Council Meeting Update
JUNE 5th, 2006
I attended the King County Council Meeting today.
Not one member of the public spoke out in favor of FORCED
MAIL VOTING. Not one.
Why isn't the media covering this on King 5 news? I think
the 80% of the public voting with their feet argument would evaporate
overnight if the media publicized the problems everyone objected to, the
whole meeting long. The media isn't just a few of us lonely bloggers out
here on the Internet. The media is not raising public awareness of the
issue. The citizens at that meeting didn't need the media to tell them
to oppose vote by mail, they all opposed it simply through logical thought
and argumentation.
How many people spoke, how many issues raised? And the council
that's voting in favor of the measure, all stating that the citizenry
supports it, but no citizen there to speak in favor of forced mail-in
voting. And the most appalling thing is that many Democratic Council members
all said that everyone was raising "valid concerns". Well if they are
valid? Why are you ignoring them?
There were Greens, Republicans, and many Democrats who spoke
passionately against this change. I think that in opposition to one council
member who wishes not to be called
out by independent journalists, this is a coalition of many people,
from many parties, all opposing this idea.
That meeting was a powerful coalition of people from a broad
spectrum of citizens, and the citizens were pissed.
Please contact the media and ask them why they are not covering
this issue. Ken Schram seems open to the idea, judging from his commentary
in 2004. If you want you could email him, I already have, see if maybe
he would host a discussion panel with all the various citizen activists
discussing this switch. He hasn't responded to my email yet.
Statement on Absentee Ballots
The
proposal to move King County to a mixed system of vote by mail (VBM)
and Diebold TSX Touch Screen Voting machines deserves rejection.
For hundreds of years
citizens of the United States have voted in public, and the votes have
been counted in public, by the public. The proposal before the King County
Council will fundamentally alter that here in King County. We will be
voting in private, and the votes will be counted by private hands using
private software, with only the illusion that it remains a public process.
The voting machines
in King County, with software already controlled by corporate hands, namely
Diebold Election Systems, still have a paper ballot associated with that
system... useful in hand recounts. But moving to vote by mail undermines
the security of the paper ballots, and removes any real ability to audit
the system. Absentee ballots, rather than correcting the software ownership
problem I highlighted in my campaign for King County Executive, simply
make matters worse by undermining the security of the paper ballot. For
the record, if you are trying to avoid the machines by using absentee
ballots, absentee ballots are fed into Diebold counting machines anyway.
This is exactly what the hand recount in 2004 should have called into
question, something that seemed to slip unnoticed by the public and the
media. Specifically the hand count overturned two machine counts.
Click to read the entire statement...
News, Info, and Links
Campaigning Outside the Lines: A Formula for Exclusion
Lansing Scott
http://eatthestate.org/10-06/CampaigningOutsideLines.htm
Many people are aware that our electoral system is biased in favor of
the two dominant parties and against smaller parties, but the campaign
of Gentry Lange, this year's Green Party candidate for King County Executive,
provides a useful case study of just how bad that bias really is.
5% Goes Green in King County
Thanks to everyone who voted for me, we are closing in on 25,000 votes
when everything is counted, and all the ballots are "found".
And before anyone writes me some nasty email about GOP talking points,
the fact is that during the last election both Andy
Stephenson and Larry Phillips absentees were "found" a little
late in the process. So I am skeptical about King County and Dean Logan
for reasons far beyond GOP talking points. Heck, the GOP started stealing
my talking points this election cycle, not the other way around.
While this campaign was issue driven, not "victory
driven", I am super proud of everyone who worked on the campaign,
volunteered, attended house parties, and generally kicked butt to get
things done. After 6 months of constant ups and downs, I am proud to call
myself a Green, and happy it is all over... for now. The current plan
is to take a break, spend some time in the mountains snowboarding, and
then to return to work on reforming King County's election system, fixing
traffic, and pushing for more Green Technologies, Industries, and sustainable
life styles.
Keep in Touch!
Regards,
Gentry Lange
Breaking News:
Touch Screens from Diebold for King County
Breaking news, Diebold to spend $5 million to buy the worst voting
machines Diebold offers. Here's the info:
"I attended the HAVA Grant Advisory Board meeting 10/27.
Among many other things, I learned that we (King Co) are spending $5m
for 650 Diebold AccuVote TSx voting machines (DREs). That includes software,
support, consulting, etc."
More info on Washblog here:
http://www.washblog.com/
What is wrong with outsourcing voting tasks
to experts?
Aren't Diebold and PSI Group simply vendors providing a service to the
county? Isn't this a very cost effective decision for the county
to make? Companies do it every day; those tasks that are not in
their core competencies are provided by outside experts. What is
wrong with this?
Read my full response to this question, here.
The KUOW interview
http://www.kuow.org/theconversation.asp
Gentry Lange on Ross Reynold's, The Conversation.
A vote for Gentry Lange is a vote for Gentry Lange. Period.
Debunking
the "Spoiler" Myth
By Mike Gillis
I reject the so-called "spoiler effect" and the way that the
Democratic Party has used it to take advantage of progressive voters for
decades.
The governorship of Washington State, both state legislative houses and
the Supreme Court in Washington State are controlled by one party: The
Democrats.
If they wished to change the system to prevent candidates with only a
minority of the electorate's support from being elected to office, they
would have. They could do it overnight. They could support systems like
Proportional Representation and Instant Run-Off Voting and eliminate the
spoiler effect altogether. Voting systems that the Greens have promoted
for years.
Read
More
There's also a great way to insure candidates win a majority
of the vote. It is called Instant Run-off Voting, or IRV for short. Please
check out the Washington based activist group working to bring IRV to
Washington State:
http://www.irvwa.org
KVI Radio Debate
570 AM, the Jon Carlson Show
3:30pm Friday, November 4th
Gentry Lange, David Irons, and Ron Sims go head to head one
last time. Apparently I am polling better with conservatives since the
last KVI debate, so this final debate should be great.
KUOW 94.9FM, Thursday November 3rd, 1:40 to 2pm
I will be on the Conversation.
New King 5 Poll
10/31/2005
The new poll comissioned by King 5 shows that Gentry Lange has gained
traction with Republican voters, and has jumped from 1% to 5% Republican
support since the last poll. David Irons has lost 2% of his Democratic
support, dropping to 13%, while Ron Sims has picked up 2%. So according
to the usual media spin, apparently Ron Sims is "stealing" back
support from David Irons. Of course, those of us who don't put
much stock into biased polls understand that any of these numbers vary
widely, and are within the polls margin of error to begin with. So while
the media continues to spin their myths, I hold steady at 8% +/- 4%. Anyway,
instead of reading the graph, here's where to look for the numbers behind
the poll:
Survey
USA Website
Eat the State Endorsement
Geov Parrish
http://eatthestate.org/10-04/Election2005Horror.htm
King County Executive: The irony and tragedy of Ron Sims'
political career is that he keeps running (and losing) races for higher
office by posing as far more liberal than his performance as King County
Executive would indicate. Now he wants a third term as Exec, and he's
being challenged by David Irons, the same Eastside Robo-Republican that
the Party designated a few years ago to take out environmentalist gadfly
Brian Derdowski in a King County Council primary. It's a truly unappealing
choice. Fortunately, there's a third option -- Gentry Lange, the Green
Party candidate. Owing to the Green Party's dysfunction, Lange's campaign
has been barely visible, which is a shame: he's smart, articulate, and
a way better choice than Sims. Gentry Lange.
[Note from Gentry: Thanks to Geov Parrish for the endorsement,
however I have to say that the Greens actually did a lot of work for the
campaign. Could we have done better, yes, and we will learn from our mistakes
in the future. However, the problems in visibility come more from intentionally
exclusion, bureaucratic negligence, and lack of compliance with Washington
State's equal access laws on the part of the mainstream media. Just one
example: the County Election's own home page did not list me as a candidate
until 3 weeks ago. Overcoming the hurdles we face as a party is possible,
however, those hurdles are far more detrimental than any failure of the
Green Party's volunteers. The Green Party folks have been largely responsible
for getting me on the ballot, getting me in the debates, and going door-to-door
to get my campaign noticed. Yes we must work twice as hard to be considered
half as good, but in that effort the Green's I worked with are incredibly
good and dedicated people, and I could not have done it without them.]
GAO Issues a Report on Electronic Voting
The General Accounting Office (Congress) has issued a rather detailed
report regarding the use of Electronic Voting Machines. The report does
a pretty good job highlighting the key concerns that activists have been
complaining about for years:
http://www.democrats.reform.house.gov/Documents/20051021122225-53143.pdf
There is also another report our by a group called the National
Election Data Archive, or NEDA:
http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/Presidential-Election-2004.pdf
So while local election officials say everything is fine,
Congress has issued a report supporting many of the criticisms activists
have raised.
The Election Center report, a corporate Whitewash of
King County's Election Problems
NEWS ADVISORY September 29th, 2005
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The Election Center Funded by Corporate Voting Machine Providers, Diebold,
ES&S, Sequoia and more
King County Council hires the Corporate “Fox” to Whitewash the Election
“Hen House”
With the report due anyday, it is unlikely that this corporately
funded entity, The Electon Center, will offer real reform or insight.
Afterall they take money from the very voting machine companies that our
elections in King County are run on.
Read the full press
release for more information.
Links
Democratic
Underground's Voting Discussion Forums
Blackboxvoting's
Discussion Forums
Voters
Unite
VerifiedVoting.org
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