From Nassau Voter Protection:

Republican Board of Elections Commissioner Sends Out Illegal Order For Election Inspectors to Disregard County Attorney's Letter on Voter ID
Democrats: We're Prepared for the Worst

MINEOLA – With four hours before polls close in the hotly-contested special election between Craig Johnson and Maureen O'Connell, the Republican County Board of Elections Commissioner has taken illegal steps designed to intimidate and suppress voters.

Commissioner John DeGrace has illegally ordered election inspectors to disregard a legally binding court order, as well as the written instructions of the Nassau County Attorney – effectively encouraging Republican poll workers to suppress voting by demanding identification from voters.

DeGrace issued an order on Board of Elections letterhead requiring Election Inspectors to "disregard" the Nassau County Attorney's letter delivered to all poll watchers this morning.

Johnson campaign spokesperson Alex Navarro said, "We're prepared for the worst. Our campaign has deployed dozens of extra voter protection attorneys to at-risk areas, We have real concerns that Commissioner DeGrace is attempting to interfere with the lawful conduct of the last hours of this critical special election."

DeGrace's actions are illegal for two reasons:

1. First, the Republican chair issued the order on official Board of Elections letterhead without informing the Democratic Commissioner, Bill Biamonte. Under law, neither Commissioner can act unilaterally. By issuing orders without informing his Democratic colleague, DeGrace has violated election law.

2. The order issued by Judge Brandveen last night is still in effect while a stay is in effect. Until this stay is lifted in Appellate Court, Judge Brandveen's order is still in full effect. Judge Brandveen's order stated that all polls and all poll workers should have access to the letter issued by the Nassau County Attorney, and requiring elections workers to disregard this law is requiring them to disobey a court order.

There's more:

This just in from Nassau Voter Protection; the above flyer (click to enlarge), clearly pretending to be an official statement from the U.S. Attorney's office, is currently being districbuted in the Seventh District.

Somebody really should call the AG's office.

The foundation of any democracy has to be free and fair election. I have written considerably about the danger the over-priced, insecure and non-verifiable DRE eVote machines are. By now you'd think the evidence was more than enough to kill any interest any state might have in these machines.

To me one of the deciding factors should be the fact that the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has advocated the decertification of these machines because:

According to an NIST paper to be discussed at a meeting of election regulators at NIST headquarters in Gaithersburg, Md., on Dec. 4 and 5, DRE vote totals cannot be audited because the machines are not software independent.

In other words, there is no means of verifying vote tallies other than by relying on the software that tabulated the results to begin with.

The machines currently in use are "more vulnerable to undetected programming errors or malicious code," according to the paper.

The NIST paper also noted that, "potentially, a single programmer could 'rig' a major election."

We continue to fight the good fight against DRE machines. I have written about this enough that I doubt I have to go into too much detail. You can read some of my earlier stuff if you want more on it. Or see the DFNYC site's discussion of the issue. For me the lack of a legal recount and the fact that the National Institute of Standards and Technology is warning against DRE machines is good enough to fight them.

But here are some upcoming events in NYC where you can try out machines or testify to the Board of Elections about them:

On January 11, 2007, at 5 PM, the New York City Board of Elections will host a public demonstration of the proposed new voting machines at Fordham University, Pope Auditorium (60th Street and Columbus Avenue).

A large turnout by individual citizens and public officials will show that the public is watching! Join us in viewing the machines currently under consideration by our County Commissioners.

On January 23, 2007, at 4 PM, the NYC Board of Elections will conduct a hearing at the Board offices at 42 Broadway, 6th floor, and the public is invited to attend and comment to the Board Commissioners on the proposed new voting machines.

Venezuela is one of Bush's favorite bugbears. I am surprised we haven't heard some form of domino theory focused on Venezuela and Bolivia as the new Vietnam and Laos in the war against Communism justifying invasions. Maybe the fact that practically every major South American nation except Colombia has voted in leftist or left-leaning governments in recent years and we would not be terribly welcome on that continent.

Hugo Chavez is quite intentionally riding a wave of anti-Bush/anti-American sentiment to achieve political power. He may well fit the definition of Demagogue as the Greeks originally envisioned it. I have heard mixed things about him regarding Jews and don't know where the truth lies (and here is one place I wish Gatemouth could give his view, but alas it is not to be). Certainly his tendency to favor anyone who is anti-American, Iran's theocracy included, seems as misguided as the Republican policy of supporting Afghan extremists, including people who became part of al-Qaeda, against the Soviets, Saddam Hussein against Iran, and any petty dictator who gives us lip service against anyone we don't like.

But there are things we don't hear about Venezuela that tell a different story from what Bush tells us.

The Albany Project has a brilliant run of the numbers from November's election for the state Senate. Bottom line: Democratic candidates got 51.1% of the votes, republicans 47.7%. However, the resultant distribution of seats in the legislature is 45.2% Democrats, 54.8% republicans, at 28 to 34 seats respectively. The average population size for a Democratic district is 310,339; for a republican district, the number is 302,558. The over-representation of republicans in the legislature amounts to 7.1%, based on the discrepancy between their total of the popular vote and their number of seats, or, read differently, gives them a representation that is 26% higher than they would have been entitled to if the popular vote were the controlling factor.

Theodore Roosevelt once quipped that the state Senate is constitutionally republican, and so it has been since almost beyond living memory. The question should be whether that is a sufficient legal shield for Joe Bruno's well-crafted majority-protection scheme. There appear to be two legal bases for challenging the districts of the state Senate: one man, one vote and the 14th amendment's guarantees as spelled out in the Voting Rights Act.

MoveOn is raising money for an ad to run in Tuesday's New York Times. Here it is:

The fight against the worst of the electronic voting machines may be nearing a turning point. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) seems poised to recommend decertification of the direct record electronic (DRE)voting machines. NIST is a non-regulatory federal agency within the U.S. Commerce Department's Technology Administration that "promotes U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards, and technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve our quality of life." This probably means that their recommendation is non-binding, but would go a long way to convincing people like my city councilman, David Yassky, who has yet to sign on to City Council resolution 131, that they had better oppose DRE machines if they want to ensure a fair vote.

From Internetnews.com:

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is recommending that the 2007 version of the Voluntary Voting Systems Guidelines (VVSG) decertify direct record electronic (DRE) machines.

It's an article of faith among many Progressive activists that electronic voting machines are a thing of evil, that these machines are somehow programmed to steal votes from Democrats, and that any and all Democratic election losses are directly attributable to this electronic menace. And who knows, this contention may very well be accurate.

The problem with this perception is the same as that afflicting the arguments of so-called "Intelligent Design" advocates, namely that faith-based assumptions rest on thin evidentiary reeds. Despite what is alleged to be a massive, nationwide and ongoing fraud that would constitute a federal crime, no successful court case has yet been brought, let alone litigated successfully, that would support the assertions of the Dieboldistas. Now, this may be because everyone is in on the conspiracy; but the more natural conclusion, and one more in line with Occam's Razor, is that this vast conspiracy does not exist. The test may very well be the litigation underway over the contested results in Fl-13. But as things stand today, the verified-voting crowd is setting up an argument which is essentially not falsifiable – "votes are being stolen in ways we can't see or verify", and that should, in my mind, offend the reality-based community.

My personal argument with the Dieboldistas is this: there is, as noted, a bit of a disparity between the fervor with which they advance their claims, and the underlying evidentiary record; and more importantly, by engaging in a small-bore faith-based conspiracy theory, they're discrediting and hindering a realization that should be manifest to everyone, namely that our system of elections is deeply and perhaps irredeemably flawed. I'd go further and say that the Diebold crowd, by positing fraud as the proximate cause of every problem with the electoral process, weakens the case that must be made for fixing the system itself. Ironically, they argue for fraud in exactly the same way that, as noted, advocates of "Intelligent Design" argue for their designer, as the root default cause that explains everything. Tin foil hats are fashionable across the political spectrum, it seems.

There are three Congressional races that still need out attention to round out the 2006 election year. All three are critical because all three address fraud on some level. FL-13 represents a major battle in the fight for election integrity and could lead to one more pick up for Democrats in the House. LA-2 represents a chance to replace an extremely corrupt poltiican who is likely to go to jail with an honest politician. NC-8 is a case where the Republican is trying to prevent the counting of all ballots, including those from areas where military families live. The Republican is just barely ahead and the Democrat picks up more votes each time a batch of uncounted ballots is finally counted. So whether you want to fight election fraud or more run-of-the-mill fraud, these three races deserve your attention.

All three races (described in detail below) can be found on my Final Races for 2006 Act Blue Page.

Christine Jennings Recount Fund

Jennings is running to replace Katherine "Stolen Election" Harris who prevented the 2000 recount in Florida and was rewarded by the Republican Party with this House seat. Harris tried moving on to the Senate, but failed. Jennings is locked in a neck and neck race to replace Harris. But Harris' legacy of election fraud continues as electronic voting machines in this district gave strange results, leading to an unusually large undercount. This suspicious behavior on the voting machines' part could cost Jennings the election. This one race could be the smoking gun that will discredit the eVote machines that do not have a legal paper trail.