July 31, 2004
BlogWood comments make the paper, mostly
Chris, a loyal BlogWood reader, sent an email to the Tampa City Council yesterday, just as I suggested in this post on hysterical Christians. Chris also posted the exact same message as a comment on that post. (Scroll all the way down to see the comments)
Today, the SP TImes did an article on reaction to the hateful and repressive actions of the city council members who walked out of a meeting rather than listen to another point of view, and they printed the email that Chris sent. Well, they printed most of it. And they “corrected” a “typo” that was actually meant to be. Here’s both versions:
"The behavior of White, Alvarez and Ferlita is typical of hateful Christians. What they can't understand, they fear. Why are these people on the City Council? And what's up with White's statement (that) listening to an atheist even one time could unleash a "snowball effect' on government? He compared it to having unprotected sex. Very twisted thinking. I'm not even sure you could call that thinking."
And from BlogWood:
The behavior of White, Alvarez and Ferlita is typical of hateful christians. What they can't understand they fear. Why are these people on the city council? Isn't there a separation of church and state. Or do they just get to shove their Judeo-Christian god down everyones throat? And what's up with White's statement "Listening to an atheist even one time could unleash a "snowball effect" on government. He compared it to having unprotected sex. Very twisted thinking. I'm not even sure you could call that thinking. Posted by: Chris at July 30, 2004 07:49 AM
So, why did the Times clean up this email message? Chris assures me that the BlogWood version is exactly the email that was sent to the city council, pasted from the original. Chris intended for several words not to be capitalized. An entire sentence was cut out without any indication.
I guess by calling the reprinted emails a “sample”, the SP Times gave itself blanket permission to edit for content and clarity. Too bad they didn’t make that point a little clearer within the article.
EMails should be reprinted without spell checking or editing. These are not letters to the editor which are often “fixed” before publication. I think a few well placed (sic)s would have made for a better solution than an invisible editing job.
E-voting? May as well flip a coin.
Remember a few days ago, when we discovered that Miami had lost computer data from the 2002 election - data it should have been backing up and archiving? Officials blamed the loss on a computer crash and said that no backups existed.
Well, now the data has been mysteriously recovered, found backed up on a CD and also on a hard drive. Convenient, eh?
Miami-Dade election officials said Friday that they found electronic records of recent elections that were thought to be lost in computer crashes, but the explanation did little to ease the swirl of controversy that again put the county's voting process under scrutiny. ......The records at issue: audits produced by the machines that provide a record of every vote cast and serve as the only reliable backup to check the accuracy of electronic vote counting.
''It is the vital record that makes certain that the election was correct,'' said Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, chairwoman of the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition.
The controversy began July 1, when the Reform Coalition made a public-records request for audits of a September 2002 primary. The group wanted to examine how the touch-screen machines functioned.
Two weeks later, they received a troubling response. An e-mail from an election department official said: ``The system crashed in May 2003 and again November 2003. As a result we lost most of the data files for the September Primary 2002.''
......When the news broke Wednesday, a team of state election officials and employees from the system's manufacturer, Election Systems & Software, arrived at election headquarters.
They found the audits on a computer, and Kaplan's secretary discovered a CD with information in a filing cabinet, the supervisor said.
Apparently, the department had been backing up the audit information all along -- as county auditors had recommended -- to prepare for server crashes.
Kaplan said crashes last year were caused not by technical failure, but by employees moving furniture without shutting the servers down.
Friday's discovery did little to assuage the fears of reformers worried about the Aug. 31 primary in a state made infamous by voting flaws in the 2000 presidential election.
Rodriguez-Taseff told commissioners the county not only needs to keep the audits, but to evaluate them.
The elections department does not regularly do that, and when an information-technology employee briefly took the task on himself last year, he found a significant glitch.
''Not only have we not looked at the audit data, we can't even find it,'' Rodriguez-Taseff said.
The coalition is particularly interested in a discovery by the American Civil Liberties Union that 1,544 people signed in at predominantly black precincts during the 2002 primary but never cast a vote.
'If the department cares about the accuracy of elections, it would have taken the audit data . . . and say, `How did we lose those votes?' '' Rodriguez-Taseff said.
''That is something we could do,'' Kaplan said. Asked later why the department had not done so yet, after two years with the machines, she said: ``We're not required to do it.''
......Ferguson was the most critical. ``It's almost a flip of the coin if we're going to get through this election without a problem.''
So, critical data that may be able to shed some light on the reliability of these machines was “lost” and then “found,” but only after representatives of the manufacturer and Jeb!’s office flood the scene. Now, I’m not suggesting that anyone may have tampered with or falsified or even counterfeited this data in order to silence critics and put an end to this inquiry.
I mean, just because Jeb! and the ES&S have everything riding on this election, and just because tons of dirty tricks were used in 2000 in order to steal the White House, and just because Florida’s voter purge list was heavily flawed in favor of Republicans, and just because Democratic leaning black voters continue t not have their votes counted, and just because the Republican party is urging its own constituents to avoid voting on these machines, um...,
Okay, maybe I am suggesting that something more nefarious than this article implies may be at work. Unfortunately, we may never know for sure, but let me point out that as a computer guy, I know that it’s pretty easy for another computer guy to fake a backup data disk and/or change the data just enough to have it reflect whatever reality the customer (Jeb!) wants to see.
Florida’s e-voting machines have no auditable paper trail. if you want your vote to count, you must vote absentee via optical scan ballot. This means requesting and filling out an absentee ballot form your county elections supervisor.
(More information: General Hillsborough County info)
Here’s a link to all of the Florida county elections supervisors. You need to contact your local county elections supervisor in order to request an absentee ballot.
Follow the “continue...” link to learn more about voting absentee in Florida.
Voting Absentee in Florida
The following list of frequently asked questions is from the Hillsborough County supervisor’s web iste, and is therefore somewhat specific to county residents, but the rules are the same no matter where you reside in Florida - any registered voter can request and vote an absentee ballot. You do not need to actually be absent on election day. So follow this link and contact your own county supervisor and request an absentee ballot today.
ABSENTEE VOTINGWho is eligible for an absentee ballot?
If you are a qualified registered Hillsborough County voter, you are entitled to vote by absentee ballot.How do I obtain an absentee ballot?
An absentee ballot may be requested for a specific election or for all elections in the current calendar year. The request can be made in person, by mail, fax, E-mail or by telephone. You can also fill out a request on-line by clicking here. The absentee request must include the voter's name, address, birthdate and signature if a written request. Only the voter or a designated member of his or her immediate family or legal guardian can request an absentee ballot for the voter. If the voter has designated an immediate family member or legal guardian to request an absentee ballot for him or herself, the designee must provide the required request information for the voter and the designee's name, address and relationship to the voter.When are absentee ballots available?
Absentee ballots are mailed approximately 30 days prior to each election to those voters who have requested an absentee ballot. A qualified voter may vote in person at either of the two offices of the Supervisor of Elections during the two weeks prior to an election.
WARNING - In Hillsborough County, this form of in person early voting involves using paperless touch screen machines - the kind that are flawed and leave no paper trail.
For other available early voting sites, please call our office at 813-272-5850 for additional information. Within four days of an election, a designated person may carry out up to two ballots for anyone as long as the required request information is provided and the voter specifically authorizes the person to pick up the ballot in writing. There is no limitation on number of carryouts for immediate family members.How do I return my absentee ballot?
Absentee ballots must be returned in the envelope provided. The envelope must include the voter's signature, the witness information and signature. Voted absentee ballots must be received by 5:00 p.m. on Election Day at the County Center office of the Supervisor of Elections or not later than 7 p.m. at the Robert L. Gilder Elections Service Center. A VOTED BALLOT CANNOT BE ACCEPTED AT A POLLING PLACE. If you request and receive an absentee ballot and later decide to vote at the polls, take your absentee ballot with you to be cancelled at your polling place.
July 30, 2004
Registration deadline looms
Monday is the deadline to Register to Vote in the Aug. 31 primary.
Stone the infidel!
A group of young children were planning a holiday show downtown. They scheduled a series of meetings, and before every meeting began, they invited a different neighborhood kid to invoke the spirit of Santa Clause so that their endeavor would be blessed with good luck.
Then one day a kid rose to give the invocation and proclaimed that Santa Clause was a figment of the collective imagination of the other kids. The speaker believed that Santa Clause was a tool used by parents to maintain control over their children. After all, kids were constantly being told that being naughty would invoke Santa’s wrath and that he would punish bad boys and girls.
The non-believer went on to proclaim that instead of supplicating themselves before this fat old white man that, perhaps, the children could, just this once, consider invoking the inclusive spirit of diversity to bless the coming meeting.
Well, the other kids went apeshit. They weren’t quite ready to consider the idea that Santa was a tool of the oppressor. And besides, if Santa didn’t exist, where were their winter rewards for being nice, not naughty, going to come from?
More importantly, what if Santa really did exist? Would He punish them simply for listening to this non-believer? Would he unleash his wrath upon the group by turning them into a pillar of coal? Uh, maybe!
Best to err on the side of safety and simply run away and hide. After all, if the children let themselves be exposed to people and beliefs that are foreign to them, even once, it could unleash a snowball effect and suddenly open the group up to a whole world of new and exciting ideas.
The City Council's opening invocation is usually a quiet moment of peace.People from all faiths bow heads to hear pastors, rabbis and even poets offer some inspiration.
But Thursday, three council members walked out rather than hear an invocation from a man who doesn't believe in God.
Council members Kevin White, Mary Alvarez and Rose Ferlita left their seats rather than listen to Michael R. Harvey, a member of Atheists of Florida who had been invited by council member John Dingfelder to offer the invocation.
Even before Harvey began to speak, White was pushing to cancel the invocation. These are sacred moments that refer to a supreme being, White said, and this speaker is an atheist.
"We have never had people of an atheist group represent Americans," White said. "And I don't think it is appropriate in this setting."
White's motion to cancel the invocation failed 2-4, supported only by him and Alvarez. She called White "very brave" for making the effort.
"I just can't sit here and listen to someone that does not believe in a supreme being," she said.
Ferlita voted to allow the invocation go on, but also walked out. "I think this is sending us in the wrong direction," Ferlita said.
Mayor Pam Iorio, who did not attend the council meeting, said later that the invocation should be reserved for speakers who invoke God. She would not say whether she would have walked out.
"I certainly don't agree with having an atheist come for the invocation," she said. "I think the invocation is a time for the council to start their day with an expression of faith."
Dingfelder said his invitation to Harvey started with a neighborhood talk. He often saw Ed Golly, president of Atheists of Florida, in South Tampa. Golly needled him that the invocation violated the separation of church and state.
"I agree you should have equal time," Dingfelder told him. "I'll set it up."
Usually, clergy members deliver the invocation. But poets, civic leaders and ordinary citizens have been invited to speak, too. Some are nondenominational; others mix politics with prayer. Some invoke Jesus, others are more meditative.
Dingfelder, who attends a Jewish synagogue, has also invited Baptist and Methodist preachers, as well as a chaplain from MacDill Air Force Base.
......Then, White stepped in. White said he had heard news reports that Harvey planned to make a political statement. Harvey should make his speech during the audience portion of the meeting, he said, when people have three minutes to address the council.
"What you are proposing is a form of censorship," Dingfelder said. And he said he was not told in advance what Harvey planned to say.
"City Hall belongs to everybody - everybody - regardless of what they believe in or what they don't believe in," Dingfelder said, his face getting flushed. "Because that is what our nation was built on. And that is what our soldiers overseas are fighting for."
With the debate over, council vice chairman Shawn Harrison invited Harvey to begin. Harrison warned him not to make a political statement.
Harvey thanked the council, then spoke about the separation of church and state.
Harrison banged the gavel.
"Sir, you are out of order," he said. "This is a political statement."
"I would say what occurred before was more of a political statement," Harvey said.
Harrison warned Harvey again.
The three council members still in the room lowered their heads.
Harvey continued: "So rather than clasping your hands, bowing your heads and closing your eyes, open your arms to that which truly makes us strong - our diversity."
Later that day, Harvey said he expected controversy, but not the hostility he faced.
"They did not want an atheist to share in that symbolic gesture to participate in government at that level," Harvey said. "I think it disturbed them. I think they did not know how to act."
......Later, White agreed that he was taking a stand. Listening to an atheist even one time could unleash a "snowball effect" on government. He compared it to having unprotected sex.
By the afternoon, Dingfelder was sounding somber. Asked if he regretted the invitation, he paused.
"I don't know," he said.
He paused again. "No, I don't think so."
His political career will probably be hurt, he said.
"All I can tell you is I did this because I honestly believed it was the right thing to do."
Write an email to the Tampa City Council and let them know what you think about their impious little display of hatred.
If you do nothing else, give John Dingfelder a shout of encouragement.
(Click the “continue...” link at the end of this post to see the full text of the invocation.)
MICHAEL R. HARVEY'S SPEECH
This is the opening invocation delivered by Michael R. Harvey of Atheists of Florida at Thursday's meeting of the Tampa City Council:
An invocation is an appeal for guidance from a supernatural power, but it is not only that. It is also a call, a petition, to positive action on behalf of and for a diverse citizenry. On behalf of Atheists of Florida, I would like to express our gratitude in being invited to deliver today's invocation.We are committed to the separation of state and church as defined by the United States Constitution. It is the core value of that remarkable and visionary document to protect the human-derived rights of all people in the continuous struggle for equal opportunities to pursue a safe and decent quality of life.
When an invocation takes on the form of public prayer, it is also a violation of the very principles upon which our country and Constitution were founded. Although we are dismayed that the practice of public prayer by governing bodies charged with representing all citizens still continues in violation of the Constitution, we also recognize that this practice has become deeply embedded in the national psyche.
Elected and appointed leaders who wish to seek the guidance of a deity can do so in private, as is their right. But not in the public arena where the establishment of religion is an assured end-result.
History - that ever-unfolding, ever-flowering story of human civilization - teaches us that the rights and accomplishments of humanity are the results of its past struggles, and that the road less traveled is many times the highest path to human progress. We therefore invoke this council and all of our leaders to be guided and inspired by the invaluable lessons of history, the honest insights of science, the guileless wisdom of logic, and the heart and soul of our shared humanity - compassion and tolerance.
So rather than clasping your hands, bowing your heads and closing your eyes, open your arms to that which truly makes us strong - our diversity. Raise your heads and open your eyes to recognize and fully understand the problems before you and know that ultimately, solutions to human problems can come only from human beings.
Thank you.
July 29, 2004
Today on Sonic Detour
Get Up with MorningWoodGet some Wood in the afternoon! I'll be hosting WMNF's Sonic Detour from 4 to 6 PM this afternoon. 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
MorningWood Needs Your Vote!
The WMNF listener survey is out, and somehow MorningWood got left off of the list for favorite shows. This sucks.
You can help to rectify this tragic error by filling out the survey online and writing in your vote for MorningWood wherever it may be even remotely appropriate.
Survey hints: The answer “MorningWood” would work nicely for the following questions: (the page numbers correspond to the printed version, in case some of you are following along with a pencil)
Favorite Daily Shows Section: Early Morning Free Form (4 - 6 AM) (Yes - this includes MorningWood, but MorningWood is nowhere mentioned as a unique entity. That is the crux of the problem.)Page 18, “Listening Preferences” section “One show I would listen to more...”
Page 19, “Weekly Shows” section: This is the one where MorningWood was inexplicably left off of the ballot. If using the printed program guide, please “Write In” MorningWood in this section. Don’t worry - I’ve received firm suggestions from people very low in the station hierarchy that your ballot wont be rejected as an “overvote” just because you write in your vote.
Page 20, “News” section: How ‘bout a plug for BlogWood.com under web sites!
Section 23 (Online): One could, if one were so inclined, type, or even paste the following: “I love to get up with MorningWood!”
Okay - that’s it for the cheat sheet. Good luck. I know you’ll do your best...
THANKS!
Thanks to all the loyal WMNF and MorningWood listeners who called in during last week’s marathon fundraiser for our new building. MorningWood continued a streak of making goal. In fact, MorningWood has never fallen short in any marathon. This time, the goal was shattered, and MorningWood was one of the best performing overnight shows. MorningWood listeners rock.
Blogging on the radio
Mama Cass! Pig tales! Judi Bari! More?!? I’m outa time... I’ll just cut and paste and run. See you on the radio.
This afternoon on Sonic Detour, get your Wood on! I’m Norwood, and I regularly host MorningWood, Tuesdays from 4 to 6 am, every week here on WMNF. I’m sitting in for Nell today on Sonic Detour, and, as fate would have it, circumstances well beyond my control have conspired to essentially plan this show for me.
First, I am in the midst of a 2 week stint of Pig Sitting. I’m hosting the True Majority Pig Mobile, a stunning representation of the enormous financial costs of the war in Iraq.
The "Pig Mobile," conceived of by Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben and Jerry's, consists of three different-sized piggy banks strung together to illustrate just how big a financial disaster the Iraq war has turned out to be.
The largest pig (by far) shows the financial cost ($200 billion) of America's attack on Iraq, including the projected minimum cost of reconstruction. The smaller pig illustrates how much the federal government spends on K-12 education ($34 billion) . And the third pig, which is a wee little pig, shows America's dedication to lessening world hunger and poverty ($10 billion).
These piggies, all built out with striking pink fiberglass and featuring an oinking soundtrack, are pulled by a full-sized Chevy van towing a trailer.
For more information on the TrueMajority Pig Mobile and where to see it during it’s last days in the Tampa area, go to BlogWood.com or give me a call in the studio.
Anyway, the Pig Mobile inspired me to do a Pig themed special a few weeks ago on MorningWood, and, by popular demand, I have boiled that special down to a single hour of porcine power. From 5 to 6 PM today, it will be all pig music all the time.
But what about the first hour? Well, if I ever finish talking, you’ll notice that the first hour of this afternoon’s Sonic Detour is dedicated to Mama Cass, who died 30 years ago today with a half eaten HAM sandwich by her side. How’s that for a segue?
Disclaimer: The coroner later determined that this particular ham sandwich had absolutely nothing to do with Mama Cass’s untimely demise.
So, as you can see, I really had no choice in the programming of today’s show: Mama Cass and the Pink Piggies, now to be forever attached deep in the bowels of my faulty memory by the thin strands of a leftover lunch.
And, as I recently found out, unexpected pig references often pop up in the least expected places, so don’t be surprised if there’s a bit of an unforeseen overlap between the sets.
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.
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.
(Updated at 3:20 PM)
GOP does not trust paperless e-voting
"It's an astonishing level of hypocrisy," said Sharon Lettman-Pacheco of the liberal People for the American Way Foundation, which sued the state seeking to force manual recounts for touch screen machines. "Which one is it: Do the machines work, or do they know something that we don't?"
Obviously, they know something. Now, I’ve been encouraging people to vote absentee for the same reasons, but I also want a paper trail, and I had nothing to do with bringing these flawed machines into the state in the first place.
A few days ago, I took Howard Troxler to task for calling the paper trail issue a partisan one. I thought that everyone should be concerned about the integrity of the vote. Well, it looks like it is partisan: the Republicans are so sure that they will be able to muster more absentee voters that they are not worried about the lost and miscounted votes that will result from the use of these machines.
In 2000, the Republicans were much better organized than the Democrats in getting their people to request and vote absentee ballots. Republicans fixed flawed applications in one county supervisor’s office so that the votes would count. They had organized absentee voting drives, assisting voters with the forms and with the ballots themselves. This was one of the many small things that helped them to get close enough to steal Florida and the country.
Now, having replaced old-fashioned, but reliable (when properly maintained, which many machines were not) and recountable machines with computer based units whose inner workings are super secret and (increasingly) obviously flawed, the Republicans are telling their own people to leave the electronic voting to the rabble and to vote absentee.
While Gov. Jeb Bush reassures Floridians that touch screen voting machines are reliable, the Republican Party is sending the opposite message to some voters.The GOP urged some Miami voters to use absentee ballots because touch screens lack a paper trail and cannot "verify your vote."
That's the same argument Democrats have made but which Bush, his elections director and Republican legislators have repeatedly rejected.
"The liberal Democrats have already begun their attacks and the new electronic voting machines do not have a paper ballot to verify your vote in case of a recount," says a glossy mailer, paid for by the Republican Party of Florida and prominently featuring two pictures of President Bush. "Make sure your vote counts. Order your absentee ballot today."
The GOP tactic is the reverse of what Bush and state elections experts have said as they have repeatedly opposed Democratic moves, in the Legislature and courts, to require a paper trail on the machines.
A coalition of liberal and civil rights groups have filed a lawsuit seeking to force state elections officials to create a system for manual recounts of touch screen results.
Miami-Dade is one of 15 counties that switched from punch-card ballots to touch screens after the 2000 recount. But absentee ballots are filled out on paper and tallied on optical scan machines because the ballot is sent through the mail.
The Republican flier is part of a hard-fought GOP primary for a state House seat in Miami where absentee ballots could make a difference.
The mailing surfaced at the Democratic National Convention Wednesday and stirred outrage by Florida delegates and elected officials.
"I've seen that advertisement. It's appalling," said Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson. "It is an acknowledgement that there are excessive error rates with touch screens even by the party in power."
"That is awful. That is disgusting. Despicable," said state Sen. Ron Klein, D-Delray Beach. "Why use dirty tricks to scare people?"
"It's unbelievable," said state Sen. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston. "They're the ones who won't certify a machine to attach a paper trail."
A Bush spokeswoman said the governor had not see the flier beforehand and did not approve of the criticism of the touch screen machines.
"The governor certainly does not support that message," said Bush spokeswoman Jill Bratina. "People need to have confidence in these machines."
The Republican Party of Florida paid to send the mailing to voters in a House primary in Miami-Dade County, where Rep. Juan-Carlos Zapata, R-Miami, is fighting to win a second term against challenger Frank Artiles in District 119.
The party supports Zapata in the Aug. 31 primary.
The full-color mailer says, "Support our Republican Party" and "every vote counts" and shows a smiling President Bush giving a thumbs-up. A tear-off absentee ballot request form, to be mailed to the Republican Party of Florida's Miami office, shows the president and Zapata side by side.
Republican Party spokesman Joseph Agostini initially denied that the brochure was the work of the GOP. But after he was shown the flier, he backtracked. He confirmed it was a GOP flier mailed in response to an Artiles flier that used the president's face without permission.
See below for help voting absentee in Florida in 2004. In a nutshell, anyone can do it, whether or not they plan to be “absent” in election day.
July 28, 2004
Want your vote to count? Vote absentee.
|
I got mine. Here’s how to get yours:
Note - In Hillsborough and many other counties, absentee ballots are handled with an optical scan system, a very reliable method that leaves a countable paper trail.
(More information: General Hillsborough County info)
Here’s a link to all of the Florida county elections supervisors. You need to contact your local county elections supervisor in order to request an absentee ballot.
Voting Absentee in Florida
The following list of frequently asked questions is from the Hillsborough County supervisor’s web iste, and is therefore somewhat specific to county residents, but the rules are the same no matter where you reside in Florida - any registered voter can request and vote an absentee ballot. You do not need to actually be absent on election day. So follow this link and contact your own county supervisor and request an absentee ballot today.
ABSENTEE VOTINGWho is eligible for an absentee ballot?
If you are a qualified registered Hillsborough County voter, you are entitled to vote by absentee ballot.How do I obtain an absentee ballot?
An absentee ballot may be requested for a specific election or for all elections in the current calendar year. The request can be made in person, by mail, fax, E-mail or by telephone. You can also fill out a request on-line by clicking here. The absentee request must include the voter's name, address, birthdate and signature if a written request. Only the voter or a designated member of his or her immediate family or legal guardian can request an absentee ballot for the voter. If the voter has designated an immediate family member or legal guardian to request an absentee ballot for him or herself, the designee must provide the required request information for the voter and the designee's name, address and relationship to the voter.When are absentee ballots available?
Absentee ballots are mailed approximately 30 days prior to each election to those voters who have requested an absentee ballot. A qualified voter may vote in person at either of the two offices of the Supervisor of Elections during the two weeks prior to an election.
WARNING - In Hillsborough County, this form of in person early voting involves using paperless touch screen machines - the kind that are flawed and leave no paper trail.
For other available early voting sites, please call our office at 813-272-5850 for additional information. Within four days of an election, a designated person may carry out up to two ballots for anyone as long as the required request information is provided and the voter specifically authorizes the person to pick up the ballot in writing. There is no limitation on number of carryouts for immediate family members.How do I return my absentee ballot?
Absentee ballots must be returned in the envelope provided. The envelope must include the voter's signature, the witness information and signature. Voted absentee ballots must be received by 5:00 p.m. on Election Day at the County Center office of the Supervisor of Elections or not later than 7 p.m. at the Robert L. Gilder Elections Service Center. A VOTED BALLOT CANNOT BE ACCEPTED AT A POLLING PLACE. If you request and receive an absentee ballot and later decide to vote at the polls, take your absentee ballot with you to be cancelled at your polling place.
Major E-voting problem emerges
I've said it before: no conspiracy is needed. These are mostly Microsoft Windows based machines and they are prone to crash and are very buggy - just like the machines that most of you use at home and work. The errors that make the news are known errors. What else is lurking out there that may be affecting the vote counts? We may never know, because vendors are allowed to keep their systems super-secret.
Herald.com | 07/28/2004 | Computer glitches lost voting data
Two computer crashes last year destroyed most of the electronic records from recent Miami-Dade County elections, raising fears about the touch-screen technology the county bought to prevent a debacle similar to the 2000 presidential election.Elections officials say they that have since fixed the problem, and that the crashes occurred long after any potential call for a recount passed. For at least 10 days after an election, they say, the votes are kept in a memory device called a ``flash card.''
''Immediately after the elections, the flash cards still exist,'' said Seth Kaplan, a spokesman for the Miami-Dade Department of Elections. ``They could have done a recount.''
Still, the department has no idea what caused the server to crash in May and November 2003 and erase nearly all of the electronic data from the previous year's gubernatorial primary and general election.
The November incident happened shortly after a major municipal election. The elections department could not say whether the crash could have jeopardized a potential request for a recount. Luckily, no recount was called for.
The Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition, which discovered the problem, said the loss of data highlights the unreliability of a system that has been wracked with glitches since the county began using it in 2002. More ominously, they say, it shows how ephemeral votes can be in an electronic system with no paper trail to rely on for a recount.
''We will never know how good or bad the audit capability because the data is gone,'' said Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, an attorney and chairwoman of the coalition. ``What this shows from a big-picture perspective is that no one knows what's going on.''
Bear with me
I'm fighting an attack of comment spam today - automated comments posted to the site advertising whatever. I'm trying various methods to block and clean up, but in the meantime, I have no time for posting.
Back soon...
July 27, 2004
Get Up with MorningWood!
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
MorningWood Needs Your Vote!
The WMNF listener survey is out, and somehow MorningWood got left off of the list for favorite shows. This sucks.
You can help to rectify this tragic error by filling out the survey online and writing in your vote for MorningWood wherever it may be even remotely appropriate.
Survey hints: The answer “MorningWood” would work nicely for the following questions: (the page numbers correspond to the printed version, in case some of you are following along with a pencil)
Favorite Daily Shows Section: Early Morning Free Form (4 - 6 AM) (Yes - this includes MorningWood, but MorningWood is nowhere mentioned as a unique entity. That is the crux of the problem.)Page 18, “Listening Preferences” section “One show I would listen to more...”
Page 19, “Weekly Shows” section: This is the one where MorningWood was inexplicably left off of the ballot. If using the printed program guide, please “Write In” MorningWood in this section. Don’t worry - I’ve received firm suggestions from people very low in the station hierarchy that your ballot wont be rejected as an “overvote” just because you write in your vote.
Page 20, “News” section: How ‘bout a plug for BlogWood.com under web sites!
Section 23 (Online): One could, if one were so inclined, type, or even paste the following: “I love to get up with MorningWood!”
Okay - that’s it for the cheat sheet. Good luck. I know you’ll do your best...
THANKS!
Thanks to all the loyal WMNF and MorningWood listeners who called in during last week’s marathon fundraiser for our new building. MorningWood continued a streak of making goal. In fact, MorningWood has never fallen short in any marathon. This time, the goal was shattered, and MorningWood was one of the best performing overnight shows. MorningWood listeners rock.
Blogging on the radio
Two pig related songs this morning, both in the first hour. Call in during either one and I’ll send you something special: 813-239-WOOD
Lots of ranting this morning, mostly after 5:00. I’ll talk about the unwarranted attacks on Betty Castor and also feature Pig Tales - I think you’ll be able to figure it out.
I am going to completely ignore the Democratic Convention, but I am playing lots of cuts from protestrecords.com this morning. Go download yourself something nice.
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.
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.
July 26, 2004
Piggies perplex slow-witted slumlord
Uh, Ms. Lynch: the cost is actually $200 BILLION, and your child is gonna be paying this bill for a long time. Unless, of course, she is conscripted and killed first. Maybe you should make an effort to “get it.”
She grabbed up apartment buildings and boardinghouses, the ones the banks wouldn't even consider financing. The more burned out, the better. She would buy low, fix them up, rent them and move on to the next. When she ran out of money to buy, she turned backward, pulling the equity out of her earlier properties and plowing it into the next one. ......She doesn't read about designing; she looks at the pictures.
She has never voted, doesn't plan to, and keeps her mouth shut when the discussion turns to politics.
One day a vehicle fashioned like a piggy bank trailing two piglets drove by. Lynch jumped in her Dodge Ram pickup truck and chased the pig down to Central Avenue and some Iraq war protesters.
"So, I roll down my window and I'm like, "I don't get the pig,' " Lynch recalls. "So she says, "We're wasting $20-million on the Iraq war and it should be spent on our children's education.' And then the guy chirps up and he's like, "You really don't get it?'
"So then the lady goes, "We're against people like you with your big gas-guzzler trucks,' and I said to her, "Well I bet your pig uses way more gas than my truck.' I don't know who these pig people were but she was really mean."
Lynch said people have told her that she has attention deficit disorder, but she has never been diagnosed with it.
I remember her - she’s the one who could not decide if she liked the pigs or not unless we told her whether we were “for” or “against” W. See, she was using this black or white litmus test to determine if she should be amused or offended. She got very confused when we told her we were neutral, that we just didn’t like the war, and apparently she doesn’t understand that driving oneself around in a 12 MPG behemoth of a truck for the sole purpose of moving ones own lazy ass is exactly the kind of shortsighted, wasteful and arrogant behavior that has caused much of the world to turn against us.
Well, since she refuses to be diagnosed, I guess it’s fair game to openly mock her obviously underdeveloped ability to formulate and process an independent thought as well as her complete lack of anything resembling common sense. Or I could just skip the mocking and come right out and say it...
July 25, 2004
E-voting reality
The Village Voice: Features: The Rise Of The Machines by Kareem Fahim
"Anything in a computer can be changed," said Hommel, who has worked with computers for over 30 years. She's devoted the past year solely to the voting issue. She talks about voter-verified paper audits of the new machines—a primary demand of many advocates—with an enthusiasm that borders on zeal. "The [electronic machines] are being sold as a panacea, on the basis that you can trust them," she said. "The people selling them are lying."There are a number of reasons why the new machines, Direct Recording Electronic Voting Systems (known as DREs), are viewed so suspiciously, by so many. There is the legacy of the contested Florida results during the 2000 presidential election, and the comments of Wally O'Dell, the CEO of Diebold Inc., a manufacturer of DREs. In a fundraising letter he sent to Ohio Republicans last August, O'Dell wrote that he was committed "to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
But as concern with the security of the upcoming election grows, the window in which changes can be made is slamming shut. Aides to several members of Congress admitted that legislation that would require the electronic machines to produce a paper audit trail will probably go nowhere during the current session. This means that a security regimen will be a voluntary, unfunded project, undertaken by state election officials rather than mandated by the federal government.
Three weeks ago, the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU, working with the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, released a set of recommendations they hope federal election watchdogs will implement before November. The measures include the use of independent security experts, training programs for election officials, and public monitoring of the voting process. But the recommendations do not call for a paper audit trail.
"You have to remember what the recommendations were intended for," said Aviel Rubin, a professor at Johns Hopkins University and a co-author of a now famous study that is critical of some of the DRE technology. "They're for those precincts that ignore the advice [to require paper audits] and use the machines anyway." Rubin has endorsed the Brennan Center's recommendations, but remains skeptical of the DREs, saying, "The Diebold system is not like any commercial system I've ever seen. It's much worse."
......After her presentation downtown, Teresa Hommel sat for tea at a nearby bakery, and said that she holds the election machines to the standard of banking systems or computers involved in stock trades. In those applications, she said, multiple audits are the rule.
Troxler tanks
Howard Troxler is completely, absolutely, one hundred percent wrong about e-voting problems. Which is a shame, because I often agree with Howard and usually enjoy his columns.
What should a reasonable person conclude about touch screen voting machines? Sure, there are some safeguards it would be nice to add. But most of the worry out there is loony tunes stuff.Uh, Howard, there’s, like, nothing to recount, you know, like nothing to check the accuracy of these machines, so how, exactly, is one supposed to show that they’re inaccurate? You could have just as truthfully said “No touch screen machine has been shown not to have been rigged or to have delivered an accurate vote total.” See, there is no way to independently verify the totals that are being produced. We don’t know how the machine tabulates the votes. We don’t know from independent studies how accurate these tallies are.The big picture:
(1) No touch screen machine has been shown to have been rigged or to have delivered an inaccurate vote total. They work fine.
”Almost” always involve human error?!?(2) Claims of "flaws" or "errors" in various incidents around the country almost always involve human elements, such as poll workers not getting the things turned on.
How ‘bout a conspiracy of one or two people who can throw 500 or 1,000 votes one way or another? Let’s see, how many votes made the difference in Florida last time?(3) A conspiracy to rig the machines in a national election is ridiculously unlikely if not impossible. A plot to rig the machines in a state or local election is even less plausible.
So, why is it that manufacturers can produce reliable ATMs and gas pumps and slot machines that produce a paper receipt without paper jams or break downs, but they can’t figure out how to put a printer on a voting machine? Why weren’t these things designed with printers in the first place? A paper receipt solves virtually every problem with these machines. Countable, verifiable receipts that voters deposit in an old-fashioned ballot box before leaving the polls provide a backup system. They provide something physical to recount, and they provide a way to test and verify the accuracy of these machines.Critics cry out: "There ought to be a paper trail, so voters can check their ballot!"
Remember, the voter already must confirm a summary of his/her ballot on the screen. But let's say we did create a running print out, displayed under glass, and kept it for posterity. This has been a paper-jam disaster in the few places that have tried it.
Actually, with the accuracy polls these days, rigging them enough might be way too obvious. And with these machines, there is nothing to recount, whether the election is close or not.On top of that, an election has to be close to trigger a recount. We think that hackers are smart enough to rig the machines, but too dumb to rig them enough?
Gee, this sounds like the right wing argument that goes something like “no matter how bad Americans treat Iraquis, they are not as doomed as they were under Saddam...” Howard, these new machines are supposed to be much better than anything ever used before. Now you’re saying that they’re not quite as bad as machines that were popular decades ago. Wow, that’s reassuring.Skeptics insist: "There ought to be a physical copy of my individual vote somewhere." Yet millions of Americans have done without it for decades, satisfied to pull a little mechanical lever in a voting booth.
So, they showed up to vote not knowing what the election was for or who the candidates were? And then they didn’t bother to vote for anyone? Uh, okay.Next comes the claim that touch screens are unreliable in a Star Trek, amok-computer fashion - "The computer ate my vote!" The routine "undervote," when voters cast an empty ballot, is being recast in a sinister light.
The most-cited example of a suspicious undervote comes from a Florida House special election earlier this year, in which more than 100 blank votes were recorded. It was the only race on the ballot.
Entirely ignored was that it was an unusual "open" primary, in which everyone could vote, even though only Republicans were on the ballot. Some Democrats no doubt saw only Republicans listed and just punched "finished."
Most of those overvotes came from optical scan machines. These machines are still in use. Funny thing, but in predominantly black counties with this technology, they took the overvoted ballots from voters and later discarded them. In white counties, they told the voters to fix their overvoted ballots before they accepted them, so very few of the white votes were thrown out.Touch screen machines eliminate a much bigger problem than undervotes - "overvotes," in which ballots are thrown out because the voter marked two different candidates in the same race. Now it can't happen. Democrats should be delighted - without overvotes in 2000, President Al Gore would be seeking re-election today.
Here lies the problem: no one is allowed to double check anything. All of the code used in these machines is super secret proprietary stuff. Just like the extremely buggy and hacker prone Microsoft Windows, only the manufacturer knows how these machines work. We don’t need a conspiracy. All we need is some buggy software (and most or all of these machines run Microsoft programs, which, as we all know, are extremely reliable and never ever crash) and votes could be lost or misappropriated. This could be in either candidate’s favor. This is not a partisan issue.Now, for the machine-rigging stuff.
To have a national conspiracy, here is what you have to believe: That not one, but several, multimillion-dollar corporations whose existence depends entirely on customer trust have decided to risk criminal indictment, prison sentences, civil lawsuits, bankruptcy and disgrace - and have somehow gotten their key hired help to agree.
Either that, or a single, evildoing programmer has sneaked past everybody. The companies have left it all in this one guy's hands, you see: "Excuse me, Mr. Luthor, would you please write this code that nobody will ever double-check, okay?"
The only things that are auditable are the printouts. They are produced based on electronic tallies that cannot be double checked. Of course they are going to match up - if you hit File and Print, an exact copy of this page will print out, but that does not prove anything about how the page came to be produced.How about local evildoers? Maybe our hacker is an evil local elections worker, with inside knowledge. He has even less ability to rig the machine than the manufacturer. And the scheme would have to elude an army of official observers.
Listen: The machines start out at zero on Election Day. They are locked at the end of voting. The total is matched against the number of physical signatures in that precinct's register. Each machine has a unique electronic code used to report its total. You can't leave any machines out of the total. You can't add new ones. You can't jiggle the totals. It's all printed and auditable.
?!? You just totally discounted this problem a coupla paragraphs back.There's plenty of real stuff to worry about. There's this clumsy felon list by the Bush administration. There are important new rules concerning absentee ballots this year that may prove huge in November. I agree with the critics that source code and audit methods about touch screens should be public record.
But the crazy tone of most of this stuff represents everything wrong with our know-nothing, Internet society. Worse, it represents a deliberate attempt to delegitimize our democracy for partisan gain. To those churning so hard to undermine faith in the election: Don't you care that you're hurting your own guy in case he wins?
This is not a partisan issue. Many of us have already lost faith in the election if it is to be conducted with voting machines which lack a simple paper trail. All we have to do to restore faith is to provide that simple paper trail. Like an ATM. Simple.
You mention the “clumsy felon list by the Bush administration,” which Jeb! tried hard to keep secret. As soon as the list became public, it was found to be riddled with errors. A week later, the state was forced to drop it.
Why all the secrecy with evoting? Why no paper trail? Why no public source software? Why is opaque better than transparent? What are they trying to hide? Incompetence scares me more than a conspiracy. These things may simply be junk.
This column of yours represents everything wrong with modern know-nothing journalism: for whatever reason, you have simply bought the spin of the manufacturers and the governments that make up their customer base. See, the partisanship here is coming from the companies that are making billions of dollars by selling these machines. They have everything to lose if too many people realize that the machines they are voting on are not any more reliable than the computers that they struggle to use on a daily basis.
July 23, 2004
Pretty Pink Piggies Parallel Park, Possibly Posing Porcine Problem?
Pretty Pink Piggies Parallel Park, Possibly Posing Porcine Problem?
Contact Information:
Norwood Orrick
813-226-2550
norwood@blogwood.com
www.BlogWood.com (local updates)
www.TrueMajority.org (general info)
Event Information:
What: TrueMajority Pig Mobile on Gandy Beach
Where: Pinellas Gandy bridge approach, South side
Date: July 22, 7am - 9am
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: July 21, 2004
TrueMajority Pig Mobile Makes Gandy Bridge Appearance
Tampa, FL - The TrueMajority Pig Mobile will be parked on Gandy Beach during morning rush hour on Friday, July 22, 2004.
The striking pink Pig Mobile may well cause traffic to snarl as drivers slow down to get a better look at the unique vehicle. Commuters are encouraged to stop by and take a gander, listen to the Piggies grunt, and learn about the fact that the U.S. is prepared to spend over $200 billion in Iraq while pressing needs in our own country such as education remain vastly underfunded.
The "Pig Mobile," conceived of by Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben and Jerry's, consists of three different-sized piggy banks strung together to illustrate just how big a financial disaster the Iraq war has turned out to be.
The largest pig (by far) shows the financial cost ($200 billion) of America's attack on Iraq, including the projected minimum cost of reconstruction. The smaller pig illustrates how much the federal government spends on K-12 education ($34 billion) . And the third pig, which is a wee little pig, shows America's dedication to lessening world hunger and poverty ($10 billion).
These piggies, all built out with striking pink fiberglass and featuring an oinking soundtrack, are pulled by a full-sized Chevy van towing a trailer.
The Pig Mobile is sponsored by TrueMajority.org, a grassroots lobbying organization founded by Ben Cohen. Local TrueMajority volunteers will drive the Piggies while they are in Tampa.
Piggie pictures and news can be found at BlogWood.com.
###
July 22, 2004
Pigs will be pigs
So, at lunch time today I was driving the Pig Mobile through Ybor City when a police car jumped on my curly, slow moving tail. I didn’t think much of it - just kept rolling down 7th Avenue, Piggies a gruntin’, pedestrians smiling and laughing. Then the cop hit his siren. He was pulling the Pig Mobile over!
Actually, I kinda figured he just wanted a closer look, but what he wanted was a closer listen. See, the Piggies emit their grunts through 4 marine grade speakers mounted under the van. They’re not earth shattering, but they do the job. And today, 2 speakers were out of commission, so the grunts were not all that loud at all.
Anyway, after considering and rejecting the absolutely massive free publicity that would result from a police chase followed by a fiery crash and impressive explosion, I pulled into a nearby parking lot and jumped out of the Pigs to see what the TPD wanted with me.
I smiled and approached the officer with a hearty “How ya doin’,” or some other equally innocuous greeting. He was out of his car and talking before I could catch a breath.
“You’re gonna have to turn those noises off,” sez officer friendly.
“Huh?!?”
“There’s a state ordinance that makes it illegal to emit a loud noise from a car.”
“Hmmmm. Is this statute based on a certain decibel level? Do you have a noise meter? Have you measured the decibel level coming from my vehicle?”
“85 decibels is considered excessive, and you are way over that. If I can hear you from a car length away, you’re too loud.”
“So, you’re gonna write me a ticket?”
“I’ll let you off with a warning. This time.”
“!?!”
“You have a right to express yourself and all, but...”
“Thank you officer. Have a nice day.”
Now, most cars, idling, can be heard form a car’s length away. This seems like a rather arbitrary enforcement of an ordinance that is probably aimed at teenage boys and their boom box automobiles - earth shaking bass that can rattle houses from blocks away.
I returned to the Pig Mobile and watched the cop turn around and exit the parking lot and leave the area. I thought about the situation, and my right of free speech, and the fact that the cop obviously had no way to scientifically measure the sound output of the piggies.
I decided that he was a typical fascist bully who decided to silence a message he didn’t agree with. I mean, he was like the first person all day who hadn’t smiled at the his first glimpse of the Pig Mobile. He’d probably seen us around town earlier this week, knew exactly what our message was, and, like most unimaginative people in a position of power, he decided that the best way to deal with a threatening truth was to squash it through intimidation and violence.
I turned the Pig’s grunts up as loud as they would go, and cruised Ybor for another 2 hours, hoping to run into the cop with the hatred of free speech. He never came back out of the hole he must’ve crawled into, because I had no other problems.
I passed cops on foot, on horseback, and in cruisers, with windows down and up, in Ybor and other parts of Tampa. None of them so much as batted an eye, and plenty of them had ample opportunity to approach me about my volume. Instead, most of them laughed. The rest just ignored me.
Officer K. A. Howell of the Tampa Police Department apparently doesn’t like our message. That’s his right, but he shouldn’t use his badge to suppress our right fo free expression.
I’m gonna go and get those broken speakers fixed tomorrow :~)
Welfare daddy takes the money and runs
Well, it looks like our little $4 million welfare experiment, our pansy-ass coddling of “needy” people companies is turning into a huge failure. We give these shiftless irresponsible louts our tax dollars, we pay these unrefined yahoos to make babies jobs, which they happily do as long as the free money is coming in, and they just sit around all day sucking from the welfare teat and getting fat off the public dole as we hard working tax payers put in extra hours to support their dysfunctional lifestyle shareholders.
We do all this hoping to give them a leg up, a little push down the road to success, but all we end up doing is making them weak and lazy. And then, when these wily welfare daddies sense a better deal elsewhere, they up and leave us in the lurch. They abandon their children employees, shirking all responsibility, leaving the state to provide for their former charges, and shack up with the first sugar daddy they can find.
Capital One is shutting down its sprawling credit card call center in Tampa, eliminating 1,100 jobs and delivering a serious blow to a decadelong effort to upgrade the area's economic base.The Tampa job cuts, which were announced along with smaller staff reductions in Dallas and Richmond, Va., are part of Capital One's ongoing push to outsource much of its customer relations work.
Salaries at the Tampa center range from $35,000, with bonuses, to $100,000 for some managers, employees said. They said they were told their jobs would be sent overseas, but the company would not say where the work will be done. About 350 jobs will remain in Tampa.
......
The McClean, Va., company plans to sell its five-building complex in Tampa. The 71-acre site includes a jogging trail, gym, laundry service and cybercafe. It intends to lease back an undetermined amount of space to house the 350 workers who will remain to handle auto finance collections.In a statement, Capital One said most of the jobs will be outsourced to "U.S.-based companies." Spokeswoman Tatiana Stead would not directly address whether those U.S. companies, in turn, would send the work offshore, a practice that has emerged as a major political issue.
......
"They told us that our work is being outsourced to another country, and that is the main thing everybody is upset about," said Patricia Correa, 59, who worked as an account supervisor."Everybody in Tampa helped build that company. ... It was a financial decision, they told us, because they can pay people in India way less."
Several employees said Capital One established a precedent of using foreign workers within the past year when jobs in the Spanish-speaking department in Tampa were shipped to Costa Rica.
"It's unfortunate that they feel like outsourcing is the answer," said Daniela Demorais, 23, a Capital One account supervisor who lives in St. Petersburg. "I don't think they'll get the quality ... that they want."
One of the largest providers of Visa and MasterCard credit cards in the world, Capital One swept into Tampa in 1995, starting with about 150 employees. It rapidly added buildings and employees to its Town 'N Country campus near Waters Avenue and the Veterans Expressway.
Prospective employees were courted through advertising on billboards and the Yellow Pages.
Capitol One had been courted, too, at taxpayer expense. In 1996, the company was approved for a $4-million tax refund - about $1-million to come from local governments - to be paid out over time through the Qualified Target Industry Program. QTI, as it is sometimes called, is a state incentive plan that uses public money to attract companies with high-paying jobs. Capitol One had to agree to bring 1,000 jobs.
......Hillsborough County Commissioner Jan Platt, who consistently votes against incentive programs for industry, said Wednesday's announcement is the reason why.
"There's no guarantee that the companies will stay," Platt said. "Do the taxpayers get refunded? I seriously doubt it."
.........Capital One beat analysts' earnings expectations for the second quarter. The company said it earned $1.65 per share, up from $1.23 the prior year and above forecasts of $1.50 per share.
July 21, 2004
Paperless problems
Look - lotto machines give receipts, in the form of a ticket. ATMs give receipts. So do gas pumps and all other computerized automated transaction machines. Why is it so hard to create a countable, verifiable paper trail in the form of a receipt that can be deposited into a ballot box?
If you live in a paperless county and you want your vote to count this year, vote absentee.
Florida elections officials knew before they bought the first touch screen voting machine that the devices had a history of problems.The machines recorded cases in which no vote was cast, known as undervotes, at a higher rate than some other machines.
But election officials bought them anyway, partly because they didn't think undervotes would become a major problem.
Now, undervotes are at the center of the latest controversy surrounding Florida's troubled elections process.
Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson on Monday called for an independent audit of touch screen machines because of the high rate of undervotes in the March presidential primary.
A task force appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush to recommend changes in Florida elections reported in March 2001 that touch screen machines had a higher rate of undervotes than optical scan machines.
Touch screen machines are similar to ATMs, except they don't produce a receipt. Optical scan systems are similar to standardized tests, in which voters use a pencil to fill in ovals on a ballot that is fed into a scanner that records the votes.
Note - In Hillsborough and many other counties, absentee ballots are handled with an optical scan system.
......Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, says Florida moved too quickly to embrace touch screen technology "before they were adequately tested."
But a leading expert on voting machines says undervotes are nothing to worry about.
"A small but significant number of voters in every election intentionally undervote," said Dan Tokaji, an Ohio State College law professor and the author of a recent report to the Election Assistance Commission on touch screen machines. "Why would somebody do that? I'm not sure if anyone has a clear answer to that question."
Still, undervoting seems peculiar in elections with only one issue on a ballot. Why would anyone take the time to go to a polling place, get a ballot and not vote? Yet that's exactly what happened in March. In Pinellas, for example, 211 voters cast blank ballots in the March primary in precincts that had just one race.
Links above are for Hillsborough County, Florida residents.
Here’s a link to all of the Florida county elections supervisors. You need to contact your local county elections supervisor in order to request an absentee ballot.
Voting Absentee in Florida
The following list of frequently asked questions is from the Hillsborough County supervisor’s web iste, and is therefore somewhat specific to county residents, but the rules are the same no matter where you reside in Florida - any registered voter can request and vote an absentee ballot. You do not need to actually be absent on election day. So follow this link and contact your own county supervisor and request an absentee ballot today.
ABSENTEE VOTINGWho is eligible for an absentee ballot?
If you are a qualified registered Hillsborough County voter, you are entitled to vote by absentee ballot.How do I obtain an absentee ballot?
An absentee ballot may be requested for a specific election or for all elections in the current calendar year. The request can be made in person, by mail, fax, E-mail or by telephone. You can also fill out a request on-line by clicking here. The absentee request must include the voter's name, address, birthdate and signature if a written request. Only the voter or a designated member of his or her immediate family or legal guardian can request an absentee ballot for the voter. If the voter has designated an immediate family member or legal guardian to request an absentee ballot for him or herself, the designee must provide the required request information for the voter and the designee's name, address and relationship to the voter.When are absentee ballots available?
Absentee ballots are mailed approximately 30 days prior to each election to those voters who have requested an absentee ballot. A qualified voter may vote in person at either of the two offices of the Supervisor of Elections during the two weeks prior to an election.
WARNING - In Hillsborough County, this form of early voting involves using paperless touch screen machines.
For other available early voting sites, please call our office at 813-272-5850 for additional information. Within four days of an election, a designated person may carry out up to two ballots for anyone as long as the required request information is provided and the voter specifically authorizes the person to pick up the ballot in writing. There is no limitation on number of carryouts for immediate family members.How do I return my absentee ballot?
Absentee ballots must be returned in the envelope provided. The envelope must include the voter's signature, the witness information and signature. Voted absentee ballots must be received by 5:00 p.m. on Election Day at the County Center office of the Supervisor of Elections or not later than 7 p.m. at the Robert L. Gilder Elections Service Center. A VOTED BALLOT CANNOT BE ACCEPTED AT A POLLING PLACE. If you request and receive an absentee ballot and later decide to vote at the polls, take your absentee ballot with you to be cancelled at your polling place.
Florida: Juan person, wan vote
So, it turns out the both the state and the private vendor who worked on the 2000 Florida voter disenfranchisement list were aware that using race as a factor in compiling the list would result in errors based on problems matching Hispanic names.
See, the state seems to have known exactly what it was doing when it compiled a $2 million list with almost no (traditionally Republican voting) Hispanics on it, but it turns out that this was just another one of those innocent mistakes, brought about by administrative incompetence, that coincidentally happened to favor the governor’s party. Really.
In May 2002, just days before the voter database was unveiled, Roberts ordered a rewrite of the matching procedures.He insisted that a registered voter's race match exactly with someone in the FDLE database. Because the FDLE classifies Hispanics as white, Roberts' decision meant voters who registered as Hispanics would be excluded from the felons list.
Roberts, who now works in the state attorney general's office, said Monday that he did not remember being at a meeting where the issue was addressed, but that he "vaguely" remembers there being some concerns about how race was kept in voter registration records.
Oh, well there you have it, then. This was all just a horrible mixup. Florida is dedicated to making sure that everyone who is eligible a registered Republican is allowed to vote.
Jeb! could put an end to this whole controversy with a stroke of his pen. He could do the right thing and join the 43 other states that restore voting rights to prisoners who paid their debts and are attempting to reintegrate themselves into our democratic society, but that would involve being fair minded and compassionate, traits that sound good in slogans, but which are rarely displayed in the actions of our governor.
''The governor could have an impact on this tomorrow, because he has the authority under the state Constitution to grant clemency in a much broader and quicker way than he has chosen to do so,'' Marshall said. ``He could restore their voting rights automatically with an executive order without requiring them to go through clemency.''
Jeb! could streamline the process. Easily and unilaterally. Right now there is a huge backlog of folks who have applied to have their rights restored, but the Republican controlled legislature refused to make money available this year for staff and other resources that could have cleared the jam and allowed thousands to register in time for the 2004 elections. And Jeb! is in no hurry to rectify this situation on his own.
There is also a backlog of thousands of ex-felons from other states who had their civil rights restored before moving to Florida. The state is not allowed to bar them from voting, but it has repeatedly ignored court orders and done exactly that, and it included these names in the 2000 version of the voter purge list.
The NAACP managed to get the state to agree to restore these folks’ voting rights, but the state is dragging its feet, and only about half of the people on this list have been returned to the rolls. But we should really cut Jeb! some slack here. He’s very busy. He’ll probably get around to this by, say, the middle of November or thereabouts.
Gee, it’s almost as if Jeb! and the Republican Party and the State of Florida are using a 140 year old racist law to ensure that in 2004 thousands of black people will once again be taught that their opinion means nothing in our democracy.
July 20, 2004
Get Up with MorningWood!
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
MorningWood Needs Your Vote!
The WMNF listener survey is out, and somehow MorningWood got left off of the list for favorite shows. This sucks.
You can help to rectify this tragic error by filling out the survey online and writing in your vote for MorningWood wherever it may be even remotely appropriate.
Apparently, the survey is no longer online, or perhaps the station took down the link so people would concentrate on marathon. Whatever - right this second, doing the online thing is impossible. So we’ll do the next best: Call the studio (813-239-WOOD) or email norwood@wmnf.org and I will send you a printed version of our Program Guide which contains the listener survey. You can fill one out the old-fashioned way and mail it back to the station.
Survey hints: The answer “MorningWood” would work nicely for the following questions:
Page 18, “Listening Preferences” section “One show I would listen to more...”Page 19, “Weekly Shows” section: This is the one where MorningWood was inexplicably left off of the ballot. Please “Write In” MorningWood in this section. Don’t worry - I’ve received firm suggestions from people very low in the station hierarchy that your ballot wont be rejected as an “overvote” just because you write in your vote.
Page 20, “News” section: How ‘bout a plug for BlogWood.com under web sites!
Okay - that’s it for the cheat sheet. Please call and get a Program Guide, or, if you already have one, please remember MorningWood when you fill out your Listener Survey. If the online survey ever comes back, you should be able to access it via the WMNF 88.5FM home page. The sections should be organized and titled just as described above, except for the page numbers.
THANKS!
Thanks to all the loyal WMNF and MorningWood listeners who called in during last week’s marathon fundraiser for our new building. MorningWood continued a streak of making goal. In fact, MorningWood has never fallen short in any marathon. This time, the goal was shattered, and MorningWood was one of the best performing overnight shows. MorningWood listeners rock.
Blogging on the radio
I’ve got this whole show planned around pig songs, in honor of the TrueMajority Pig Mobile’s visit to Tampa. So, I’ll probably mention the Presidential visit to Tampa on Friday as well as other pig related news.
This just in: an alert reader noticed some news about Linda Ronstadt. It seems that she praised and then dedicated a song to Michael Moore during a Las Vegas performance on Saturday and caused quite a stink. I was too busy being self-absorbed and planning for this morning’s show to notice the news, so thanks to BlogWood reader Linda for the tip.
AP Wire | 07/19/2004 | Las Vegas casino boots singer Linda Ronstadt after performance
Singer Linda Ronstadt not only got booed, she got the boot after lauding filmmaker Michael Moore and his new movie, Fahrenheit 9/11 during a performance at the Aladdin hotel-casino.Before singing "Desperado" for an encore Saturday night, the 58-year-old rocker called Moore a "great American patriot" and "someone who is spreading the truth." She also encouraged everybody to see the documentary about President Bush.
Ronstadt's comments drew loud boos and some of the 4,500 people in attendance stormed out of the theater. People also tore down concert posters and tossed cocktails into the air.
It’s after 2am, and I’ve just finished burning my playlists to CD, and a change this late would be just way too painful for my sleep deprived caffeine fueled brain to handle at the moment, so we’ll just have to send Ms. Ronstadt our best without actually playing one of her tunes or even a song about her. Oh well - maybe next week?
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.
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.
July 19, 2004
Congratulations: your disenfranchisement is protecting the integrity of Florida’s elections!
The pattern is unmistakable and indefensible: Florida does its best to discourage certain groups from voting. Here’s another example:
The sign that Pasco election officials stick in grass outside polling places reads, "Photo and Signature Identification Required."It might seem straightforward - state law says voters are required to show their ID before casting their ballot. But some activists say such language is a deceptive shorthand for the law and could prevent people from voting.
"Voters were turned away because of signs like this in 2000," said Courtenay C. Strickland, director of the voting rights project at the ACLU of Florida. "Those are misleading and can result in disenfranchisement."
The group recently wrote the state's elections supervisors, asking them to display signs - and arm poll workers - with information that more accurately reflects state voter-identification laws. While the statutes require photo and signature identification, generally they also allow people without such ID to vote after signing an affidavit.
.,,,,,"The misinterpretation of "ID Required' signs by both poll workers and voters alike, who took such polling place signs to be complete statements of Florida law rather than the misstatements that they are, led to lost votes in the November 2000 election and more recently in 2003," Strickland and Howard Simon, the ACLU's executive director, wrote to county elections supervisors following the March presidential primary. The letter was referring to complaints about signs in Lee County.
"The surest way to prevent such unnecessary disenfranchisement in 2004 is to refrain from the posting of such signs whenever possible, (and) to train poll workers in the affidavit process ..."
And the excuse for this barrier? Why, the powers that be are simply striving to help the citizens of Florida by putting on the best darn election ever:
"We tried to explain we're not trying to disenfranchise voters," Harrington said. "We're trying to protect the integrity of the elections."
Because an election in a democratic society in which every eligible voter was allowed to vote would be completely lacking in integrity. Now, let's ignore that issue and segue right into some good old-fashioned intimidation of black voters.
A voter rights group is accusing state investigators of intimidating elderly black voters while looking into possible ballot fraud in the disputed Orlando mayoral race.Buddy Dyer's re-election March 9 has been dogged by accusations of fraud.
The Voter Protection Coalition said Florida Department of Law Enforcement agents, while contacting people whose absentee ballots are being questioned, revealed their side arms, spokeswoman Alma Gonzalez said Friday.
``You can't do that to old black people who fought hard for the right to vote and, in fact, have seen law enforcement utilized in this kind of intimidating and harassing way through the civil rights movement,'' Gonzalez said.
Pig Mobile in Tampa
UPDATE: Piggie Pics (in reverse chronological order, for some reason... I'll fix later, or not...)
More Pics Here
SP Times shows some love
Another mention in the SP Times (this makes 3 that I've seen!)
Complete Piggie Coverage Here, including the Ybor Pig v Pig story! (See "Pigs will be Pigs")
|
Well, as many of you have already figured out, the TrueMajority Pig Mobile arrived in Tampa just a little early. After meeting the President on Friday morning, the little piggies have been spotted all over the area, snorting and grunting, and giving people a laugh wherever they show up.
A piggie news link will remain in the sidebar, on top of the page, until the little piggies leave Tampa. probably in about 2 weeks. In the meantime, Tampa’s volunteer drivers will be using the comments feature to post their planned routes and to leave pictures and other updates.
Readers are also encouraged to share their Pig Mobile stories and pictures. Email pics to norwood@blogwood.com, and post your news right here by using the comments.
July 16, 2004
"Florida is absolutely committed to blocking voters"
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is meeting to investigate Florida’s failed felon purge list. They’re interested in finding out how the list ended up so error ridden, and they would really like to know what, exactly, is gonna happen now that each county is free to use the list or not as they go about scrubbing their individual rolls before election day. NYT:
Ms. Hood (Florida Secretary of State Glenda) declined an invitation to appear at Thursday's hearing, but sent a letter saying that county election supervisors would remove felons from the rolls without using the state list. Florida is one of seven states that ban felons from voting, unless they successfully petition to have their rights restored.Dr. Berry said she was concerned that Ms. Hood's new plan would be even worse than the original problem, possibly violating Bush v. Gore, the landmark case that stopped recounts in the 2000 presidential election because there was no uniform standard among Florida's counties for counting votes.
Representatives of civil rights organizations who testified said they were already planning lawsuits to stop county efforts to purge voters.
"Florida is absolutely committed to blocking voters," said Barbara Arnwine, director of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. "All of the civil rights organizations are in intense discussions, and we think there are three or four lawsuits that should be filed here."
Committed to blocking voters? Wouldn’t that imply that the errors on the list, errors like the absence of Republican leaning Hispanic voters, errors that overwhelmingly targeted Democrats, wouldn’t the implication be that these errors were not actually errors at all, but rather part of a plot to aid pResident Bush’s reselection campaign?
''If it was intentional, it may well have been a criminal violation of the Civil Rights Act,'' said Commissioner Christopher Edley Jr., a professor at Harvard Law School. ``It's not just about a sloppy database, it's not just about bureaucracy strapped for resources. It's about the deprivation of a fundamental civil right.''The commission, which met today in Washington to discuss the state's felon list and electronic voting issues, has a contentious history with Florida leaders. After the 2000 presidential election, commissioners released a draft assessment of the election in Florida that called state leaders ``grossly derelict in fulfilling their responsibilities.''
The language in the final report was toned down, but commission Chairwoman Mary Francis Berry made it clear Thursday that she has't forgotten about election problems in Florida.
Although the felon list now won't be implemented before the November election, commissioners say they're concerned about how individual election officers will handle the issue of removing felons from their voter rolls.
They fear the decision will result in inequities across Florida's 67 counties, since the state has now left it up to individual election supervisors to create their own system of removing ineligible voters. In the Bush v. Gore decision that decided the 2000 presidential election, Edley pointed out, the U.S. Supreme Court determined that different recount procedures in each county violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution.
'With all due respect to the secretary of state in Florida, it's simply not sufficient to toss up your hands and and say, `The counties will take care of it,' '' Edley said.
Posted by Norwood at 06:32 AM | Comments (2)
Pig Mobile arriving early to meet the President
According to reliable sources, the TrueMajority Pig Mobile will arrive in Tampa on Friday, a full 2 days ahead of schedule, and just in time to meet President Bush in downtown Tampa.
July 15, 2004
ALERT: Bush in Tampa Friday
Make signs tonight, wave them tomorrow
State must do more for felons
Once again, the state is sued to force it to do the bare minimum required by law to assist someone who is attempting to reintegrate into society. Once again, the state loses, but no one’s holding their breath waiting for Jeb! to actually start complying with another court order regarding Florida’s racist disenfranchisement rules. (Actually, to be fair, Jeb! may well comply promptly with this particular ruling, since it comes way too late to help anyone who wants to vote in this year’s election.)
The unanimous ruling by the 1st District Court of Appeal said state prison officials must provide the forms felons need to get their voting rights back and help fill them out.The lawsuit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, the Florida Justice Institute and Florida Legal Services on behalf of the Florida Conference of Black State Legislators, several organizations that assist ex-felons and felons.
"The question for the governor now is whether the state will stubbornly insist on maintaining its unjust and archaic system of lifetime disenfranchisement," said Howard Simon, ACLU Florida director.
Florida is one of seven states that do not automatically restore voting rights to felons who have served their sentences. They must apply to the Board of Executive Clemency, comprising the governor and Cabinet.
The state's executive clemency laws have remained virtually unchanged since 1868, when lawmakers sought to deter ex-slaves from voting.
Because if we don’t illogically and unjustly punish people forever, then the terrorists win.
Florida: proudly barring blacks from the polls for 140 years!
Having spent $2 million to create and defend a secret voter purge list of black Democrats, only to abandon it as the light of day exposed its many flaws, the state is still fighting with the NAACP to keep over 1,200 ex-felons from the polls. You’d think that they woulda learned by now, but with the stakes this high, I guess they’re willing to keep looking foolish as long as it helps Jeb!’s brother get reSelected.
This particular group should never have been barred from voting in the first place, since they moved to Florida having served their terms in states that restore voting rights to felons who have paid their debts to society. 43 states automatically grant these rights. Florida is one of only 6 other states that still cling to the racist reconstruction era practice of keeping felons from the polls.
Federal courts have ruled repeatedly that Jeb! must not interfere with these ex-felons’ voting rights, and Jeb! has repeatedly ignored these court rulings. The NAACP sued the state to force it to return about 3,000 people to the rolls whom it illegally barred from voting in the 2000 election. The NAACP won, but now the process is being dragged out, many say quite deliberately, and 1,249 folks are still waiting for the state to comply with the agreement to restore their rights.
All 1,249 were convicted in states that automatically restore voting rights to felons who have completed their sentences.Administrators of the Florida Division of Elections say they have worked hard to repair mistakes from the 2000 election, and they have already reinstated more than 1,700 out-of-state felons. But efforts to restore the rest have been stymied by other states slow to respond to requests for information, records show.
''We have been very diligent, and we've worked very hard to get this done,'' said Dawn Roberts, director of the Division of Elections. ``We've been writing and calling every one of those states. It is not an easy task, and we have acted in good faith all along.''
But civil rights lawyers who extracted the agreement from the state as part of a legal settlement two years ago say election officials are plodding unnecessarily, and the names should be restored automatically.
SIMPLE CALL
''We thought they would call the states in question, verify they indeed were automatic restoration states and give people their rights back,'' said Elliot Mincberg, attorney for the civil rights foundation People for the American Way.
''Instead, they decided that each and every name must be researched by the other state,'' he said. ``In some cases, that's not happening. Again, the state continues to err on the side of exclusion instead of on the side of the voter.''
Poor Dawn: she calls and calls, but those mean other states just wont call her back.
The state is going to lose this argument, just like it lost the argument over the purge list, but it’s going to take time and effort to force Jeb! to do the right thing. Jeb! knows this, and he knows that as long as he’s keeping us busy and distracted with all of these important little battles that he increases his chances of slipping some well planned Republican friendly irregularities down our collective throat come November.
Lots more on the purge list and other Florida problems at BlogWood.
Update - NYT has an okay overview of Florida's 2004 election problems, but they missed the out-of-state felon thing. Just another sign that there is almost too much to keep track of.
Make signs tonight, wave them tomorrow
From an email I got today: (Oh, and rumor has it that the Pigmobile might make an early arrival in order to meet the President.)
President Bush is coming to Tampa on this Friday, July 16th for a Department of Justice conference on sex trafficking. I'm going to join the MoveOn contingent to demand that he apologize to conference participants and to the public for breaking his promises to America's women.Bush ran on a "W is for Women" pledge. Yet, his record is a long list of empty and broken promises to women, from doing nothing to lower health care costs, to cutting funding for women's health care programs and shelters for battered women, to cutting Violence Against Women programs.
Join me this Friday to Protest President Bush's visit and his record of broken promises to women! We'll be in front of the Tampa Marriot Waterside Hotel, 700 S. Florida Ave., in downtown Tampa, at 8:30am. Sign up here.
President Bush has become adept at saying one thing and doing another. We have an opportunity to shine the spotlight on his poor record, but we need your help.
----------------------
Footnotes:
----------------------
[1] Bush Administration cuts $2.8 billion for shelters for battered women. The 2004 Bush Administration budget included cuts of $2.8 billion to programs which support shelters for battered women. [Source: United Press International, 10/9/03][2] Bush Administration cuts $12.5 million for Violence Against Women Program. The 2004 Bush Administration budget included $12.5 million in cuts to the Department of Justice grants for the Violence Against Women Program, which will weaken efforts to fight violence against women. [Source: United Press International, 10/9/03]
[3] Bush 2005 budget eliminates $20 million Justice Department program to aid victims of human trafficking. [Source: Baltimore Sun, 2/3/04; Office of House Democratic Leader, 3/15/04]
July 14, 2004
Voting wrongs
SP Times: Even with new chief, election doubts linger
Critics complain that new touch screen voting machines lack a paper trail for manual recounts, a glitch in some machines was fixed only recently, and thousands of petitions have been sent to the state urging a return to paper ballots.And Saturday, Secretary of State Glenda Hood abruptly abandoned a flawed list of thousands of potential felons who could have been removed from the voter rolls.
Like Harris four years ago, Hood now finds herself standing alongside Gov. Jeb Bush at the center of another election controversy.
"The idea that we should trust Gov. Bush or Mrs. Hood with our right to vote is an unrealistic expectation," said U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Boca Raton, who unsuccessfully sued the state to try to force it to create a paper trail for recounts and is appealing. "It's a pattern of deception and a pattern of purposeful actions to prevent certain Floridians who vote Democratic from voting. This is Jim Crow in Florida in 2004. George Wallace would be proud."
Mrs. Hood stands by the long and illustrious track record of Florida’s new voting equipment:
"We've taken steps to make sure we have the best technology available today," Hood said. "It has delivered successful elections since 2002."
Hmmm... perhaps Mrs. Hood meant to say “It has delivered successful elections, with the exception of some minor software glitches, since 2002...”?
In yet another Florida election blunder, officials in Broward County misplaced more than 100,000 ballots cast in this week's election.Officials said the amended totals did not change the result of any races.
The county elections office discovered 103,222 votes Wednesday that had not been counted although officials had said 100 percent of the precincts were included in Tuesday night's results.
......Broward deputy elections supervisor Joe Cotter called Tuesday's mistake "a minor software thing."
July 13, 2004
Piggies comin' to Tampa
TrueMajority Pig mobile coming to Tampa
Contact Information:
Norwood Orrick
813-226-2550
norwood@blogwood.com
www.BlogWood.com (local updates)
www.TrueMajority.org (general info)
Event Information:
What: TrueMajority Pig Mobile
Where: All over the Tampa Bay area
Date: July 18 - July 31
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: July 13, 2004
TrueMajority Pig mobile coming to Tampa
Tampa, FL - The PantsOnFire Mobile-the 12-foot statue of President Bush with his pants aflame- was a big hit in Tampa, garnering media attention and turning heads on land and in the air as local volunteers led a procession of vehicles over the Gandy bridge, crossing the hump just as Air Force One flew overhead with George W. Bush aboard. This was the first time the President and the statue had crossed paths. George (the statue) is now on his way West to spread the truth about Bush's lies.
Following in his wake is the Pig Mobile, another whimsical art car by TrueMajority. The Pig Mobile consists of three different-sized piggy banks strung together to illustrate just how big a financial disaster the Iraq War has turned out to be.
The largest pig (by far) shows the financial cost ($200 billion) of America's attack on Iraq, including the projected minimum cost of reconstruction. The smaller pig illustrates how much the federal government spends on K-12 education ($34 billion). And the third pig, which is a wee little pig, shows America's dedication to lessening world hunger and poverty ($10 billion).
These piggies feature an oinking soundtrack and are made of striking pink fiberglass based on a full-sized Chevy van towing a trailer.
The goal is to keep the mess in Iraq on people's minds and to hold President Bush accountable for it-even if the media does not report the facts on the costs of America's attack on Iraq. And there's no better way to understand the giant numbers involved than to compare them to how little our government finds to spend on stuff we all care about-like schools and world hunger.
Local volunteers will be driving the Pig Mobile all around the Bay Area from July 18 - 31.
Get Up with MorningWood
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
Building Fund Marathon: WMNF’s fundraiser for our new home.
WMNF’s new home is going up right next door to our old studio. Our new house is almost paid for, but we still need a little help.
Call 813-239-WOOD or 813-238-8001 from 4 to 6 am this morning and pledge your support to community radio and MorningWood.
Studio line: 813-239- WMNF WOOD
Special thank you gifts only available on MorningWood include last week’s Elvis Presley tribute special. Everyone who pledges $20 or more to MorningWood will get these 2 CDs: one with the original songs, and another with the actual broadcast from the first hour of MorningWood last week.
Studio line: 813-239- WMNF WOOD
I’m also offering the ever popular “Used Books from Norwood’s Library” premium. Pledge $50 or more and get your pick of 4 or 5 titles. Call early for the best selection!
Studio line: 813-239- WMNF WOOD
I’m a computer guy by day. A $100 pledge will get you a computer house call from Norwood’s Computer. I can show you how to record your favorite MNF shows and put them on CD. I can clean spyware, make you safe from viruses, or fix just about anything that can be fixed.
Studio line: 813-239- WMNF WOOD
A $365 pledge will get you a one year “subscription” to MorningWood. That’s right: now you can sleep in on Tuesday mornings, secure in the knowledge that a recording of that day’s MorningWood episode will arrive via the U.S. Postal Service in just a few day’s time. Just one dollar a day. Isn’t that a slight price to pay for a whole year’s worth of extra sleep?
Studio line: 813-239- WMNF WOOD
Wanna tell me what to play and where to play it? It’s notoriously difficult to get a request in on MorningWood, but if you pledge for a guest host spot, you can come in and play almost anything for 2 hours. I’ll press all the right buttons for you, and we’ll make a CD of the broadcast so that you can show off for your friends. $150 pledge.
Studio line: 813-239- WMNF WOOD
We really really really need some $1,000 Building Fund Pledges. We offer 3 years same as cash nothing down zero percent financing, which works out to a mere $28 and change each month for 36 months. How can you say no to an offer like that?
Studio line: 813-239- WMNF WOOD
Blogging on the radio
We need to raise money this morning, but if the phones are ringing, I’ll do some radio blogging. Tune in, but call first!
Studio line: 813-239- WMNF WOOD
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.
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.
July 12, 2004
Destroying democracy in order to save it
As reported recently on BlogWood, George W. Bush will do absolutely anything to retain power.
American counterterrorism officials, citing what they call "alarming" intelligence about a possible Qaeda strike inside the United States this fall, are reviewing a proposal that could allow for the postponement of the November presidential election in the event of such an attack, NEWSWEEK has learned.The prospect that Al Qaeda might seek to disrupt the U.S. election was a major factor behind last week's terror warning by Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. Ridge and other counterterrorism officials concede they have no intel about any specific plots. But the success of March's Madrid railway bombings in influencing the Spanish elections—as well as intercepted "chatter" among Qaeda operatives—has led analysts to conclude "they want to interfere with the elections," says one official.
As a result, sources tell NEWSWEEK, Ridge's department last week asked the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel to analyze what legal steps would be needed to permit the postponement of the election were an attack to take place. Justice was specifically asked to review a recent letter to Ridge from DeForest B. Soaries Jr., chairman of the newly created U.S. Election Assistance Commission. Soaries noted that, while a primary election in New York on September 11, 2001, was quickly suspended by that state's Board of Elections after the attacks that morning, "the federal government has no agency that has the statutory authority to cancel and reschedule a federal election." Soaries, a Bush appointee who two years ago was an unsuccessful GOP candidate for Congress, wants Ridge to seek emergency legislation from Congress empowering his agency to make such a call. Homeland officials say that as drastic as such proposals sound, they are taking them seriously—along with other possible contingency plans in the event of an election-eve or Election Day attack. "We are reviewing the issue to determine what steps need to be taken to secure the election," says Brian Roehrkasse, a Homeland spokesman.
So, emergency planning consists of figuring out how to cancel the election? Wouldn’t that be a suspension of democracy, and isn’t that what the terrorists ultimately want? Uh, couldn’t we, like, plan how to make sure the election happens even if a major terror attack occurs? Wouldn’t that be more in keeping with our democratic ideals and our determination to stand firm against those who would destroy our culture?
Update - Bilmon has a more thoughtful perspective:
Suppose that one week before election day, the United States is hit by a major terrorist attack - I mean a really big one, like a dirty bomb on the Washington Mall or a liquified gas tanker exploding in the port of a major American city.Suppose that on the eve of the attack, national polls and the electoral math both show Kerry-Edwards clinging to a narrow lead over Bush-Cheney, one that appears sufficient, barely, to put the Democrats back in the White House.
Let's further suppose that a week after the attack, on the eve of the election, those same national polls show an enormous "rally around the President" effect, one that pushes Bush's approval ratings back towards 80% - not only enough to guarantee Shrub a landslide reelection victory, but also enough to sweep the Republicans to a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and a 1932 or 1974-sized edge in our Chamber of People's Deputies.
Under those circumstances, would you want the election to be held as scheduled? Or would you rather it was postponed for a month, until the initial shock had passed and the voters had had a chance to consider whether the administration's incompetence and the relative indifference of the GOP Congress to homeland security needs might not have contributed to the disaster?
Update - The General has more.
Food not bombs
There's a good article in the SP Times today about the incidents in Tampa in which volunteers were arrested for feeding the homeless in a city park.
In a nutshell, the city backed off after being convinced that Tampa’s anti- homeless feeding ordinance was unconstitutional. Mayor Iorio has promised to rework the law to make sure that only the rich can eat in city parks, and the browbeating cop who made the first arrest has been rewarded by the city for continuing to use physical force against the powerless.
In July 2003, a homeless man complained that Balkcom beat him up while arresting him at the Tampa Convention Center. Witnesses said Balkcom ordered the man to stand against a wall, then kneed him and struck him with a nightstick. Balkcom said "he would throw the guy in the river to see how good he could swim," one witness said.Internal affairs investigators cleared Balkcom of wrongdoing.
"Gary can be rough around the edges," said Peters, his supervisor.
Asked about the complaints filed against him, Balkcom said his job policing the streets is tough, and sometimes he has to be forceful if people don't cooperate. He cheerfully shared with a reporter a Chris Rock video - "How Not to Get Your A-- Kicked by the Police" - that he has downloaded onto his cruiser's computer.
He works hard, Peters said. Balkcom comes in at 6 a.m. when his shift doesn't start until 7. He has hired homeless men to do construction work for his side business, Peters said.
When Balkcom was named officer of the month, council member Rose Ferlita cited his efforts helping the homeless.
"Gary has gone over and above to try to resolve at least part of (the problem) as much as he can," she said.
July 11, 2004
Purge list dumped
More on this later, as time allows.
Herald.com | 07/11/2004 | State drops felon-voter list
''They were trying to sneak this thing by us until someone pulled the cover off it,''
State: Florida scraps felon vote list
July 10, 2004
Purge problems persist
Now, keep in mind the fact that Hispanic voters in Florida typically vote overwhelmingly Republican. And we already know that black voters tend to vote for Democrats. We learned that in 2000 when thousands of black voters were improperly prohibited from voting.
The state’s infamous voter purge list, designed to remove registered voters from the rolls so that no ex-felons can sneak in and vote on election day, has about 47,000 names on it. Almost half, 22,000, are names of black voters, mostly Democrats, despite the fact that black folks make up only 11 percent of Florida’s population.
About 8 percent of Florida’s citizens are Hispanic. The list of 47,000 contains exactly 61 Hispanic voters. That’s 61. Not 61 percent. Just 61, out of a database of over 47,000.
Just to be clear about this, black people who tend to be Democrats: 22,000; Hispanic folks, who tend to vote Republican: 61.
Jeb! says this is all an innocent mistake. Funny how these mistakes always seem to favor Rupublicans, eh?
Florida election officials used a flawed method to come up with a listing of people believed to be convicted felons, a list that they are recommending be used to purge voter registration rolls, state officials acknowledged yesterday. As a result, voters identifying themselves as Hispanic are almost completely absent from that list. Of nearly 48,000 Florida residents on the felon list, only 61 are Hispanic. By contrast, more than 22,000 are African-American.About 8 percent of Florida voters describe themselves as Hispanic, and about 11 percent as black.
In a presidential-election battleground state that decided the 2000 race by giving George W. Bush a margin of only 537 votes, the effect could be significant: black voters are overwhelmingly Democratic, while Hispanics in Florida tend to vote Republican.
Elections officials of Florida's Republican administration denied any partisan motive in use of the method they adopted, and noted that it had been approved as part of a settlement of a civil rights lawsuit.
"This was absolutely unintentional," said Nicole de Lara, spokeswoman for the Florida secretary of state, Glenda E. Hood, an appointee of Gov. Jeb Bush, the president's brother. "The matching criteria were approved by several interested parties in the lawsuit, and the court. I don't know how it got by all those people without anyone noticing."
It’s time to throw this list out. Just get rid of it. Call your county supervisor of elections and demand that the list not be used. Call now Monday. They don’t answer the phones on weekends.
Hillsborough County: 813-272-5850 or voter@hillsboroughcounty.org
Other Florida Counties: use the Florida Voter Assistance Hotline (I don’t know if they will help Democrats at this number): 866-308-6739
Background on Florida’s voter purge list is right here.
Are you on the list? Check here.
Work the polls on election day.
Coming soon: a handy time line that makes it easy to follow the follies of the infamous Florida voter purge list. Stay tuned!
July 09, 2004
More e-voting problems in Miami
Miami-Dade County elections officials have been working on a small problem with their voting machines: a serial number that is essential for identifying the source of votes is being lost somewhere in the transfer of data from voting machines to the big computers that do the final tabulations.
No worries, though. The manufacturer that sold the county these flawed machines is in town to fix them, and they just might be able to get them working right.
Unfortunately, no one has yet figured out just how to fix a whole new crop of serious flaws that has just come to light thanks to a public records request by the Miami Herald.
ES&S, the manufacturer of these machines, is now engaged in a shouting match with the state and county. Meanwhile, an independent audit has shown that the entire Miami-Dade system put in place by ES&S is fatally overburdened, having never been designed to handle an area as populous as Miami-Dade.
There seems to be plenty of blame to spread around here. The state says that ES&S filed an incomplete application for certification for these iVotronic machines, but the state certified the machines, which would seem to be an implicit approval of the incomplete application.
• The central database machines used to tabulate votes are incapable of holding all the audit data at once, requiring a ''labor intensive and costly'' solution that could complicate a recount in a close race. Audit data is used to back up the system.• The optical scanners used to read absentee ballots have problems when information is merged from the three machines the county uses.
• And the county could potentially mix up votes if it were to try to use phone lines to transmit data from the polling places to the election center, which it doesn't plan to do.
ES&S RESPONSE
ES&S Senior Vice President Ken Carbullido responded to Kaplan on June 14, noting that each of the problems could be resolved if the county alters its procedures, reconfigures its software or, if it wants to transmit data from the polling places, redo the programming code in the machines or retrain its staff.
He acknowledged on Thursday, however, that the problems are ''separate issues'' from the so-called ''audit anomaly'' that brought a team from his company to Miami-Dade this week. The team tested a program intended to repair a problem in which the computers garbled serial numbers in the machine's audit trail. In a close election requiring a recount, that problem might make it difficult to tell what votes were cast on a particular touch-screen machine.
MAKE CHANGES
All of the problems can be addressed by the November election if Miami-Dade officials make a few changes in the way they use the equipment, said Doug Jones, a University of Iowa computer expert the county hired to independently review its electronic voting system and make recommendations.
But, Jones said, the extent of the flaws expose a major failing of the system: ``The fundamental problem is the data formats used were never designed to handle a county as big as Miami-Dade.''
......Jones said the problem rests with the software, known as Unity, and added that it is up to ES&S to decide how far it wants to go to make it better able to perform in large counties.
The lesson, Jones said, is ``the belief that a software program is correct is almost always wrong.''
''All we have are a choice between imperfect systems,'' he said.
Luckily, Florida voters can legally vote absentee and leave a paper trail, at least for themselves.
And there’s something you can do! (From a TrueMajority email):
The national "Computer Ate My Vote" day of action is really taking off - in
just the three days since we invited you to next Tuesday's big event, more
than 20,000 TrueMajority members have added their names to the call for
voter-verified paper ballots. Along with others who signed on earlier, and
signatures from MoveOn, Democracy For America and VerifiedVoting.org, it
adds up to a list of more than a quarter-million names. Come on down
Tuesday, July 13th to join the crowd of Florida citizens who will deliver
those petitions and call on your election officials to support voter-
verified paper ballots.
The rally and press conference is at on Tuesday, July 13th.
There are 8 different rallies in Florida;
Find the one near you.
These events are happening in 17 more states besides Florida, and there's
also a national telephone press conference that same day where Gov. Howard
Dean will join our own Ben in promoting what you're doing. This will be the
biggest day of grassroots action for secure elections yet - come be a part
of it!
About this campaign:
The paperless computerized voting terminals being adopted by many states are
vulnerable to software flaws, hardware failures, and security holes. The
machines have already lost votes in a number of elections around the
country, and without a paper printout there is no way to do a meaningful
audit or recount. Every voter should be able to see a paper version of their
ballot to verify their choices are recorded correctly, before leaving it
with pollworkers as a permanent record. For more on the issue, see
computeratemyvote.org
Tuesday, July 13
Rally & Press Conference
outside Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections Office
(Buddy Johnson, Supervisor)
601 East Kennedy Blvd
Tampa, FL 33602
11:00am
Contact: Rob McKenna (rob@dukies.com)
SP Times: "Nevermind"
Yesterday, the SP Times, in a story about Florida’s infamous voter purge list, reported that only several hundred names were removed by the state after it came to light that these black Democrats have a legal right to vote.
Today, the paper seems to be coming into line with most of the rest of the state’s newspapers. They’ve updated their numbers and now claim 2,500 have been removed, but they don’t ever explain how they calculated the smaller number or why they were so out of line with other reports.
Wednesday's abrupt turnabout by Secretary of State Glenda Hood affects 2,465 people, nearly five times as many as the 537 who decided the presidential election of 2000. The shift ends a threatened lawsuit by civil rights groups who said the earlier policy violated federal civil rights laws.
The Miami Herald has not backed off their estimate, which stands at 1,600, but most other sources are sticking with 2,500. Would it be so hard to simply compare the “before” and “after” lists and figure out what the state has done?
July 08, 2004
Be a poll worker on election day
On election days, it takes some 3,500 workers to staff the precincts of Hillsborough County. As the primary election draws closer, Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections Buddy Johnson still is seeking helpers to work the polls.
Poll workers must be registered to vote or eligible to register in Hillsborough, must be able to read and write English and must attend pre-election training classes.
Positions available include clerk, the person in charge of a precinct; inspector, who registers voters; touch-screen technician, who handles technical support; and precinct deputy, the person hired ``to maintain law and order.''
Election Day pay ranges from $85 to $150.
Many poll workers return, but there still is a need for workers in Hillsborough County. For information, contact Poll Worker Services at (813) 744-5855.
Polls are open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., and workers must be in place by 6 a.m. and remain there all day. Those who are not assigned to work at their home precinct can vote early or by absentee ballot.
UPDATE: Reliable sources inform me that Spanish speakers are greatly needed. Apparently, there is a shortage of Spanish speaking poll workers for every election.
Oh, and don’t forget to whine to Buddy about his continued use of the error prone voter purge list, despite the fact that Florida’s Secretary of State now says that Buddy does not have to use it.
October July surprise
This spring, the administration significantly increased its pressure on Pakistan to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, his deputy, Ayman Al Zawahiri, or the Taliban's Mullah Mohammed Omar, all of whom are believed to be hiding in the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan. A succession of high-level American officials--from outgoing CIA Director George Tenet to Secretary of State Colin Powell to Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca to State Department counterterrorism chief Cofer Black to a top CIA South Asia official--have visited Pakistan in recent months to urge General Pervez Musharraf's government to do more in the war on terrorism. In April, Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador to Afghanistan, publicly chided the Pakistanis for providing a "sanctuary" for Al Qaeda and Taliban forces crossing the Afghan border. "The problem has not been solved and needs to be solved, the sooner the better," he said.This public pressure would be appropriate, even laudable, had it not been accompanied by an unseemly private insistence that the Pakistanis deliver these high-value targets (HVTs) before Americans go to the polls in November. The Bush administration denies it has geared the war on terrorism to the electoral calendar. "Our attitude and actions have been the same since September 11 in terms of getting high-value targets off the street, and that doesn't change because of an election," says National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack. But The New Republic has learned that Pakistani security officials have been told they must produce HVTs by the election. According to one source in Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), "The Pakistani government is really desperate and wants to flush out bin Laden and his associates after the latest pressures from the U.S. administration to deliver before the [upcoming] U.S. elections." Introducing target dates for Al Qaeda captures is a new twist in U.S.-Pakistani counterterrorism relations--according to a recently departed intelligence official, "no timetable[s]" were discussed in 2002 or 2003--but the November election is apparently bringing a new deadline pressure to the hunt. Another official, this one from the Pakistani Interior Ministry, which is responsible for internal security, explains, "The Musharraf government has a history of rescuing the Bush administration. They now want Musharraf to bail them out when they are facing hard times in the coming elections." (These sources insisted on remaining anonymous. Under Pakistan's Official Secrets Act, an official leaking information to the press can be imprisoned for up to ten years.)
A third source, an official who works under ISI's director, Lieutenant General Ehsan ul-Haq, informed tnr that the Pakistanis "have been told at every level that apprehension or killing of HVTs before [the] election is [an] absolute must." What's more, this source claims that Bush administration officials have told their Pakistani counterparts they have a date in mind for announcing this achievement: "The last ten days of July deadline has been given repeatedly by visitors to Islamabad and during [ul-Haq's] meetings in Washington." Says McCormack: "I'm aware of no such comment." But according to this ISI official, a White House aide told ul-Haq last spring that "it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July"--the first three days of the Democratic National Convention in Boston.
Children at Abu Ghraib
This Modern World notes a German press report that the U.S. is imprisoning and torturing children in Iraq.
Beyond the obvious moral and legal issues this raises, it may also lead to even more coalition partners jumping ship, leaving U.S. troops even more at risk than they already are.
State recount rule challenged
Some months back, the state of Florida declared that recounts of electronic ballots were not needed. Logically, this makes sense, since there is nothing to physically recount with an electronic ballot. But that lack of anything solid to recount is opne of the underlying problems of electronic voting.
Simply put, the state has been using computerized lottery machines for years and years. You buy a ticket, you get a paper copy with your numbers. Simple. Foolproof. Tested. Proven.
Unfortunately, with e-voting, unlike the lottery, the state has decided that the overwhelming infallibility of computers is such that no paper printout is needed. No paper printout equals nothing to recount equals huge potential for fraud and catastrophe:
Voting rights groups sued Florida election administrators on Wednesday to overturn a rule that prohibits manual recounting of ballots cast with touch-screen machines, a lawsuit with echoes of the state's disputed 2000 presidential election voting.The lawsuit said the rule was ``illogical'' and rested on the questionable assumption that electronic voting machines perform flawlessly 100 percent of the time. It also said the rule violated a Florida law that expressly requires manual recounts of certain ballots if the margin in an election is less than 0.25 percent of the votes cast.
Seems pretty sensible, but here’s the state’s contention:
The state Division of Elections maintains that manual recounts are not necessary for touchscreen machines because voter intent is never in doubt. "They don't allow you to overvote," said department spokeswoman Nicole de Lara.But the machines do allow undervotes, when a ballot includes votes for some offices but not others. During a special election in South Florida earlier this year, some ballots were cast with no votes, even though only one office was on the ballot.
Because state law says the purpose of a recount is to determine whether there was a "clear indication on the ballot that the voter has made a definite choice," there is no need to review touchscreen ballots, former Elections Director Ed Kast wrote in a letter to elections supervisors in April.
It is impossible to vote for too many candidates on a touchscreen ballot, and Kast said a "review of undervotes cannot result in a determination of voter intent as required by" Florida law.
Pasco County Supervisor of Elections Kurt Browning said he agrees with the state's position.
"In Florida law you only recount overvotes and undervotes and you can do that on a paper ballot," he said. "There's no overvotes because the system prohibits overvotes. On an undervote, there's no vote, so how do you manually recount something that doesn't exist?"
Orwellian, but under state law, Browning may well be correct. The law only calls for a recount of ballots that were not counted in the first place - undervotes and overvotes. Without a paper trail, there is no way to determine the intent of the voter, thus there truly is nothing to recount.
That’s one of many reasons we need a paper trail. A voter will get a receipt, check it for accuracy, and deposit it into a traditional ballot box. These receipts can then be used to audit the accuracy of the computerized voting machines and to do a manual recount where necessary.
"The question is, are we going to follow the law?" Gonzalez said. "It is not our desire to dictate to the secretary of state how she upholds the law. We know there are a variety of options available to do this."In January, a state House race in Broward and Palm Beach counties was decided by 12 votes, but 137 ballots did not have any votes.
Democrats have pushed for a paper trail for all touchscreen machines but have failed to win support among Republicans. Florida Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Graham filed legislation requiring a paper backup by the November election, but the bill has stalled.
If you want a paper trail for your vote, request an absentee ballot from your county supervisor of elections.
Buddy Johnson: quit yer “whining” about the purge list
The Tampa Tribune today conveniently ignores the fact that Florida’s Secretary of State essentially released every county supervisor of elections from the responsibility of using the increasingly controversial voter purge list.
Florida's top election officials conceded Tuesday that they will take no legal action to force the state's 67 election supervisors to remove nearly 48,000 voters who have been identified by the state as potentially ineligible to vote.This means the fate of these voters, some of whom appear to have been wrongly placed on the list, will be up to the election supervisor in each county, many of whom have been hesitant so far to remove any voter from the rolls. Some supervisors have said they were unsure if they had the time or staff needed to independently verify the background of voters prior to this fall's elections, but other supervisors have moved ahead anyway.
The Tribune doesn’t question that the list will be used locally and focuses on the lack of time and other resources that burden each county elections supervisor as they attempt to make sense of the purge list.
County elections officials are under an Aug. 2 deadline to decide whether thousands of felons in the Tampa Bay area can be purged from voter lists.That's the last date to register before the primary election Aug. 31. The next important date after that will be Oct. 4, the registration cutoff for the Nov. 2 general election.
With little guidance and no money from state elections officials, county elections supervisors are scrambling to find time and money to meet their obligations.
``We certainly were not staffed for it,'' Polk County Supervisor Lori Edwards said. ``We didn't budget for it. Nor are we skilled in investigating criminal matters.''
In Florida, convicted felons are not eligible to vote unless they petition the Office of Executive Clemency to have their rights restored.
The 2000 election stirred controversy when thousands of people who either received clemency or were not felons were purged from voters lists. President Bush won in Florida by 537 votes.
With the general election approaching, the state's 67 elections supervisors are coping with the usual preparations plus new lists of felons.
With two staff members working full time to review Polk's felon list, there won't be enough time to check every name, Edwards said.
``I won't let this eat up all our resources,'' she said.
......Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections Buddy Johnson has asked the county's clerk of court, Richard Ake, to help review the portion of the list that includes felons convicted in Hillsborough.
His staff will mail letters to felons if it is determined they are not eligible to vote. Johnson plans to advertise in local media also. Anyone who wants to challenge a decision can request a hearing, he said.
Johnson said he doesn't know what that will cost, but he expects to hire temporary employees or an outside company to help.
``It's just part of what we do,'' Johnson said. ``I think some people are whining a little bit. It's part of the job.''
Let’s all call or email Buddy (813 272-5850; voter@hillsboroughcounty.org) and whine to him about the fact that he is still planning on using this very flawed purge list of mostly black, registered Democrat voters despite the fact that he doesn’t have to. Oh, and just in case you’re wondering: Mr. Johnson is a buddy of Jeb!, having been appointed by the Governor to replace Pam Iorio when she resigned to run for Mayor of Tampa. Buddy is now in charge of the election in one of Florida’s most populous counties. The decisions he makes now may well have a huge impact in November.
Whine to Buddy Johnson: 813 272-5850 or voter@hillsboroughcounty.org
Purging the purge list
With the recent public release of the 2004 Florida voter purge list, the media and other organizations have been searching for errors by crunching numbers and checking names at a frantic pace.
On Friday, the first day after a court forced the state to make the list public, The Miami Herald reported that 2,100 former felons who were on the list should not have been included, since they had their civil rights restored by the Governor.
The state responded by citing a bureaucratic rule that calls for a person in these circumstances to reregister if they had mistakenly registered to vote before their right to vote had been officially restored. In other words, the state was saying that 1,600 of these 2,100 had registered too early and therefore must do it again.
The state wanted each county to remove these eligible voters from the rolls and then ask them to come down and sign up again. Oh, and the vast majority of people in this little subset of the list are registered Democrats. A disproportionately large percentage of them are black.
Well, now the state is backing down, having been pressured by the NAACP, ACLU, and other civic minded groups. Jeb!’s Secretary of State has agreed to unpurge some of these eligible voters, but there is massive confusion as to how many names are coming off the list and the criteria being used.
After lots of research and having perused articles in many of the state’s largest newspapers, I have definitively concluded that somewhere between 300 and 2,500 names are being purged from the purge list.
State Clears 2,500 Names Off Felon List: From The Tampa Tribune
Stung by public disclosures that its own record-keeping system could block eligible voters from the polls this fall, the state Elections Division agreed Wednesday to wipe nearly 2,500 Floridians from its list of probable felons ineligible to cast ballots.The nearly 2,500 were possible felons flagged by state analysts for registering to vote before their voting rights were restored. However, the state's method of identifying them was flawed, and voting rights advocates threatened to sue because they questioned whether the voters should have been singled out in the first place.
Hundreds taken off felons list (SP Times)
The number of voters affected by the policy change is not clear.Several newspaper analyses of the potential felons list found as many as 2,000 people on the list who had been granted clemency, meaning their rights were restored.
However, the St. Petersburg Times found as many as 1,000 names on the statewide potential felons list who completed their sentence and improperly registered to vote before they received clemency. State officials estimated the number to be around 300.
Herald.com | 07/07/2004 | State: 1,600 ex-felons eligible to vote
The Florida Division of Elections did an about-face Wednesday, acknowledging that 1,600 former felons whose voting rights had been restored should be removed from its list of potentially ineligible voters.The Herald reported last week that the 1,600 were among more than 2,100 felons who remained on the state's list even though they had regained the right to vote.
State officials initially insisted they were simply following Florida law by including the 1,647, each of whom had registered to vote before their civil rights had been restored. County elections supervisors were directed to contact each voter and have them reregister before the November election -- or face removal from the voting rolls.
Yet the Department of State -- whose secretary, Glenda Hood, reports to Gov. Jeb Bush -- backtracked on the issue.
......The decision drew praise from civil rights groups, who argued that qualified voters could have been kicked off the rolls because of administrative errors and bureaucratic bungling.
Advocates with the American Civil Liberties Union and the Florida Justice Institute, who threatened to sue unless the state switched course, also said that forcing voters to reregister served no legitimate purpose and potentially violated the law.
''I think it was a needless impediment to the right to vote in Florida,'' said Howard Simon, executive director of the ACLU of Florida.
......
Simon cautioned that the state list of 47,000 possible felons registered to vote must still be scrutinized for mistaken identities and other irregularities before elections supervisors begin removing people from the rolls.Another 500 voters who have won clemency remain on the list, for instance.
So, is the state going to issue an updated list? Can we just do the math to figure out how many names were removed? When will this happen? Will there be time to straighten this whole mess out before the election? What about other list issues and election problems like lawsuits over touch screen voting recounts? Stay tuned!
July 07, 2004
Jeb!’s disenfranchisement tricks
Florida’s handling of Jeb!’s voter purge list shows not innocent errors, but a “high level of trickery,” according to U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek.
On Friday, we learned that the Miami Herald found about 2,100 people, mostly black Democrats, that were wrongly included on the purge list despite having had their civil rights restored by the state. When this news came out, Jeb! literally ran away rather than answer questions.
Now the Tampa Tribune reports that the state is defending its list and the methods used to build it. The state says it knows that 2,500 voters included on the list are now legally eligible to vote, but the state claims that the voters did not register when they should have, so the state has no choice but to follow the law and attempt to remove these Democrats from the rolls.
The problem with that argument is that it is flat wrong. Another state law makes the actual registration date a moot point, but Jeb!’s crack staff in the Secretary of State’s office somehow missed that little detail.
Further, the state claims that is has no way to track compliance with their illegally strict registration policy.
In other words, the state can tell that someone registered 2 days before they were legally supposed to, but the state claims to have no method to determine if that same person later re-registered in accordance with the state’s false interpretation of the law. So, if you jumped the gun, you lose. No restarts.
Shades of the 2000 election fiasco here, as the state is casting a very wide net in forming the purge list, and subsequently failing to weed out the false positives before making the list operative. Incredibly, the state is consistently able to develop complex data mining protocols to add names to its purge list, but seems immensely inept when it comes to fine tuning the list to safeguard the rights of Democratic voters.
Nobody disputes that the almost 2,500 people on the list of felons at risk of being erased from voter rolls have had their voting rights restored.The problem is that broad disagreement exists between state election officials and voting rights advocates over how difficult it should be to clear them from a list of people believed to be felons.
The voters, overwhelmingly Democrats, were included because they registered to vote before they went through the clemency process and won back their voting rights.
The Division of Elections, an executive branch agency reporting to Gov. Jeb Bush, contends state law requires felons to register after their voting rights have been restored.
Officials acknowledged Tuesday that the list includes felons who likely have followed the state's registration policy but that there is no method of tracking compliance unless they move to a new county.
Voting rights advocates and some county election supervisors said the registration requirement being ordered by the state this year is unnecessary. The American Civil Liberties Union and Leon County Elections Supervisor Ion Sancho cite a separate state law that they say makes the registration date a moot point.
``There is a serious possibility that a fully qualified voter will be disenfranchised because of an administrative error,'' ACLU of Florida Legal Director Randall C. Marshall wrote in a letter Tuesday to Secretary of State Glenda Hood. The group is threatening a lawsuit unless she reverses her position on registration.
......U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, D- Miami, said, ``The governor's administration will stop at nothing to knock people from the rolls. This is an official document that came out of the highest levels of state government, and I wouldn't even call it an error but a high level of trickery.''
......Janet Modrow, who shares oversight of the purge list, acknowledged in an interview Tuesday that she compared felons' original - not the latest - registration date with their clemency date to determine whether they need to register again.
Modrow said it will be each county election supervisor's responsibility to see whether the voter has registered since their clemency. This check was not suggested, however, in a checklist of verifications the state said it is distributing to the 67 election supervisors.
Division of Elections Director Dawn Roberts said voters who registered before they received clemency committed a serious mistake.
``This is an anomaly that should not have occurred. It is an anomaly that cannot be overlooked,'' she said.
In many cases, it had been overlooked for many years, and voters on the list of 2,500 have voted without incident for some time.
Modrow said she would have used more up-to-date information when compiling the list if it had been available.
Meek replied to the explanation with a blunt, ``Hogwash. I think that argument is weak and is not leveling with the people of the state of Florida.''
Many other mistakes on the formerly secret purge list are coming to light as well. Funny, but all of these “mistakes” seem to benefit Jeb! and his brother, but I’m sure that’s just coincidence.
Some people whose civil rights were restored before 1977 were excluded from a database used by state officials to identify felons who should be barred from voting, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law.Before 1977, the clemency office did not always maintain certain identifying information, such as birthdates. Names without such information were not included in a database the state used to identify potential felons who should be barred from voting.
That means some people might have been wrongly included on the list of potential felons.
The Brennan Center, which is suing the state on behalf of felons who cannot vote, called that a "serious flaw" in the state's review.
All of these “errors” are coming to light due to the CNN lawsuit which forced the state to turn over the list to the public last week. Thanks to the bright lights now being shone on the process, the list may actually be thrown out by many county supervisors of elections. This is a good thing, but now some Florida residents will be much more likely to be disenfranchised, based solely on their address. Can anyone say “Equal Protection Clause?”
Florida's top election officials conceded Tuesday that they will take no legal action to force the state's 67 election supervisors to remove nearly 48,000 voters who have been identified by the state as potentially ineligible to vote.This means the fate of these voters, some of whom appear to have been wrongly placed on the list, will be up to the election supervisor in each county, many of whom have been hesitant so far to remove any voter from the rolls. Some supervisors have said they were unsure if they had the time or staff needed to independently verify the background of voters prior to this fall's elections, but other supervisors have moved ahead anyway.
......In May, the state sent elections supervisors a list of nearly 48,000 people it said were potential felons and ineligible to vote. That initial May memo gave no hint of discretion for supervisors, telling them that they ''must follow'' the procedures that require that a certified letter be sent to those on the list. Voters who did not reply to the letter or a subsequent newspaper advertisement, the memo told elections supervisors, ''must'' be removed.
But on Tuesday Hood put the burden solely on supervisors to research the background of voters before deciding whether enough evidence exists to purge them from the voter rolls.
''There has to be absolute proof; otherwise, they are not going to do anything but give the benefit of the doubt to the voter,'' Hood said.
......However, state officials continued on Tuesday to insist that anyone who registered to vote prior to having their civil rights restored should be purged from the voter rolls even though they are now eligible to vote. The Herald has identified more than 1,600 voters on the list who fall into that category.
Roberts called such registrations ``invalid.''
''We ought not lose sight of the fact that this is an anomaly that should not have occurred,'' said Roberts, who said those names were included to alert county elections officials.
But the state could not answer what would happen if someone's name was removed from the rolls during the 30-day period prior to an election. Voters who register during that window cannot vote in the upcoming election.
July 06, 2004
Get Up with MorningWood!
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
Building Fund Marathon
WMNF is raising funds for our new building from Tuesday July 6 to Tuesday July 13. MorningWood Marathon is on the last day, so please save some pennies for me!
Today on MorningWood
Blogging on the radio: comments and insights rants on news and events.
Sometimes sets are made from the thinnest of excuses...
I was looking for something else entirely when I stumbled upon this very over the top Wink Martindale tribute to Elvis Presley. (To download any mp3 from BlogWood, right click the link and then “save target as...” to download the file to your computer.)
Now, it just so happens that Elvis recorded “That’s All Right”, his first single for Sun Records in 1954 on July 5 or 6, depending on who you believe.
Hmmm, I smell an anniversary, and you can’t have an anniversary on MorningWood without a tribute. Thus, the first hour of today’s show was born.
Featuring The Cramps, Wink Martindale, Ronnie Elliott, Junkie XL, and Wesley Willis, this is one special you absolutely do not want to miss.
For people who wake up at a normal hour, a special offer: Pledge to MorningWood during WMNF’s current fundraising-for-our-new-building Marathon, and I will send you a recording of the Elvis tribute from today’s first hour of MorningWood.
That’s for everyone who pledges a minimum of $20 during MorningWood next week. Marathon starts today at 6 AM, right after MorningWood, and MorningWood is actually the last regular show of Marathon. So, save a few pennies for me, and get a cool CD in the process. To pre-pledge, just email me soon with a phone number. I’ll call and we’ll finalize the details by phone. Please DO NOT send any credit card information by email.
For our second hour this morning, I think some kind of actual holiday just passed, so I might just play some good patriotic music and spoken word from Anti Flag, Greg Palast, and more - whatever I can fit in around today’s Blogging on the Radio: Feeling vaguely Jesus!
After this incident last week in which a right wing fundamentalist group led by a certifiable nutcase named Dobson made Michael Moore a target by sending out his home address to the all of their followers via email, I phoned them. They call themselves Focus on the Family, an ironic moniker, considering that they seem to have no concern whatsoever for the health and well being of Mr. Moore’s family.
They are slimy, nefarious, pro-violent true believers, and every word out of their mouths is a lie, including the words “is” and “and”. Hear all about my conversations with Focus on the Family this morning in the middle of what has turned into a rather lengthy “Jesus” set, including this creepy song by John Ashcroft (“Let the Eagle Soar”, the same song heard in F911!).
If you’d like to call Focus on the Family yourself, and I highly recommend that you do, first bone up on your facts so that you can call them on all of their lies. Then call and have some polite fun at Dr. Dobson’s expense:
800-232-6459
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.
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.
July 02, 2004
Florida felon list online
People For the American Way has posted an easily searchable copy of the felon purge list. Check It For Yourself!
See today's BlogWood and here for lots of background on this developing story.
More Florida election irregularities
Hotwax Residue fills us in on the still developing (at least if anyone cares enough to pay attention) petition signature scams.
Krugman on F911
Krugman boils it down for us:
..."Fahrenheit 9/11" performs an essential service. It would be a better movie if it didn't promote a few unproven conspiracy theories, but those theories aren't the reason why millions of people who aren't die-hard Bush-haters are flocking to see it. These people see the film to learn true stories they should have heard elsewhere, but didn't. Mr. Moore may not be considered respectable, but his film is a hit because the respectable media haven't been doing their job.
Secrets of the Florida purge list revealed
Yesterday, a Florida judge granted CNN and other news and organizations the right to thoroughly inspect the Florida felon purge list.
In 2000, thousands of potential voters, mostly minority, and heavily Democrat, were wrongly scrubbed from the voter rolls in a misguided effort to comply with the Civil War reconstruction era law which still bars ex-felons who have paid their debt from voting in Florida. Florida is one of six states which still clings to this racist law.
Well, the news organizations have already started to crunch the numbers in the list and have found some interesting results.
The Tampa Tribune reports that the majority of the names on the list are of Democrats and minorities. No surprise there:
Florida's error-prone list of 47,763 suspected felons who could be tossed from voter rolls before November's presidential election contains nearly three times as many registered Democrats as Republicans. Almost half are racial minorities.Although activists have speculated for months that most of the voters on the controversial list are likely Democrats, precise numbers were difficult to calculate because state law forbade releasing copies to the public.
That law, however, was overturned Thursday by a Leon County judge at the request of CNN and several other news organizations, including The Tampa Tribune.
Circuit Judge Nikki Ann Clark said in her ruling that the Florida Constitution ``grants every person the fundamental right to inspect or copy public records.'' Further, the state had previously allowed the public and news media to inspect the list and not make copies, but Clark cited previous state court rulings that said the public's access was ``valueless without the right to make copies.''
News organizations, advocacy groups and others argued that public release of the list would enable greater scrutiny so that mistakes could be identified and fixed before eligible voters are wrongly turned away at the polls, as they were in the 2000 presidential election. Already, several mistakes have been discovered statewide.
......Among racial groups, the largest reported group was non-Hispanic whites with 24,197, followed by 22,084 non-Hispanic blacks, 1,384 unknowns, 61 Hispanics, 14 Asian or Pacific-Islanders, 12 American Indians and 11 others. The list consisted of 37,777 men and 9,986 women.
Meanwhile, the St. Pete. Times mentions that the list is so controversial that the state’s own laywer was not willing to defend it in court.
The felon list had few defenders. Even state Attorney General Charlie Crist, a Republican, questioned whether it made sense, and was hesitant about defending the law in court. Instead, the state hired a private firm to defend the law.
And the Miami Herald has already started to check names on the list, and has already found some troubling inconsistencies.
More than 2,100 Florida voters -- many of them black Democrats -- could be wrongly barred from voting in November because Tallahassee elections officials included them on a list of felons potentially ineligible to vote, a Herald investigation has found.A Florida Division of Elections database lists more than 47,000 people the department said may be ineligible to vote because of felony records. The state is directing local elections offices to check the list and scrub felons from voter rolls.
But a Herald review shows that at least 2,119 of those names -- including 547 in South Florida -- shouldn't be on the list because their rights to vote were formally restored through the state's clemency process.
That's a potentially jarring flaw, critics say, in a state that turned the 2000 presidential election to Gov. Jeb Bush's brother George on the narrowest of margins -- 537 votes.
Transparency: what a concept.
Anyway, the list has only been available for about 16 hours now, and already tons of problems have been identified. Stay tuned for more outrage and unbelievable coincidence as these numbers are thoroughly vetted.
Thankfully, many of Florida’s county elections supervisors, who are ultimately in charge of the voter rolls in their respective counties, have been hesitant to make use of this list, and some are now saying that they may just throw the whole list out.
Counties must issue letters to voters who could be declared ineligible. Only those who can prove they're eligible to vote will be left on the rolls.Secretary of State Glenda Hood said in a statement announcing the release of the information that it contains potential matches and is not a final list.
Some, including Pasco County Supervisor of Elections Kurt Browning, said it's possible that the process will prove lengthy and that no voters will be removed in their county before Nov. 2.
Felons, meanwhile, continue to be purged from voter rolls - sometimes improperly - because processes exist separate from the statewide list of potential felons.
The process may prove lengthy because the state has made the county supervisors responsible for checking every name on the list to make sure it should be there. With the Miami Herald finding 2000 false positives right off the bat, individual elections supervisors, with small staffs and no budget for the project, were being overwhelmed.
Pasco Supervisor of Elections Kurt Browning said he expects to hire a private firm to review the list but is not sure how to pay for it."We're not equipped to do it ourselves," Browning said. "We don't know where to look or where to start to look."
TONS of background info here.
July 01, 2004
CNN gets purge list
Excellent news, as long as CNN or someone actually does something with the list before it’s too late:
(Note: Tons of background on Florida felons and voting here.
A state court judge in Florida ordered Thursday that the board of elections immediately release a list of nearly 50,000 suspected felons to CNN and other news organizations that last month sued the state for access to copies of the list.The list is used to determine who will be eligible to vote in November's presidential election in the state.
Florida is one of a handful of states that bar people convicted of felonies in that state from voting.
In 2000, a similar list was the center of controversy when state officials acknowledged after the election that it contained thousands of names in error, thus barring eligible people from voting.
Many of the barred voters were African-Americans, who traditionally tend to vote Democratic.
Bush won the state by a 537-vote margin and, with it, the presidency.
The lawsuit, filed by CNN and joined by other news organizations, challenged a 2001 statute passed by the Republican-controlled legislature that limited the public's access to the list.
News organizations were allowed to inspect the list, but not make copies of it or take notes from it. (CNN asks Florida court for ineligible voters list)
"The right to inspect without the right to copy is an empty right indeed," said Leon County Circuit Judge Nikki Clark, in her six-page order.
"Whether the public chooses to inspect or copy [the list] is not the choice of the governmental agency which has custody of the record. It is the choice of the person who has requested access."
The judge went on to declare the statute unconstitutional because it failed to comply with a constitutional amendment guaranteeing public access to the state's public records.
The state has a right to an automatic 48-hour stay, if its lawyers appeal.
They would have to show cause why the information should continue to be withheld, said Tampa attorney Gregg D. Thomas of the law firm Holland & Knight, which is representing the news organizations.
"I think the long-term impact is that the citizens of Florida will have access to the interactions of their government to make sure that the government, particularly with regard to the right to vote, is conducting itself appropriately."
Fuck the fundamentalists
A powerful group of sick Christian fundamentalists has sent out Michael Moore's home address to their email list. Call their toll free number and ask them why: 800-232-6459. Be polite. Remember: they are paying for the call and for the employee on the other end, so call often and talk for a long time. Ask for the employee’s last name and address. Ask for their founder Dr. Dobson’s home address. Say you just want to talk to them about Michael’s film.
Ask them why they care about Michael Moore. They are purportedly an apolitical organization.
Now, why would this group pull such a stunt. They say that they are just providing information to their flock so that the lemmings can “contact” Mr. Moore. Of course, these are the same fundie types who put abortion doctors on “wanted” posters and silently cheer when they and their families are harassed and killed.
It’s time to put a stop to this intimidating and hateful behavior, so lets have some fun at these folks’ expense. Hint: they will lie through their teeth. Every word out of their mouths is probably a lie, including the words “and” and “is”.
My calls: (2 so far, and counting. Remember: these guys are super-serious, so it’s relatively easy to pull their legs and act the part of an outraged fundamentalist ally looking to help.)
Talked to Holly whose last name I think is Weiser, though after she gave it to me she had second thoughts and would not spell it. She wouldn’t give me her home address or the address of Dr. Dobson either.
First, Holly claimed that the address given out was not Michael Moore’s home address. This is a blatant lie (see the text of the email below), and has been disproved.
Then Holly said I could read the email on the web and told me to go to their web site. She was vague about the full address of the email, and eventually admitted that it is not available on the web.
She proceeded to helpfully look for a copy of the email in her own email program, and eventually claimed to have found it, but only after literally minutes of silence broken by one apologetic “Sorry. I can’t talk and read at the same time.” I admitted as to how that was probably true, seeing as how her lips was already moving to form the words as she read, so how could she be expected to carry on a conversation at the same time and all...
Finally, she “found” the email in question and read off an address on 83rd Street in NYC. I Informed her that this was indeed Michael Moore’s home address (I don’t know if this is true or not), and she seemed perplexed and immediately transferred me to someone in “the department that is handling this.” She was unable to forward me a copy of the email which she claimed to have miraculously found.
Heidi Puck in the mysterious department for handling inquiries about Michael Moores home address was much less forthcoming. She did promise to forward me the email, (surprisingly, I have yet to get it - the email must be running slow today!) after fumbling through an aborted attempt to steer me to the nonexistent web page where Holly had tried to send me earlier.
Another call yielded a firm “no comment” from Mark (no last name given) who hung up on me after I pressed him for an opinion on whether he thought that Jesus would post someone’s address online.
800-232-6459
Note: original story from Non Prophet via Crooked Timber via Atrios.
800-232-6459
Here’s the email.
" Filmmaker Michael Moore, writer/director of the new Bush-bashing documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11," has made quite a career out of marketing himself as a man of the people, a populist everyman who fights passionately for the little guy.That's why we wanted to make sure "little guys" could let
Moore know exactly what they think about his new movie.So, if you have an opinion about the film -- in which
Moore plays fast and loose with the facts to build a case
that President Bush is an idiot and the war in Iraq is all
about oil profits -- we suggest you send it to the
following address:[MM's Address removed]
That's his home -- a condominium this man of the people,
so critical of capitalism, spent $4.5 million on seven
years ago. And please don't worry that it's wrong to use
this address; it's public record, obtained through New
York State mortgage records and Federal Election
Commission filings."
800-232-6459
Update: on my third or fourth call (I’ve lost count already) I got a very helpful person in the “Correspondence” department who swore to me that the email in question was not kept on file anywhere and they couldn’t just send it out to me. When I suggested she simply forward me a copy from her inbox, she hemmed and hawed, finally offering to “have someone contact me” via email at some other unspecified time.
I also asked her about the home address, and she got mixed up. First, she admitted that it was his home address. Then, after I expressed some confusion, she let on that it wasn’t really his home address, but backed right off and went back to her original admission when I called her on it. I very politely asked her why her organization was blatantly lying to callers and she professed to be absolutely shocked that any employee of Focus for the Family would have the talent to attain such hypocritical heights. She actually took Holly’s name as if to follow up on the trail of misinformation. These people are pure evil. (Holly will be getting a gold cross and something extra special from Dr. Dobson tonight for maintaining the mendacity)
I highly recommend that you call them yourself. It’s really kinda fun, though it's creepy just talking to these people.
800-232-6459
Update - I fixed the phone number. (Doh!)
800-232-6459
Oops: Fox fucks up
Fox news, not exactly known for it's, er, penetrating stories, showed some uncensored porn clips a few nights back.
There’s a move afoot to complain to the FCC about this episode, though the FCC has no real power over cable.
Last words on Howard and Tampa
Okay, this is getting out of hand. Let's just say that Howard's arrival in the Tampa Bay radio market could be huge. This will be the last dedicated post on this topic today. (I'll just keep updating this post if I keep running across more good stories.)
SF Gate today:
"I'm an independent. ... I always vote for the best guy,'' Stern told his audience this week, urging them -- as he has for months -- to vote for Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts. Dismissing Bush as incompetent and a threat to the First Amendment, he said of the choices facing voters in November: "I think the stakes are higher than they've ever been before.''
Circular links: Florida Politics (scroll down to Howard Stern post) has more (and also a link back to BlogWood - thanks!)
Yeah, but can Stern really make a difference in November?
As noted previously today, Tampa is getting Howard Stern, which could be a big deal come November. Hillsborough County is in play, as they say, and Howard could help tip the balance.
T hough much has been made of the recent debut of Al Franken as a liberal talk-radio host, the most important political voice on talk radio this year may turn out to be not Franken but the usually apolitical "shock jock" Howard Stern.Recent months have not been kind to Stern, who found himself a target of the backlash against indecency that followed the baring of Janet Jackson's nipple during the Super Bowl halftime show. In February the radio behemoth Clear Channel Communications dropped him from six of its affiliates for being "vulgar, offensive and insulting." The following month the FCC slapped him with a $27,500 fine for his on-air discussions of sexual techniques such as the "nasty Sanchez" and the "blumpkin" (don't ask). As Congress considers raising obscenity fines as high as $500,000, Stern is contemplating a move to satellite radio, where the FCC couldn't touch him.
The proudly boorish host has cast himself as the target of a Republican vendetta—sparked by his criticism of President Bush and spearheaded by Clear Channel (whose CEO is a Bush family friend). So Stern is fighting back, proclaiming "radio jihad" on Bush's re-election campaign and partly remaking his show—well known for its adolescent obsession with fart jokes, lesbians, and strippers—into a platform for anti-Republican invective. "Remember me in November when you're in the voting booth," Stern tells listeners. "I'm asking you to do me one favor. Vote against Bush. That's it."
......Stern could sway many undecided voters, according to Michael Harrison, of Talkers magazine, a nonpartisan periodical that surveys radio listener demographics.
Harrison says that Stern has "a gigantic audience of thirty- to fortysomethings, people who have grown up with him, people who are teachers, accountants, lawyers." Several million of them "would say they lean conservative ... but are on the fence" in this race. And the host has tremendous credibility with his listeners. "He may be raunchy, edgy, dirty," Harrison says, "but he's compulsively honest, and his main target is hypocrisy." Also, it's not hard to imagine that Stern's relentless screeds against the President would compel some of the previously nonvoting members of his audience—people whom political campaigns usually ignore—to turn out for John Kerry.
......In Florida, the fiercest battleground in 2000, the Clear Channel purge cost Stern audiences in Fort Lauderdale and Orlando—which is fodder for Bush-Clear Channel conspiracy theorists. But even now Stern's show reaches 38,000 people a week in Fort Myers—seventy times Bush's Florida margin in 2000. In short, it's not inconceivable that Stern could swing a state or two into Kerry's column.
(Did I mention that Howard’s coming to Tampa?)
And just who are these fiercely loyal Stern listeners?
Enter Howard Stern, notorious shock jock. As the New York Daily News reports today (and Knight Ridder reported yesterday), a recent survey by the New Democrat Network reveals the King of All Media's potential influence on the presidential race."[Stern] is listened to by 17 percent of likely voters," the survey finds. And "one-quarter of all likely voting Stern listeners are swing voters." One-quarter of 17 percent is 4.25 percent of all voters - more than enough to swing a close contest.
Further, as the News reports, "Stern launched a 'jihad' to defeat Bush after the FCC began assessing massive fines against stations that carry the jock." Perhaps relatedly, the New Democrat Network's survey shows that nationally Howard Stern listeners "would support Kerry over Bush by a margin of 53 to 43 percent." In battleground states, Kerry's support is even stronger, 59 percent to Bush's 37 percent.
Howard's fighting for all of us
From Buzzflash, more on Howard’s fight against Clear Channel, Bush, and the FCC.
"Clearly the saddest and most infuriating irony of the whole mess is that Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell is demagoguing this ‘issue’ . . . about indecency in the media, thus distracting attention from his attempt to impose a radical relaxation of media ownership rules on the country," Shales reminded – a move, coincidentally, that benefits fat cats like Clear Channel. [TV Week]And so, we’ve officially arrived at the bizarre place where yesterday’s news is colliding with today’s manufactured realities. And though Neil Young [NewsMax.com], like Howard Stern, [Fox News] was once touted as a "pro-Bush celebrity" the closer he examined the Clear Channel/Bush/Big Brother triangle, the more clearly he saw the danger at hand. "[A] lot of the people's civil rights have been compromised, and we don't know what's going on. If I keep speaking my mind, will I be deported?" Young asked the Guardian last May, before addressing Clear Channel’s monopoly on radio stations, concert halls and cheerleading for President Bush.
"I'm not very happy with the state of things. Music is being banned, and we have people in control of the radio stations who are the same people in control of the concert halls. They're also tied into the [US] administration and are sponsoring pro-war rallies. It's not good. . . In the next couple of months, they'll probably make it unpatriotic to be Democrat. It's pretty crazy." [The Guardian]
Rush Limbaugh, the gem in Clear Channel's showcase, need not worry about similar persecution, however. Following Sen. John McCain's astonishing 19-point victory in New Hampshire during the 2000 presidential primaries, for example, Limbaugh did the right thing by Bush and repeatedly raised questions about McCain’s integrity and credentials. When Sept. 11 widows questioned Bush’s odd behavior on Sept. 11 (and his repeated attempts to stonewall the independent commission investigating the attacks), Limbaugh leapt to the President’s defense -- shamelessly and falsely smearing the women as political toadies. [BuzzFlash.com]. (Why, one wonders, didn’t Clear Channel’s president consider Limbaugh’s blatant lies "offensive and insulting"?)
And though Limbaugh initially defended Stern’s First Amendment rights, he twisted his defense to make it seem as if John Kerry is the boogieman lurking in America’s censorship closet -- rather than blaming the myriad of Republicans involved. In case you’re wondering, the House Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act was introduced in the House by Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), while House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Sen. Joe Barton (R-TX) pushed for the provision that would also hold fine individual disc jockeys up to $500,000 for each violation. [HillNews.com] And the Senate version is sponsored by Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC).
Most blatantly, however, in his haste to blame the Democrats, Rush overlooked the fact that the FCC -- which is fining Stern for ancient offenses which were less racy than Oprah topics [New York Post] -- is headed by Colin Powell’s son.
"Do you think Karl Rove might have made a phone call to little General Powell, little Michael and said, 'Let's get this over with. Let's give him the fine and get this done with before Stern gets us all voted out of office,'" the National Enquirer’s Mike Walker asked Stern.
"First of all, I know that for a fact," Stern answered. "I can't even tell you how, just like you can't reveal your sources. I have two sources inside the FCC. They know exactly what is going on. They had a meeting two weeks ago, freaking out. I seem to be making enough noise that people are realizing we could hurt George W. Bush in the elections. So they are trying to figure out at what point do they fine me. So, you are absolutely right."
"This new fine that just came out is three years old," Stern continued. "It has nothing to do with the new rules that came out. They are coming up with new rules every day. . . So they went back three years ago, found a complaint, trumped one up against me and hit me with a fine. . . as soon as the Senate passes this bill, they are going to hit me up with some new fines." [FMQB.com]
Walker also suggested that Powell’s FCC crackdown on Stern created a "left-wing Rush Limbaugh," and Stern agreed, adding that "they unleashed a monster." (The difference, of course, is that the FCC wants to make sure that "a left wing Rush Limbaugh" will never have a national platform).
"I’m relying on people in the [media] to have a better understanding of this issue than the general public," Stern said on March 16, the same day a New York Post editor phoned into his show and revealed that even at the Rupert Murdoch-owned Post, reporters and editors are frightened of the government.
"People are afraid to speak," Jeremy Lipschultz, a professor of communication at the University of Nebraska at Omaha told the Guardian. "When you don't know exactly when you've crossed that line, the tendency is to stay way behind it.'' [The Guardian]
......"Believe me, people are already collecting tapes of Stern’s radio show and kids will be listening to him under the covers at night, just like I read Henry Miller," Ronald Reagan’s daughter Patti Davis explained. "What will really be sad is when kids have to hide beneath the covers to read the First Amendment." [MSNBC]
And that, of course, is the ultimate point. Because though Regular Joes and clueless journalists may fail to see it just yet, Howard Stern’s First Amendment rights are their rights, too.
And while concentration camp survivor Pastor Martin Niemöller’s observations have been misquoted and abused too often, his warnings nevertheless ring true today. [History.UCSB.edu] First they came for the shock jocks. God only knows who’ll be next.
Note - the [brackets] in the article represent links in the original. Read the original Buzzflash article to get all the links.
Tampa gets Stern
Say what you want about Howard Stern. In a nutshell,
He is highly controversial for his use of scatalogical and sexual humor and inflammatory comments about various religious and ethnic groups.
But, ever since W’s FCC declared war against him, he has become one of the most vocal critics of the Bush administration. A quick look at his web site reveals lots of anti-Bush links. He rants daily about the Bush administration, and he is loudly encouraging his listeners to vote aWol right out of office.
Howard’s listeners are a diverse bunch, too, about evenly split between Dems and Rethugs, with a large contingent of independents, but one thing many of his listeners share is a respect for Howard’s opinions, and right now they are very pissed off at George Bush and the FCC. He could well help swing the state and the nation away from W’s rule.
Yesterday, Stern announced that he was returning to many of the markets where Clear Channel pulled him off of the air several months ago.
Howard Stern, the radio shock jock whose removal in February from six Clear Channel Communications Inc. stations marked another battle in the cultural war over indecency, will return to nine cities nationwide, including WPBZ-FM 103.1, "The Buzz," in West Palm Beach, starting July 19."I can't wait to get back into the markets where we were taken off," Stern said in a statement Wednesday. "I've missed my fans, and judging from the countless e-mails and calls I've received, they've missed the show."
New York-based Infinity Broadcasting Corp., which syndicates Stern's show in 35 cities, also is adding his 6-10 a.m. weekday show in Tampa and Orlando. The controversial but popular Stern is well known for his foul language and sexually explicit comedy.
......When it comes to men in that (18-34) age group, Stern's show is tops in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Dallas, said Jim Goss, an analyst with Chicago-based Barrington Research.
......The debate over what should be allowed over the public airwaves heated up Feb. 1, when singer Janet Jackson's right breast became exposed during the halftime show at the Super Bowl.
As the previous article noted, Stern will also be available in the Tampa area, for the first time.
Howard Stern announced Wednesday that his syndicated morning show would appear in nine new markets, including four where his show was axed by the nation's largest radio chain for alleged indecency.Among the new broadcasting outlets: Tampa radio station WQYK, 1010 AM, which currently airs locally-produced sports programming as well ESPN sports shows. Stern's syndicated program, which originates from New York City, will air live from 6 to 10 a.m. weekdays on the Infinity-owned station.
Charlie Ochs, Tampa market manager for Tampa's six Infinity outlets, says the controversial disc jockey is a premiere morning show host with a loyal listener base. Though rumors circulated for years about this station or that picking up Stern's program, his July 19 debut will be the first time Stern has a home in Tampa.
So, bite your tongue and give Howard a chance. He’s actually a step up from Bubba, and right now he’s a powerful ally in the fight against the Bush dynasty.