HorsesAss.Org

As the Washington Legislature continues to debate election reform in the wake of the our gubernatorial hoo-hah, they should keep in mind this cautionary tale from yesterday’s Miami Herald:

Three years after spending $24.5 million to install a controversial touch-screen voting system, Miami-Dade County elections officials have been asked to study scrapping the system in favor of paper-based balloting.

The request from County Manager George Burgess follows the recent resignation of Elections Supervisor Constance Kaplan and the revelation that hundreds of votes in recent elections hadn’t been counted.

What was it Slippery Slade said about King County clearly having “the worst election administration” in the nation?

Miami-Dade is considering whether optical scan technology — like that used in King County — might produce more accurate results at a lower cost. (Caltech/MIT concludes optical scan is more accurate.) County officials say the electronic machines have tripled election day costs.

”It’s a confluence of bad facts,” said Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, head of the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition and a longtime critic of the elections department. “You have lousy technology that doesn’t inspire voter confidence combined with outrageous costs for that lousy technology.”

Burgess’ April 4 directive came just days after Kaplan resigned amid revelations that a coding glitch in the county’s iVotronic touch-screen machines tossed out hundreds of votes in six recent elections.

A “coding glitch,” huh. While the word “glitch” implies that these errors were unintentional, the St. Petersburg Times reported last week that a computer programmer who claims he developed software to alter the results on electronic voting machines, has passed a lie detector test, administered by the retired chief polygraph operator for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Clint Curtis swore in an affidavit, and testified before a congressional sub-committee, that he developed the software at the request of U.S. Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Florida).

The Times reporter is clearly skeptical, but the allegations are taken much more seriously by a local blog that has been covering the story in great detail. (Sound familiar?) I don’t have an opinion one way or the other, but the allegations of fraud and conspiracy sound at least as plausible as those coming from the aluminum hat boys over on (u)SP. And they certainly deserve being looked into in light of the allegations of illegal vote shifting on Snohomish County’s electronic voting machines.

Anyway, what we do know is that electronic voting machines have been proven to be error prone, and none in Washington state currently provide a voter verifiable paper trail.

Republicans want to ram election reforms through now, while the politics are hot, but I hope we take the time to learn not only from our own mistakes during the last election, but also from the mistakes of election officials in other states. In the words of Miami-Dade County Commissioner Katy Sorenson: “Sometimes, lessons are expensive.”

One of the more encouraging recent developments in Washington politics was the opening of a state chapter of Progressive Majority, an organization dedicated to developing a local “farm team” of liberal candidates. It’s great to see a progressive group with such a pragmatic mission… and the money to back it up.

In the current issue of the Seattle Weekly, George Howland Jr. profiles Progressive Majority, and it’s Washington state director, Dean Nielsen. Nielsen argues that Democrats have to get busy, even in this off-election year.

“If we have any hope of taking back congressional seats,” says Nielsen, “we have to start at the local level.” Seventy-five percent of the members of Congress were once locally elected officials

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I get a lot of nasty comments and emails accusing me of a lot of nasty things. So a big thanks to John for passing along this link to a diary on Daily Kos that pretty much sums up my response: “Message to any winger trolls.”

Liberals do not, DO NOT, NOT hate America. Fuck you if you think that. Fuck you if you think we should all be deported to Russia, or France, or even Canada. Nothing against Canada, or, hey, even France or Russia, but this is my home, just like it’s the home of millions and millions of other progressives who are not traitors, who aren’t America-haters.

Progressives and liberals DO NOT want the terrorists to win.

We DO NOT hate the troops.

We DO NOT hate the rich.

We DO NOT hate life.

We DO NOT want to turn you gay, or wipe out your religion, or make you have an abortion.

So stop saying it. And fuck you if you do, fuckers.

(Okay, maybe I wouldn’t mind turning JCH or Cynical gay… that’d be kind of funny.)

Read the whole thing.

Just a reminder, the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets again tonight (and every Tuesday,) 8pm at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue East. I’m going to try to stop by early for beer and conversation.

According to policy testimony, Dennis Kyne put up such a fight when he was arrested protesting the Republican National Convention last summer, that it took four police officers to drag him down the steps of the NY Public Library.

“We picked him up and we carried him while he squirmed and screamed,” the officer, Matthew Wohl, testified in December. “I had one of his legs because he was kicking and refusing to walk on his own.” […] But one day after Officer Wohl testified, and before the defense called a single witness, the prosecutor abruptly dropped all charges.

During a recess, the defense had brought new information to the prosecutor. A videotape shot by a documentary filmmaker showed Mr. Kyne agitated but plainly walking under his own power down the library steps, contradicting the vivid account of Officer Wohl, who was nowhere to be seen in the pictures. Nor was the officer seen taking part in the arrests of four other people at the library against whom he signed complaints.

(10 to 1 prosecutors don’t file perjury charges against Officer Wohl.)

The New York Times reports that video evidence from the proliferation of lightweight cameras in the hands of eyewitnesses have directly led to the dismissal of charges against 400 of the 1,806 people arrested that week. In fact, of the 1,670 cases that have run their full course, 91 percent have ended with charges dismissed or a not guilty verdict.

Among them was Alexander Dunlop, who said he was arrested while going to pick up sushi.

Last week, he discovered that there were two versions of the same police tape: the one that was to be used as evidence in his trial had been edited at two spots, removing images that showed Mr. Dunlop behaving peacefully. When a volunteer film archivist found a more complete version of the tape and gave it to Mr. Dunlop’s lawyer, prosecutors immediately dropped the charges and said that a technician had cut the material by mistake.

Technical error. Yeah, right.

What we saw in the streets of NYC during the GOP Convention were the birth pangs of a nascent police state. Hundreds of peaceful protesters and innocent bystanders were herded like sheep, arrested, jailed, falsely accused, and prosecuted… all for having the temerity of trying to disrupt a presidential photo-op with a display of their First Amendment rights.

Mayor Bloomberg and his police officials proudly point to the relative lack of physical violence in which they indiscriminately swept crowds off the streets… but when we allow the Constitution to be so casually bloodied, how long before real blood flows through the gutters?

You’ve got to give him credit… initiative monger Tim Eyman has finally come up with a bold new idea, guaranteed to shake up the political establishment: $30 car tabs.

Sure, Tim ran a $30 car tabs initiative in 1999 (I-695) and again in 2002 (I-776)… but this one is totally different because, um… well… it’ll have a completely different number. As the French say, “plus ca change, plus c’est le meme chose” (Translation: “Tim Eyman is a horse’s ass.”)

Tim called up David Ammons of the AP today to give him the scoop (a savvy PR move, considering nobody shows up for Tim’s press conferences anymore.) Tim plans to run an initiative to the legislature mandating $30 car tabs. It would block the Legislature from imposing a proposed $5 to $25 weight fee, and would eliminate the local MVET option currently levied for the Seattle Monorail and Sound Transit.

Tim railed against what he calls “tab creep” since the passage of I-695.

“This is the most arrogant and disrespectful attitude toward the voters. It’s like having children who are constantly trying to test you,” Eyman said.

Uh… local voters approved both the Monorail and Sound Transit’s Light Rail, and it is Tim who is being arrogant and disrespectful by calling us children. Personally, I think Tim is the “tab creep;” as one Eyman critic said, he seems to have some sort of $30 car tab fetish:

Eyman critic David Goldstein, a Seattle blogger and software designer, called the new initiative a tantrum by a sponsor who has gotten too caught up in his own myth.

“He’s making a fetish out of $30 tabs,” Goldstein said in an interview. “It’s his personal ego. And it’s bad public policy. It shows his disregard for local control. It’s another statewide initiative to prevent us in Seattle and King County from building the kind of infrastructure we want and need.

“Here’s the guy who’s against centralized government and for voter control who is now essentially railing against local control.”

Oh wait… that was me. How meta.

I could have been pithier, but the point stands… this initiative isn’t about taxes or public policy or respecting the will of the people… it’s about Tim. He built his career on $30 car tabs, and any tinkering with them he takes as a personal affront. But if he thinks he can simply slap tail fins on this old buggy and ride it to victory at the polls, he’s got another thing coming.

Tim traditionally relies on Eastern Washington for much of his support, but nobody has felt the pain of I-695 more than the residents of rural towns, many of which are on the verge of bankruptcy as a result. And voters have made it clear they want the kinds of non-asphalt transportation projects that only “flexible funding” can finance (the state Constitution limits gas tax spending to roads and car ferries.)

If Timmy really wants another winner, he’s going to have to get a little more creative. Could a $20 car tab initiative be far on the horizon?

The excerpt above comes from a fundraising letter the Evergreen Freedom Foundation (EFF) recently sent out to Washington residents, decrying our state “as the place you can vote from the grave” or “if you are a resident of another state.” The EFF’s solution? Purge the voter rolls and make everybody re-register:

Each of us who wants to vote must be able to prove that we are a non-felon, American citizen, with a legal residence. And we must still have a pulse when we vote!

(Emphasis theirs.)

Hmmm. Um… before the EFF pontificates to state and local elections officials about how to clean up their lists, perhaps the EFF should try cleaning up their own. The fundraising letter was forwarded to me by a faithful reader, along with an angry cover letter addressed back to EFF President Bob Williams:

I find it incredibly ironic that your organization so concerned with cleaning up the election process in the state of Washington is sending mail to dead people.

I received a letter addressed to a Mr. Harald R. Lellelid, [address excised] on March 3, 2005. This person has been dead for nearly five years. Furthermore he has never lived at this address. He resided in Oregon, but as the executor of this estate I transferred all of his mail to my address in Seattle.

That’s right… the EFF’s targeted profile of outraged Washington voters includes deceased Oregonians.

In case you’re wondering, Harald did not receive a ballot this past November… which I suppose can be attributed to the fact that the EFF was not running the election.

Clearly, this error proves that the EFF’s research is “totally messed up.”

Ooops… I almost forgot to stick it to Tim Eyman:

Tim Eyman and his treasurer created a sham corporation in 2000 to hide salary payments to the Mukilteo initiative king, a Snohomish County judge ruled Friday.

The Everett Herald reports that Timmy’s former treasurer, Suzanne Karr, was ruled to have participated in a deliberate attempt to circumvent state disclosure laws (hmmm… that’s a “conspiracy” isn’t it?) Guilty of six specific public disclosure violations, Karr could face up to $22,000 in fines, plus court costs and legal fees.

Which is kind of a bummer for her, considering that while Tim was secretly growing fat on diverted contributions, Karr didn’t take a dime for herself. Indeed, she was the one who tipped off the media after Tim continued to publicly deny he was making money off his initiative campaigns.

Karr, who was in tears after the ruling, said the state once offered to settle with her for a $2,500 fine, but she “couldn’t do it because I didn’t do anything wrong.” Hmmm. While she didn’t personally profit from her actions, she obviously did do something wrong (you know… violate the disclosure laws,) and some sort of penalty is called for.

For is part, Timmy settled out of court a couple years ago, agreeing to $53,000 in penalties and a permanent ban on handling political action committee money. Considering he paid himself about $250,000 through his sham corporation (with Karr’s help,) and raised over $100,000 in unregulated contributions to his “legal defense fund,” I’d say he got a pretty sweet deal.

If Tim were to take full responsibility for his actions… if he were a gentleman… if he were a mensch… Tim would pay Karr’s penalty and court costs out of his own pocket.

It’s the least he can do for the individual who was perhaps most personally victimized by his selfish, fraudulent, shameless scheme to secretly enrich himself on campaign funds.

“All of us at ‘The Daily Show’ very much appreciate the Peabody Committee’s recognition of our work,” Mr. Stewart said in a statement released by the show. “Because this is the first time we’ve ever released a statement, we’d also like to, just for the hell of it, categorically deny all charges and say that we find them both scurrilous and without merit.”

Yes, for the second straight presidential election, “The Daily Show”, Comedy Central’s satirical fake news show, has won a prestigious Peabody Award for its election coverage. Tom Goldstein, the director of the mass communications program at the University of California, Berkeley, said the award should come as no surprise:

“Jon Stewart is extraordinarily important phenomenon,” he said, adding, “The truth can be told in many ways – journalistically, through satire – and he does a brilliant job of expressing the truth his way.”

So for those of you who say I need to be more serious if I want to be taken seriously… screw you.

I just watched this week’s edition of Up Front With Robert Mak, featuring Stefan and myself. Not quite as exciting as the sudden death playoff in the Masters Tournament going on simultaneously over on channel 7 (Tiger won,) but I suppose it serves as a reasonable introduction to local political blogging for people who have been living in a hole. In case you missed it, the show will be rebroadcast tonight on KONG-16 at 10:30 pm, or you can stream it online from the KING-5 website.

Please remember that my few minutes of airtime were distilled from a two-hour interview in which I didn’t just talk about Stefan and the election. And while I have few complaints about being taken out of context, I want to assure everybody that I’m not quite so arrogant about my role in the election contest PR war as I probably came across. Many, many other blogs have contributed to the effort, including some great research and analysis from Also Also and Preemptive Karma. And I didn’t mean to entirely dis the media efforts of the state Democratic Party, the Gregoire campaign, and their surrogates, but lets face it… as far as PR goes, the Dems got their asses kicked.

Oh… and there was one thing that really pissed me off: they refused to say my domain name, going so far as to intentionally obscure it on screen. I was particularly surprised to hear them bleep the word “ass” in an old clip from the initiative campaign, which originally aired unbleeped, “ass” intact.

I’m proud of my brand, and don’t intend to drop it. But I clearly need to come up with an alternative domain name that won’t scare off the media cowards/puritans. Any suggestions?

UPDATE:
A couple people have asked about Robert Mak’s statement that I count my visitors in the hundreds. I generally do not reveal my web stats, but I believe what I said was that I have several hundred comments a day. My traffic is admittedly less than (u)SP’s, but it is certainly more than a couple hundred.

In his commentary this morning on Weekend Edition, NPR news analyst Daniel Schorr highlighted a fact that has been glossed over by the Bush Administration in its push for private accounts: one-third of Social Security beneficiaries are not retirees… and many of them are children.

Social Security is more than just an old-age pension fund, it is a family insurance program… the primary, if not only source of support preventing low income families from falling into poverty. Citing statistics from the National Center for Children in Poverty, Schorr points out that Social Security is in fact the largest children’s program America has:

• One in 15 beneficiaries of Social Security is a child under 18
  

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A couple days ago KING-5 sent a camera to my house to interview me for this Sunday’s edition of “Up Front With Robert Mak.” I was told the subject was blogging, and I assume I’ll be on the show, though I caught a promo last night that featured a shadowy shot of Stefan at his computer, so who knows how much. It’ll air Sunday on KING-5 at 4:30 PM, and again on KONG-16 at 10:30 PM.

Anyway, I’ve got a dirty little secret to tell, that I’m not sure I shared on camera… I don’t really read the blogs all that much. In fact, before I started blogging myself, I hardly read them at all. My main reason for turning HorsesAss.org into a blog was to force myself to write every day. (Be careful what you wish for.) Nobody was more surprised than me that HA developed such a large audience so quickly.

So I feel a little weird being presented on TV as the voice of liberal blogging in WA state, when I’m really such a newcomer to the blogosphere.

Fortunately, many of my readers are old hands, and they’re constantly pointing me towards good stuff that I otherwise might miss. For example, several readers have pointed me towards Balloon Juice, a conservative blog that has responded to the Schiavo Memo controversy and other current events with some serious introspection.

What I see going on around me is that my party is in power. We control the Presidency. We control the House and the Senate. Republican appointees outnumber Democratic ones on the Supreme Court, and we are poised to add more. We own talk radio. Cable news tends to be neutral to conservative (it certainly is not liberal or progressive- some outfits may have anti-Republican reflexes). We have all but eliminated partisan debate in congress, playing by rules much tougher than anything that was in place. Where there were once no conservative (or few) newspapers, there are now several. We have numerous conservative online journals. Hundreds of publications that all push the same point and pass on the same message.

And it still isn’t enough. Everything is under attack if it does not toe the same hard-right line. The university, the institution of marriage, journalism as an enterprise, the medical community, the legal community, every foreign institution, the United Nations- anything, that doesn’t cater to the conservative need for instant gratification in the form of message adherence and submission to the new doctronaire must be destroyed. Look at the recent behavior of Republicans in Congress towards REPUBLICAN APPOINTED CONSERVATIVE JUDGES. Forget ‘screw me once, shame on you.’ This new breed of fanatacism is “Slight me in any discernable way, even a mild disagreement, and I will publicly destroy you.”

Well, that’s the excerpt that seems to be getting the most interest from my fellow liberals, and I think it speaks for itself without further comment. But I’d also like to draw your attention to another sentiment that I think is too often overlooked by bloggers on both sides of the ideological divide. (You know… the few I actually bother to read.)

…most people who read blogs understand that this medium is by nature personal, opinionated, and partisan, and as such, each blogger should be read with the level of credibility they deserve.

Hate to sound like a broken record, but when it comes to blogging, caveat emptor.

G.O.P. Consultant’s Marriage Is a Gay One

Tom DeLay. (That should start things off.)

So, what’s my response to the recent events surrounding last November’s contested gubernatorial election?

Big whoops.

I’ve already discussed the 93 absentee ballots discovered amidst trays of empty envelopes. Sloppy work to be sure, but let’s have some perspective: that’s 93 out of over a half-million absentee ballots. And while more of these ballots came from pro-Rossi precincts than from pro-Gregoire (59 to 32), a proportional analysis would only give Rossi a pick-up of about four votes. Hardly grounds for setting aside the election.

And so I was a bit surprised to see former U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton, suddenly coming forth to put an ugly face on what has already been an incredibly uglier and mean propaganda campaign. Slade the Blade is also a lawyer — a former State Attorney General — and thus you’d think he’d be embarrassed to use such flimsy and inconsequential evidence as these 93 ballots as the basis for asking the U.S. Justice Department to launch a criminal investigation… and to do so with such reprehensible and over-the-top rhetoric.

The mistake could have been fraud or “colossal incompetence,” he said.

“I think it’s appropriate to come to the conclusion that King County has the worst election administration in any county in the United States of America

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