SAME CIRCUS, SAME CLOWNS: THE IRAQI ELECTION
Former prime minister Ayad Allawi, whose secular slate appeared likely to finish fourth in the race and play a small role in the government, also questioned the results and called a meeting for Wednesday of groups angry with the outcome.

And Saleh Mutlak, who headed an independent Sunni slate, said: "I don't think there is any practical point for us for being in this National Assembly if things stay like this.

"This election is completely false. It insults democracy everywhere. Everything was based on fraud, cheating, frightening people and using religion to frighten the people," he said. "It is terrorism more than democracy."

Good for Benton County election folk.

Spread the wisdom.

Voting is only good when it is open, honest, and fair to all voters.

Well Brad, here we are at the end of 2005, and Florida's elections coming up in six to eight months. We still haven't had an investigatation into the fraud that has happened in the 2004 election. In a letter that was written by our new Supervisor of Election Arthur Anderson, he said that his first promise was to have a Voter Verified Paper Ballot. It is now, December of 2005 and we still do not have one. He did gather a group of friends and vendors and some IT people to be on his advisory committee. This group is so shocking that we would like to past a few things on to you to see how you all feel.
1. The chair has agendas to prevent the public from speaking. They have repeated disagreements at almost every meeting.
2.Clint Curtis has been on several agenda meetings, and so far he has not been able to speak.
3. The members have their own agendas like vendors from Sequoia who were involved in Louisiana voting scandals, he was on the committee at first as a voting member. This was a conflict of interest. Our Supervisor didn't see this as a conflict of interest. I fought to make sure he didn't get to vote. Yes, he doesn't have one now. The other cronies who are on the committee don't seem to care, but the only thing they want to do is get it done and go home.
4. They continue to not talk about the 70,000 machine errors that happened in Palm Beach County 2004 presidential elections.
5. When one of us tries to speak they send over an armed guards to intimidate them.
6. Of course, we have the election machine vendors on the committee looking to make the BIG dollars...
7. The next meeting will be Diebold who will give a presentation. Again we cannot ask any questions at these exclusive meetings.
As we all know that Diebold is rapidlly falling. We are so happy that Ion Sancho's courage to expose the security flaws in the electronic voting machines have shown up. We must not forget Bev Harris's whose determination, is helping to bring Diebold to it knees and change the elections in this country. One thing that we can hold on to is that she did an audit on the 2004 in Palm Beach County. We are waiting for the committee to have her come in and do a presentation. They haven' yet.
Things here in Palm Beach County are still a mess and we do not see the light at the end of the tunnel yet. The media is starting to listen to what the Palm Beach Coalition on Election Reform has to say. It is a beginning and we hope it too will bring positive change for the voters of this county. We still have a long way to go. We need all the support we can get to do this.
Happy New Year and may we have an honest election with a Vertified Paper Ballot.
Harriet Lerman
radio show host on 1340 WPBR AM
member of the Palm Beach County Coalition on Election Reform