First, we didn’t do it.
Second, via KHOU in Houston:
The Harris County Election Technology Center, located on Canino at Downey, caught fire around 4:20 a.m., and the blaze quickly grew to three alarms.
The warehouse stored more than 10,000 pieces of equipment, including voting booths and eSlates, the computer-based machines used for collecting votes.
The fire comes just months before the general elections on November 2, which include the governor’s race. Early voting is scheduled to begin in October.
Former KPFT (Houston Pacifica) radio host and election integrity advocate Pokey Anderson tells us there are some 1.8 million registered voters in Harris County, the third largest in the nation. “Harris County is huge,” she writes via email this morning, “est. pop for 2006 is 3.6 million people, which is larger than the population of 23 states. That is about the size of Iowa and Vermont combined.”
KTRH NewsRadio reports County Clerk Beverly Kaufman is hoping to “depend on other counties around the state, even across the country, to donate similar machines.” Until God tried to intervene this morning, Harris County used 100% unverifiable Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting systems made by Austin-based Hart Intercivic.
A source familiar with Hart Intercivic tells The BRAD BLOG that the nation’s fourth-largest e-voting company has fallen on hard times of late and does not have machines to ship to replace those lost in the fire.
If they can’t get “similar machines” from somewhere, how, oh, how will the citizens of Houston be able to have elections this year?! Especially since pieces of paper, pens, eyeballs, citizen oversight and common frickin’ sense were all long ago outlawed in Harris County, Texas, apparently.
Also related: This year’s Harris County Pac-Man Tournament has been canceled.
UPDATE 8/28/10: The early work into determining the cause of the 3-alarm blaze, whether or not it was an accident or arson, is underway…along with determining the plan for how the county will proceed with the upcoming elections in the wake of the loss of $30 million dollars worth of unverifiable electronic voting machines…
This from Houston Chronicle’s update tonight:
Houston’s fire marshal’s office hasn’t made a ruling on whether Friday’s early-morning fire was accidental or deliberately set, said Harris County Clerk Beverly Kaufman, who hopes to hear something on the cause early this week.
“It would break my heart to think someone would do something like this to the election process,” she said, adding that she was unaware of anyone who might have had a motive to burn down the building.
Once again, we repeat, we didn’t do it!
Harris County Commissioners Court will meet in an emergency session Monday to receive the county clerk’s proposed recovery plan.
And again, our suggested “recovery plan”: Pen, paper, translucent plastic boxes, eyeballs of the citizenry to count all of the ballots, in front of everyone at the polling place. If hand-counting ballots is good enough for really really close elections, when you really really need to know who actually won, isn’t it good enough for every election? We argue as much in “Democracy’s Gold Standard”.
“First, we didn’t do it.”
L.O.L.
Sure…..
Just imagine if a fire forced Houston election officials to conduct a transparent election with paper ballots, hand-counted in full view of the public.
Oh, the horror of having to conduct a transparent election.
What a terrible shame! Sequoia reported they would pay $1 for each DRE they have sold to counties in the past. I wonder how much the Hart machines were worth? Terrible, terrible! How will they ever get through an election without DREs? Probably the VVPAT rolls were the first to go.
Ooops, my bad. “Unverifiable” machines – guess there was no paper to cause things to burn.
Buy, beg or borrow a whole set of Canadian voting machines. These consist of paper, pencils, pens, rulers, cardboard voting screens, forms for entering vote and so forth so that recounts can be conducted when needed. Cheap, quick, fair, functional. Hello!!!
Too bad all the paper in the county burned up too! I guess they’ll have to count the votes on their fingers, or —
and this would only be fair — just hand the election to the Republican candidates, saving everyone a lot of time and aggravation. That’s what the machines would have done.
V for Vendetta …
This is actually a good thing. Now they can dispense with the voters having to cast ballots. The state can just call the machine manufacturers so they can announce who won. Cuts out that voter middleman and the results are equally verifiable.
Carrie is on our side!
They could just announce the results early, and tell everyone there’s no point in going to the polls.
http://www.theonion.com/video/diebold-accidentally-leaks-results-of-2008-electio,14214/
Dissillusioned, that onion piece is just too funny! Thanks for the link.
Good!! It wasn’t you who did it. I was just getting to really like your website.
Now, the question posed is: Who has the most to gain from destroying the machines?
Magnolia @ 12 said:
What took ya so long?!
Hart Intercivic?
So maybe there is a God…
Czaragorn! Stop it!
Remember, there’s ALWAYS a scientific explanation.
Hey, Houston! Here’s an idea. Vote by mail. It’s done in Oregon & Washington and best of all, it works.
Is there any chance this could be a movement? Heh, heh, heh, just kidding?
TheOtherWA said:
Uh, yeah, well, not really so much… There’s this: Why ‘Vote-by-Mail’ Elections are a Terrible Idea for Democracy
So, unless you have no other choice but to vote by mail (Lord knows, don’t vote on a touch-screen), fight like hell to vote on paper, at the polling place. And if you MUST vote by mail, bring your ballot to the precinct or the county on Election Day if you are allowed to do so.
Seriously too funny. Also seriously, who’s intercivic’s insurer? How much did intercivic make on this fire?
and what negotiations were going on that might have made intercivic realize that they were better off machineless just before an election?
AAAAAAAAAANNNND, what other similar suppliers can we expect to see sudden and unpredicted fires, earthquakes, vandalisms, tornadoes, floods and hurricanes completely destroy their heavily insured inventories in the near future?
E-voting systems are sort of like nuclear weapons. The only way that ordinary people win is not to use them.
They could use the next closest thing to what just burned up:
3 Mediums in a room
Let them predict the winner by majority. No pens or paper allowed in the room to keep it as close to the trail left by the DRE’s.
So if we don’t want to vote using those electronic machines…this is one solution.
California voted to de certify them , maybe we just needed to get rid of them and not worry about the certification.
I would have to disagree with you Brad, Hart Intercivic wont’ be the the one to gain. It would be Republicans.
Harris County is very liberal. It voted for the country’s first openly lesbian Mayor in 2008. Bill White, the very popular former mayor of Houston is running for Governor of Texas against Gov Perry. The election is being stolen in TX.
Wendylefty – wow, thanks for that head’s up! (Hey, Karen from Ill. – didja catch that? Put Harris Co. TX on our November 2010 potential screwy-hooey hanky-panky map.)
Wonder what voting system will fly in to the “rescue”…
Got to question your reasoning, Wendylefty. If the Republicans want to steal the election, the last thing they would do is burn the machines that make electoral theft virtually undetectable.
If Harris Co. is critical to the governor’s race, progressives — in fact all who believe that the winner should match the individual who actually receives the most votes — should be pushing for a Harris Co. election conducted entirely on paper ballots with transparent counting.
As an atheist, I hate using the cliche, but if this leads to a transparent, paper-ballot vote, the fire should be seen as a “gift from Heaven.”
Bill White was the best mayor Houston has had in decades. All of Houston would have voted for him in the November election. The Dallas business community has endorsed Bill White. Austin hates Rick Perry. In a fair and open election, Bill White has a very good chance of defeating Rick Perry, but there are people for whom this is not an option.
One way of stealing an election is to suppress the opposition vote, by purging voter rolls, giving poor communities unreliable voting machines, or denying them enough voting machines to allow all citizens to vote. It doesn’t always have to be vote flipping software that does the trick. I wouldn’t put it past the Perry Machine to have set this fire. I have met the man. Gave me the creeps, seriously.
Thank you for that local insight, GetPlanning! I was going to respond with a similar observation, but was struggling to articulate it as well as you have.
Ernest – In my decade + experience with election monitoring / investigations: there are marked patterns of fraud / footprints for pre-election manipulation. While setting fire to thousands of machines is (slightly) new – GetPlanning is absolutely right – there’s a number of very real ways this fire can erroneously benefit one candidate over another.
…and it’s always the largest, most densely populated, Democrat leaning urban districts where the biggest, broadest, sweeping attempts to muddy the numbers can be tracked. (And no one can imagine how HUGE Houston is, unless you’ve been there and tried to navigate it without GPS or a Bible. So until we see the County’s proposed “fix” for this – I would shy away from presuming something is off with any of our reasoning. You kind of have to think backwards with this issue, while at the same time being careful not to speculate.
That said, you’re absolutely right that Houston citizens should be making as much noise as they can about voting with pens and paper. While (as a Florida Voting Rights activist whose seen the state shut down any citizen attempts at oversight / control over their own voting system) the more people make a stink – the harder it will be to face-rape the voter on election day.
Plus you get the election / state officials on record for when the election goes horribly wrong.
And it will.
And as a former Austin resident / Travis Co. voter (yeah I know, I get around) I still have a lot of ties to that beloved big town – and yes, they DO hate Rick Perry. And they hated George Bush. And Anne Richards was most beloved…
…probably would’ve successfully voted her into office for another term in 1994 over George W. Bush if it hadn’t been for Tom Delay’s scurrilous and successful bids in the Texas House to gerrymander almost all of Texas to favor Republicans.
We fought him tooth and nail on that in Austin. I often think of that time because I had no idea how huge a behemoth we were fighting; how high the stakes, how different a country we would have resulting. Texas is really much more purple than red.
…politics IS all local.
(*Stupidly, we didn’t use the word “gerrymandering” in 1995. We wrongly called it “redistricting”. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if a Republican came up with the more impolite term just so it could be used to against the Dems as accusation of doing same.)
In Spain, fires also makes a lot of damage to forests …
This would be a perfect time for the County to install hand marked ballots. Ballots that would be counted by the poll workers at the end of the Vote, at each polling place. Counting, that would be open to the Public and Press.
I know, I’m dreaming…
I lived in Houston for ten years and Austin for twenty five, Houston/Harris county is NOT LIBERAL. White was a pretty good mayor – best? most popular? No. Programs like ‘safe clear’ turned off most local voters it took the legislature to reign him in. He alienated much of the business community meddling with regulation. White’s refused to come clean with voters and release ALL his tax returns – what’s he hiding. Is White: 1) avoiding disclosure that would connect him to Fronterra, BJ Svcs and BTEC who did big business with the city while he was mayor, personally making MILLIONS from these entities 2) avoiding debating Perry who has 10 times the charisma of White (think Nixon/JFK). Texas has the #1 economy, you don’t fire the coach in a winning season.
Houston proper makes up a fraction of the Harris county vote. Outlying areas are conservative. Harris county’s a mixed bag in district elections, up-ballot/statewide races typically go strongly Republican. Bush trounced Kerry by over TEN POINTS, Perry prevailed in a 5 way race and even with 2008 Democrat fever, Obama squeaked by with 19,000 votes out of over a MILLION. Republican energy is high and polling puts Perry up 10 points in the area. Worst case; Perry by 5%, likely; 10 – 15%. epublicans have the wind at their back, and don’t want problems with elections – especially in outlying areas most effected by a shortage of equipment.
A Democrat ‘ACORN’ style voter drive; ‘Houston Votes’ minion of innocuous sounding ‘Texans Together Education Fund’ a partian run ‘non partisan’ group, has just been caught padding the roles with fraudulent/bogus applications. They’ve been focusing in the poor neighborhod where the fire occured. County officials have abundant and overwhelming evidence against ‘Houston Votes/TTEF’s’ activities. Here’s its director grilled by the local press: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIboqi_khV8 Brutal! In the ultimate irony, these leftists have made numerous allegations of voter suppression – I guess if not letting dead people vote and not allowing people to vote 3,4 times is suppression, so be it. Problems with these ‘drives’ in poor and minority districts has caused citizens to create watchdog efforts. ‘Houston Votes’, the biggest of the bunch, threw dozens deputy registrars in their control under the bus, but their credibility’s shot.
Let’s wait and see what the investigators say, but it seems odd that ‘Houston Votes’ gets busted one day and the next the fire breaks out. This fire’s the LAST thing Republicans want right now.
One other thing; Jeannie Dean has her facts wrong. A great illustration of why you shouldn’t buy into partisan ‘claims’ without checking the facts. I worked at the capitol/legislature in the 73rd and 78th legislative sessions that addressed districts. The 1990’s redistricting had nothing to do with Delay (or TRMPAC). Democrats ran their traditional gerrymander as they had for decades and it took several court actions to fix their ‘fix’.
Republicans didn’t take the Tx. Senate until 1996 (AFTER redistricting) and the House until 2002. The 2000 census redistricting was the FIRST in Republican hands in my lifetime and Democrats pulled out all the stops with dirty tricks. They threw tantrums, abdocated their oath of office, abandoned their posts to withhold a quorum, fled to another state and had the Highway Patrol searching for them. They complained about convoluted districts, yet THEIR district maps, were just as bad (or worse). I think Ms. Dean has the two Redistricting sessions confused.
It seems facts have become increasingly confusing things to some folks, so I’ll break it down:
1. Really, I actually, factually *did* work in Austin, TX in 1995 AGAINST a Republican-led attempt to gerrymander the districts in favor of the Republicans. I know that for a fact because I cashed the pay checks for it. While it’s true that what we were fighting wasn’t yet CALLED TRMPAC, it was the seedlings of it and yes, it was a Tom Delay Production – lock, stock and loaded barrel. Your suggestion that the effort “had nothing to do with Delay” is obtuse.
(Delay was a Helluva Guy back in 1994, quoted with zingers like: “By the time we finish this poker game, there may not be a federal government left! Which would suit me just fine.”*)
Right. Largely BECAUSE of the early efforts in 1995 to re-draw some of the smaller Texas districts outside of Austin, as I described above.
…you’re kidding, right? Sigh. Well, buddy, I’m not going to waste my breath here defending dirty Dems OR Repubs. It’s not red/blue chess game to me. So if you want to push semantics and call what I was (actually, factually) working on at that time the “re-re-districting” of Texas? – S’alright. I don’t denim-stretch to conform to party proxy. Call it whatever you want…
…but it *is* funny / not funny how you failed to mention the Democratic re-districing of 1991 was LEGAL…and Delay’s Republican re-redistricting in 2003…um…wasn’t.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Texas_redistricting
In 2002, Delay was able to make all his gerrymandering dreams come true, snaking them through the Republican controlled House and the Senate, knowing full well the Legislative Redistricting Board would be AWOL and he could force feed Texas(almost)any district map he wanted without opposition.
3. To accuse any or even all involved of ‘dirty tricks’ while defending (even deflecting away from)the undisputed poopy role of Tom Delay…?
…Unless you’re an absurdist for hire, you should be concerned for yourself.
(*”In a stunning 1994 interview, shortly after the now infamous Republican revolution, Tom DeLay sat down and laid out his vision for America: to destroy the Department of Education, HUD, OSHA, the NEH, the NEA, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy. His self-stated goal was to “completely redesign government.” http://tomdelaymovie.com/about.php)
I also live in Austin/Travis county and the Travis county election statistics are on the web. Jeannie, you should check your facts, you either don’t know the facts or are misleading people. I agree with Dospesentas. Also Perry isn’t “hated” here – that’s your slanted opinion. The county is about 60/40 Dem/Rep – the opposite of the rest of the state. Regardless, Travis county elected Bush gov. twice, with almost a twenty percent margin the second time against Mauro who was a local resident and former state land commissioner. Travis country also gave Bush a big win against Gore. You call that hate? Nonsense.
Ann Richards was a good speaker but a terrible Governor. Her policies and appointments were a disaster. That’s why she was ousted after one term. It had nothing to do with districts, which when she ran, were drawn exclusively by Democrats.
Fair enough.
Yes, all my friends in Austin are artists and stand-up comics. Yes, it was entirely an unscientific poll I was espousing in this case; and no, I didn’t Google the stats before making what was (an affirmation) of another poster’s statement that “Austin hates Rick Perry.” I concede and amend it to: “60% of sentient voters in Austin, of whom my friends make up a small but very smart and powerful portion, HATE Rick Perry.”
??
I am not trying to mislead anyone. On the contrary, I am quite appreciative of information (vetted or no) posted by local folks who take enough interest in their own elections to share what they know. I lived and voted in Texas over 15 years ago, briefly, so I concede I am not in loop with the current crop of Homegrown Coo-Coo.
But Texas WAS Solid Democratic Blue country before the Southern Strategy paid off. And ‘60% of Austinites who still adore LBJ and Lady Bird, of whom my friends make up a small but potent percentage of’, still adore the Democratic principles they espoused, loved, and worked so hard to make law.
As such, I’m like to think the Texas body politic is more complex than conventional, stupid, red/blue meme would dictate.
Could be totally wrong about that, too. I always overestimate the species.
RE: Anne Richard’s loss in 1994 – while (perhaps) not (entirely) due to Tom Delay’s hooey, is still a mystery to me. I never looked into the election itself (moved there afterwards) so I will gladly concede I am completely wrong about something I know very little about…
Unlike poster above, who writes *SLANTED*, misleading uber-partisan dribble like,
Don’t know about the org. you mention above, but you should know that ACORN was completely cleared of any wrong doing, so if you’re right about the TTEF then this is a false comparison. And if you are wrong, and like ACORN this org. also flags it’s own suspect registrations, as required by law, and submits them to the proper authorities…well, then it’s a false accusation.
Don’t mean to turn the tide, but one good turn (of truth) deserves another…doncha’ figure?
I actually DO live in Austin and STILL do work at the capitol and looking forward to working the next session in January.
First, I was responding to: “probably would’ve successfully voted her into office for another term in 1994 over George W. Bush if it hadn’t been for Tom Delay’s scurrilous and successful bids in the Texas House to gerrymander”. THATS UNTRUE!
Second, redistricting/gerrymandering legislative districts have absolutely nothing to do with state wide elections (like Governor), which are at large, popular vote races.
Third, Delay wasn’t around the Tx. Leg. in 94. He was a Tx. house member in the late 70’s, for like one session then won the 22nd legislative district race in the early 80’s and rarely showed his face around the capitol until 2003. I’m unaware of him having anything to do with the 90’s redistricting, which was controlled by Democrats and resulted in districts biased to favor Democrats. With regard to ‘legalities’, the 90’s gerrymander, generated about a dozen suits and ended up before a 3 judge panel (same as the 2003 gerrymander).
Fourth, Austin’s a somewhat liberal, university, state government town and does trend Democrat. However there’s good support for major candidates of BOTH parties and the vitriol Dean implies isn’t true except among partisans.
I used the ‘ACORN’ analogy because ‘Houston Votes’, like ACORN, had a partisan agenda, operated under a ‘non-partisan’ guise and focused on welfare rich, minority areas.
K. All good.
…but ACORN’s “partisan” agenda was to legally register poor and disadvantaged voters. While it’s true that most poor people tend to vote Democratic – legal voter registration is not some scurrilous agenda just because it doesn’t benefit (your?) one party. Same is true of the Dem re-districting in ’91 – you may not like it, but it’s a LEGAL part of the mechanism that allows for a functioning democracy. What’s your beef with that?
“
K. I’ll take you at your word.
Because of this interesting exchange I went back and re-read a bunch of stuff re: the Texas Redistricting to refresh my memory. I worked for Jeff Montgomery and Associates in 95-96 (through Esther’s Follies), cold calling Dems to warn them about TOM DELAY’s “redistricting plans”. Knowing I couldn’t have made that up, Dospesentas, I looked into dates and sure enough:
So, Delay was quite active at that time, whether or not he was loitering in your doorway over at the Capitol. This article from 2006 in the New Yorker goes into great detail about how high a value Delay placed on the “re-re districting” of Texas, how long it’d been on his radar as his cause celeb, and how he personally flew back to Austin from D.C. to “help” with it’s passage.
Quote from Tom Craddick(Delay colleague):
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/03/06/060306fa_fact#ixzz0yljoPmbY
Summing up: It WAS Delay, it WAS 1995-96, it WAS Austin, it WAS over the re-districting issue, it WASN’T related to (the dirty trick) that caused Anne Richards defeat(probably ROVE, anyway) the year prior to my arrival…
…but I’m still not remembering why / how / who was directly responsible for the re-drawing of district lines in 1995 that we were fighting. Couldn’t have been the State Dems, Dospesentas, because I’m pretty sure they hired us.
It WAS court ordered, right? After tons of protracted legal battles stemming from the ’91 re-distrticting)…? But the court, not wanting to inject itself into a political fight, didn’t determine the districts proper for some reason…? And then I seem to remember the Dems capitulated the Repubs, even though they had control? Let them decide by default?…Chickened out? Self defeated? Maybe they DID draw up the proposed districts and just did it very, very badly.
That’s the part I’m not remembering and can’t confirm.
Oops. Sorry about the bold. Attempting to close.
[Ed Note: Fixed for ya. – BF]
Do you really believe ACORN wasn’t a Democrat oriented organization, that they supported Republicans equally? If so, I have some beautiful ocean front property cheap.
You (purposely) confuse the 1990/2000 redistricting. I’ll give you points for trying to confuse things to get off the hook for your misleading satement. You made the claim regarding Richards: “probably would’ve successfully voted her into office for another term in 1994 over George W. Bush if it hadn’t been for Tom Delay’s scurrilous and successful bids in the Texas House to gerrymander”. That’s untrue. READ YOUR OWN NYTimes LINK – It validates what I’ve been saying. Democrats controlled both houses in the 90’s and drew the maps how they wanted – DELAY HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. Look at the district maps they were totally slanted to favor Democrats – before AND after the courts decision.
Delay’s fundraising in Texas for legislative candidates in the 90’s (that you opposed) had nothing to do with control of redistricting. Also, the time period you cite is well AFTER the redistricting. To put it bluntly and in Texas terms: BULLSHIT!
The other fallacy of your statement, again: REDISTRICTING HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH STATE WIDE ELECTIONS! U.S. LEGISLATIVE DISTRICTS ARE DRAWN BY THE STATE LEGISLATURE UNDER REDISTRICTING BASED ON THE CENSUS (IN TEXAS and most other states) They’re U.S. HOUSE districts, they apply to U.S. House of Representatives members – PERIOD! They don’t apply to Senators, Governors, Attorney Generals, Comptrollers, Treasurers or any STATE WIDE OFFICE!! What’s so hard to understand? DISTRICTS HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH A GOVERNORS ELECTION. NOTHING!!!! GOOGLE IT, READ ON IT.
Now you are bringing Karl Rove into the picture, what’s next; Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck?
Dospesentas said:
They didn’t support Democrats OR Republicans. They represented their constituency’s needs. Now since their constituents were low- and middle-income Americans, that obviously means they’d be able to show little, if any, support for the anti low- and middle-class agenda of the Republican Party.
But where Dem policies were anti-working class, ACORN also slammed them, with frequency. See ACORN’s years long fight against predatory lending practices, for example.
I confess I’ve not yet read this entire comment thread, having just gotten back on the grid, but I had to jump in in response to that partial comment.
As to Delay’s unprecedented mid-term redistricting, it was exactly that, and was also found to be unconstitutional, in part, by SCOTUS. The first time such redistricting was done in a non-census year. It was, in short, an outrageous power grab, no matter how much you may have disliked Dem districting up until that point.
Sorry,dospesentas @39 but you missed the mark by a country mile.
ACORN was never a “Democrat oriented organization.” It was a non-partisan, national coalition of community organizations which not only strove to insure that these otherwise atomized and powerless masses retain and exercise their equal right to vote, but a caring organization which seeks a living wage for all citizens; that tried to protect them from predatory lenders and phony foreclosure assistance scams.
Now since the Republican party is principally a right-wing organization principally funded by billionaire sociopaths who tirelessly seek to expand the gap between rich and poor; because the same Wall Street banksters who seek to exploit the poor usually support Republicans (plus corporate friendly Democrats), it is not all that surprising that most of the individuals whom ACORN assists tend to vote against the Republicans.
But that doesn’t make ACORN a “Democrat organization” — (your use of the typical wing-nut “Democrat Party” as opposed to “Democratic Party” is duly noted).
As to Karl Rove’s role in Bush’s “success” in 1994, I’d suggest you read Slater & Moore’s Bush’s Brain.
Dospesentas also said:
We have very few rules for commenting here at The BRAD BLOG. One of them concerns the posting of knowing disinformation. I don’t know (yet) if you actually know you’re posting disinformation, so I’ll allow you the opportunity to demonstrate your claim or otherwise retract it before taking further action here, but unless you can back up your charge of either ACORN or Houston Votes “letting dead people vote” or “allowing people to vote 3,4 times”, you are now officially being given a warning about posting such disinformative claims.
As I am aware of ZERO such instances, I’ll request you post the evidence for your suggestive claim. In lieu of that, as mentioned, you may feel free to retract it. Thank you.