Hello CA Kossacks and Other Inquiring Minds:
Yesterday, 3/16/05, I went to our state capitol in Sacramento to attend the Senate confirmation hearing of Gov. Schwarzenegger's nominee Bruce McPherson who will likely be confirmed to replace our elected Secretary of State Kevin Shelley.
Our local DFA group had prepared questions for the senators to assist them in demanding baseline conditions of employment to replace an elected official: 1. Affirm VVPATs by 2006, 2. Retain VSPP staff and 3. Abstain of political partisanship.
[More below the fold]
However, I was heartened that Senator Deborah Bowen asked the three conditions that we had provided, and so I was free to respond to red flags that I heard in McPherson's introductory statement to the Senators. With little time to collect my thoughts, here's what I said [and note what is in brackets I didn't actually say]:
I hear several contradictions:
1)DELAY? McPherson seems to suggest that implementation of the 2006 VVPAT mandate may not occur on all systems until late June or July of 2006 [which is AFTER the 2006 January deadline].
2)RUSH? Senator Ashburn said that the Shelley audit findings of JLAC ("Judicial Legislative Audit Committee") seemed to have whitewashed* how Shelley spent the HAVA funds. I went to that JLAC audit hearing of Shelley [and I didn't say this to them, but Shelley's primary misuse of HAVA funds stems from his refusal to funnel $35M into republican beholden e-voting vendors]. At Shelley's audit hearing Doug Chapin of Electionline.org * * testified that some states, such as Georgia, rushed out and spent all their HAVA money right away on soon to be obsolete paperless systems, whereas New York took a wait-and-see approach and spent nothing at all; notably, California was right in the middle of this range.
With that in mind, why are rushing to spend the HAVA money BEFORE we have a first class e-voting option available [, i.e. equipment with more than the Sequoia's cash register style VVPAT, which is not good in terms of voter privacy. BTW, I believe the EAC is trying to set a use it or lose it precedent that would make all States a Georgia; but in the meantime, I believe the only equipment deadline that is soon is the deadline to replacement punch cards systems. Someone needs to check this.]
3.RUSH? Our Governor is bypassing the democratic legislature by taking an unprecedented number of bills directly to ballot [including redistricting] BEFORE our election integrity issues are resolved.
[And what I wish I had said to tie this all together was: Why is it in all three instances, California voters get the short end of the stick?]
* The only other thing of interest to me is to investigate why Senator Ashburn is so hot to further pursue the alleged "whitewash" of JLAC of Shelley's misuse of HAVA funds. It would take an entire diary to fill everyone on this, but the things that Shelley probably did do wrong, i.e. kickback from a contributor, employment for a contributor's son, are NOT the things that are getting a bee in these people's bonnet.
However, in a quick nutshell, read the Shelley audit report and you'll see that his two big crimes were NOT spending $35M in a timely fashion (which is preposterous because the EAC--the EAC is the protocol end of the HAVA mandate-- was late in their guidance, other states spent nothing at all, and the deadline for equipment, I believe, only applies to replacing punchcard technology.
The second biggest offense of Shelley was he spent $661,000 to extricate CA from contracts with Diebold and any amount over $500,000 needed a separate form. No one questioned whether the law firm did their work or not--just they used the wrong form.
The allegations of partisan use of funds was under $2,000, and likely even under $1,000 in an entire year--yet probably $50,000 was spent investigating this charge.) HAVA mandates that the SoS do outreach and so they went to predominately republican roundtables, as well as a few democrat only events--this is what they were screaming about in their charge that he used the SoS for partisan uses. (Wouldn't a real crook have funneled millions into their partisan buddies evoting companies?).
* * Finally, Electionline.org, a non-profit that analyzes how each state is spending its HAVA money, said in so many words that the EAC, without really legal authority to do so, is getting together an ad hoc tribunal to rebuke Shelley for his misuse of HAVA funds. (BTW, Gracia Hillman of the EAC, I believe, is good friends with Conny McCormack.) So doesn't it seem that this tribunal's true aim would be to send a message to all SoS's to spend their money right away on whatever crappy stuff that is now available--from Diebold or Sequoia--or lose your funds?