I agree! Until our election system is fixed Democrats will always be the underdog in certain states and in national elections.

The biggest "reform" that I hope will come of this will be to have the Dems win back the House and the Senate in '06. We need that for so many reasons.

I also hope to see Delay in prison as someone's "bitch". :)

Until our election system is fixed Democrats will always be the underdog in certain states and in national elections.

What exactly does that mean--that Oregonians should be trying to change election practices in Ohio and Florida (how would you feel if people from Ohio and Fla. started telling us we shouldn't control Oregon elections?). Paul Hackett carried 4 counties in one of the "reddest" congressional districts in Ohio--how could that be if the software wouldn't allow it?

Why talk about this on Blue Oregon blog--what exactly can Oregonians do about elections in other states? What do you folks think of the Carter-Baker election reform ideas?

I wrote an email to the Marion County Clerk and this is part of the response:

Since we program our own elections in Marion County, the specter of a malicious code implanted at time of manufacture, that could perform vote switching based on certain criteria after the first few thousand votes is not viable here. The reason is that, when our machines were manufactured, no party or candidate had any idea where their "arrow" would land on the ballot and reader. Oregon's use of a "random alphabet" to determine order of candidates on the ballot, rather than established fixed party positions precludes the manufacturer or anyone else of being able to predictably change a count in their favor by the speculated means described above. Moreover, our tally machines are not connected to the internet, are kept under lock and key, and are subject to logic and accuracy testing multiple times in each election. The likelihood of tally machine manipulation in Marion County is nil.

Are you really saying that random alphabet, tally machines not connected to the internet, keeping them under lock and key and the abovementioned logic and accuracy testing are not enough because the software companies are so evil?

Or could all the energy devoted to complaining about election software better be put to having quality candidates contesting all elections, activists who actually know their own county elections officials, and paying close attention to all election procedures?

If all elections in Oregon are fixed, how did the State Senate go Democratic and why are all statewide officials Democrats except Gordon Smith?

Y'all see Casino Jack's Thug Life outfit he wore to court?

The poor boy thinks he's Tony Soprano -- without the house, money or laughs.

As for reforms, I hear Signatures, his lousy restaurant with the fatty steaks will be closing by the weekend.

Try Morton's.

Y'all see Casino Jack's Thug Life outfit he wore to court?

The poor boy thinks he's Tony Soprano -- without the house, money or laughs.

As for reforms, I hear Signatures, his lousy restaurant with the fatty steaks will be closing by the weekend.

Try Morton's.

Oh, yeah! He was literally a black hat, right on TV. It must be true, it was on TV!

Abramoff appears to be a scum bag, which is too bad for my profession and for Preston Gates & Ellis which is a pretty good law firm which employs a lot of progressive people. However, before we Dems get too gleeful about all this, I suggest we wait and see what happens next. I would like to say I never met a crooked Dem politician, but as a former resident of Chicago I can't say that. What is the old saying - politics is like making sausage, you don't want to know too many details about the process, you just want to see what the finished product is? I know that concept does not match the high ideals of many of those who post here, but such is life!

I would slow down before getting too smug about Abramoff. Here is a blog with links showing Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and other prominent D's took heavy $'s from him and the tribes he represented: texasrainmaker

This is really a story about our federal government being too big and too powerful in general. If it was not so all encompasing, then it would not benefit special interests to throw away so much money bribing congressman.

Pat,

Don't forget former Senator Daschle voting on FAA regulation bills while Ms. Tom Daschle was working as a lobbyist for several airlines...You could fill pages with examples from both sides of the aisle of the revolving door between K street and the Hill.

I remember watching Independence Day in the theatre and the crowd actually cheering the destruction of the Capitol...this is just one reason why.

Wrong again, Boze Nose!

One blogger in Texas living in his step-mommy's basement told Boze Abe Jackoff (his hs nickname) gave money to Dems!

Nope, not a dime. Not a cent.

And if you can prove I'm wrong, do it, with a real link to real reporters, not frilly panty-wearing mamas boyz, bring it on, pal.

Bring. It. On.

Not sure what your point is, but it appears that Democrats took Abramoff money per Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/02/AR2005060202158.html

What I'm worried about is what's really going on. Sure, scum-bag Abramoff pleaded guilty and is supposed to be spilling some beans. But when you realize that the DOJ prosecutor in the case is a hand-picked B* appointee, appointed during a Congressional recess because Dem. Senators questioned her qualifications, experience, and conflicts of interest, you have to wonder. The prosecutor, Alice Fisher, had never been a prosecutor before and has strong ties to Michael Chertoff and possibly even Delay's defense team. What are the Repressives hiding by controlling this prosecution? It sounds to me that Abramoff is going to give up several sacrificial lambs for appearance sake but the really heavy corruption will be covered up once again.

For more info on her, go to SourceWatch.org at http://tinyurl.com/8dsc6.

Thank you for this: Marion county is in much better shape than the other counties. They are using 1988 software and are one of the few counties that does their own programming. And Sharon Ricks doesn't let the vendors anywhere near before or during an election. Still, without an audit, it's faith based voting. The majority of counties in Oregon do not do their own programming.

Exactly what kind of audit do you propose--an audit with the VRC Seal Of Approval because no othr audit can be believed? An audit by national election experts? Or what?

Just a word of advice to the folks complaining about secret election software, faith based voting, etc.

Those of us who have long toiled in the vinyards of election activism sometimes have this annoying habit of wanting details from people we have never met.

To say that "all vote counting is suspect unless proven otherwise" implies that NOWHERE in this country can we trust vote counting. I think that is a little extreme.

If a person has 20 hours of volunteer time a month to contribute to political activism, they have the right to decide if they will donate that time to candidates, or ballot measures, or issues around how votes are counted. If they live in Marion County, they have the right to trust Marion County elections and not be thrilled by cracks like "faith based voting".

In order to convince folks of the rightness of your cause, be careful how you word things. You folks in the VRC may think it is more trustworthy than any elections division. But if people living in Marion County trust the election officials they know personally over total strangers, an attitude of "believe VRC over any election official" is not likely to win supporters for your cause. That is all I am trying to say.

LT --

You seem to be missing a couple of our primary points. As we've tried to emphasize, it's not our election officials in Oregon that we don't trust but the private vendors and their electronic election systems and secret software. Fortunately, all counties in Oregon use the optical scan system, which is one of the better systems (in part because it has paper ballots). However, there are some things that may (and I emphasize "may") simply be beyond the security capabilities of our officials. Marion County has has very professional elections officials and a top-notch election system and process with impressive (and reassuring!) security safeguards. They and We have a lot to be proud of! Unlike most counties, Marion County is also fortunate to have their own IT person to oversee much of the computer-related operations of the election process and to set up the county’s ballot definition files (BDF’s). At least some (most?) of the other counties contract out much of the computer-related work, including the BDF’s, to private vendors like ES&S. This is alarming. (Again, see http://www.whoscounting.org.)

And it’s hardly us leading the charge against electronic election systems and secret software. Rather, it's computer scientists and computer security experts from around the country who've been leading the charge for several years now. They're also the ones who coined the phrase, "faith-based voting" for these systems. So when the experts are screaming about it, I happen to feel they know more than I do and I become alarmed. If you don't, that's your business.

If you're not aware, a few tests have been performed recently in other states, such as Florida, to see if in fact a “secure” system could be hacked undetectably. In all cases, it was. At our national election reform summit held in Portland in Oct., Florida software programmer Clint Curtis even demonstrated how easy it is to hack into an electronic election system. One Oregon election official saw the demonstration. She was shocked and became a believer.

Clint also stated to us that at least some Oregon county elections officials are mistaken when they claim to be doing the programming themselves. He said, "The conclusion they were working on is that by setting up the database to reflect the specific races and candidates [the BDF files] that they were actually programming. In actuality all the programming is done in the executable and they are only configuring the setup file. Why they would believe that they were operating on the coding level I am not sure. I showed them [at the summit] where the code actually exists and demonstrated how the internal code can effect the totals to the races they configured."

However, we in the Oregon Voter Rights Coalition are NOT saying that our elections in Oregon are currently inaccurate, definitely being manipulated through hacking, whatever. But, based on experiences in numerous other states and warnings from computer experts, we don’t trust private vendors and their secret software counting our votes. (And it is the software counting our votes, not the election officials.) Therefore, what we ARE saying is that we currently have no way of having confidence in the reported machine-counted results.

MANY election reform activists around the country are calling for hand-counted paper ballots only. No machines, period. The Oregon VRC is not calling for that rather drastic measure. (Although, I can certainly understand why Ohioans are.) What we are proposing is to have a scientifically designed, independent, random, hand-counted sampling of our paper ballots as a way of ensuring that the machine results, and the certified election results, are indeed accurate. The methodology that’s been developed by statisticians and researchers is relatively simple and inexpensive, and would provide voters with confidence in the election results. What's wrong with providing a simple way to give the voters confidence in the results?

Sorry, but in this day and age of people like B* and Abramoff and Howard Ahmanson, Jr., mixed with computer technology -- and after 2 stolen presidential elections, numerous possibly stolen U.S. Senate races, and a few very suspicious gubernatorial election results -- telling us to "trust our fine election officials" and the secret software-counted tallies isn't good enough, not even in Oregon.

Back to Abramoff.

John D. --

Just to clarify it a little, SourceWatch.org states that Alice Fisher was appointed "Assistant Attorney General to head the Criminal Division in the Department of Justice." In my understanding of the heirrarchy, that means she's the prosecuting U.S. Attorney's boss. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

SourceWatch.org also states, "[Sen. Patrick] Leahy was also concerned about 'reports that she has had ties to Congressman Tom DeLay’s defense team' and 'also [wanted] to know what steps she [intended] to take to avoid a conflict of interest in the Department’s investigation of lobbyist Jack Abramoff and possibly Mr. DeLay.'" Again, that tells me that in this position, she would be directly involved with the Abramoff case.

Hence, my concern is still very high over this issue.

Back to voting- Growing up in Chicago, I am a firm believer that when it comes to anything concerning money or power, anything that can be corrupted will,sooner or later, be corrupted. You never put your faith in peoples integrety, you try to create an incorruptable system. ie. "The person who cuts the cake gets the last piece." I don't believe there has been a computer system created that someone can't figure out how to hack. I personally do not trust any elections unless they are hand counted. It could always be done after the fact. An election without a paper trail (Dieblot) isn't an election, it's a bad joke.

Excellent points, Karl.

FYI, if you're not already aware, there is a big discussion going on between various election reform groups across the country re insisting on hand-counted paper ballots only vs. some form of auditing of machine results. After meeting with some of Oregon's elections officials and trying to understand some of the many issues involved with actually DOING hand-counting, esp. in this day and age of larger population, etc., the Oregon VRC has taken the position that a scientifically designed, independent, hand-counted random sampling of our paper ballots -- an audit -- would be one way of still using modern technology yet ensuring the reported (and certified) results are accurate. Our proposal includes the stipulation that if a discrepancy is found between the audit and machine results, a full hand recount would be done. Many other groups are also pushing for such audits in their areas.

Obviously, such an audit would not be the end-all solution. We still need to push to have access to the computer source code, such as with open source software, if that can be developed. At least we here in Oregon do not have to fight the major battle over e-voting machines vs. another type of system!