Florida: not ready for prime time

Well, this ought to put all of our minds at ease ... NOT.

According to Common Cause, Florida is one of several states whose myriad voting problems risk the validity of and confidence in the conduct of the November 4 election.

"It is unfortunate that even after the debacle of 2000, Florida continues to have many significant problems with its election administration system," said Ben Wilcox, Florida Common Cause president.

"We're going to have to cross our fingers that the huge turnout in the coming election doesn't overload our rickety system and end up disenfranchising voters."

Florida officials said the Common Cause report included incorrect and incomplete information and that the state is prepared to handle what is expected to be a major surge in voters.

The report examined voter registration, voter identification, voting machine allocation, poll worker recruitment and training, provisional ballots and other issues.

It said that Florida could mistakenly reject many eligible voters by requiring that prospective voters prove eligibility by providing the exact information that appears on existing state databases.

They're alluding, of course, to the law recently activated by Republican secretary of state Kurt Browning wherein even a minor typographical error in Tallahassee might disenfranchise any one of us ... especially those people who are targeted by this GOP master stroke: new voters, largely young, minority, and -- oh, yeah -- Democratic.

"Florida could mistakenly reject many eligible voters" ... don't you get it, Common Cause? That's exactly what the Republicans have in mind! The reason that "even after the debacle of 2000, Florida continues to have many significant problems with its election administration system" is because Republicans continue to game the system to make sure they do everything in their power to prevent lawfully registered voters -- Democrats -- from exercising their constitutional right. Since the Republicans can't win on the issues anymore, their only real option is disenfranchisement.

This is what passes for democracy in 2008, folks -- one party trying to fix elections in advance, any way they can. While in Michigan, the GOP in one large county outside Detroit is pushing to keep voters whose homes have foreclosed away from the polls -- thereby giving those folks a double whammy from the economic woes the Republican president's policies have caused! -- and the Obama campaign is challenging that practice, here in Florida ... crickets so far.

Republicans can't plausibly claim that this new law in Florida is intended for any purpose other than disenfranchisement of registered voters. No bleating about "accurate records" or "the need for certainty" can dress up their obvious ploy to fix the election. In other words ... you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig.

So there.

GOP strategy: when you can't win, steal

We knew that as the Republican smear machine cranked up and, predictably, had no results, and as the Huggy Bear campaign became the laughing stock of the political world, they'd get desperate, right? Well, in Florida, GOP desperation is showing.

America's Wang™ is still a critical swing state, even though most polls show Huggy with a modest lead here. But, of course, it's early, and with seven weeks to go, the Florida GOP stealing machine is cranking up. Last week, there were thousands of lost ballots in Palm Beach County ... now, a new state law is in place, thanks to a Republican legislature and a Republican secretary of state, that threatens to disenfranchise many voters in the state, by targeting new voters in a year of record new registrations, particularly of minorities and young people.

Secretary of State Kurt Browning put the state's 2005 "no match, no vote" law into effect Monday, less than a month before the Oct. 6 deadline to register to vote in the Nov. 4 general election.

That means the voter registration information for anyone who signed up Monday or later must match identification information in other government databases. If the state can't make the match or the person can't prove that the registration information is correct with a driver license or Social Security card before Nov. 4, the voter will get only a provisional ballot on Election Day.

And that's even if the voter shows up with the proper ID at the polls.

Then, the voter will have two days after Election Day to prove his or her case, or the provisional vote won't count.

Yep, you read that right. The Republican secretary of state "activated" a dormant, three-year-old state law just three weeks before the registration deadline for November's election.

Of course, Browning himself has a ready explanation for why he waited to implement the law, which had been in court battles until this past July:

Browning, a former Pasco County supervisor of elections who was appointed to his state position by Republican Gov. Charlie Crist, said he delayed implementation of the law until after the primary to give supervisors time to make changes to their computer systems and because registration had closed by the time the court order became final.

He also acknowledged that the court case prompted state legislators to make changes this year to the law, which originally was passed to prevent voter fraud, and said he gets "steamed up" by complaints.

"Folks ... continue to stir this up, and they think it's wrong simply because they don't like it. That's it in a nutshell," he said. "They don't like it, therefore it's wrong. I'm telling you it's not wrong. You've had a district court and an appellate court and the United States Department of Justice that have signed off on that. It's good. It's valid.

"They want to keep the hysteria moved up. They want to keep everybody agitated. They want to make sure that nobody has confidence in their systems."

But if the system doesn't work, elections experts say it could especially affect Democrats. Presidential candidate Barack Obama has made bringing new voters to the polls one of his campaign strategies, and many of the voters he has encouraged to sign up are minorities.

Of the 400,000 new voters registered in Florida this year, about two-thirds are Democrats.

You're steamed up, Kurt? I'm fucking pissed.

The law may be "valid," but you're citing the Bush crime syndicate's own Department of Justice, led by a series of political hacks like Alberto Gonzalez and Michael Mukasey, as proof that it's "good?" Just because Drunky McStagger says something's valid doesn't mean it's "good" -- in fact, it's a pretty good indicator that it's quite the opposite.

This is more than just controversial -- it's a potential disaster for Democratic hopes, at least on the presidential level, in November. There can be no doubt that the law's implementation was timed to cause maximum electoral damage to Democrats in Florida, and I have no doubt that the Republicans knew exactly what they were doing when they had Browning act in this instance. Just as they knew that moving the primaries back to January 29 would cause huge problems for the Democrats, so too are they plotting and scheming to try whatever they can do to hold onto power in the face of daunting national opposition and recognition that the Republican plan to maintain the status quo is asinine.

I feel like ranting, but I don't have the words at the moment. I'm just too angry. All I can do is tell you that if you're not registered to vote, do it now -- today -- or as soon as you can. And be prepared to go through a ridiculous bureaucratic process when you register ... but please, be patient and do it. Every vote counts, and we've got to win by a large enough margin to keep the Republicans from stealing yet another election.

Oh, and in conclusion, I'd like to invite Kurt Browning to go fuck himself. Thanks in advance.

UPDATE (10:25 pm 9/11/08): Crap. I just discovered I inadvertently omitted the link to the article I quoted! I'm a dumbass. Anyway, it's fixed now. Sorry.

(cross-posted at FPC Blog)

Want a revote? How about no Democratic candidate in November?

Gov. Crist says if the Democrats pony up the $4 million or so that it would cost to do a revote, the state will oversee the election. Well, that's mighty nice of him ... I'm sure he'd love to have the Division of Elections, part of the Department of State, led by noted wingnut Kurt Browning, supervise the do-over.

But leave it to House Speaker Marco Rubio (R-ude) to sum things up from the Fascist perspective:

Republican House Speaker Marco Rubio of West Miami said he doesn't like Crist's plan because "our elections supervisors are already over-burdened."

"We already had an election. A record number of Democrats voted. Why can't they just ... respect those votes and move on? I don't understand why Howard Dean is so obsessed with punishing Florida's Democrats."

Shorter Rubio: "Why can't the dirty Democrats just bend over and take what we in the Legislature forced on them in the first place?"

But hold on -- it gets better:

Florida House rules chairman David Rivera, a Republican, said he likes the idea of a mail election if the Democrats pay for it. Meantime, he has asked the House elections committee to research a bill that would ban the Democratic nominee from the Florida ballot in November if the national party refuses to seat the state's delegates. It's Senate Republican leader Dan Webster's idea, but he's not wedded to it.

Sen. Nan Rich, a Democratic supporter of Clinton, said the idea would hurt the nominee and again disenfranchise voters.

House leader Rubio, agreed, saying the idea "would make us as bad as Howard Dean."

Holy. Fucking. Shit. Let me break this down so you don't miss the carnage of democracy's demise: a legislator from one party is looking into whether the state legally can keep the other party's candidate off the ballot completely. "Hurt the nominee?" How about "bury American government once and for all?"

I don't know whether we should have a new election or not, but what I do know is Rubio calling Howard Dean "bad" is the very worst kind of irony. And Webster's idea is the very worst kind of petty, undemocratic bullshit.

(cross-posted at FPC Blog)

Florida certifies Diebold for elections

Hurricanes aren't the biggest threat to America's Wang™. Florida is facing a bigger menace ... from the infamous, nefarious, GOP-controlled Diebold. From BradBlog (note: all links in excerpt are PDF files):

On July 27, the Florida State University Security and Assurance in Information Technology Laboratory (SAIT) issued a report on the results of a review of the source code for the Diebold voting system that was in the state of Florida certification process. This report was commissioned by the Secretary of State, Kurt Browning.

On July 31, Browning sent a letter to Diebold to tell them that the system would not be certified as it was presented to the state and that the company had until August 17 to fix the problems or the certification process would be stopped. Included in that letter were three pages of required software repairs.

On August 10, Browning sent a congratulatory letter to Diebold to let them know all of the code fixes were successfully inspected by the SAIT Lab. and the state and that the Diebold optical-scan system and AutoMark were to be certified for use by the state.

That's less than two weeks from report of numerous problems to repairs to the source code to reinspection to issuance of certification.

How did this happen so fast?

UPDATE August 12 It appears that the changes that were made to the code had already been made in a newer version of the code that is in the federal testing process. The Independent Test Authority sent that code to Florida State and that is what was inspected and passed. I am being told that the report by the SAIT will be published early in the week.

Truth be told, I'm not even all that concerned about the speed with which the certification occurred. What really bothers me is that a wingnut Secretary of State certified a wingnut voting machine manufacturer.

We need to keep a wary eye on Diebold. Florida isn't exactly known for its accurate elections, you know? Diebold certainly won't improve the situation.

(Thanks to Ripley for the tip.)

FL-13: SecState says it wasn't the voting machines

Another chapter in the ongoing saga of Florida voting goes the Republic Party's way:

Neither voting equipment nor election software caused more than 18,000 votes to disappear in a disputed congressional race to replace former U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris, according to two audits released Friday by the Florida Secretary of State.

But what went wrong Nov. 7 in the Sarasota County District 13 election is still a mystery, the audits found.

[...]

"The team's unanimous opinion is that the iVotronic firmware, including faults that we identified, did not cause or contribute to the CD13 undervote," reads a report authored by a team of eight computer scientists based at Florida State University who conducted the audit.

But the report goes on: "There is no dispute that this undervote is abnormal and unexpected and that it cannot be explained solely by intentional undervoting."

Florida Secretary of State Kurt Browning issued a statement Friday saying the audit confirmed that "there is no evidence that suggests the official results are in error."

It should be noted that the lead computer scientist on FSU's audit was associate professor Dr. Alec Yasinsac, whose political activities include contributions to the campaigns of Katherine Harris and GOP congressional candidate Frank Schwerin. Just sayin'.

Anyway, we still don't know why there were 18,000 undervotes in Sarasota County, and I wonder if we ever will:

[Democratic candidate Christine] Jennings and voter advocacy groups, including People for the American Way, mounted a legal battle to gain access to ES&S' source code for the machines.

That lawsuit is awaiting a decision by the 1st District Court of Appeal after a circuit judge ruled Jennings' arguments about the possibility of lost votes were "conjecture" and did not warrant disclosing the trade secrets of the voting machine company.

Some experts testified that poor ballot design contributed to the anomaly and that the race was difficult to locate on the touch screens.

Earlier this month, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., launched an inquiry into the election, asking Congress' Government Accountability Office and the National Institute of Standards and Technology to perform a "top-to-bottom" investigation into the 18,000 undervotes.

Stay tuned ...