Let’s face it: Jeb! appointee Buddy Johnson should go back to running restaurants, because he obviously lacks the skill and knowledge necessary to run Hillsborough County’s elections.

Buddy doesn’t know much about computers, but he knows what Jeb! wants him to say, and he’s been touting the company line ever since he was appointed by the Governor to replace newly elected Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio.

Back in February, BlogWood readers learned that Buddy was exhibiting a stunning lack of concern about the increasingly well documented problems inherent in these machines.

It would take “an unbelievable conspiracy” to breach the security of the machines, which replaced punch-card ballots used in 2000, Johnson said.

As I pointed out in that February post, security is not the only concern, seeing as Hillsborough County’s machines use Microsoft software. Any one who has ever used Windows knows that Microsoft software is buggy. It crashes. It was also never designed for secure vote counting, but Buddy’s Rumsfeldian outlook on democracy conveniently allows for some wiggle room:

“There’s never been a perfect election,” Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections Buddy Johnson said. “And there never will be.”

Well, elections may not be perfect, but wouldn’t perfection be a good goal to strive for?

Regardless of his goal, Buddy dropped the ball repeatedly during the primary. First, Buddy’s infallible computers failed, causing a huge delay in the counting of the vote. Next, 245 votes from one precinct were lost. Then, Buddy had to have a reporter point out to him the fact that he had the wrong vote totals posted on his official county website since whenever he figured out what he wanted the final tally to be.

Now, to be fair, Buddy has blamed most of these problems on human error rather than computer glitches. I guess that means that Buddy is admitting to administrative incompetence, but is standing by the integrity of the voting machines, although he may not have made that leap of logic himself quite yet.

That brings us up to date, more or less, and sets the stage for today’s confirmation that Buddy is a doddering old fool.

Hillsborough County Elections Supervisor Buddy Johnson said Wednesday that steps had been taken earlier this year to reduce a security risk in the county’s touch-screen voting system detailed in a Tampa Tribune article this week.

The flaw could have enabled vote totals to be manipulated, leaving little trace, according to computer security experts.

Johnson said security measures were installed to diminish the risk in Hillsborough County after a widely distributed report commissioned by Ohio elections officials late last year first identified the potential problem. Pinellas County elections officials rely on similar security measures for their touch-screen voting machines.

In interviews with the Tribune last week, Johnson did not mention the protective measures taken by his office when asked about the potential security risk.

He said Wednesday that he misunderstood the Tribune’s questions and thought the newspaper was referring to a newer report. In a written response published on today’s Our Opinion page, Johnson explained: “I believed that your reporter was referencing some new information, not a report published in November 2003.”

The Tribune, however, had provided Johnson - at his request - a copy of the report in question four days before the story was published Tuesday.

The report, and another by computer science Professor Douglas W. Jones for Miami- Dade County, warns that computers equipped with elements of the popular Microsoft Office suite software package can be used to manipulate vote totals without leaving a record because it shares the same database format as the touch-screen voting equipment.

Because of that risk, Ohio forbids computers equipped with the software to be used in election-night headquarters where votes from touch- screen machines are being tabulated. The report describes the likelihood of anyone abusing the security weakness as “low” but rates its potential effect as “high.”

In his written response to the Tribune’s Page 1 story, Johnson said his office had taken “management control measures” to reduce the risk identified in the Ohio report.

Among the measures implemented in Hillsborough County to guard against the risk, Johnson said in an interview, are allowing many onlookers inside the “clean room” where the computers are used to tabulate votes on election night and limiting access to supervisory functions on the computers.

Similar steps have been taken by Pinellas County, which also uses touch-screen voting systems produced by Oakland, Calif.-based Sequoia Voting Systems. Theresa LePore, the elections supervisor of the third Florida county to use the system, Palm Beach, could not be reached.

The Ohio report identified Microsoft Access, its flagship database program, as the focus of its concern.

A Sequoia spokesman said the company believes security measures taken by Johnson are sufficient to guard against the danger.

Jones, a member of Iowa’s voting systems certification team and a consultant in jurisdictions scattered throughout the nation, said he would prefer that Microsoft Office suite and Access in particular be removed from computers used to tabulate votes.

In conversations with the newspaper last week, Johnson said the Microsoft Office suite security concern was a surprise to him and he would have to research the issue before addressing it.

Johnson also criticized the newspaper’s use of the report commissioned by Miami- Dade because it applies to a voting system produced by Omaha, Neb.-based Electronic Systems and Software Inc.

Jones, the author of that report, said his comments on the Microsoft Office suite danger apply equally to systems produced by Sequoia Voting Systems such as the one in Hillsborough.

So, Buddy feels that there are so many security questions that he can’t keep up with them all, or maybe he thinks that everything is just fine, or perhaps these new-fangled computer thingys are just too fancy for anyone to fully comprehend, but, hey, the screens are right purdy, and things happen when you touch them, just like an ATM, only you don’t get a receipt, which really makes them better than an ATM, right?.

Obviously, Buddy’s chief qualification for this job was his political support of Jeb!. When counting votes, he feels that a ballpark estimate is good enough, which actually logically leads to his idea that posting accurate totals is not necessarily important.

He thinks that computers are infallible, except when they’re not, but, again, let’s not try to introduce accuracy into the election, ‘cause that might be hard to do.

Finally, it’s becoming crystal clear that his non-techincal management of his office is less than adequate, especially if one takes him at his word that most of the recent glitches were caused by human error.

Happily, we can vote Jeb!’s Buddy out this November. Send a message that votes are important and that a paper trail is key to transparent and auditable elections.

Rob Mckenna is running against Buddy. Rob understands computers, he knows how to count, and he wants to bring some integrity to our electoral process.

Posted as Tampa

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Remember one thing: George Bush , his brother Jeb!, and the rest of the Republican party will stop at nothing to win. They will walk all over the constitution, they will bend and break rules. They will intimidate and lie and use every means at their disposal to suppress votes, and those means include armed state agents.

Here in Tampa, we recently learned that a traditionally black church is being targeted by the IRS simply because Democrat Janet Reno stopped there during a campaign for governor 2 years ago. Campaign stops at churches are traditional and very legal. The church has curtailed all political activity until the investigation is over. My bet is that the investigation will end on November 3.

In Orlando, there are two separate and very questionable investigations in progress that are succeeding in chilling the activities of traditionally Democratic organizers. The case of Ezzie Thomas, Orlando’s “Absentee Ballot King,” drags on, with empty allegations of fraud being thrown around, and agents fingering their sidearms and spouting vague tales of criminal activity while visiting the homes of black absentee voters.

The lesson: vote, and you will be investigated, possibly prosecuted. Don’t vote, and you will be left alone.

Local politicians call him the absentee ballot king.

Before each election, Ezzie Thomas appears at the homes of hundreds of black voters and picks up their absentee ballots.

In a predominately black Orlando neighborhood, it seems everyone knows the 73-year-old Thomas. He was the local television repair man for years, extending credit to black residents when no one else would.

But now Thomas’ tactics in the spring Orlando mayoral election are at the center of a controversy that once again has put Florida elections in the national spotlight. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigated Thomas, closed its case, then reopened it. Now the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights are investigating the FDLE investigation.

Critics of Thomas’ methods argue they are illegal and give Democrats an edge. Critics of the FDLE investigation say all candidates go after absentee ballots like Thomas does and call the probe an attempt to scare black residents into not voting in November, which would help Republicans.

“If there was evidence of widespread absentee ballot fraud, I don’t think anyone would question their right to investigate,” said Democratic lawyer Joseph Egan, who wonders why the FDLE would focus so hard on someone like Thomas.
……

In early June, FDLE agents began knocking on voters’ doors in Lake Mann Homes, a public housing complex on Orlando’s west side.

When they first stopped by Hattie Bowman’s house, she wasn’t home. So agents questioned her 9-year-old daughter. They wanted to know where mom was, who she was with, what type of car she drove.

When Bowman returned, she could see firearms under the agents’ coats. They told her they were conducting a criminal investigation.

“When they said “criminal,’ I said, “Oh my God,”‘ Bowman said. They wanted to ask her 19 questions - on tape.

“As scared as I was,” she said, “I didn’t believe it.”

She knew it was legal to vote by absentee ballot. And she did that again during the Aug. 31 primary.

About a mile away, agents asked voter Annie Justice if Thomas bribed her.

“If he bought votes, I want my money,” she joked.

The agents didn’t frighten her either, she said.

“I am not easily intimidated - believe me,” she said.

In late June, Thomas called a news conference to decry the FDLE’s tactics. Democratic activists claimed scores of voters were too scared to vote absentee.

“There are African-Americans who believe that if you vote absentee, you will have cops showing up at your door,” said Egan, the Democratic lawyer.
……

Meanwhile, Thomas spends his days behind the screen door of his ranch house. For November’s general election, he doesn’t plan to collect a single absentee ballot.

Chalk one up for Jeb!.

The Thomas case has garnered national attention, but a lesser known investigation is also paying dividends to the Bush family.

In Orlando, the Florida home of Disneyworld and a vital political battleground, the campaign for the November presidential election is getting sly, nasty and very, very personal. Normally, at this stage of the proceedings, Ezzie Thomas, a well-known character on the predominantly African-American west side of town, would be out chatting to the people, registering them to vote before the 4 October deadline and helping them with absentee ballots if they do not think they will have time to make it to the polls on election day. But the 73-year-old Mr Thomas, an affable ladies’ man, is staying out of public view for fear of exacerbating what is already a highly controversial - and highly political - criminal investigation of his election-related activities.

A similarly low profile is being taken by Steve Clelland, the head of the local firefighters’ union. Last week, he did not even dare attend a local appearance by John Kerry, the candidate he is supporting for President, in case it added to the legal troubles facing his own organisation. The firefighters are also subject to a criminal investigation, the chief allegation - for which no evidence has been produced - being that they colluded with City Hall to set up an illegal slush fund for political campaigning.

What makes the troubles facing the two men particularly sinister is that they are declared Kerry supporters, with the power to bring in hundreds if not thousands of votes for the Democratic Party. The investigations are being conducted by the state police, known as the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), which reports directly to Governor Jeb Bush, brother of President George Bush.

The Republicans, naturally, deny the investigations are politically motivated. But even they acknowledge that a chill has spread through Orlando’s overwhelmingly Democratic black voting community after a flurry of unannounced visits by armed state police to at least 52 homes whose mostly elderly residents had signed up for an absentee ballot with Mr Thomas’s help.

The Republicans have been hard put to explain what exactly the two men have done wrong. The media has aired official allegations ranging from vote fraud to campaign finance irregularities to racketeering, but no charges have been brought, despite exhaustive investigations. A grand jury examining allegations concerning the firefighters’ union concluded that no laws had been broken, which has not deterred the FDLE from pursuing the case.
……

One added wrinkle is that Orlando’s mayor, Buddy Dyer, is one of only two prominent Democratic public officials along the I-4 corridor. Clearly, if he is discredited, the Democrats will be deprived of a vital figurehead in the run-up to 2 November. As it turns out, he is directly implicated in both of the FDLE’s investigations. The intrigue began with Mr Dyer’s election last March. It was a two-round election, but Mr Dyer finished with just over the 50 per cent threshold needed to avoid a run-off. His closest opponent, a Republican called Ken Mulvaney, cried foul, saying the 234-vote margin putting Mr Dyer over the threshold was fraudulent.

Since Mr Mulvaney’s campaign manager was a prominent local talk-radio host called Doug Guetzloe, his allegations had a wide airing. But most of them, if not all, were demonstrably untrue. Mr Guetzloe claimed illegal absentee votes had been faxed into the elections supervisor’s office, but the office accepts only originals. He also said people had been paid for their votes, but offered no evidence of this.

The greatest suspicion fell on Ezzie Thomas, because he had personally witnessed applications for 270 absentee ballots, a figure big enough to force a run-off election if it could be shown the votes were fraudulent. The city attorney’s office cross-checked the signatures on the absentee ballots with the original application forms and concluded they were valid. Intriguingly, the FDLE did the same thing and stated, in a letter written to the state attorney in Orlando in May, that there was “no basis to support the allegations” and that the case should be considered closed.

“They’ve been trying to explain away that letter ever since,” said one senior city employee who did not wish to be identified. Something caused the FDLE to change its mind, because in early June uniformed officers began knocking on doors and asking threatening questions of dozens of black voters who had been in contact with Mr Thomas. Several said the FDLE officers took off their jackets and exposed their firearms while questioning them. In at least one case, the officer crossed his legs and tapped a 9mm pistol sitting in an ankle holster while he asked detailed questions about the interviewee’s reasons for voting absentee. (Absentee voting is a choice under Florida law, so one can wonder about the line of questioning.)
……

As it happens, Mr Thomas had been been hired before by Republican candidates to perform exactly the same services he provided for Mr Dyer, without falling foul of the law. Among his past clients are two names with particular resonance in the 2004 presidential race. One is Mel Martinez, the Bush administration’s outgoing Housing Secretary who is now running for the Florida Senate seat being vacated by the retiring Democrat, Bob Graham. (Mr Thomas helped Mr Martinez run for chair of the Orange County commission a few years ago.) And the other is Glenda Hood, who was mayor of Orlando for 12 years before being appointed Jeb Bush’s Secretary of State, the office responsible for running Florida’s elections.

And Mayor Hood, not Mayor Dyer, allowed the firefighters’ union to spend up to $40,000 a year in city funds on political activities. In those days, the firefighters were considered allies of the Republican establishment in Orange County and had endorsed George Bush for President in 2000. But Mr Clelland and his members were deeply disappointed by the White House’s failure to follow through on promises to put an extra 100,000 firefighters on American streets and update their equipment. So, in early June, they joined a statewide union vote endorsing Mr Kerry for President in 2004.

Days later, the FDLE, with television cameras in tow, raided City Hall, seized several computers and announced that the union and its so-called “leave bank” were being investigated. The beefy Mr Clelland said he was scared to death in his interview with the FDLE supervisor in Orlando and was told he might be slung into jail if he insisted on having his lawyer present. He duly asked Mr Egan to leave the room.

Like the black absentee voters, Mr Clelland also noticed the officer tapping the 9mm pistol in his ankle holster as he let loose his barrage of questions. “You would think these investigators were going after John Gotti [the late Mafia don],” he said bitterly. “Their actions have gutted this organisation locally.” After the grand jury ruled that the union leave bank was legal, Mayor Dyer asked Florida’s attorney general for a ruling to get the FDLE off their backs. But Mayor Dyer’s bad luck was that he had run for the office of attorney general in 2002, and his successful Republican opponent, Charlie Crist, was not about to cut him any slack. Mr Crist has refused to offer an opinion either way.
……

Orlando is also in a state of major flux. For years, the big citrus farmers, as well as the land developers who came in Disneyworld’s wake, made it a reliable Republican stronghold. Then an influx of low-wage service workers, including a growing tide of immigrants from Puerto Rico, changed its complexion.

The Republicans were shocked when Al Gore beat George Bush in Orange County in the presidential race in 2000, and vowed not to be taken by surprise again. The party identified the Puerto Ricans - many from middle-class backgrounds back home - as the key constituency and set to work to win over as many as possible.
……

With workers from both parties rushing to register as many voters as possible while there is still time, the race remains nerve-rackingly close, close enough that the votes controlled by Ezzie Thomas and the firefighters might just make the crucial difference.

So, after the election, there will be much hand wringing and soul searching and Jeb!’s office will issue a non-apology, saying that the Jeb!’s jack booted thugs were just protecting the integrity of the election and if they intimidated any coloreds into not voting, well, of course, that was never their intent, and it’s not their fault if things worked out that way…

Successful campaigns rely on grass roots organization. Getting supporters to actually cast a ballot is perhaps the single most important duty of local activists. Regardless of the international attention that the bogus Orlando investigations are garnering, the Republican party has already met its goal of suppressing the vote through old-fashioned state-sponsored intimidation.

More on the Ezzie Thomas case.

More on GOP voter suppression.

Posted as Florida

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Get Up with MorningWood, on 70,000 Watt Community Radio WMNF 88.5 fm, Tampa, and streaming at wmnf.org. 4 to 6 am (eastern) every Tuesday!

Studio line: 813-239- WMNF WOOD

Marathon

Yes, WMNF has had a buttload of pledge drives this year, and MorningWood has been involved in all of them. This is the last one for a while, and absolutely the last one this year. This time, we need money strictly for day to day operations. We’ll worry about the new building later.

To volunteer to help out during Marathon, call or email Gene Moore. (813-238-8001) or call me in the studio this morning: 813-239-WOOD.

Marathon runs from October 1 through October 8. Please support MorningWood with your pledge on Tuesday, October 5.

Blogging on the radio

Carter on Florida

Jimmy Carter, the former US president, has said Florida lacks “some basic international requirements for a fair election” and a repeat of the 2000 election fiasco “seems likely”.

Mr Carter said reforms recommended after the recount in Florida had still not been implemented “because of inadequate funding or political disputes”.

Mr Carter, who runs an election and human rights centre in Atlanta, accused election officials working for Florida’s governor, Jeb Bush, the president’s brother, of being “highly partisan”.

They were “brazenly violating a basic need for an unbiased and universally trusted authority to manage all elements of the electoral process”.

“The disturbing fact is that a repetition of the problems of 2000 now seems likely, even as many other nations are conducting elections that are internationally certified to be transparent, honest and fair,” Mr Carter writes in a commentary reprinted in today’s Guardian.
……

Mr Carter was a member of a commission that recommended modernising the state’s voting equipment, but he says today those reforms have been patchy. The new computer voting machines have raised questions over the possibility of tampering, but there are no statewide regulations on the use of a paper backup record of the vote in the event of another recount.

Mr Carter argues the right to uniform, reliable voting procedures is a requirements for a fair election by international standards. However, he writes: “There are disturbing signs that once again … some of the state’s leading officials hold strong political biases that prevent necessary reforms.”

Meanwhile, an appeals court has just revived a lawsuit that demands a paper trail for every Florida voter:

Florida’s election system, ridiculed and maligned during the 2000 presidential election and then rebuilt with new technology, was thrown into chaos again Monday with five weeks to go before Election Day.

A federal appeals court in Atlanta reversed a lower-court judge and ordered him to hear a lawsuit that demands voters be given paper receipts when they use touch-screen voting machines so there is a paper trail in a close election.

The court’s decision is vindication for U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, the Palm Beach County Democrat who filed the lawsuit, and a potential nightmare for election officials in the 15 counties that use the ATM-style equipment, including Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach.
……

Regardless of whether Wexler wins his lawsuit in court, state officials said Monday that they will now draw up an emergency rule requiring touch-screen counties to do manual recounts in close elections — a startling turnaround, because the state fought for months to bar such recounts.
……

This latest controversy comes as Florida is under renewed criticism.

In a stinging opinion piece in The Washington Post, former President Carter, whose Atlanta-based Carter Center has monitored 50 elections worldwide, argued that ‘’some basic international requirements for a fair election” are missing in Florida.

Among them, he said, are paper ballots and a nonpartisan electoral commission. Carter said that “Florida voting officials have proved to be highly partisan, brazenly violating a basic need for an unbiased and universally trusted authority.”

HOOD AND HARRIS

Carter likened Hood to her predecessor, Katherine Harris, who co-chaired President Bush’s state campaign while overseeing the 2000 recount.

”The same strong bias has become evident,” Carter said of Hood, blaming her for a flawed list of felons who were to be purged from voter rolls. The list contained the names of 22,000 blacks — likely to vote Democratic — but just 61 Hispanics, who in Florida tend to vote Republican, Carter said. He called the list a ”fumbling attempt” to disqualify blacks.

Also on MorningWood today:

Revolution, rain, and the return of the remix or mashup: an amalgamation of two or more songs, often combing the lyrics of one with the instrumental part of the other. Today, a brand new very cool mashup that I found on Skippy. It mixes two songs plus a surprise bonus vocalist.

Anyway, a few years ago, mashups were all the rage for a week or two, and I played lots of ‘em, sometimes dedicating an entire 2 or 3 hour show. This morning, I’ll feature a couple of old favorites along with the brand new not to be missed “imagine…walk on the wild side”.

Also this morning, another cool downloadable find - Billionaires foe Bush has teamed up with rappers Felonious Axe and 50 Billion to produce this rich video and mp3.

Billionaires for Bush will be starting a Florida Tour very soon and MAY be in Tampa this weekend - events are actually being rescheduled right now due to all of the hurricanes. Check back here for more details as they become available.

Revolution and rain will fill in the rest of MorningWood - freeform political radio. Tune in and listen up.

Playlists

Each week, I bring my planned songs in on CD. I usually end up playing most or all of them in the planned order. But sometimes things go askew. Sorry - no guarantees or refunds.

Hour 1 planned playlist

Hour 2 planned playlist

Live playlist (May be down due to power outage)

WMNF Community Radio

WMNF is a non-commercial community radio station that celebrates local cultural diversity and is committed to equality, peace and social and economic justice. WMNF provides broadcasts and creates other forums to serve the community by the exposure and sharing of these values.

Posted as Music

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This one was different. No boarding up, no lines at gas stations, no rumors of rationing. Just another hurricane: flickering power, trees down, water intrusion. Yawn. Whatever.

Of course, here in Tampa, we got to watch the storm weaken and eventually turn north, thus sparing us from serious calamity yet again. And don’t get me wrong - there was plenty of wind and rain, but I truly feel that people were more or less resigned to their fates for this one.

Or maybe it was just pure disbelief.

Personally, I’m starting to wonder if there might just be something to those far-out tin foil hat theories about the government controlling the weather.

Collectively , the storms have completely buried any local campaign coverage, and have allowed the Bush bros. to step to the fore with lots of photo ops and butt loads of government cash. Kerry, meanwhile, has shied away from the state, lest he appear to be taking advantage of a natural disaster.

Here’s a hint: heavy duty aluminum foil works best for blocking alien radio waves, but the thinner, less expensive rolls are much more stylish and make for more comfortable headgear in the Florida heat. Shop wisely.

Posted as Florida

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UPDATE - Another missive from FP, this one via
Flablog:

Last week, when I began having problems posting to my web site, Florida Politics, I advised Blogger of the problem via e-mail. It has been a week, and I have yet to receive a response (understandable enough, they’re busy folks).

Imagine my surprise this afternoon when I went to Florida Politics (to use some of the links) and found another site in its place.

I can still access the Blogger site (my password and username work), but, as has been the case for the past week, I can’t post. I just dropped another e-mail to Blogger, and hope to have the issue resolved soon.

In the meantime, I wanted to let you know that I have no intention of abandoning the Florida Politics site, and will resume as soon as I can figure out what happened. I regret that some of the folks who regularly visit the site will assume I have stopped blogging.

Whatever anyone can do to spread the word as to what has happened will be much appreciated.

If anyone has any suggestions or comments, please contact me at “flagov@lycos.com”.

Thanks,

F.P.

(end update)
###

Florida Politics, an indispensable sight for a slightly progressive take on Florida political news, has been taken over by a bunch of wingers. Here’s an update from the real author.

Thanks for the e-mail.

I have been unable to post since last week. I e-mailed Blogger and they said my site had exceeded the size limit, which makes no sense. In the meantime, this new site showed up out of nowhere (and a bunch of wingers, to boot). . . I e-mailed Blogger about the hostile takeover, and am awaiting a response. I don’t know what to do until Blogger straightens it out.

It is frustrating because the folks who are regular readers don’t know what the heck is going on.

I am trying to get to the bottom of it. Thanks for the concern.

FP

Can any Blogger savvy people help to get to the bottom of this?

The sight in question is flapolitics.blogspot.com

As of now, some of the archive links that I have still work: Florida Politics archive. As you can see, the sight has changed for the worse.

Posted as Florida

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What with all the excitement of going to NYC, dealing with numerous hurricanes, and simply trying to keep up with paying the bills, I haven’t chimed in at all on the numerous problems Hillsborough County experienced during our recent primary.

We’ve been getting lots of national press, none of it good, and Hillsborough Elections Supervisor Buddy Johnson is on the hot seat. Despite the problems, many, if not all, related to the new touch screen voting machines, Buddy is sticking to his “no paper trail needed here” platform.

First, on election night, Buddy’s brand new computers couldn’t count the votes.

After hours and hours of troubleshooting, the problem was blamed on an indexing error. As a computer person, I know that indexing errors are, perhaps, the single most common cause of database problems. At the very least, indexing is always a prime suspect. Despite this well known fact, it took Buddy’s guys all night to figure out what the problem was.

Incompetence.

Next, votes were lost. 245 votes from one precinct in Tampa were not counted. Buddy blamed this computer related mistake on human error.

“We’re very disappointed this happened,” he said.

Incompetence.

Now, we learn that Buddy has had the wrong vote totals: posted on his official county website since whenever he figured out what he wanted the final tally to be.

For three weeks since the Aug. 31 primary, the Web site of Hillsborough Supervisor of Elections Buddy Johnson included this obvious contradiction: a total of 118,699 people turned out to vote countywide, while 125,891 voted in the race for state attorney.

That’s 7,192 more votes than voters.

Did the county’s new-fangled touch screen voting machines go haywire and tabulate extra votes? Was there a ballot-stuffing scandal in the race for county prosecutor?

No, it was something even more predictable in the recent history of vote tabulation in Hillsborough County.

It was human error, Johnson said Wednesday.

Johnson’s staff somehow underreported the voter turnout on the county elections Web site, and no one noticed it until a St. Petersburg Times reporter brought it to Johnson’s attention during an interview Wednesday morning.

“I don’t know why it’s there,” Johnson said after consulting with his staff two different times.

Incompetence.

Funny, how Buddy bends over backwards to describe errors as human. That’s probably because his opponent in the race is a computer consultant, a proven manager who is a strong backer of paper trails for computerized voting machines.

Check out Rob Mackenna, and send Jeb!’s lackey packing this November.

Register NOW to vote - deadline is looming!

Posted as Tampa

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Surprise: DINO (Democrat in Name Only) Hillsborough County Commission candidate, the self-appointed moralist Bob Buckhorn, is being backed by developers and Republicans. His opponent, ex homo-erotic wrestler Brian Blair, is getting money from the same sectors. So, flip a coin - no matter who wins this race, developers will be happy, and Hillsborough will suffer.

More than half of the nearly $589,000 drummed up by nine remaining candidates for the Hillsborough County Commission has gone to two established politicians: Commissioner Ken Hagan and former Tampa City Councilman Bob Buckhorn.

Running for separate seats, Hagan has banked $159,367 to Buckhorn’s $156,776, according to the latest campaign finance reports.

Brian Blair, Buckhorn’s opponent, has raised $104,804, but David Cutting, Hagan’s challenger, has collected only $372.

Much of the money, directly or indirectly, comes from the building industry in fast-developing Hillsborough. Conservative businessmen, the mobile home industry and fireworks sellers also are bankrolling local races.

Buckhorn and Blair are running for one of two countywide seats left open for the general election Nov. 2: District 6, being vacated by term- limited Democrat Jan Platt.

Buckhorn, a Democratic political consultant, has a lengthy and diverse donor list reflecting the eight years he worked for Tampa Mayor Sandy Freedman and the eight he spent as as a councilman.

Through the reporting period that ended last week, Freedman gave him $250, and former city police spokesman Joe Durkin chipped in $100. Former County Attorney Emmy Acton also gave $100, and her former chief assistant, Jim Porter, donated $500.

Lawyer Kevin Platt, son of the commissioner Buckhorn hopes to succeed, gave $50. Prominent defense attorney Barry Cohen contributed $500.

Deanne Roberts, a public affairs consultant and former Tampa Chamber of Commerce chairwoman, delivered $2,000 - half as a personal donation, and half from her company.

Kimmins Corp., one of the area’s biggest construction concerns, gave $500, as did its chief executive, Fran Williams.

Buckhorn is reaching out to Republicans, too. Former Commissioner Stacey Easterling gave him $500, and her fiance, investor John Jaeb, donated $1,000.

DeBartolo A Blair Contributor

Blair, a Republican businessman making his second commission run in two years, has a donor list long on names that are less familiar in the public eye. But he, too, has collected heavily from the building industry and mobile home parks.

Among Blair’s more prominent donors, developer Edward DeBartolo and restaurateur Chris Sullivan each gave $500. Lobbyist Todd Pressman contributed $250, and former Hillsborough GOP Chairwoman Margie Kincaid gave $200.

Former Commissioner Joe Chillura and businessman Ralph Hughes are key advisers for Blair. Chillura donated $250; Hughes and his companies have given at least $1,500.

Publisher Dick Mandt added $500, and prominent farmer Roy Davis gave $200.

George Steinbrenner, owner of the New York Yankees, gave $500 each to Buckhorn and Blair.

Fireworks vendors and developers… maybe a “tragic” sparkler accident could lead to the destruction of a brand new subdivision or 2, but I’m not holding my breath. I can’t see any other good resulting from the election of either of these clowns.

Unless prude extraordinaire Ronda Storms is caught Tampa

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Tampa Tribune:

Imagine Toby Keith or Mariah Carey playing in a 20,000-capacity outdoor concert venue…

Posted as Tampa

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The Tribune today gives us an article in Florida’s amendment to raise the minimum wage. Of course, in an attempt to manufacture a downside to the proposal, they recycle the much disproved conservative “this will cost jobs and close businesses” scare tactic that is being trumpeted by the Florida Chamber of Commerce and other business groups. This time, though, greedy opponents of a more equitable minimum wage have thrown in a new twist: lower pay is good for the poor, because they will lose government benefits if paid adequately.

Wednesday, the conservative camp argued that increasing the minimum wage - and potentially lifting tens of thousands of Floridians out of government-backed health insurance programs - would be a bad thing.

At least 13,000 Floridians could be bumped from Medicaid or KidCare eligibility if the minimum wage increase passes, according to both groups.

Carol Dover, president and chief executive of the Florida Restaurant Association, cited “serious, serious social consequences.”

“By pushing families out of the government-sponsored programs and making it harder for employers to provide health insurance, Amendment 5 is only going to make the problem worse,” she said.

Economist Pollin called that an “incredible argument.”

Funny how these conservative opponents of fair pay suddenly find some compassion for the poor and decide that government assistance programs are a good thing, eh?

Despite the empty rhetoric coming from the other side, all studies still point to a raise in the minimum wage as extremely helpful for low wage workers. A raise for the lowest level workers will also result in a “trickle up” effect: workers making 7 or 8 dollars an hour should see higher paychecks too.

Robert Pollin, an economist at the University of Massachusetts, said the proposal would affect 300,000 Florida employees directly. A ripple effect on those earning an hourly wage in the $6.15 to $7.50 range would bring raises to an additional 550,000.

Pollin appeared on behalf of Floridians For All, the group behind the minimum-wage push. He put the price at $440 million a year to Florida employers, a fraction of the $930 billion in total sales rung up in the state.

He said to expect “very small, negligible price increases” if the measure passes, about 14 cents on a $20 lunch, he suggested.

“Those price increases will wash out. Those businesses will not lose customers. Those businesses will not lose revenues. Those businesses will not lose profits.”

Continuing that theme:

We know this because Princeton University’s David Card and Alan Krueger tested the argument in a 1995 study comparing the employment effects of a minimum wage increase in New Jersey with effects in neighbouring Pennsylvania where no raise occurred. Contrary to the doom and gloom predictions of minimum wage foes, Card and Krueger found that modestly higher minimum wages in New Jersey did not produce higher unemployment. In fact, New Jersey experienced better job growth than its lower wage neighbour. They suggest that higher minimum wages resulted in a more stable and better motivated workforce that reduced job turnover expenses, like recruiting and training, and improved productivity. As well, putting more money into the hands of working people who spend that money in their communities produced economic spin-offs.

The authors also found that an increase in the minimum wage does not necessarily have a negative employment impact on young people. In 1988, for instance, California’s minimum wage jumped a whopping 27 percent, from $3.35 to $4.25. Yet from 1987 to 1989, California’s teenage unemployment rate dropped more than the national average and fell relative to other comparable states that did not increase minimum wages.

That’s just the first linkable study I stumbled upon - there are tons of studies that have all independently determined that a raise in the minimum wage absolutely does NOT have a negative impact on jobs or the economy. The conservative scare arguments have been disproved over and over again.

Actually, the real problem with Amendment 5 is that it doesn’t go far enough. A one dollar raise, while significant for those who survive of $5.something per hour right now, still leaves workers with less than a living wage.

Still, Amendment 5 is all we’ve got this year. Vote “yes”.

More info: Floridians For All

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Check-out line reading, from an unimpeachable source.

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