most votes nationwide wins the presidency.

The compact would take effect only if enough states _ those with a majority of votes in the Electoral College _ agreed to its terms.

A candidate needs 270 of 538 electoral votes to win.

Maryland is the only state to pass the compact into law, while governors in California and Hawaii vetoed bills to join the compact.

Action on the compact is pending in other states, including Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois and North Carolina.

Republicans criticized the bill as undermining federal elections by eliminating a factor that forces candidates to pay attention to voters in smaller states.

The bill has been pushed by the California-based National Popular Vote organization, which is led by a bipartisan advisory board.

The New Jersey Senate is slated to consider the bill on Monday. It tried to vote on the legislation earlier this week, but sponsors couldn't muster enough votes to get it approved.

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On the Net:

National Popular Vote Movement: http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/index

Third parties seek impact
Charlottesville Daily Progress
Monday, October 30, 2006
Third-party politics is always interesting, and especially so in Virginia this year.
Central Virginia has in Joseph Oddo its own third-party candidate, representing the Independent Green Party, against Republican Virgil Goode and Democrat Al Weed in the 5th District race for Congress.
The usual questions and complaints are heard in this race about third parties:
- Third parties aren’t a viable part of the democratic system.
- Third parties sidetrack voters, pulling support away from viable candidates. And:
- Who are these people, anyway?
The Independent Greens are not who many people think they are.
The Independent Green Party is often confused with the Green Party, from which it broke away. But while the Greens generally lodge left of center, the Independent Greens trend rightward.
The Independent Greens have a brief platform that calls for fiscal responsibility in Washington, including balancing the federal budget, paying off the debt, holding the Pentagon accountable for its spending and eliminating non-competitive no-bid contracts. That’s the conservative part.
The party also endorses building high-speed rail across Virginia to reduce traffic congestion. That’s the green part. Its goal of reducing reliance on foreign oil also reflects a traditionally conservative view.
The party also calls for terms limits for House and Senate - a position some conservatives would call liberal.
And it advocates reinvigorating democracy by mounting challenges to entrenched incumbents and a powerful two-party system that, Independent Greens contend, seeks to lock out newcomers.
Which takes us back to those complaints. By polling just enough votes to prevent someone else’s victory, the third party is seen as a spoiler; by failing to attract enough votes to win, the third party is seen as nonviable. Such criticisms may be accurate enough.
Ironically, the political establishment also often operates as a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy: By marginalizing third parties - such as by keeping them out of debates - the establishment ensures they will stay on the margins. If a candidate has garnered enough voter interest to be listed on the ballot, he or she also should be included in public debates.
Third party adherents generally see their role as something other than either winner or spoiler. They know the odds against them are slight. But they want to spread a message, wake up the electorate, shake up the establishment.
In 1992, Ross Perot’s third-party presidential campaign “failed” in that Mr. Perot came nowhere near being elected to the White House, but in a sense it succeeded when Republicans embraced one of his campaign planks, the balanced federal budget, and moved to implement it when they took control of Congress in 1994.
Today, the Independent Greens say they want to raise issues that the major parties are afraid to take on. They want to make voters think more deeply about campaigns and issues of governance. They want to make elections more interesting and bring voters out of their apathy by offering alternatives to the usual campaign fare. They may want to throw a bit of a scare into the major parties, so that the Big Two at least will have to engage them on the issues and perhaps - as with Ross Perot and the GOP - even adopt some of their goals.
Critics may be right about the spoiler effect. But third parties can have some worthy aims worth supporting.
Voters will have to probe their own consciences to determine if they want to allocate their valuable support to candidates deemed viable, or spend it on a third-party effort to shake up the establishment.
This story can be found here.

RUNNING FOR OFFICE IN 2008?

SEND US YOUR PRESS RELEASE TO BE POSTED HERE.

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One of the best parts about running for office is the opportunity to express yourself in front of a large audience (though many fear this aspect – it should be viewed as a welcome opportunity for any third party candidate.) Here is a sample of what you can deliver…

Slightly modified from an October 2006 televised address:

A patriot must always be ready to defend his country from his government.

I’m Joe Oddo, Independent Green running for Congress because we need Action Against Apathy. I want to encourage you to get involved. To run for office. To insist we are allowed in the debates and covered by the media.

I offer solutions starting with the National Election Reform Platform. A ten-point plan to institute fairness and security into our election process. With this platform we can excite, encourage and empower citizens to run for office. It is vital that our citizens get interested and engaged in politics. 2008 presents an opportunity for 468 capable and credible independents to run and get elected to Congress to promote this platform. See all ten points at: IndependentAmerica.org.

I offer fiscal solutions that will balance the federal budget now. Pay off the federal debt in five years. And fix the tax code for real tax cuts, not credit card advances.

There is nothing compassionate or conservative in military adventurism. This administration promotes addiction to a new drug called fear. We no longer face facts. We prefer to fabricate them. We lost over 4,000 young American soldiers, and caused thousands of Iraqi civilian deaths. Why? For war industry profits. Everyone knows it. One of every four tax dollars are being spent at the Defense Department. From their own report, billions are being mismanaged through "improper payments". That's new government-speak for "waste, fraud and abuse".

We can fix that with an auditable accounting system so we know where our money is going. We can save billions more by closing bases in Germany and Japan. And by scrapping useless weapons programs.

I ask you, what real liberal or conservative would ever sanction the Patriot Act, or NSA domestic spying? Why should we give away the rights guaranteed by the Constitution now, when they served us well for the multitude of threats we defeated during that last 230 years?

Instead it’s: be afraid. Be very afraid. Don’t worry about your tax dollars going to campaign contributors through no-bid contracts. Don’t pay attention while they strip away our rights, or rob our Treasury blind.

We won’t hear them say: War as a foreign policy of the United States is wrong. Peace is the answer. Nonviolence is the answer.

How do we correct this? By running for office. By paying attention to the shenanigans of this government. By joining a third party and getting on the ballot to have your voice heard and message delivered. This is taking Action Against Apathy.

Because I am an optimist, I offer solutions that the two parties will not address. Join us. Our Web site is IndependentAmerica.org. Please Vote Oddo in November.

Thank you.

Authorized and paid for by Independent America Political Action Committee. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.