Kudos (for a change) to AP for their report today into what happened during the Super Tuesday Democratic Caucus in New Mexico, where thousands of long-time registered Democratic voters were knocked off the rolls, leading to some 17,000 provisional ballots being cast (11% of all votes, up from 4% four years ago.)
What has changed since 2004, just four years ago? For a start, the private, constantly failing voting machine company ES&S has taken over management of the registration rolls. At the same time, Secretary of State Mary Herrera’s office seems to be in complete denial of the problem, which could drastically affect the ability of legally registered voters to cast proper ballots in the state come this November, when the race could be as razor-thin in New Mexico as it was in 2004.
The AP report picks up on one of our own, covering the privatization of NM’s (and several other states’) voting rolls, as filed here just after Election Day, when the mess first began to emerge.
Get a load of just a few of the disturbing details, on the thousands of voters knocked off the rolls and the SoS-in-denial, from the surprisingly good AP coverage by Heather Clark…
In Mora County, for example, where half the voters cast provisional ballots, about 1,000 Democrats were stripped of their party affiliation in the Secretary of State’s databank and so were never given to the Democratic Party for the caucus list, County Clerk Charlotte Duran said.
In one Bernalillo County polling place, last names beginning with the letter “A” were missing, said Lynn Jacobs, a volunteer poll worker at the site. In San Miguel County, voters on an entire street did not appear on the list, said Pat Leahan, director of the Las Vegas Peace and Justice Center who observed the caucus. And Caucus Director Beth Adams said caucus workers have noticed the names of some people whose addresses were rural routes or post office boxes were not included on the lists.
The names of state Auditor Hector Balderas and state District Judge William Lang—both longtime Democrats and voters—were omitted from the voter lists that were relied on during the Super Tuesday caucus, the two officials said.
A half dozen poll workers said they saw other longtime Democrats try to vote on Super Tuesday only to find their names were not on the lists.
“I had person after person, who had voted in every election, they hadn’t moved in years, and were not on the lists,” Jacobs said.
And as to the SoS office-in-shameful-denial:
But Mora County’s missing voter names happened before they handed over their lists to the Democrats, Duran said.
Clerks there discovered after the caucus that about 1,000 Democrats and about 100 Republican voters had been stripped of their party affiliation in the databank. So the Democrats’ names were never passed to the party to be included in the caucus lists.
Duran said she contacted Election Systems & Software, which contracts with the state to manage the software, but was unable to get a guarantee that the problem would not crop up again.
“They couldn’t answer me or they didn’t want to,” she said.
A spokesman for Election Systems & Software did not immediately return a message to his cell phone Monday.
I have provided Mary Herrera with all she needs to know about ES&S to justify a complete termination of the business relationship…and long before this latest crap with the voter rolls. My conversations with a few of the NM County Clerks have clarified that they have no confidence in her ability to run elections, or her understanding of audit and security procedures.
Let’s find out what really happened? Indeed. Denial is absolutely the key word.
Saint Kos, add this one to your list of things that don’t happen. It’s just that nutter parallel universe thingy acting up again.
I can’t figure out why you don’t just partner up with Saint John and get over it. He needs a new preppyganda outlet.
“They couldn’t answer me or they didn’t want to”
Why . .
If they can’t answer it’s cause they WON’T answer.
If they didn’t WANT to it’s cause of some evil invisible electronic project they hide.
For Oath Breakers . .
If they can answer, they will
Lies or truth depending on the wind.
They’ll Muck around until caught.
For honest citizen
They’ll say something
Hey Man Stop That!
They will interfere when needed
Senator
ack…yuckie
For Most
not any better than the rest of us pieces of human scum
Vot0r Ro0lez
So okay
no electricks tabulation devices
no netwurx
maintain unbroken chain of custody of paper ballots like they need to survive a war. (we supposedly are in a war right? we in a war, were not? come on. hello . hello )
Citizen Oversight. (It should be similar to Jury Duty where it HAS TO come out fair because of all the people.)
(throwin this idea out)
Because it’s been far to long for citizens to get their votes counted right, and with all the stupid legislation prior to this date, and misunderstandings about the capabilities and abuses of electronic technology, we want to change all policies and procedures to:
GET citizens of the United States to SERVE to COUNT (PAPER BALLOT) votes and PROVIDE CONTROL BY EXPEDITING OVERWHELMING OVERSIGHT ON THE CHAIN OF CUSTODY. (feed them, drink them, pay them, let them use the restroom, whatever it takes to get the job done.)
Further, if possible, voting in the direct sun of the day would be good, and access to voting polls should be stratigically placed to be surround-able and sweep-able with any electronics either removed, approved, or turned off preferably. Allowing for Pigeon Carriers to go X (some help here) distance away to use any communications. The voting poll should be as much like a library. Quiet where you can think. Not arguing about some stupid broken printer or network. This has gone on long enough and the nonsense must stop. Ordinary citizens could count the vote in their own neighborhood better than all this abusive technology ( I call it abusive cause it’s what it’s being used for ) By itself networks are good, phones, electronics, but NOT for tabulating votes, or transmitting results. You should KNOW the person your transferring your official results to FACE TO FACE . Your not calling BOB in Alabama or some such nonsense!! It COULD BE another country, for ALL YOU KNOW.
No electronics will go down in history as being the stupidest fucking abusive exploited idea ever created when applied to tabulation and voting.
It’s simple
You could CARVE two wooden dishes and talk, how does the information travel? Invisibly, and some times intermittently.
Now apply that to the known physics of electronics.
Induction, RF, logic, Capacitance, Power, Thermal
Whatever ..
It all has stuff that messes it up. And it’s a network that sit’s quietly not being tested for flaws by being forced to run all the time. No it sits with it’s flaws waiting. Not to mention that the wiretapping by using the FIOS splitter could be feed back to manipulate results, and because FIOS splitters are some kind of state secret, we can’t audit, or validate the result ever.
Now what was I talking about?
Oh yeah, Voter Rolls.
Protect Voter Rolls.
Right up there with the others
Chain of Custody
No networks
no electonics
in the sun/daylight
sweepable
its a lot to remember. (fun to write this post though)
fighting about ID’s.
Don’t need a ID.
Need OVERSIGHT of the VOTER ROLLS.
The ROV’s Identify registered voters.
If your not fake you get a ballot in the mail.
Brad,
You’ve got no integrity, and no credibility whatsoever. How fitting that you gave yourself the Time Person of the Year award, as though you were doing it tongue in cheek, but never bothered to clarify for the many readers who commented. Here’s a more informative excerpt from the Time article which you cite as your “nomination”:
“Who are these people? Seriously, who actually sits down after a long day at work and says, I’m not going to watch Lost tonight. I’m going to turn on my computer and make a movie starring my pet iguana? I’m going to mash up 50 Cent’s vocals with Queen’s instrumentals? I’m going to blog about my state of mind or the state of the nation or the steak-frites at the new bistro down the street? Who has that time and that energy and that passion?
The answer is, you do. And for seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, TIME’s Person of the Year for 2006 is you.
Sure, it’s a mistake to romanticize all this any more than is strictly necessary. Web 2.0 harnesses the stupidity of crowds as well as its wisdom.”
So, Brad, you not only prove them right in that last sentence, you exploit “the stupidity of crowds” of your readers with misdirection, and shoddy lazy writing.
For what possible reason would you still be posting a link to this blog entry on your front page? I can’t think its for any reason other than to deceive your readers into thinking you actually were noticed by Time Magazine. You’re a disgrace for taking advantage of people of good principle with those kinds of tactics.
There’s no relevant article on the front page to put this, but I just noticed this:
kos said:
and later, defending his remarks:
So, yeah.
Ahem. Back on topic.
The article said NM had contracted with ES&S to maintain their voter registration database. I’d be interested to know if that means NM bought the software from ES&S and uses it in their own offices with their own employees, or did ES&S actually take on the day-to-day maintenance of the data itself. If that’s the case, that should certainly be illegal. Purchasing a product to use to do your job is one thing, but turning your entire job over to someone who has not been elected or appointed, has not taken an oath of office and has no direct accountability would border on criminal negligence.
Does anyone know how NM maintains its voter rolls?
It is my understanding is that the master rolls are maintained through the Secretary of State’s office by ES&S – not ES&S software and NM State employees, but rather by the actual company. The Democratic Party used those rolls, which it appears were defective before the Democratic party did any manipulation of them for the primary.
It appears that our SoS Mary Herrera has a lot in common with Dean Logan…in that neither of them are particularly interested in whether registered citizens actually get to cast their vote and have it counted.
An excerpt from the following article
A spokesman for Herrera said her office has no immediate plans to investigate reports of missing voter names and is waiting to hear from the Democratic Party about any inadequacies with the lists.
“If there are any discrepancies, it would have been after it would have been received by the Democratic Party. Let them investigate it. Let’s find out what really happened,” spokesman James Flores said.
Feigned concern about the accuracy of the voter rolls, and shifted blame for the inacurate rolls…Jesus H, what do we pay these people for??
BTW, what was that loon Paul (#5) going on about?