From Rocky Mountain News today...
The departure of Holly Lowder, former Alamosa County clerk, comes two months before what is expected to be one of the biggest elections in recent Colorado history. Lowder’s work centered on the implementation of the new statewide voter registration system, said Richard Coolidge, spokesman for the agency.
Lowder could not be reached for comment.
…
Coolidge would not give details on why Lowder stepped down. He said Thursday was her last day.
…
Larimer County Clerk Scott Doyle said Lowder was more involved with the voter database early on but had become less involved in recent months.
AP reports that county officials were notified of Lowder’s departure via email on Thursday, from the SoS office, which noted only that she had “retired and wanted to ‘pursue other opportunities.'”
Sources in CO tell us there will be more coming, likely tomorrow, on this. We’re also told that there may be a salacious aspect here that might just make the well-worn euphemism about “election officials being in bed with voting machine vendors,” um, somewhat more than just a euphemism. (Talk about your voting machine “sleepovers”!)
[See update for more details on the above, now at bottom of article!]Aside from the noteworthiness of Lowder’s sudden exit, as pointed out in the article, in regard to the importance of Colorado in this year’s elections — the state’s 9 electoral votes are thought to be very much up for grabs this year, despite going to Bush in the previous two elections — BRAD BLOG readers will remember a bit of the background here concerning the utterly dysfunctional state of e-voting in the Centennial State under their current SoS, Mike Coffman…
In short (which ain’t easy): A lawsuit brought by citizens against the former Sec. of State (Gigi Dennis) prior to the ’06 election resulted in the ordering of the decertification of all touch-screen voting machines in the state, to take effect immediately after that year’s general election. The court order, which came after the trial revealed the state’s e-voting systems had undergone little if any testing before being previously certified by the state, came too close to the election to order their decert before hand.
The horrible (virtually non-existent) state certification process was begun under Republican SoS Donetta Davidson, who was replaced by Dennis after Davidson was named by George W. Bush as a commissioner of the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission. Davidson’s new duties at the EAC would include overseeing federal certification for e-voting systems across the entire nation.
After the systems were decertified by the CO judge, the Republican Coffman (who had subsequently replaced Dennis) went about performing actual testing on the systems — despite stonewalling from the voting machine vendors — to determine whether they were secure and accurate enough to use in elections. They weren’t. So Coffman ordered all but Diebold’s machines be decertified.
Why was Diebold alone allowed for continued use? We don’t know for certain, but it was discovered shortly thereafter that Coffman’s congressional campaign employed the same PR firm as did Diebold in the state. Diebold, of course, denied any improprieties, though after the issue came to light it laid off the PR firm. (Mission accomplished?)
During the ensuing weeks and months, under pressure from county election officials, Coffman began to wobble on his decert orders and eventually allowed pretty much all of the machines to be used as is, once again, for the upcoming 2008 General Election.
He’ll be overseeing that election as the state’s election chief, even as he runs as a Republican candidate for the U.S. House in the state’s 6th Congressional district.
And yes, that’s the quick version. And yes, Colorado’s a mess. And yes, it’s likely to get messier as this latest scandal unravels.
UPDATE 9/6/08: As we mentioned above, more details have now been made available in this story. Turns out Lowder shared a residence with one of the voting company vendors who had state business. Full details now here…
Well, we know that the Rove forces intend to steal this election, too – Colorado doesn’t have many people targets for disenfranchisement, so it’s up to hacking the machines. A drive to totally disqualify the robots and go back to paper might be in order. Look for further info on http://www.stealbackyourvote.org
The NPR show Talk of the Nation Science Friday had a segment today about the perils of electronic voting that is worth checking out, although the chosen NYU “expert” seems a bit timid in articulating the problems fully. Journalist/election integrity expert in her own right, Lynn Landes, called in to the show with a question and comment.
“”state’s 9 electoral votes are thought to be very much up for grabs this year, despite going to Bush in the previous two elections “”
Why does everyone keep spewing this mantra when we all know that most “swing states” allegedly won by Bushco were in fact STOLEN through blatant election fraud?
Gore won in 2000, Kerry won in 2004.
The last time a democrat lost an election was 1989. Almost 20 years ago.
Yep, anybody who continues to allow electronic voting and tabulating without a paper record that takes priority in a comprehensive post audit is blindly allowing election fraud. I believe it is still not too late to demand it for this election! I’d take a portion of what they are going to bail fanny and freddie out with to Secure Democracy First!
Brad, as you are well aware, Velvet Revolution has a new website for candidates, and where voters can find out how to say to them, “We stand for you. Now you must stand for us!” It’s called StandingForVoters.org. If your well-informed guess about Lowder pans out, we may need another new one: LyingForVendors.org.
So is this a good thing, if you want fair CO elections?
Question is, why the Democrats keep sitting on their thumbs, dangling their feet on these issues..is it because of the GOP in the Senate with their obstruction and record filibustering..? (Why the hell doesn’t Harry Reid grow a couple, and make the GOP actually filibuster, make them stand up there and talk for days, instead of just caving in when they threaten a filibuster) Or are the Democrats to cowardly..? Do they want the GOP to steal another election..have they all been paid off..or do they just plain have their heads in the sand..so out of touch they have no clue whats happening outside the walls of Congress… How are we supposed to believe they are for change?…when they won’t even do something as basic as try to stop election theft…are they waiting for us to start a revolution or give them some sort of “bloody sign” before they do any thing…? Cause talking, yelling, begging, signing petitions and attending protests, sure as hell is not capturing their attention
Here’s a bit of the Science Friday Talk of the Nation show from Friday:
(8:57)
Ira Flato: “And in Florida, where they lost 2500 ballots…”
Larry Norden: “Ya.”
Ira Flato: “Were those paper ballots or electronic ballots?”
Larry Norden: “They were, they were paper ballots, uh, (cut off here by Flato who starts talking over him)
Ira Flato: “(laughing) Still losing paper ballots?!” (laughs for several seconds
Larry Norden: “Yeah, and you know, that’s something I want to emphasize, you know, there’s so much focus on the technology, but what it comes down to is having the right procedures in place…”
…
That about sums it up. I may post other juicy bits.
More about Ira Flato’s NPR “Talk of the Nation:Science Friday” interview, entitled “Voting Technology Evolves in Electronic World”, from last Friday,
Here’s the Lynn Landes call:
(16:28)
Lynn Landes: “Yeah, Hi, I’m Lynn Landes, I’ve been writing about this issue since 2002, and I’m frankly shocked that Mr. Norden is defending the computer count of votes, because he knows as well as any computer programmer that those votes can be shifted, uh, substituted, by the millions, by these handful of companies that are controlling the election [ac]counts, and we’ll never–nobody will ever even know that it happened, so why not do the paper ballots that are are hand counted at the polls on election day, and return some transparency back to the process.”
(Ira then cut in for a few seconds, interrupting Landes to announce the name of the program. He seemed to be taking his sweet time, to give
Ira Flato: …um, Larry?
Larry Norden: “Actually, I’m not defending electronic voting, um, I think electronic voting is a reality. That’s what we’re dealing with. There have been some benefits, there are some problems. I actually wrote a report about the potential problems with electronic voting, how votes could be lost and how votes could even be manipulated with corrupt software. I think the key is to make that process as transparent as possible. You have a paper trail on most machines now, some kind of paper record–that should be used. We should be doing audits. We are in a few states but not enough, where we’re taking some percentage randomly of that paper record and making sure that the machines record matches the paper record.
(18:04)
Lynn Landes: “Well just one comment. Our consitutional right is to a direct access to a ballot, not to have to work our way through a machine in order to register our vote, and secondly, to have that vote counted openly and properly with full public oversight. And when these machines are being used–you cannot have transparency and machines in the same polling place. They don’t work together.”
Larry Norden: “Well, one thing that I would encourage,
Ira Flato: “Thanks Lynn” (speaking over the top of Larry Brandon here) (and this lets us know Lynn has been cut off neatly before she could do any further damage…
Larry Norden: …and I mean that’s certainly what we’re doing at the Brennan Center is we’re trying to make sure that it happens as much as possible is that the whole process of counting and double checking and there there there are redundant records uh, everywhere for these machines, the number of people who have signed in, uh, should be checked against uh, the number of votes that have been totalled in machines–all of these machines print total tapes at the end of the day, everything should be looked at, and that whole process has got to be as public, um, to everyone as possible.
…
there was a lot more, but it’s too painful to try to transcribe it all.
It’s so good to know about the great work that the Brennan Center is doing to ensure election security. I feel so much better, don’t you?
Writing for “the love of truth”, (that’s from the motto of the UCC congregation I belong to)
John Dowd
heh, Ira Flake-O
Yeah John, hundreds of thousands of votes lost with paper ballots and central tabulation, along with thousands more lost with crappy chain of custody. No wonder they are laughing about the “cure.” Lynne is exactly right! I’d like to see out-of-luck vets getting paid to oversee counters myself.
Its really bad to hear they seem to have gotten to the Brennen Center. Also, with idiot boy’s choices (the first was charged/disgraced and gone) for head of public radio, I take npr now with a grain of salt. It is bad to see the Brennen Center cohorting though!
I wish people would understand everywhere…
Its the EARTH, not the what you believe’s in the SKY that connects us ALL.
Good one Flo!
Hi again, here’s more on the Ira Flato interview–another example of how bad it was: This came up when the discussion turned to “ballot design issues” at about thirteen minutes into the interview. Note how easily they dismiss the problems from the Sarasota election with 18,000 missing votes, attributing it all to “ballot design”, easily fixable via “usability testing”, as though this is a really cool new concept, that will address all these nasty problems and just make them go away, like magic.
(12:56)
Ira Flato: …I know Larry, that you study ballot design, and that always has since 2000 been the, you know: ‘Butterfly ballots!’. ‘All kinds of ballots!’ ‘Designs!’. ‘I think I’m pushing one, [but] I’m getting something else!’. Are there still problems, even electronically?
Larry Norden: “There are, there are. and again I keep coming back to this, but this again comes back to the idea that we’ve had all this change in technology in this short period of time, uh, and I think … in some sense the purchase of all these new machines was caused by a ballot design problem–was caused by this butterfly ballot in 2000, and the thought was ‘we’ll get some new technology and we won’t have these problems anymore’. But we have in every election since then–we have seen somewhere a ballot-design problem. Probably the most famous recent example was in 2006, in Sarasota county, ironically enough in a race to replace Katherine Harris uh, in congress. The layout of the ballot, uh, and it was on a touch-screen machine and the way it was laid out, it was very hard to see the congressional race. In a race that was decided by about 350 votes, you had 18,000 people uh, miss that race,
Ira Flato: “Hmmmm”. (no particular inflection, just a kind of “I’m still listening” type hmmm, made over the top of Norden, who continues right on…)
Larry Norden: “so ballot design is still critical, and again especially because so many people are looking/seeing new systems for the first time, they may not be familiar with that design, it’s really important that we pay attention to it. One of the things that I’ve been doing as I’ve been travelling in the country is we’ve been encouraging usability testing of ballots. Usability testing is something we do in the private sector all the time. You’re looking at a website…–there have been some tests to make sure that people can use it and understand it.
Ira Flato: “Right. Right.” (here again speaking over the top of Norden, who continues speaking.)
Larry Norden: “…The census does it. When they are putting together questions they test them to make sure that people can understand them. It’s not something we do with ballots, and um, ”
…
(Here Ira interrupts to make a comment suggesting testing in senior-citizen’s homes. Norden responds saying sure, because there are three groups of people who are very affected by ballot design problems, and those are older voters, new voters, and minority voters.
Ira then suggested they take a question from Second Life.
So what do you suppose people on Second Life were burning to ask about, concerning electronic voting and election security and so on??? Oh, well, it was a question about how do the new machines help people with vision problems. Please! So bizarre! There had to have been more relevant questions that were passed over, for one that would allow Larry Norden to say nice things about electronic voting. (IMHO).
It was all this kind of happy-talk disinformation. Nothing to see here, public, you can all go back to sleep. Just think of all the people who listen to NPR to get their information, thinking this makes them well-informed.
It was just the usual propaganda, about on a par with Faux News. Just need some usability testing, and check those various redundant sources of information that can all be easily hacked, and everything will be fine…
For the love of truth,
John Dowd
(for Ancient, You’re so right, and note that NONE of this is about what’s might be in the sky, although wrt that, I will just say that Jupiter and Arcturus are lovely right now in the early evening, to the south, Jupiter on the left, Arcturus over more toward the southwest.
It’s too bad when there’s corruption in our government agencies, they can’t be removed from office “by Thursday” , seems they love to hang around for as long as possible.
And to the other sub-thread here.
It’s never too late for paper ballots and public oversight of the entire process.
The only thing that’s late, is the amount of time it will take to bypass the fascist corporate media and get the word out.
Perhaps if someone started a new domain.
With the intent of getting the Public to make complaints in stations Public File all across America. This fascist media problem needs to come to a head.
PublicFiles4FascistMedia.org
Or something?
I see some entities out there talking about Public Files, but NOT ENOUGH, and NOT ORGANIZED.
Let’s get RID of these fake Journalists, and lying fascist stations by the outright DENIAL of their LICENSE and FREQUENCY RENEWAL!
Entertainment is one thing, fascism is something else. We have been screwed long enough.