NYTimes: The ‘Revolving Door’ of Partisan Election Officials and the Voting Machine Industry

Blogged quickly by Brad from somewhere deep in the heart of Texas…

Color us shocked. Elections Officials who oversee their own elections or those of their party leaders…and then go to work for the Voting Machine Companies they do business with/apologize for. Hey, at least they’re now getting paid (publicly) for the lobbying work they were doing for those companies already.

New York Times notices the problem we have with the way our electoral system “works” and how so many of those who run it seem to work for everyone but the voters…

Across the country, state voting officials routinely participate as candidates in races they are responsible for overseeing or act as leaders in their political parties. In the last presidential election, the secretaries of state in Arizona, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri and Ohio, were chairmen of their states’ re-election campaigns for President Bush.

While federal ethics rules require lawmakers to wait a year after leaving office before they can take a job lobbying their former colleagues, no such rules exist for election officials, creating a revolving door between election administration and the voting machine industry. In recent years, top election officials in at least five states have moved from government posts directly into jobs as lobbyists for the voting machine industry…

And a note to NY Times’ Ian Urbina: Good story. Though it would be a journalistic breath of fresh air if you avoided already discredited political operatives as quoted sources. E.g., folks like Robert Pastor of the hoax Baker/Carter National Election Reform Commission and the anti-democratic GOP wingnut SoS of Indiana, Todd Rokita. Consider it a friendly request with appreciation that you seem to be back on this beat…

6 Responses

  1. How does DeGregorio get a pass in all this? He went from the Chairman of the Election Assistance Commission directly into a cushy vendor COO position without skipping a beat.

  2. Now seriously, folks. Does anyone actually believe that a one-year waiting period between working in public service and working for private industry supplying the public sector one worked for a year ago makes any difference whatsoever? That this waiting period actually eliminates, or even reduces, the possibility of any unethical shenanigans or shenanigans antithetical to our democracy occurring?

    COME ON!!! Lobbying IS unethical! Lobbying is ALREADY intrinsically antithetical to our democracy! Why are we participating in a discussion about ethics rules around lobbying?! That’s like discussing the ethics of arson!

    Let’s stop saying that it’s OK for private industry to get in between the people and their legislators, by bankrolling OUR legislators to do THEIR bidding. LOBBYING is the problem! NOT the insufficient OVERSIGHT of lobbying.

    Sorry for all the exclamation points, but I am truly disgusted by our apparent acceptance of lobbyists on Capitol Hill (and elsewhere) as bau. Let’s send lobbyists packing off somewhere else to find something real or possibly even meaningful to do for money. They may not be the pigs at the trough, but they sure as heck are pouring in the swill.

  3. So as not to take up too much Bradblog space, I refer to this recent thread and this one too.

    OT …
    4th AMENDMENT ALERT … ALERT … The congress is being duped again into weakening doing away with the 4th Amendment. which requires that searches and or seizures be done with a warrant based on sworn testimony and probable cause.

    Call your congress members and demand that they not give the president what he wants: Alberto Gonzales will be allowed to decide who to search when without a warrant for up to one year.

    Remember what he did to a sick man in the hospital.

    CALL or email them TODAY !!!

    CONGRESS WAKE UP !!!!!!!

  4. RE: Post #3

    OT

    4th Amendment Alert … continued …

    Check this:

    A Push to Rewrite Wiretap Law
    White House Seeks Warrantless Authority From Congress

    The foreigner/American calls don’t even have to be a suspected Al Queda, or other terrorist group, anymore for the proposed new warrantless wire-tapping by the NSA

    (Wash. Post, emphasis added). And to add a little spice to your life, this is being rushed thru congress THIS VERY MINUTE:

    IRS wants data on users from Internet firms

    The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) is sounding an early warning on a proposal in the president’s 2008 budget that would require Internet businesses like eBay and Amazon.com to collect personal data on their customers and share it with the Internal Revenue Service.

    (NetWorkWorld, emphasis added). There is a lot of news out there that is drowning this out.

  5. http://action.eff.org/fisa
    Eff has some information on this warrantless wiretap to contact your Senator to oppose “FISA Modernization”:

    “Hello, I’m a constituent, and I urge my representative to reject the Administration’s ‘FISA Modernization’ proposal or any other proposal that would expand surveillance powers and rubberstamp warrantless surveillance of Americans. I oppose the NSA spying program and demand immediate investigations to help stop this unprecedented invasion of Americans’ privacy.”