BACK ON THE CHOPPING BLOCK: We’ve spent the last day or so chuckling over the latest kafuffle caused by the same vague Hawai`i election laws that cause another “dance of the headless chicken” that surrounded the Kirk Caldwell affair last election- a matter we spent in inordinate amount of bandwidth on after the filing deadline in 2008.
It was the first of the numerous bizarre dust-ups caused by the then-new Chief Elections Officer Kevin “King” Cronin who thankfully has skulked back into the hole from whence he came after numerous Louis XIV-style “L'État, c'est moi" decisions.
But leave it to the legislature to fail to try to figure out how to write clear laws or the elections bureau to write clear administrative rules in the interim and now we have a whole new dance to enjoy.
As many have heard by now some slimy little Republican, David Hamman, a Princeville locksmith tried, apparently successfully, to game the system by filing and withdrawing his papers to challenge Representative Mina Morita in the 14th House District actually admitting he did it to extend the deadline so the party could pick a “candidate” after the filing deadline.
We put the word candidate in quotes because the definition of just what that may be is the bone of contention according to Morita who has blogged twice on the subject.
Apparently Scott Nago, the new Chief Elections Officer, is as challenged as his predecessor and okayed the switcheroo and today the Republicans did name a replacement, Harry R. Williams, a Kapa`a contractor.
But it comes down to whether Hamman was ever a candidate for the house because after withdrawing he filed his papers to run for the vacating seat of former State Senator and now Lt. Governor candidature Gary Hooser.
HRS 11-117 says
Withdrawal of candidates; disqualification; death; notice. (a) Any candidate may withdraw not later than 4:30 p.m. on the day immediately following the close of filing for any reason...
On receipt of the notice of death, withdrawal, or upon determination of disqualification, the chief election officer or the clerk shall inform the chairperson of the political party of which the person deceased, withdrawing, or disqualified was a candidate.
And HRS 118 says:
Vacancies; new candidates; insertion of names on ballots. (a) In case of death, withdrawal, or disqualification of any party candidate after filing, the vacancy so caused may be filled by the party....
(b) If the party fills the vacancy, and so notifies the chief election officer or clerk not later than 4:30 p.m. on the third day after the vacancy occurs... the name of the replacement shall be printed in an available and appropriate place on the ballot,
But Hawaii Administrative Rule (HAR) Chapter 3-173-1, defines “candidate” as “an individual who has qualified for placement on the ballot.”
And in Hawai`i no one may be a candidate for two offices.
Under the law apparently only Mina’s party- the Democrats- can file in 5th Circuit Court to overrule Nago’s decision but the point is that with two years to do so, neither the legislature or the elections bureau even attempted to change the law or rules to deal with the ambiguities and write some election laws that are clear and not wide open for manipulation and abuse with loopholes you could drive a Superferry through.
In an email today Morita said she is “still looking at all my options and working with the party” and as of press time we haven’t heard anything about a court filing. But unless and until the election laws regarding election filing deadlines gets a good hard look and some much needed clarifications and indeed changes are made we’ll be right back here in 2012.
Showing posts with label Kevin Cronin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kevin Cronin. Show all posts
Friday, July 23, 2010
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
DAT’S ONE DEAD PUPPY
DAT’S ONE DEAD PUPPY: Once upon a time a man named Kevin took over operations of a public cesspool after the previous overseer had done too good a job of keeping the stink away from our noses. The new guy quickly named himself King of the Dung Heap and decided that, with no experience, he would start digging around, flailing way at the pipes with a dull pickaxe and digging a deeper hole in his own warped image, leaving a messy open sewage pit- know as the current state of the state elections bureau.
So the resignation (thanks to Larry Geller for the apparent only posting of the letter) of Chief Elections Officer Kevin “King” Cronin comes with no element of sorrow- only a sense of dismay and disgust at the prospect of cleaning up his mess.
Our coverage of the, to be chartable, “foibles” of this arrogant boob has been extensive from the first inking of screw-ups to come with his having “forgot” to file to vote upon appointment, through his arrogant assent to royal “I am the state” status with his “because I said so” rulings in the Kirk Caldwell fiasco at the filing deadline- as we beat to death here, here, here, here, here and here- followed by our two takes on his “reckless disregard (for) procurement laws” in choosing to issue a long term contract for an expensive. inferior set of voting machines, which led to our still exclusive report regarding his part in a race discrimination suit in his only previous job semi-related to elections which occurred during his tenure in Wisconsin.
But perhaps the most annoying and ultimately arrogant thing in his resignation letter is this statement, as reported extensively by some media outlets without mention of his screw ups – most notably on the “that’s-what-passes-for-News-Now” conglomeration of TV stations- was how “smoothly” the 2008 elections ran.
Seems no one remembers the absurdly confusing changes and the unneeded “check box”
for party selection in the primary that more than likely led to unnecessarily voided votes and an unusual (see second entry)- and later found to be manipulated- number of spoiled ballots and overvotes.
Then of course there was Cronin’s “rules are for suckers” debacle as we examined a few times and, although there are finally new, or we should say some, administrative rules up for approval- after Cronin was forced to provide them when he lost yet another law suit resulting from his egotism and pomposity- it’s anyone’s guess if they will actually fix the underlying problems over the potential for neighbor island vote flipping and other issues resulting from his penchant for pulling rulings out his, uh, ear.
We were calling for Cronin’s resignation last August and now that it’s come a year and a half too late it’s particularly unsatisfying given the absolute mess he left and, the not just the lack of any shovel but, a concerted effort by the governor and legislature to deny use of any implement to dig our way toward conducting an election in less than a year.
We’ll probably have moments when we wish we still had the prince of prevarication to kick around but today isn’t one of them.
--------------
We’ve got some real- and outside- world things to take care of tomorrow and Friday so we’ll dispense with our agoraphobic activities until Monday unless we get some 28 hour days.
So the resignation (thanks to Larry Geller for the apparent only posting of the letter) of Chief Elections Officer Kevin “King” Cronin comes with no element of sorrow- only a sense of dismay and disgust at the prospect of cleaning up his mess.
Our coverage of the, to be chartable, “foibles” of this arrogant boob has been extensive from the first inking of screw-ups to come with his having “forgot” to file to vote upon appointment, through his arrogant assent to royal “I am the state” status with his “because I said so” rulings in the Kirk Caldwell fiasco at the filing deadline- as we beat to death here, here, here, here, here and here- followed by our two takes on his “reckless disregard (for) procurement laws” in choosing to issue a long term contract for an expensive. inferior set of voting machines, which led to our still exclusive report regarding his part in a race discrimination suit in his only previous job semi-related to elections which occurred during his tenure in Wisconsin.
But perhaps the most annoying and ultimately arrogant thing in his resignation letter is this statement, as reported extensively by some media outlets without mention of his screw ups – most notably on the “that’s-what-passes-for-News-Now” conglomeration of TV stations- was how “smoothly” the 2008 elections ran.
Seems no one remembers the absurdly confusing changes and the unneeded “check box”
for party selection in the primary that more than likely led to unnecessarily voided votes and an unusual (see second entry)- and later found to be manipulated- number of spoiled ballots and overvotes.
Then of course there was Cronin’s “rules are for suckers” debacle as we examined a few times and, although there are finally new, or we should say some, administrative rules up for approval- after Cronin was forced to provide them when he lost yet another law suit resulting from his egotism and pomposity- it’s anyone’s guess if they will actually fix the underlying problems over the potential for neighbor island vote flipping and other issues resulting from his penchant for pulling rulings out his, uh, ear.
We were calling for Cronin’s resignation last August and now that it’s come a year and a half too late it’s particularly unsatisfying given the absolute mess he left and, the not just the lack of any shovel but, a concerted effort by the governor and legislature to deny use of any implement to dig our way toward conducting an election in less than a year.
We’ll probably have moments when we wish we still had the prince of prevarication to kick around but today isn’t one of them.
--------------
We’ve got some real- and outside- world things to take care of tomorrow and Friday so we’ll dispense with our agoraphobic activities until Monday unless we get some 28 hour days.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
WE’RE READY FOR OUR CLOSE-UP, MRS. DEVILLE
WE’RE READY FOR OUR CLOSE-UP, MRS. DEVILLE: Although the Honolulu Advertiser’s headline blares Election officials ready for 100% turnout it seems that the turnout today won’t effect the election on Kaua`i as much as that of those who voted early.
A whopping 11, 032 people had already voted before the polls opened today, a figure that could be 50% of the votes.
The last comparable November mayoral election on Kaua`i would have to be the 2002 election where the total vote in the mayor’s race was only about 23,000. That year the number of registered voters was only about a thousand less than this year.
That could mean that, unlike in the past when catch-ups and fall-outs were common between the first “printout”- comprised of the early voters and sometimes those who voted before noon- and the final tally, the first release tonight might not be changing much.
The eighth place council candidate after the first tally in the past has “made up” as many as 500 votes when the results were final. But expect anything more than a 200 vote margin for seventh place contender to be insurmountable
It’s anyone’s guess whether the latest of the dozens of screw-up by “King” Kevin Cronin and his state Elections Office will invalidate a stack of the mail-in ballots.
Honolulu Advertiser correspondent and blogger Derrick DePledge tells us today that
Staff at the state Office of Elections believe they have found the reason for the unusually high number of over votes on absentee mail ballots during the September primary in the (Honolulu) mayor’s race.
The Office of Elections rejected 1,599 absentee mail ballots because of overvotes — 3.1 percent of the total — by far the highest for any race.
Kevin Cronin, the state’s chief elections officer, said staff believe that most of the overvotes were caused by the way the ballots were folded. Cronin said the folds — made either when ballots were mailed out or when they were returned by voters — left creases that optical-scan voting machines read as votes for minor candidates Paul Manner and George Nitta.
The creases also created a high number of overvotes in the District 3 state Board of Education race.
“We are approximately 95 percent certain that this is what created the overvotes in the absentee mail ballots,” Cronin said this afternoon.
Although there were no apparent anomalies on Kaua`i in the primaries in terms of overvotes it might be something to look for tonight when the results are released.
It’s just another nail in the coffin for Cronin’s all-the-bells-and-whistles $41 million contract with HartIntercivic that was voided and will have to be re-bid next year.
The question of who is going to bid against them might be a factor when the next system is procured because we’ve learned that their chief competitor ES&S is reportedly closing their office in Honolulu.
And in another one from the “bet you’re gonna vote this time, hippie” file, in following-up on our thoughts yesterday on the voter suppression, vote flipping and the rest of the ubiquitous fraud we realized that it’s all actually doing wonders for the “get out the vote” efforts for Obama.
Normally there’s a self limiting factor in landslides- if people listen to polls and think the vote is a foregone conclusion many don’t bother to vote.
But since people have heard about all the fraud- including a dozen people who pointed out to us yesterday’s Democracy Now! revelations, as summarized well at KauaiEclectic today- the question on voters’ minds is, will the fraud be overwhelmed by a wide enough margin for Obama to win?
A friend in Germany sent us a Spiegel article this morning about a team of German observers in Florida and apparently the Germans are even more outraged about all this than we are.
He translated and paraphrased it this way
European election observers (in Fr. Lauderdale, Fla.) are surprised and complain about that they only allowed to visit one polling place. That this particular polling place was pre-selected by Government Officials. ... this is unacceptable..... to tell election observers which polling place they have to visit and which polling places are not / off limits .... specially in Florida (as we all remember) had in 2000 some irregularities.... we (the election observers) have had expected more sensibility... said Rep. Meinhardt (Member of House of Rep. in Germany)...
And, if you’ve been living in a cave and woke up today trying to find out who was running in the special mayor’s race to replace Bryan Baptiste, you’d know there was an election but wouldn’t know who was running by reading today’s edition of our local Kaua`i rag.
Though it’s chocked full of numbers and the names of everyone else running for office on Kaua`i the article fails to mention the names Bernard Carvalho and JoAnn Yukimura.
Well it could be worse- yesterday there wasn’t an article about the election at all.
Nor has there been a mention much less coverage in the alleged newspaper about the fraudulent nature of the six Charter Amendment amendments on the ballot on Kaua`i.
First off. they were unnumbered on the ballot causing communication between voters regarding the virtues of any particular amendment almost impossible.
Then the inclusion of the entire amendment for the citizen’s General Plan proposal was a sure fire voter suppression measure.
And two of the questions were intentionally worded to give the impression the measure would do the exact opposite of what was described in the question.
Yet as dismal as the actions of the newspaper, the county clerk, the county attorney and the charter commission was the lack of action by the citizens of Kaua`i who declined to file suit before the election... insuring that the fraudulent results will no doubt stand.
All in all it’s been a disappointing election year with few worthy candidates and even fewer seemingly informed voters... par for the course these days in what is billed on CNN as “election result courtesy of Exxon-Mobile.”
We’ll be gagging down and digesting the local results with Lani Kawahara tonight at HawaiiLink, right behind Hamura’s. Join us and celebrate the one bright spot in the Kaua`i election.
A whopping 11, 032 people had already voted before the polls opened today, a figure that could be 50% of the votes.
The last comparable November mayoral election on Kaua`i would have to be the 2002 election where the total vote in the mayor’s race was only about 23,000. That year the number of registered voters was only about a thousand less than this year.
That could mean that, unlike in the past when catch-ups and fall-outs were common between the first “printout”- comprised of the early voters and sometimes those who voted before noon- and the final tally, the first release tonight might not be changing much.
The eighth place council candidate after the first tally in the past has “made up” as many as 500 votes when the results were final. But expect anything more than a 200 vote margin for seventh place contender to be insurmountable
It’s anyone’s guess whether the latest of the dozens of screw-up by “King” Kevin Cronin and his state Elections Office will invalidate a stack of the mail-in ballots.
Honolulu Advertiser correspondent and blogger Derrick DePledge tells us today that
Staff at the state Office of Elections believe they have found the reason for the unusually high number of over votes on absentee mail ballots during the September primary in the (Honolulu) mayor’s race.
The Office of Elections rejected 1,599 absentee mail ballots because of overvotes — 3.1 percent of the total — by far the highest for any race.
Kevin Cronin, the state’s chief elections officer, said staff believe that most of the overvotes were caused by the way the ballots were folded. Cronin said the folds — made either when ballots were mailed out or when they were returned by voters — left creases that optical-scan voting machines read as votes for minor candidates Paul Manner and George Nitta.
The creases also created a high number of overvotes in the District 3 state Board of Education race.
“We are approximately 95 percent certain that this is what created the overvotes in the absentee mail ballots,” Cronin said this afternoon.
Although there were no apparent anomalies on Kaua`i in the primaries in terms of overvotes it might be something to look for tonight when the results are released.
It’s just another nail in the coffin for Cronin’s all-the-bells-and-whistles $41 million contract with HartIntercivic that was voided and will have to be re-bid next year.
The question of who is going to bid against them might be a factor when the next system is procured because we’ve learned that their chief competitor ES&S is reportedly closing their office in Honolulu.
And in another one from the “bet you’re gonna vote this time, hippie” file, in following-up on our thoughts yesterday on the voter suppression, vote flipping and the rest of the ubiquitous fraud we realized that it’s all actually doing wonders for the “get out the vote” efforts for Obama.
Normally there’s a self limiting factor in landslides- if people listen to polls and think the vote is a foregone conclusion many don’t bother to vote.
But since people have heard about all the fraud- including a dozen people who pointed out to us yesterday’s Democracy Now! revelations, as summarized well at KauaiEclectic today- the question on voters’ minds is, will the fraud be overwhelmed by a wide enough margin for Obama to win?
A friend in Germany sent us a Spiegel article this morning about a team of German observers in Florida and apparently the Germans are even more outraged about all this than we are.
He translated and paraphrased it this way
European election observers (in Fr. Lauderdale, Fla.) are surprised and complain about that they only allowed to visit one polling place. That this particular polling place was pre-selected by Government Officials. ... this is unacceptable..... to tell election observers which polling place they have to visit and which polling places are not / off limits .... specially in Florida (as we all remember) had in 2000 some irregularities.... we (the election observers) have had expected more sensibility... said Rep. Meinhardt (Member of House of Rep. in Germany)...
And, if you’ve been living in a cave and woke up today trying to find out who was running in the special mayor’s race to replace Bryan Baptiste, you’d know there was an election but wouldn’t know who was running by reading today’s edition of our local Kaua`i rag.
Though it’s chocked full of numbers and the names of everyone else running for office on Kaua`i the article fails to mention the names Bernard Carvalho and JoAnn Yukimura.
Well it could be worse- yesterday there wasn’t an article about the election at all.
Nor has there been a mention much less coverage in the alleged newspaper about the fraudulent nature of the six Charter Amendment amendments on the ballot on Kaua`i.
First off. they were unnumbered on the ballot causing communication between voters regarding the virtues of any particular amendment almost impossible.
Then the inclusion of the entire amendment for the citizen’s General Plan proposal was a sure fire voter suppression measure.
And two of the questions were intentionally worded to give the impression the measure would do the exact opposite of what was described in the question.
Yet as dismal as the actions of the newspaper, the county clerk, the county attorney and the charter commission was the lack of action by the citizens of Kaua`i who declined to file suit before the election... insuring that the fraudulent results will no doubt stand.
All in all it’s been a disappointing election year with few worthy candidates and even fewer seemingly informed voters... par for the course these days in what is billed on CNN as “election result courtesy of Exxon-Mobile.”
We’ll be gagging down and digesting the local results with Lani Kawahara tonight at HawaiiLink, right behind Hamura’s. Join us and celebrate the one bright spot in the Kaua`i election.
Friday, October 31, 2008
ROLL OVER AND PLAY DEAD
ROLL OVER AND PLAY DEAD: After our excoriation of American democracy, American elections, American sandwiches and Americans themselves yesterday we heard from many who fear the presidential election will be stolen from their beloved Barak Obama.
One in particular commented:
Andy, I think you are being too hard on the American people, but you raise a good question: what should we do if the election is stolen?
I would propose large demonstrations, leading to massive civil disobedience. Each island should figure in advance the best spot for a display of resistance to the theft. On oahu, it would probably be at the Federal Building to start, perhaps moving to the State Capitol as a place to settle in and wait.
We could have a camp-in, a teach-in for democracy, with shared cultural events: music, talks. No business as usual until democracy is re-established.
Heck, I think we should start gathering if the election even starts getting stalled out due to "malfunctioning machines" or obvious voter disenfranchisement in Florida, Ohio or Pennsylvania.
I think most Americans want a strong democracy and are tired of eight years of GOP lies and greed. With Obama, many of us began to hope. If they steal that hope away, we will have to react.
I suggest it should be deliberate, disciplined and non-violent.
Perhaps we should already start scheduling the workshops on non-violent civil disobedience?
What’s become painfully obvious is that, while some may commendably try to actually do something if the election is stolen from the Democrats again, none of them will do a damn thing about the pervasive fraudulency as long as the right corporate party wins.
We finally visited one of this year’s homes of all things electorally bogus at Brad Friedman’s Bradblog today where a story linked to a report from the Colorado Independent (that linked to an article in the Aurora Sentinel) about what may be the first DRE (direct electronic recording voting machines) to be impounded after being caught “flipping” votes- a process whereby, where no matter how many times you try to vote for Obama it comes up McCain.... one that Homer Simpson reportedly will experience this coming Sunday.
In this case it was a Colorado senate race where the “machine knew better”. than the voters as to which candidate they preferred.
But instead of recalibrating the machine mid-election as is the custom in these matters:
(Clerk and Recorder for Adams County Karen) Long said that her office has quarantined the machine, as per the Secretary of State’s instructions. She said the office had not received any prior complaints about the machine, and that she is awaiting further instructions from Secretary of State Mike Coffman.
But that’s just one of the hundreds of documented events of voter suppression, illegal voting roll purges and other nefarious schemes listed by Friedman.
Here’s a small recent sampling of others
500 Absentee Ballots Rejected for Alleged Signature Mismatches in Duval County, FL No Recourse Allowed for Voters Once Ballot is Rejected...
PA Counties Said Unprepared to Serve Voters, Meet Court Order for Emergency Paper Ballots Election Official: '80% of Counties Do Not Have Emergency Ballots'
Early & Absentee Voting Scandals in D.C. & L.A.
More Vote-Flipping in TX by Machines Other Than Those Made by ES&S Direct Recording Electronic Voting Systems Made by Hart InterCivic and Diebold Also Reportedly Now Flipping Votes From Democratic to Republican in TX...
VIDEOS: Vote Flipping on Touch-Screens in WV Failure Seen Persisting Even After Election Official 'Recalibrates' Failed Machine!
ES&S Touch-Screens Keep Flipping in WV, Now in At Least 6 Counties Same ES&S iVotronics Flipping Votes from Democrats to Republicans (and others) in At Least 4 States- Warnings About These Machines Issued Long Ago, Yet Dems Continue to Allow Their Use...
Those are interspersed with stores about the less than conscientious and diligent efforts by the Obama and Democratic Party’s team of lawyers supposedly poised to pounce when these things happen.
But our fear is that this “all’s well that ends well” attitude will cause them to go back to sleep for another four years if Obama wins.
There is a blow back reported in today’s Washington Post. It says
Goodbye, electronic voting. Farewell, fancy touch screen. Maryland and Virginia are going old school after Tuesday's election.
Maryland will scrap its $65 million electronic system and go back to paper ballots in time for the 2010 midterm elections -- and will still be paying for the abandoned system until 2014. In Virginia, localities are moving to paper after the General Assembly voted last year to phase out electronic voting machines as they wear out.
As luck would have it, after a hearings officer found that our own Hawai`i Chief Elections Officer- the despotic Kevin Cronin- screwed up procurement so badly in accepting a multi-year bid from Hart InterCivic for an overpriced slew of DRE’s,. the contract will be re-bid next year.
Now it’s the legislature’s turn to make it clear that, even with supposed paper trails- which as PNN documented are virtually useless due to non use- these machines have to go. Not only are they unreliable and unverifiable they take at least three to five times longer to use, which has caused all day long lines-with many giving up and going home- at early voting centers across the country, especially where they are the sole method of voting.
If Obamaniacs are happy enough with the results to ignore how their votes have been stolen nonetheless they will get just what they deserve in ’12 when you can bet that the other side will have learned the lessons of ’08.
The legislature determines how we vote. And you can bet with the lawsuit demanding valid administrative rules a “bill relating to voting procedures” will be on the agenda in January when the new session is called to order.
Write your or call state legislator today while you still have that anticipatory anger or don’t whine when this ugliness rears it’s head again with a new state contract for more DRE’s.
One in particular commented:
Andy, I think you are being too hard on the American people, but you raise a good question: what should we do if the election is stolen?
I would propose large demonstrations, leading to massive civil disobedience. Each island should figure in advance the best spot for a display of resistance to the theft. On oahu, it would probably be at the Federal Building to start, perhaps moving to the State Capitol as a place to settle in and wait.
We could have a camp-in, a teach-in for democracy, with shared cultural events: music, talks. No business as usual until democracy is re-established.
Heck, I think we should start gathering if the election even starts getting stalled out due to "malfunctioning machines" or obvious voter disenfranchisement in Florida, Ohio or Pennsylvania.
I think most Americans want a strong democracy and are tired of eight years of GOP lies and greed. With Obama, many of us began to hope. If they steal that hope away, we will have to react.
I suggest it should be deliberate, disciplined and non-violent.
Perhaps we should already start scheduling the workshops on non-violent civil disobedience?
What’s become painfully obvious is that, while some may commendably try to actually do something if the election is stolen from the Democrats again, none of them will do a damn thing about the pervasive fraudulency as long as the right corporate party wins.
We finally visited one of this year’s homes of all things electorally bogus at Brad Friedman’s Bradblog today where a story linked to a report from the Colorado Independent (that linked to an article in the Aurora Sentinel) about what may be the first DRE (direct electronic recording voting machines) to be impounded after being caught “flipping” votes- a process whereby, where no matter how many times you try to vote for Obama it comes up McCain.... one that Homer Simpson reportedly will experience this coming Sunday.
In this case it was a Colorado senate race where the “machine knew better”. than the voters as to which candidate they preferred.
But instead of recalibrating the machine mid-election as is the custom in these matters:
(Clerk and Recorder for Adams County Karen) Long said that her office has quarantined the machine, as per the Secretary of State’s instructions. She said the office had not received any prior complaints about the machine, and that she is awaiting further instructions from Secretary of State Mike Coffman.
But that’s just one of the hundreds of documented events of voter suppression, illegal voting roll purges and other nefarious schemes listed by Friedman.
Here’s a small recent sampling of others
500 Absentee Ballots Rejected for Alleged Signature Mismatches in Duval County, FL No Recourse Allowed for Voters Once Ballot is Rejected...
PA Counties Said Unprepared to Serve Voters, Meet Court Order for Emergency Paper Ballots Election Official: '80% of Counties Do Not Have Emergency Ballots'
Early & Absentee Voting Scandals in D.C. & L.A.
More Vote-Flipping in TX by Machines Other Than Those Made by ES&S Direct Recording Electronic Voting Systems Made by Hart InterCivic and Diebold Also Reportedly Now Flipping Votes From Democratic to Republican in TX...
VIDEOS: Vote Flipping on Touch-Screens in WV Failure Seen Persisting Even After Election Official 'Recalibrates' Failed Machine!
ES&S Touch-Screens Keep Flipping in WV, Now in At Least 6 Counties Same ES&S iVotronics Flipping Votes from Democrats to Republicans (and others) in At Least 4 States- Warnings About These Machines Issued Long Ago, Yet Dems Continue to Allow Their Use...
Those are interspersed with stores about the less than conscientious and diligent efforts by the Obama and Democratic Party’s team of lawyers supposedly poised to pounce when these things happen.
But our fear is that this “all’s well that ends well” attitude will cause them to go back to sleep for another four years if Obama wins.
There is a blow back reported in today’s Washington Post. It says
Goodbye, electronic voting. Farewell, fancy touch screen. Maryland and Virginia are going old school after Tuesday's election.
Maryland will scrap its $65 million electronic system and go back to paper ballots in time for the 2010 midterm elections -- and will still be paying for the abandoned system until 2014. In Virginia, localities are moving to paper after the General Assembly voted last year to phase out electronic voting machines as they wear out.
As luck would have it, after a hearings officer found that our own Hawai`i Chief Elections Officer- the despotic Kevin Cronin- screwed up procurement so badly in accepting a multi-year bid from Hart InterCivic for an overpriced slew of DRE’s,. the contract will be re-bid next year.
Now it’s the legislature’s turn to make it clear that, even with supposed paper trails- which as PNN documented are virtually useless due to non use- these machines have to go. Not only are they unreliable and unverifiable they take at least three to five times longer to use, which has caused all day long lines-with many giving up and going home- at early voting centers across the country, especially where they are the sole method of voting.
If Obamaniacs are happy enough with the results to ignore how their votes have been stolen nonetheless they will get just what they deserve in ’12 when you can bet that the other side will have learned the lessons of ’08.
The legislature determines how we vote. And you can bet with the lawsuit demanding valid administrative rules a “bill relating to voting procedures” will be on the agenda in January when the new session is called to order.
Write your or call state legislator today while you still have that anticipatory anger or don’t whine when this ugliness rears it’s head again with a new state contract for more DRE’s.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
JUST PUT IT IN HIS BOW- HE’LL EAT IT
JUST PUT IT IN HIS BOW- HE’LL EAT IT. The only mainstream media reporter in Hawai`i trying to make sense out of the nonsensical, rules-are-for-suckers Hawai`i Elections Bureau- the Honolulu Advertiser’s Derrick DePledge- is at it again, this time trying to divine just why so few people chose to use the electronic voting machines known as DREs in September’s primaries
And again he turned to elections observer Bart Dame in the attempt..
But in doing so he just might have exposed why the oft-criticized elections chief Kevin Cronin chose to sign off on a $41 million HartIntercivic contract to provide voting equipment instead of the competing ES&S bid which would have cost less than half that.
In his blog DePledge says that:
Election observers looking at the performance of the state’s new voting machines given the legal challenge to the contract caught an interesting pattern after the September primary.
Voters overwhelmingly opted for paper ballots fed through eScan optical-scanners over the electronic eSlate machines.
On primary day, when voters could choose between the two machines at precincts, only 7.5 percent picked the electronic machines.
Just 14.4 percent voted on the electronic machines during both early voting and primary day a figure one observer — Democratic activist Bart Dame — argues is inflated because voters were only given the choice of electronic machines at three early voting locations on O’ahu.
But it took a comment on the post to give some insight into the statistics. ”Poll Worker” wrote
As a poll worker during the September Primary I am a firsthand witness to what actually took place. We had only one electronic machine assigned to our polling place. It generally took 4 times as long for people using the electronic machine than doing a paper ballot. In fact, more than half of those who initially wanted to use the electronic machine changed their minds because they didn’t want to wait around. The time it took each person to vote using the electronic machine made it pointless to offer voters the electronic option because we knew they would only change their minds after waiting 5-10 minutes
Dame then went further in explaining what happened on the ground
An optical scan machine can handle many more voters than the electronic machine. Voters are given a paper ballot and sent to a canvas voting booth to mark it with a pen. To handle more voters, you just need to provide more canvas voting booths and pens. Regardless of how long it takes for a voter to decide how to mark their ballot, other voters can continue to receive and mark their ballots and flow around them. At the end, the voter waits in a short line to insert their ballot into the optical scan machine. The actual contact of voter with the machine should be about 20-30 seconds per voter....
Voters using the DREs (”electronic voting machines”) each spent several minutes in contact with the machine. To avoid lines, we would need an additional DRE for each waiting voter (as compared to an additional pen for optical scan voters). In locales where they use all DRE voting machines, the lines snake out the door and the waits can be for hours.
The problem is not unique to Hawai`i or this year’s election. Those who followed the theft of the 2004 presidential election in Ohio know that the exclusive use of DREs there, especially in minority and Democratic leaning precincts, caused stupendously long lines that snaked around city blocks, causing many to turn around and go home.
Anyone who has been involved in elections has figured out that there are dozens of reasons why the DREs are far inferior to plain old paper ballots counted via an “optical scan” machine the way SAT tests have been, for the most part, reliably given and scored for 50 years.
But somehow we’ve ended up with a new Chief Elections Officer who was not only not from the islands and therefore is not familiar with people’s voting habits- something any voting administrator will tell you is of utmost importance- but someone who had no experience administrating elections whatsoever
“King” Kevin Cronin- the self proclaimed “de facto” Elections Chief and Wisconsin import- came in earlier this year and apparently decided that DREs were not just to be used for those who needed them due to disability- as the law requires- but for every voter
Perhaps that’s because he’s of a generation that is many times dazzled by computer age gizmos but has no knowledge of how they work or how and when to use them- or, more importantly, how they don’t work and how and when not to use them.
And so rather than provide DREs on special request or for those who really need them and process the rest with easy to use and verifiable, paper ballots he decided to fall for pitch for the stuff with all the bells and whistles... and none of the reliability and simplicity voters clamor for
And, although he reportedly denies favoring one method over the other, it’s apparent from their sole use in most O`ahu early voting locations that rather than providing a single DRE at each location along with paper ballots, he’d prefer to spread them far and wide and force voters to use them whether they want to use them or not.
All the horrors of proprietary codes, lack of verifiable results and other negatives of the DREs aside, just the cost of using them is something that would raise even a simpleton’s eyebrows.
The numbers are apparently there for Cronin’s Elections Bureau to do a real analysis of what the cost is to provide for each vote being cast for both the DREs and the optically scanned paper ballots.
But a quick back of the envelope calculation shows that any comparison between the time-consuming, hassle-ridden, costly DREs and the simplicity, speed and low cost of a pen, some printed paper and a single simple scanning counting machine, makes it not just no contest but could even mean thousands of times the cost for per vote for those who use DREs.
That would explain why one bid was for twice the other, And it would explain why the administrative hearings officer threw out the bid and chastised Cronin whose blinding by science apparently caused him to pick the new expensive model instead of the old reliable one.
Just a little more grist for the bone mill in the labyrinth of the Minotaur.
And again he turned to elections observer Bart Dame in the attempt..
But in doing so he just might have exposed why the oft-criticized elections chief Kevin Cronin chose to sign off on a $41 million HartIntercivic contract to provide voting equipment instead of the competing ES&S bid which would have cost less than half that.
In his blog DePledge says that:
Election observers looking at the performance of the state’s new voting machines given the legal challenge to the contract caught an interesting pattern after the September primary.
Voters overwhelmingly opted for paper ballots fed through eScan optical-scanners over the electronic eSlate machines.
On primary day, when voters could choose between the two machines at precincts, only 7.5 percent picked the electronic machines.
Just 14.4 percent voted on the electronic machines during both early voting and primary day a figure one observer — Democratic activist Bart Dame — argues is inflated because voters were only given the choice of electronic machines at three early voting locations on O’ahu.
But it took a comment on the post to give some insight into the statistics. ”Poll Worker” wrote
As a poll worker during the September Primary I am a firsthand witness to what actually took place. We had only one electronic machine assigned to our polling place. It generally took 4 times as long for people using the electronic machine than doing a paper ballot. In fact, more than half of those who initially wanted to use the electronic machine changed their minds because they didn’t want to wait around. The time it took each person to vote using the electronic machine made it pointless to offer voters the electronic option because we knew they would only change their minds after waiting 5-10 minutes
Dame then went further in explaining what happened on the ground
An optical scan machine can handle many more voters than the electronic machine. Voters are given a paper ballot and sent to a canvas voting booth to mark it with a pen. To handle more voters, you just need to provide more canvas voting booths and pens. Regardless of how long it takes for a voter to decide how to mark their ballot, other voters can continue to receive and mark their ballots and flow around them. At the end, the voter waits in a short line to insert their ballot into the optical scan machine. The actual contact of voter with the machine should be about 20-30 seconds per voter....
Voters using the DREs (”electronic voting machines”) each spent several minutes in contact with the machine. To avoid lines, we would need an additional DRE for each waiting voter (as compared to an additional pen for optical scan voters). In locales where they use all DRE voting machines, the lines snake out the door and the waits can be for hours.
The problem is not unique to Hawai`i or this year’s election. Those who followed the theft of the 2004 presidential election in Ohio know that the exclusive use of DREs there, especially in minority and Democratic leaning precincts, caused stupendously long lines that snaked around city blocks, causing many to turn around and go home.
Anyone who has been involved in elections has figured out that there are dozens of reasons why the DREs are far inferior to plain old paper ballots counted via an “optical scan” machine the way SAT tests have been, for the most part, reliably given and scored for 50 years.
But somehow we’ve ended up with a new Chief Elections Officer who was not only not from the islands and therefore is not familiar with people’s voting habits- something any voting administrator will tell you is of utmost importance- but someone who had no experience administrating elections whatsoever
“King” Kevin Cronin- the self proclaimed “de facto” Elections Chief and Wisconsin import- came in earlier this year and apparently decided that DREs were not just to be used for those who needed them due to disability- as the law requires- but for every voter
Perhaps that’s because he’s of a generation that is many times dazzled by computer age gizmos but has no knowledge of how they work or how and when to use them- or, more importantly, how they don’t work and how and when not to use them.
And so rather than provide DREs on special request or for those who really need them and process the rest with easy to use and verifiable, paper ballots he decided to fall for pitch for the stuff with all the bells and whistles... and none of the reliability and simplicity voters clamor for
And, although he reportedly denies favoring one method over the other, it’s apparent from their sole use in most O`ahu early voting locations that rather than providing a single DRE at each location along with paper ballots, he’d prefer to spread them far and wide and force voters to use them whether they want to use them or not.
All the horrors of proprietary codes, lack of verifiable results and other negatives of the DREs aside, just the cost of using them is something that would raise even a simpleton’s eyebrows.
The numbers are apparently there for Cronin’s Elections Bureau to do a real analysis of what the cost is to provide for each vote being cast for both the DREs and the optically scanned paper ballots.
But a quick back of the envelope calculation shows that any comparison between the time-consuming, hassle-ridden, costly DREs and the simplicity, speed and low cost of a pen, some printed paper and a single simple scanning counting machine, makes it not just no contest but could even mean thousands of times the cost for per vote for those who use DREs.
That would explain why one bid was for twice the other, And it would explain why the administrative hearings officer threw out the bid and chastised Cronin whose blinding by science apparently caused him to pick the new expensive model instead of the old reliable one.
Just a little more grist for the bone mill in the labyrinth of the Minotaur.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
BARKS AGAINST THE EMPIRE
BARKS AGAINST THE EMPIRE: Last week we sniffed around the reported supposed stunning decrease in spoiled ballots during the Sept 20 election and for the first time were able to throw dimwitted Elections Bureau Chief Kevin Cronin a potential bone for having possibly done something right during the months running up to the balloting,
But it’s becoming clearer that, as we suspected, in all likelihood it was only through manipulation of the statistics and reports and the ways the ballots were treated and in fact counted after balloting took place that the decrease in over-votes and spoiled ballots could make sense.
First, in a follow-up to his original analysis of the raw numbers claimed by the Election Bureau Honolulu, Advertiser political reporter and blogger Derrick DePledge attempted yesterday to explain the massive decrease he originally reported.
First thing he discovered was evidence that the voters were confused by having to check an extra box to designate a party, as many feared would happen going in. He wrote .
Many folks simply do not believe the results reported by the state Office of Elections given past patterns.
(One precinct worker said he collected at least 50 ballots where voters had screwed up before voting correctly, which showed that the ballot design was confusing even though the end products were successfully cast — and presumably counted — ballots.)
Then he goes on to quote Democratic Party activist and long-time voting observer extraordinaire Bart Dame in addressing the problems predicted by many, including himself.
Bart Dame, a Democratic activist and election observer, has identified the most curious aspect of the results. Why so many votes for the obscure Independent Party?
The results showed 1,305 votes at the precinct level and 754 absentee votes for the Independent Party for 2,059 votes overall.
Shaun Stenshol, the Independent candidate in the 2nd Congressional District, received 967 votes and had 291 blank votes for 1,258 overall.
That leaves a gap of 801 Independent Party votes.
These 801 voters could have picked the Independent Party and then skipped the partisan races, voting only in the non-partisan races, such as the mayoral campaigns. Some, however, could have picked the Independent Party because they think of themselves as independents and then tried to vote for Democratic or Republican candidates, spoiling their absentee ballots or overriding or giving up in frustration when the voting machines at the precincts flagged their errors.
Dame would like to see a more complete breakdown of the Independent Party vote to determine exactly what happened.
There were also the 2,074 voters who picked the non-partisan ballot option. These could be voters who were only interested in the mayoral, city council or school board races or — worse — thought they had to pick the non-partisan ballot to vote in non-partisan races and spoiled their votes for partisan candidates.
But that doesn’t seem like it could have influenced the dramatic decrease. But that’s because DePledge only told part of Dame’s story.
In the comments on the blog post Dame wrote:
I would present the math a little different in discussing the Independent Party vote:
2059 voters statewide selected the IP Ballot.
As you wrote, “Shaun Stenshol, the Independent candidate in the 2nd Congressional District, received 967 votes and had 291 blank votes for 1,258 overall.”
Those 1258 votes tell us the number of 2nd CD voters who selected the IP ballot. Therefore, there were 801 voters in the First CD who took an IP ballot, even though there were NO IP candidates for them to vote for.
If we review the voting patterns for minor political parties in the last few Hawaii elections, voters who select “third party” ballot have consistently voted in the 90% plus range for at least one of the party’s candidates.
With the previous, ES&S system, voters were not presented party ballot lines when there were no candidates available for them to vote for. The Hart ballot was designed in such a way that made this mistake possible. It is possible that 801 First CD voters consciously chose the IP ballot as a means of making a statement against the present “two party duopoly,” which dominates our current system. Or they may have been confused and picked the IP ballot because they view themselves as “independent” voters, not understanding the IP is a party– one created to put Ralph Nader on Hawaii’s ballot for the General Election.
An advantage of the Hart optical scan system is its ability to allow for an easy review of images made of the paper ballots as they were scanned and the votes tallied. I suggest the Office of Elections should conduct a review of the ballots cast by voters who selected both the “Independent Party” and “Non-Partisan” ballots. Not to change any vote totals, but in a forensic examination of the voting process to determine the scope of possible voter error, or faulty ballot design. We have the evidence available. Let’s check the data and improve the system for the next election.
Of course, as many remember, Cronin was cut a new one by an administrative hearings officer for picking the Hart InterCivic voting system and cancelling all but this year’s contract, keeping it because it was too late to change it. He also secretly designed the new ballot without checking with anyone as required by law.
But that wasn’t enough for blogger Doug White at Poinography (with a sub-title we’re jealous of- Adhocracy in Action) who dug a little deeper, also with the help of Dane.
White wrote
I was flummoxed by this paragraph in a recent Advertiser story:
“Rex Quidilla, of the Office of Elections, said voters who picked a party had their votes for that party’s candidates counted at precincts even if they tried to cross over and vote for another party’s candidates in certain races. He also said that votes cast in nonpartisan races — such as the mayoral campaigns — were counted even when voters spoiled their ballots in partisan races.”
Then after citing our report on the dearth of required administrative rules White said.
The existing rule §2-51-1 defines a spoiled ballots as “a ballot marked incorrectly by the voter, is misprinted, is illegibly printed, or contains some other defect,” but, beyond that definition, the rules only mention spoiled ballots insofar as to describe what becomes of such ballots if they are discovered before being cast. However, if spoiled ballots were discovered later (as seems to be the case this year), there were (and still are) no rules to explain how a spoiled ballot is to be tallied or, to put first things first, if portions of a spoiled ballot may be tallied by somehow inferring or divining the voter “intent.” In the past it would seem that spoiled ballots were discarded altogether, but that’s only my best assumption.
The so-called “salvaging” of votes by the Office of Elections, however well-intentioned, is clearly open to perceptions of manipulation. As Bart Dame put it so well last month, “I am NOT saying the OoE staff, or the employees of the voting machine vendors (in this case, Hart-InterCivic) are crooks. I want a system with enough safeguards where they COULD be crooks and it would have no impact due to the safeguards we put into place and the technologies used.”
Dane’s commentary from before the election is rather long but seemingly accurate in predicting may of the problems so far in this year’s elections. .
And in a comment Dane, who witnessed the way the procedures were apparently made up as they went along, on election night, de-flummoxed White by delving further into the matter saying:
(I)f a voter marked they wanted to vote in the Republican primary and cast some votes for Republican candidates, but then voted for a Democratic (or Green or Libertarian) candidate elsewhere on the ballot, the votes cast for the explicitly chosen party (Republican, in this example) would be counted. The votes for candidates from the other parties would be ignored. In previous primary elections, votes cast for candidates from multiple parties would invalidate the entire partisan portion of the ballot.
The next sentence in the Hon-Ad paragraph:
“He also said that votes cast in nonpartisan races — such as the mayoral campaigns — were counted even when voters spoiled their ballots in partisan races.”
Even with the “Select a Party” question reducing the number of spoiled ballots, it is still possible to do so. For example, if a voter selects TWO parties. Or if a voter fails to select any party, then proceeds to cast votes for candidates from multiple parties. Under those rather limited circumstances, the partisan portion of the ballot would be invalidated for reasons of “multi-party voting.”.
But then the heart of the matter was revealed:
Regarding the “vote salvaging operation”: I had raised concerns prior to the election whether such an effort might not be bending the Office of Election’s hard and fast insistence that we are not a “voter intent” state. They have that position for exactly the concern you raise. When human beings try to determine a voter’s intent by ambiguous markings, the results are easily distorted by bias. My understanding is there were 997 ballots cast where the voter had failed, or perhaps refused, to pick a party. These ballots were kicked out by the machines and handed over to a bi-partisan group of election observers. The job of the observers was to determine if votes were cast within a single party’s primary. If they were, they were regarded as properly cast and were counted. Where a voter cast votes in the primary of more than one party, the partisan portion of the ballot was judged “spoiled,” though the non-partisan votes were still counted.
I can agree this may seem a bit “ad hoc.” I had attempted to get straight answers from the Office of Elections prior to the vote on how they would handle such ballots. I was reassured they would be treated in this way, only to see public statements from election officials which gave contrary information.
But I believe the “vote salvage operation” was handled objectively and with the support of the election observers.
Although I am trying to reassure you on these particular points, I still have serious concerns about the conduct of elections in Hawaii, particularly with the secretive procurement process for choosing a voting system and the weak audit standards for verifying the electronic vote.
And as to our supposition from last week that there was more vigilance and insistence on taking another ballot for people who spoiled optical scan ballots causing the machine to spit them out, another comment at Poinography said
Having worked the polls standing at the optical scanner, I can tell you one of the most common errors people made was to pick a single party to vote in but fail to actually color in the box next to that party in the box hidden over on the lower right. Dumb, dumb dumb ballot design.
If a person only voted in one party, it’s not hard to discern which party they wished to vote in. The machine kicks them out as spoiled anyway. I’m going to guess these “salvaged” votes came from the mailed in absentee ballots with this sort of error. Other errors, you’d have to be guessing which is bogus.
Luckily on Kauai, no partisan race had more than one candidate so the entire party primary exercise was silly in the first place
And, as we reported before the election, the paper ballots apparently will never be seen again because, we learned during a conversation with Dame on the Malama Kaua`i Radio program the day before the election, the legally required “audit” we excoriated for being insufficient was even more deficient that we thought.
The audit, it appears
1) done only in one race,
2) done only in 10% of the precincts of that race
3) done only on ballots cast on election day (no absentee or walk-in)
4) done only on election night before the results are announced
5) done only on O`ahu so are done only for O`ahu ballots
Since there was no statewide race this year it’s not clear what race was “audited” this way, if any.
This means no local Kaua`i races are ever audited and the Kaua`i and neighbor island precincts weren’t even used in the one statewide race that was examined by hand because it was done while the paper ballots were still on Kaua`i.
And as we reported the paper ballots are never touched again on neighbor islands once they are cast.
Those who think a “paper trail” makes a difference can take those paper ballots and, like the state elections bureau does, stick them where the sun doesn’t shine.
Because they will never see the light of day again once the results are announced... and one must prove to a judge they contain evidence of actual (not just suspected) fraud in order to ever examine them..
Welcome to governance in Hawai`i- the new home of the Star Chamber mentality where the Minotaur’s Labyrinth rules supreme.
But it’s becoming clearer that, as we suspected, in all likelihood it was only through manipulation of the statistics and reports and the ways the ballots were treated and in fact counted after balloting took place that the decrease in over-votes and spoiled ballots could make sense.
First, in a follow-up to his original analysis of the raw numbers claimed by the Election Bureau Honolulu, Advertiser political reporter and blogger Derrick DePledge attempted yesterday to explain the massive decrease he originally reported.
First thing he discovered was evidence that the voters were confused by having to check an extra box to designate a party, as many feared would happen going in. He wrote .
Many folks simply do not believe the results reported by the state Office of Elections given past patterns.
(One precinct worker said he collected at least 50 ballots where voters had screwed up before voting correctly, which showed that the ballot design was confusing even though the end products were successfully cast — and presumably counted — ballots.)
Then he goes on to quote Democratic Party activist and long-time voting observer extraordinaire Bart Dame in addressing the problems predicted by many, including himself.
Bart Dame, a Democratic activist and election observer, has identified the most curious aspect of the results. Why so many votes for the obscure Independent Party?
The results showed 1,305 votes at the precinct level and 754 absentee votes for the Independent Party for 2,059 votes overall.
Shaun Stenshol, the Independent candidate in the 2nd Congressional District, received 967 votes and had 291 blank votes for 1,258 overall.
That leaves a gap of 801 Independent Party votes.
These 801 voters could have picked the Independent Party and then skipped the partisan races, voting only in the non-partisan races, such as the mayoral campaigns. Some, however, could have picked the Independent Party because they think of themselves as independents and then tried to vote for Democratic or Republican candidates, spoiling their absentee ballots or overriding or giving up in frustration when the voting machines at the precincts flagged their errors.
Dame would like to see a more complete breakdown of the Independent Party vote to determine exactly what happened.
There were also the 2,074 voters who picked the non-partisan ballot option. These could be voters who were only interested in the mayoral, city council or school board races or — worse — thought they had to pick the non-partisan ballot to vote in non-partisan races and spoiled their votes for partisan candidates.
But that doesn’t seem like it could have influenced the dramatic decrease. But that’s because DePledge only told part of Dame’s story.
In the comments on the blog post Dame wrote:
I would present the math a little different in discussing the Independent Party vote:
2059 voters statewide selected the IP Ballot.
As you wrote, “Shaun Stenshol, the Independent candidate in the 2nd Congressional District, received 967 votes and had 291 blank votes for 1,258 overall.”
Those 1258 votes tell us the number of 2nd CD voters who selected the IP ballot. Therefore, there were 801 voters in the First CD who took an IP ballot, even though there were NO IP candidates for them to vote for.
If we review the voting patterns for minor political parties in the last few Hawaii elections, voters who select “third party” ballot have consistently voted in the 90% plus range for at least one of the party’s candidates.
With the previous, ES&S system, voters were not presented party ballot lines when there were no candidates available for them to vote for. The Hart ballot was designed in such a way that made this mistake possible. It is possible that 801 First CD voters consciously chose the IP ballot as a means of making a statement against the present “two party duopoly,” which dominates our current system. Or they may have been confused and picked the IP ballot because they view themselves as “independent” voters, not understanding the IP is a party– one created to put Ralph Nader on Hawaii’s ballot for the General Election.
An advantage of the Hart optical scan system is its ability to allow for an easy review of images made of the paper ballots as they were scanned and the votes tallied. I suggest the Office of Elections should conduct a review of the ballots cast by voters who selected both the “Independent Party” and “Non-Partisan” ballots. Not to change any vote totals, but in a forensic examination of the voting process to determine the scope of possible voter error, or faulty ballot design. We have the evidence available. Let’s check the data and improve the system for the next election.
Of course, as many remember, Cronin was cut a new one by an administrative hearings officer for picking the Hart InterCivic voting system and cancelling all but this year’s contract, keeping it because it was too late to change it. He also secretly designed the new ballot without checking with anyone as required by law.
But that wasn’t enough for blogger Doug White at Poinography (with a sub-title we’re jealous of- Adhocracy in Action) who dug a little deeper, also with the help of Dane.
White wrote
I was flummoxed by this paragraph in a recent Advertiser story:
“Rex Quidilla, of the Office of Elections, said voters who picked a party had their votes for that party’s candidates counted at precincts even if they tried to cross over and vote for another party’s candidates in certain races. He also said that votes cast in nonpartisan races — such as the mayoral campaigns — were counted even when voters spoiled their ballots in partisan races.”
Then after citing our report on the dearth of required administrative rules White said.
The existing rule §2-51-1 defines a spoiled ballots as “a ballot marked incorrectly by the voter, is misprinted, is illegibly printed, or contains some other defect,” but, beyond that definition, the rules only mention spoiled ballots insofar as to describe what becomes of such ballots if they are discovered before being cast. However, if spoiled ballots were discovered later (as seems to be the case this year), there were (and still are) no rules to explain how a spoiled ballot is to be tallied or, to put first things first, if portions of a spoiled ballot may be tallied by somehow inferring or divining the voter “intent.” In the past it would seem that spoiled ballots were discarded altogether, but that’s only my best assumption.
The so-called “salvaging” of votes by the Office of Elections, however well-intentioned, is clearly open to perceptions of manipulation. As Bart Dame put it so well last month, “I am NOT saying the OoE staff, or the employees of the voting machine vendors (in this case, Hart-InterCivic) are crooks. I want a system with enough safeguards where they COULD be crooks and it would have no impact due to the safeguards we put into place and the technologies used.”
Dane’s commentary from before the election is rather long but seemingly accurate in predicting may of the problems so far in this year’s elections. .
And in a comment Dane, who witnessed the way the procedures were apparently made up as they went along, on election night, de-flummoxed White by delving further into the matter saying:
(I)f a voter marked they wanted to vote in the Republican primary and cast some votes for Republican candidates, but then voted for a Democratic (or Green or Libertarian) candidate elsewhere on the ballot, the votes cast for the explicitly chosen party (Republican, in this example) would be counted. The votes for candidates from the other parties would be ignored. In previous primary elections, votes cast for candidates from multiple parties would invalidate the entire partisan portion of the ballot.
The next sentence in the Hon-Ad paragraph:
“He also said that votes cast in nonpartisan races — such as the mayoral campaigns — were counted even when voters spoiled their ballots in partisan races.”
Even with the “Select a Party” question reducing the number of spoiled ballots, it is still possible to do so. For example, if a voter selects TWO parties. Or if a voter fails to select any party, then proceeds to cast votes for candidates from multiple parties. Under those rather limited circumstances, the partisan portion of the ballot would be invalidated for reasons of “multi-party voting.”.
But then the heart of the matter was revealed:
Regarding the “vote salvaging operation”: I had raised concerns prior to the election whether such an effort might not be bending the Office of Election’s hard and fast insistence that we are not a “voter intent” state. They have that position for exactly the concern you raise. When human beings try to determine a voter’s intent by ambiguous markings, the results are easily distorted by bias. My understanding is there were 997 ballots cast where the voter had failed, or perhaps refused, to pick a party. These ballots were kicked out by the machines and handed over to a bi-partisan group of election observers. The job of the observers was to determine if votes were cast within a single party’s primary. If they were, they were regarded as properly cast and were counted. Where a voter cast votes in the primary of more than one party, the partisan portion of the ballot was judged “spoiled,” though the non-partisan votes were still counted.
I can agree this may seem a bit “ad hoc.” I had attempted to get straight answers from the Office of Elections prior to the vote on how they would handle such ballots. I was reassured they would be treated in this way, only to see public statements from election officials which gave contrary information.
But I believe the “vote salvage operation” was handled objectively and with the support of the election observers.
Although I am trying to reassure you on these particular points, I still have serious concerns about the conduct of elections in Hawaii, particularly with the secretive procurement process for choosing a voting system and the weak audit standards for verifying the electronic vote.
And as to our supposition from last week that there was more vigilance and insistence on taking another ballot for people who spoiled optical scan ballots causing the machine to spit them out, another comment at Poinography said
Having worked the polls standing at the optical scanner, I can tell you one of the most common errors people made was to pick a single party to vote in but fail to actually color in the box next to that party in the box hidden over on the lower right. Dumb, dumb dumb ballot design.
If a person only voted in one party, it’s not hard to discern which party they wished to vote in. The machine kicks them out as spoiled anyway. I’m going to guess these “salvaged” votes came from the mailed in absentee ballots with this sort of error. Other errors, you’d have to be guessing which is bogus.
Luckily on Kauai, no partisan race had more than one candidate so the entire party primary exercise was silly in the first place
And, as we reported before the election, the paper ballots apparently will never be seen again because, we learned during a conversation with Dame on the Malama Kaua`i Radio program the day before the election, the legally required “audit” we excoriated for being insufficient was even more deficient that we thought.
The audit, it appears
1) done only in one race,
2) done only in 10% of the precincts of that race
3) done only on ballots cast on election day (no absentee or walk-in)
4) done only on election night before the results are announced
5) done only on O`ahu so are done only for O`ahu ballots
Since there was no statewide race this year it’s not clear what race was “audited” this way, if any.
This means no local Kaua`i races are ever audited and the Kaua`i and neighbor island precincts weren’t even used in the one statewide race that was examined by hand because it was done while the paper ballots were still on Kaua`i.
And as we reported the paper ballots are never touched again on neighbor islands once they are cast.
Those who think a “paper trail” makes a difference can take those paper ballots and, like the state elections bureau does, stick them where the sun doesn’t shine.
Because they will never see the light of day again once the results are announced... and one must prove to a judge they contain evidence of actual (not just suspected) fraud in order to ever examine them..
Welcome to governance in Hawai`i- the new home of the Star Chamber mentality where the Minotaur’s Labyrinth rules supreme.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
CHASING A DUCK/OUR BOWL RUNNETH OVER
CHASING A DUCK: Following-up on yesterday’s article about Bernard Carvalho’s ducking of the scheduled and now cancelled local-newspaper-sponsored debate tonight, we were able to learn today that Carvalho has a meeting scheduled tonight at his campaign headquarters according to a reliable source who saw it in his open date book.
When we asked we were able to confirm with Carvalho’s campaign manager Leonard Rapozo that there is an “executive committee” meeting scheduled for tonight- and every Thursday night- at campaign HQ.
Rapozo continued to stonewall us by refusing to answer whether in fact Carvalho will even be at the meeting tonight or whether that was the “event” that had been “previously scheduled”, causing his refusal to debate his opponent in the mayor’s race, Councilwoman JoAnn Yukimura.
He did say that Carvalho will be attending “another event” but refused to say what and where that event was..
Rapozo also refused to confirm or deny the Honolulu location of Carvalho’s “event” tonight that was reported in the newspaper.
Rapozo did say that they received the invitation to the canceled debate on September 17, eight days before the day the debate was scheduled but would not answer further questions about the cancellation or provide any details regarding the nature or location of tonight’s “previously scheduled event”.
When asked if Carvalho would debate Yukimura at all, Rapozo said that they would be participating in a Chamber of Commerce event on October 23 although the format for that event is unclear at this time.
This morning’s Lihu`e Business Association “public forum” in Lihu`e at Duke's Kalapaki was not scheduled to be a debate or even a conversation between the two candidate and, as we reported yesterday, was not even going to have both candidates in the same room.
Carvalho’s opponent Councilwoman JoAnn Yukimura did not respond to an email request for comment by press time although according to sources within the campaign but not authorized to speak on the campaign’s behalf she would welcome a chance to debate on the issues and is disappointed in the debate’s cancellation..
TGI newspaper did not respond to an email this morning asking for the date they sent the invitations or whether they will attempt to reschedule the only purportedly impartial forum/debate scheduled before the Nov. 4 mayoral election.
----------------
OUR BOWL RUNNETH OVER: We and a slew of others have severely criticized the way the Office of Elections and specifically it’s Chief Kevin Cronin conducted business this year- many times, on many matters.
But today the Honolulu Advertiser’s government reporter Derrick DePledge reported an absolutely stunning decrease in the reported number of ballots spoiled due to multi-party votes in Saturday’s primaries.
He reports:
Despite fears of voter confusion over a new ballot design, the number of ballots spoiled in Saturday's primary because voters chose candidates from more than one political party was a record low.
The state Office of Elections reported that just 257 ballots — 89 at the precinct level and 168 absentee ballots — were spoiled because of multiparty voting, out of 246,220 ballots cast. The number was minuscule considering that 5,231 ballots were invalidated by multiparty voting in the 2006 primary and 9,561 ballots were ruined in the 2004 primary
Wow. We went and checked the numbers because they seemed way too low to be true and sure enough, that’s what the official results reveal.
The changes to this year’s ballots were under fire when they were printed before anyone saw them, especially the candidates and political parties, as required by law.
In the past voters merely were instructed to vote for only one party’s candidates in the partisan elections for state offices. But this year, in an attempt to reduce the number of voters who voted in more than one party’s primary, they had to check a box indicating their party preference.
One change to explain the difference was buried deep in the article and was pretty much unexplained but DePledge reported that
The Office of Elections also assigned two teams to sort through an estimated 1,000 absentee ballots in which voters failed to select a party. Cronin said staff examined the individual absentee ballots and counted the ones where it was apparent the voter favored one party.
Whether that was done in prior elections was not mentioned in the article but that kind of activity has never been reported in past elections
But even so that would still to explain the difference.
One difference could be the training of those who stand by the tabulating machines for the paper ballots. In the past the old machine did reject ballots that had votes for more than one party and the people were told they could either go get a new ballot or just let it go as is.
Whether there was increased vigilance and/or more prodding of people whose ballots were rejected by the machine to re-vote this year isn’t known at this time but is a possibility.
The reason for this lack of information as to the rules is because there aren’t any rules delineating procedures, which is the subject of a Maui lawsuit on which we reported earlier this election season.
But this certainly calls for further investigation by the Elections Bureau and poll-watchers because as anyone who studies numbers knows anomalies like this can be indicative of serious problems even if the numbers are a supposedly “positive” development.
Any cashier will tell you it doesn’t matter if you have too much or too little in the register, it’s wrong either way.
We smell some other explanation here but for now will just have to accept the numbers and look for other information. We welcome anyone’s observations or theories.
When we asked we were able to confirm with Carvalho’s campaign manager Leonard Rapozo that there is an “executive committee” meeting scheduled for tonight- and every Thursday night- at campaign HQ.
Rapozo continued to stonewall us by refusing to answer whether in fact Carvalho will even be at the meeting tonight or whether that was the “event” that had been “previously scheduled”, causing his refusal to debate his opponent in the mayor’s race, Councilwoman JoAnn Yukimura.
He did say that Carvalho will be attending “another event” but refused to say what and where that event was..
Rapozo also refused to confirm or deny the Honolulu location of Carvalho’s “event” tonight that was reported in the newspaper.
Rapozo did say that they received the invitation to the canceled debate on September 17, eight days before the day the debate was scheduled but would not answer further questions about the cancellation or provide any details regarding the nature or location of tonight’s “previously scheduled event”.
When asked if Carvalho would debate Yukimura at all, Rapozo said that they would be participating in a Chamber of Commerce event on October 23 although the format for that event is unclear at this time.
This morning’s Lihu`e Business Association “public forum” in Lihu`e at Duke's Kalapaki was not scheduled to be a debate or even a conversation between the two candidate and, as we reported yesterday, was not even going to have both candidates in the same room.
Carvalho’s opponent Councilwoman JoAnn Yukimura did not respond to an email request for comment by press time although according to sources within the campaign but not authorized to speak on the campaign’s behalf she would welcome a chance to debate on the issues and is disappointed in the debate’s cancellation..
TGI newspaper did not respond to an email this morning asking for the date they sent the invitations or whether they will attempt to reschedule the only purportedly impartial forum/debate scheduled before the Nov. 4 mayoral election.
----------------
OUR BOWL RUNNETH OVER: We and a slew of others have severely criticized the way the Office of Elections and specifically it’s Chief Kevin Cronin conducted business this year- many times, on many matters.
But today the Honolulu Advertiser’s government reporter Derrick DePledge reported an absolutely stunning decrease in the reported number of ballots spoiled due to multi-party votes in Saturday’s primaries.
He reports:
Despite fears of voter confusion over a new ballot design, the number of ballots spoiled in Saturday's primary because voters chose candidates from more than one political party was a record low.
The state Office of Elections reported that just 257 ballots — 89 at the precinct level and 168 absentee ballots — were spoiled because of multiparty voting, out of 246,220 ballots cast. The number was minuscule considering that 5,231 ballots were invalidated by multiparty voting in the 2006 primary and 9,561 ballots were ruined in the 2004 primary
Wow. We went and checked the numbers because they seemed way too low to be true and sure enough, that’s what the official results reveal.
The changes to this year’s ballots were under fire when they were printed before anyone saw them, especially the candidates and political parties, as required by law.
In the past voters merely were instructed to vote for only one party’s candidates in the partisan elections for state offices. But this year, in an attempt to reduce the number of voters who voted in more than one party’s primary, they had to check a box indicating their party preference.
One change to explain the difference was buried deep in the article and was pretty much unexplained but DePledge reported that
The Office of Elections also assigned two teams to sort through an estimated 1,000 absentee ballots in which voters failed to select a party. Cronin said staff examined the individual absentee ballots and counted the ones where it was apparent the voter favored one party.
Whether that was done in prior elections was not mentioned in the article but that kind of activity has never been reported in past elections
But even so that would still to explain the difference.
One difference could be the training of those who stand by the tabulating machines for the paper ballots. In the past the old machine did reject ballots that had votes for more than one party and the people were told they could either go get a new ballot or just let it go as is.
Whether there was increased vigilance and/or more prodding of people whose ballots were rejected by the machine to re-vote this year isn’t known at this time but is a possibility.
The reason for this lack of information as to the rules is because there aren’t any rules delineating procedures, which is the subject of a Maui lawsuit on which we reported earlier this election season.
But this certainly calls for further investigation by the Elections Bureau and poll-watchers because as anyone who studies numbers knows anomalies like this can be indicative of serious problems even if the numbers are a supposedly “positive” development.
Any cashier will tell you it doesn’t matter if you have too much or too little in the register, it’s wrong either way.
We smell some other explanation here but for now will just have to accept the numbers and look for other information. We welcome anyone’s observations or theories.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
DO YOU SMELL THAT?:
DO YOU SMELL THAT?: We’re just back from voting and it was every bit the appalling experience we thought it would be- and then some.
First off, early voting this year on Kaua`i is being conducted in a construction zone having moved from the Historic County Building– where people were told to come- to the “Annex” next door where the newly and apparently hastily readied basement room reeked of fresh paint- not just an OSHA violation for the workers but a nauseating experience for all involved.
But what the heck- you have to be dizzy in the first place to vote for most of those on the ballot this year- what’s a little huffing on the way into the voting booth?
Then we were handed a paper ballot shunning the electronic machine, as if it really matters. We and others were not told of the new procedure of having to check the little box picking a party instead of just voting in one party’s primary.
The new check box is there for no particular reason other than our new idiotic State Elections Chief Kevin "King" Cronin decreed it- without checking with anyone as was required by law.
And, in another bit of stupidity that could have been solved if he had bothered to follow the law and let someone check his new ballot, although the instructions still say to fill in the oval completely, there are no ovals or even circles next to each name but rectangles, insuring not just more confusion but using twice as much effort and ink to mark the ballot this year.
Cheesehead Cronin obviously decide that too many people had finally figured out the color-coded method over the last 10 years it’s been in use so he’d change it to insure another 10 years of confusion and ruined and invalid ballots.
Then- surprise number 17 gazillion this year- instead of, as has been the practice in the past, leaving off the names of those unchallenged in their party's partisan primaries for those running for state or federal office, they were included this time for no particular reason... probably because that’s the way they do it in Wisconsin.
Studies show that the worst years for mistakes in balloting occur when the balloting methods change- whether changing from things like punch cards to optical scans to using new instructions and ways to mark the ballots.
And so you’d think any schmuck who runs elections knows the best way to insure people understand the ballot is to not change the methodology from election to election unless you really have to..
But Cronin obviously isn’t just any ordinary schmuck- he got a unique, arrogant schmuck-osity about him as we’ve detailed over the past few months.
The worst part is that we aren’t alone in thinking that no matter what we did, there was a good chance that our vote will not be counted because no one is checking the infamous “paper trail” that is supposed to reassure everyone that the result will reflect the vote.
Everyone assumes that some kind of paper record- such as the printer contained in the electronic machines or the ones that we mark in ink and feed into the optical scan counting machine- are an assurance of lack of fraud because they can be counted later after the machines are done doing their “magic”.
But,. as we reported yesterday- and as is listed as a bone of contention in the lawsuit filed by Maui voting observer Bob Babson- the “paper trail” is rarely if ever seen again once the voter leaves the booth.
Because, as Babson’s attorney Lance Collins told us,. trying to see them again is an exercise in futility.
We were surprised to find out yesterday that electronic transmission to Honolulu of the vote with no one on-site verifying the totals had been the case for years and was not, as widely reported by the mainstream media and so by us, a new arbitrary invention of Cronin’s..
But when we asked Collins about it he added the following
I don't know how its been done on Kauai but tabulation has occurred previously on Maui then sent to Honolulu (without telling anyone on Maui what the results are) and then the results are sent back from Honolulu. This is what made Bob Babson initially suspicious in 2006.
Because the Maui final count was not made available before the tabulator was hooked up to the internet/telephone, there would be no way to verify that tampering had not occurred unless you manually recounted all the ballots (except the absentee ballots are never audited-recounted in the first place). However, there are no recounts unless a candidate or 30 voters have concrete evidence that there was fraud or error and that the fraud/error changed the result.
A very high standard for very low election security.
In other words the only way the “paper” is ever seen again - or even a first time- is if 30 people can prove there was something wrong with the totals. And that, if that’s true it would have changed the winner
Many people think it’s futile to vote because good people don’t become candidates- almost by definition- and many can’t even get on the ballot in many states.
And if they do manage to run, only those with lots of money from dubious sources – as well as those who don’t just represent but actually ARE the special interests- can get the media recognition to tell people they are “viable” or “ electable”.
But the with the privatized elections systems used in every state these days- which results in the proprietary nature of the counting software- and other ridiculously convoluted rules for ever actually checking the results, the supposed confidence-building “paper trails” do nothing to negate, and in fact facilitate, the opportunities for election fraud. .
So, that said, don’t forget to vote Saturday kiddies... It’s apparently a sucker’s game but it’s probably the only “right” you have left.
First off, early voting this year on Kaua`i is being conducted in a construction zone having moved from the Historic County Building– where people were told to come- to the “Annex” next door where the newly and apparently hastily readied basement room reeked of fresh paint- not just an OSHA violation for the workers but a nauseating experience for all involved.
But what the heck- you have to be dizzy in the first place to vote for most of those on the ballot this year- what’s a little huffing on the way into the voting booth?
Then we were handed a paper ballot shunning the electronic machine, as if it really matters. We and others were not told of the new procedure of having to check the little box picking a party instead of just voting in one party’s primary.
The new check box is there for no particular reason other than our new idiotic State Elections Chief Kevin "King" Cronin decreed it- without checking with anyone as was required by law.
And, in another bit of stupidity that could have been solved if he had bothered to follow the law and let someone check his new ballot, although the instructions still say to fill in the oval completely, there are no ovals or even circles next to each name but rectangles, insuring not just more confusion but using twice as much effort and ink to mark the ballot this year.
Cheesehead Cronin obviously decide that too many people had finally figured out the color-coded method over the last 10 years it’s been in use so he’d change it to insure another 10 years of confusion and ruined and invalid ballots.
Then- surprise number 17 gazillion this year- instead of, as has been the practice in the past, leaving off the names of those unchallenged in their party's partisan primaries for those running for state or federal office, they were included this time for no particular reason... probably because that’s the way they do it in Wisconsin.
Studies show that the worst years for mistakes in balloting occur when the balloting methods change- whether changing from things like punch cards to optical scans to using new instructions and ways to mark the ballots.
And so you’d think any schmuck who runs elections knows the best way to insure people understand the ballot is to not change the methodology from election to election unless you really have to..
But Cronin obviously isn’t just any ordinary schmuck- he got a unique, arrogant schmuck-osity about him as we’ve detailed over the past few months.
The worst part is that we aren’t alone in thinking that no matter what we did, there was a good chance that our vote will not be counted because no one is checking the infamous “paper trail” that is supposed to reassure everyone that the result will reflect the vote.
Everyone assumes that some kind of paper record- such as the printer contained in the electronic machines or the ones that we mark in ink and feed into the optical scan counting machine- are an assurance of lack of fraud because they can be counted later after the machines are done doing their “magic”.
But,. as we reported yesterday- and as is listed as a bone of contention in the lawsuit filed by Maui voting observer Bob Babson- the “paper trail” is rarely if ever seen again once the voter leaves the booth.
Because, as Babson’s attorney Lance Collins told us,. trying to see them again is an exercise in futility.
We were surprised to find out yesterday that electronic transmission to Honolulu of the vote with no one on-site verifying the totals had been the case for years and was not, as widely reported by the mainstream media and so by us, a new arbitrary invention of Cronin’s..
But when we asked Collins about it he added the following
I don't know how its been done on Kauai but tabulation has occurred previously on Maui then sent to Honolulu (without telling anyone on Maui what the results are) and then the results are sent back from Honolulu. This is what made Bob Babson initially suspicious in 2006.
Because the Maui final count was not made available before the tabulator was hooked up to the internet/telephone, there would be no way to verify that tampering had not occurred unless you manually recounted all the ballots (except the absentee ballots are never audited-recounted in the first place). However, there are no recounts unless a candidate or 30 voters have concrete evidence that there was fraud or error and that the fraud/error changed the result.
A very high standard for very low election security.
In other words the only way the “paper” is ever seen again - or even a first time- is if 30 people can prove there was something wrong with the totals. And that, if that’s true it would have changed the winner
Many people think it’s futile to vote because good people don’t become candidates- almost by definition- and many can’t even get on the ballot in many states.
And if they do manage to run, only those with lots of money from dubious sources – as well as those who don’t just represent but actually ARE the special interests- can get the media recognition to tell people they are “viable” or “ electable”.
But the with the privatized elections systems used in every state these days- which results in the proprietary nature of the counting software- and other ridiculously convoluted rules for ever actually checking the results, the supposed confidence-building “paper trails” do nothing to negate, and in fact facilitate, the opportunities for election fraud. .
So, that said, don’t forget to vote Saturday kiddies... It’s apparently a sucker’s game but it’s probably the only “right” you have left.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
THE DOG ATE MY VOTE
THE DOG ATE MY VOTE: We tend to think of outright election fraud as something that happens in faraway places like Florida and Ohio done by secretive Republican moles and operatives in places where the laws and rules of the state combine with unregulated proprietary soft-ware-using electronic-gizmos to “flip” the votes.
But that was in a different era- one before the reign “King” Kevin “The Minotaur” Cronin as Hawai`i Chief Elections Officer, whose exploits we’ve detailed many times for many months now as a search of his name in the box at the top of the page will reveal.
A month ago we detailed how despite the fact that there are absolutely no required HRS Chapter 91 Administrative Rules Cronin has made some up arbitrarily and capriciously- and illegally- and a judge has ruled that, although Cronin was grossly negligent if not guilty of malfeasance in selecting the electronic voting machines in the Hart InterCivic contract that was struck down by an administrative hearings officer, the election will proceed with the equipment they provided... and of course no rules for their use
But we thought, at least if people want their votes to actually count they can shun the DRE - direct electronic recording- devices and mark their choice on a piece of paper to be read by an optical scanner as Hawai`i voters have done for many years
But an article in yesterday’s Honolulu Advertiser dashed all hopes of that because it reports almost all of the walk-in absentee polling locations in O`ahu will contain no paper and optical scan opportunities and force those voting to use the unregulated, un-transparent highly hackable and rigable machines.
Buried deep in the article- and of no particular interest in terms of potential voter fraud to Advertiser Staff Writer Gordon Y.K. Pang- he reports
One thing O'ahu absentee walk-in voters will notice is that electronic voter machines are more prevalent than in the past. Glen Takahashi, the city's election administrator, said only electronic machines will be available to absentee walk-in voters who show up at the Kapolei Hale, Aiea Shopping Center and University of Hawai`i-Manoa Campus Center locations....
Those wishing to conduct absentee walk-in voting on O'ahu and who want to fill in a more traditional paper ballot can only do so at Honolulu Hale or Windward Mall, Takahashi said.
You’d think that the issue of the electronic machines’ reliability- brought up in court as part of a lawsuit on Maui over the lack of any regulations- would be discussed next but Pang prefers to bury his head up the butt of election officials by reporting
Election officials also prefer the electronic system, (Voter Services Section Chief Rex) Quidilla said. The machines don't allow for overvotes, which occur when someone incorrectly punches more than one vote, or more than one party ballot in the primary, he said.
Additionally, it's easier for a voter to correct mistakes before turning in final selections, Quidilla said.
But though we were pretty livid over this next questionable act by self proclaimed “de facto” Election Chief Cronin, attorney Lance Collins who is representing the plaintiffs in the lack of “ad rules” case isn’t shocked in the least. When asked for comment yesterday and he told us:
“Reports about the lack of optical scanners at walk-in voting precincts is not surprising. When a state agency is required to comply with rule making and fails to comply with rule making, there is nothing to stop the agency from changing its rules whenever it wants to.”
Although the current ongoing walk-in voting- at the Historic County Building- the only location on Kaua`i- will be providing paper ballots watch out for the vote eating DRE behemoths... that is if you want your vote to count.
But that was in a different era- one before the reign “King” Kevin “The Minotaur” Cronin as Hawai`i Chief Elections Officer, whose exploits we’ve detailed many times for many months now as a search of his name in the box at the top of the page will reveal.
A month ago we detailed how despite the fact that there are absolutely no required HRS Chapter 91 Administrative Rules Cronin has made some up arbitrarily and capriciously- and illegally- and a judge has ruled that, although Cronin was grossly negligent if not guilty of malfeasance in selecting the electronic voting machines in the Hart InterCivic contract that was struck down by an administrative hearings officer, the election will proceed with the equipment they provided... and of course no rules for their use
But we thought, at least if people want their votes to actually count they can shun the DRE - direct electronic recording- devices and mark their choice on a piece of paper to be read by an optical scanner as Hawai`i voters have done for many years
But an article in yesterday’s Honolulu Advertiser dashed all hopes of that because it reports almost all of the walk-in absentee polling locations in O`ahu will contain no paper and optical scan opportunities and force those voting to use the unregulated, un-transparent highly hackable and rigable machines.
Buried deep in the article- and of no particular interest in terms of potential voter fraud to Advertiser Staff Writer Gordon Y.K. Pang- he reports
One thing O'ahu absentee walk-in voters will notice is that electronic voter machines are more prevalent than in the past. Glen Takahashi, the city's election administrator, said only electronic machines will be available to absentee walk-in voters who show up at the Kapolei Hale, Aiea Shopping Center and University of Hawai`i-Manoa Campus Center locations....
Those wishing to conduct absentee walk-in voting on O'ahu and who want to fill in a more traditional paper ballot can only do so at Honolulu Hale or Windward Mall, Takahashi said.
You’d think that the issue of the electronic machines’ reliability- brought up in court as part of a lawsuit on Maui over the lack of any regulations- would be discussed next but Pang prefers to bury his head up the butt of election officials by reporting
Election officials also prefer the electronic system, (Voter Services Section Chief Rex) Quidilla said. The machines don't allow for overvotes, which occur when someone incorrectly punches more than one vote, or more than one party ballot in the primary, he said.
Additionally, it's easier for a voter to correct mistakes before turning in final selections, Quidilla said.
But though we were pretty livid over this next questionable act by self proclaimed “de facto” Election Chief Cronin, attorney Lance Collins who is representing the plaintiffs in the lack of “ad rules” case isn’t shocked in the least. When asked for comment yesterday and he told us:
“Reports about the lack of optical scanners at walk-in voting precincts is not surprising. When a state agency is required to comply with rule making and fails to comply with rule making, there is nothing to stop the agency from changing its rules whenever it wants to.”
Although the current ongoing walk-in voting- at the Historic County Building- the only location on Kaua`i- will be providing paper ballots watch out for the vote eating DRE behemoths... that is if you want your vote to count.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
CHASIN’ THE CHICKENS AGAIN
CHASIN’ THE CHICKENS AGAIN: Well thanks to Ian Lind’s posting of the actual filings in the latest Dance of the Headless Chicken court case, at the risk of turning into a 24/7 “All Kevin Cronin All the Time” blog, we do have more news to clarify and supplement yesterday’s review of the latest Cronin machinations.
Yesterday we reported on the old switcheroo someone pulled in getting an Aug 7 court ruling that Chrystn Eads was “disqualified” from the House race for Kirk Caldwell’s old state house seat and that he was citing her case now as the reason for allowing replacement candidate Isaac Choy to run- this after Choy had been chosen to replace Caldwell causing the Republican Party to sue saying the replacement was outside the three day window for replacement candidates.
We wondered who filed the suit heard on Aug 7- how did it get into court? We hypothesized it might have been the Republicans or the Honolulu County Clerk.
But we should have know because the filer was none other than Cronin himself.
We have no inside info as to why Cronin did so but the only reason would be that he was ready to be reversed on the Caldwell decision pegging his date of withdrawal to when the elections office received his withdrawal in writing the day after the filing deadline, not his verbal withdrawal before the deadline.
To review the actual law again HRS 11-117 says nothing about written withdrawals except in cases of “ill health”
It says:
§11-117 Withdrawal of candidates; disqualification; death; notice. (a) Any candidate may withdraw not later than 4:30 p.m. on the day immediately following the close of filing for any reason and may withdraw after the close of filing up to 4:30 p.m. on the twentieth day prior to an election for reasons of ill health. When a candidate withdraws for ill health, the candidate shall give notice in writing to the chief election officer if the candidate was seeking a congressional or state office, or the candidate shall give notice in writing to the county clerk if the candidate was seeking a county office. The notice shall be accompanied by a statement from a licensed physician indicating that such ill health may endanger the candidate's life.
Despite this as we reported exclusively earlier an official state produced Candidate Fact Sheet says that, the law be damned, ALL withdrawals must be in writing.
The fact sheet says
Candidates may withdraw for any reason not later than the day immediately following the deadline to file nomination papers. To withdraw, the candidate must submit a written notice to the Chief Election Officer (for state and federal office candidacy) or to the appropriate City/County Clerk (for county office candidacy). (HRS Section 11-117).
Yesterday we weren’t quite sure how the news reports regarding the fact sheet fit into it all. But an examination of Cronin’s filings to have Eads’ “withdrawal” re-trigger Choy’s placement on the ballot puts the false fact sheet at the heart of his case for dating Caldwell’s withdrawal.
Cronin goes to great lengths to use the fact sheet to justify his decision, even getting the Ballot Operations Section Head of the Office of Elections, Lori Tomczyk, to file an affidavit saying that all candidates got the fact sheet, even Caldwell
Cronin uses the fact sheet that misrepresents the law as the sole legal justification for his decision in the Caldwell-withdrawal-date decision he made last month and, even though this was a filing for summery judgment in court the actual citation of the relevant law- HRS 11-117- is nowhere in the brief, only many mentions of the “fact sheet”.
Oh and by the way the fact sheet says on it’s cover
This Fact Sheet is intended for informational purposes only and should not be used as an authority on the Hawaii election law and candidate deadlines... Consult the Hawaii Revised Statutes and other sources for more detailed and accurate requirements.
Cronin, under fire for the Caldwell ruling and knowing that the actual law says nothing about withdrawals being in writing in all circumstances, knew he was vulnerable if a ruling on it ever got before a judge.
Just the fact that Caldwell wasn’t challenging his ruling wasn’t enough because there was an outstanding Republican Party-filed suit contesting the “in writing” decision. And if a judge read the actual law he was pretty sure to overrule Cronin- overrule him in a case that was high profile, one for which Cronin has been under continual fire in the press and the blogs and only one of the myriad of Cronin’s actions that have put the elections chief’s job in jeopardy.
What to do, what to do?. How could he make his Caldwell decision go away?
Easy- by essentially suing himself to put the situation with Eads before a judge and getting an official ruling on her case without anyone to challenge it (because no one knew) and fait accompli allowing the Democrats to re-select Choy based on Eads case, not Caldwell’s... all before anyone knew about the done deal.
We had suspected that maybe in the early confusing days after the filing deadline- when the chickens were all first decapitated- someone filed a case thinking it was Eads who was being replaced by Choy rather than Caldwell due to erroneous press reports.
Eads, for those who don’t remember, did not get her papers filed with enough signatures until after the 4:30 p.m., July 22 deadline but was allowed by Honolulu County Clerk Denise Decosta to collect signatures and file at 4:50 p.m.- an action that Decosta said constituted a non-filing in a decision she made that week.
But Cronin, seeing a little wiggle room revived the filing, saying essentially that the clerk’s mistaken action in accepting the papers late constituted a filing.
And so he went to court to challenge the filing, got a ruing on Aug 7, wrote to the Democratic Party Chair Brian Schatz- who had earlier used his influence to get Decosta to accept Eads filing- who then re-selected Choy to be the replacement candidate, this time for Eads.
And that, Cronin claims, makes his Caldwell decision irrelevant, so moot.
This is sure to cause Republican’s heads to explode when they realize that Schatz’s phone call to Decosta at the 4:30 July 22nd filing deadline asking her to “err on the side of inclusion” and allow Eads to go outside, gather signatures and then file her papers, ended up assuring the Democrats would have a candidate in the race for a House seat in a Democratic stronghold district which otherwise would go to the only person left in the race, a Republican.
Cronin is claiming that even though Eads filing was not legal and should by all reason be adjudged to have never happened, because of Decosta’s error in accepting it- at Schatz’s request- Eads had to be “disqualified” for the office she never qualified for.
The file contains no briefs from anyone but Cronin and his brief goes into convoluted detail as to supposed legal reasons why no one needed to be notified or allowed to challenge it.
Even though Decosta had ruled the filing wasn’t complete, Cronin now says it wasn’t “officially” not filed until he got a ruling from the court – a ruling that re-opened the door for Schatz’s Democratic Party to re-insert Choy’s name on the ballot without having to deal with the actual law in the Caldwell decision.
We’re not sure what’s contained in it but, as reported today in an article about an appeal of a recent administrative hearings officer’s ruling blasting Cronin for selecting an overpriced, second-rate-security election system from Hart InterCivic :
The Republican Party filed another suit Aug. 8 alleging that Cronin and the Office of Elections improperly allowed Democrat Isaac Choy to stand as a state House candidate for the 24th District (Manoa).
We haven’t seen that suit but fear it will spur another chapter in the Hawai`i Shyster Chronicles... making the three main mayoral-wannabe dunces and 15 or so clueless council would-be-clowns on Kaua`i very happy we suspect..
Don’t worry- we’ll get to you
Yesterday we reported on the old switcheroo someone pulled in getting an Aug 7 court ruling that Chrystn Eads was “disqualified” from the House race for Kirk Caldwell’s old state house seat and that he was citing her case now as the reason for allowing replacement candidate Isaac Choy to run- this after Choy had been chosen to replace Caldwell causing the Republican Party to sue saying the replacement was outside the three day window for replacement candidates.
We wondered who filed the suit heard on Aug 7- how did it get into court? We hypothesized it might have been the Republicans or the Honolulu County Clerk.
But we should have know because the filer was none other than Cronin himself.
We have no inside info as to why Cronin did so but the only reason would be that he was ready to be reversed on the Caldwell decision pegging his date of withdrawal to when the elections office received his withdrawal in writing the day after the filing deadline, not his verbal withdrawal before the deadline.
To review the actual law again HRS 11-117 says nothing about written withdrawals except in cases of “ill health”
It says:
§11-117 Withdrawal of candidates; disqualification; death; notice. (a) Any candidate may withdraw not later than 4:30 p.m. on the day immediately following the close of filing for any reason and may withdraw after the close of filing up to 4:30 p.m. on the twentieth day prior to an election for reasons of ill health. When a candidate withdraws for ill health, the candidate shall give notice in writing to the chief election officer if the candidate was seeking a congressional or state office, or the candidate shall give notice in writing to the county clerk if the candidate was seeking a county office. The notice shall be accompanied by a statement from a licensed physician indicating that such ill health may endanger the candidate's life.
Despite this as we reported exclusively earlier an official state produced Candidate Fact Sheet says that, the law be damned, ALL withdrawals must be in writing.
The fact sheet says
Candidates may withdraw for any reason not later than the day immediately following the deadline to file nomination papers. To withdraw, the candidate must submit a written notice to the Chief Election Officer (for state and federal office candidacy) or to the appropriate City/County Clerk (for county office candidacy). (HRS Section 11-117).
Yesterday we weren’t quite sure how the news reports regarding the fact sheet fit into it all. But an examination of Cronin’s filings to have Eads’ “withdrawal” re-trigger Choy’s placement on the ballot puts the false fact sheet at the heart of his case for dating Caldwell’s withdrawal.
Cronin goes to great lengths to use the fact sheet to justify his decision, even getting the Ballot Operations Section Head of the Office of Elections, Lori Tomczyk, to file an affidavit saying that all candidates got the fact sheet, even Caldwell
Cronin uses the fact sheet that misrepresents the law as the sole legal justification for his decision in the Caldwell-withdrawal-date decision he made last month and, even though this was a filing for summery judgment in court the actual citation of the relevant law- HRS 11-117- is nowhere in the brief, only many mentions of the “fact sheet”.
Oh and by the way the fact sheet says on it’s cover
This Fact Sheet is intended for informational purposes only and should not be used as an authority on the Hawaii election law and candidate deadlines... Consult the Hawaii Revised Statutes and other sources for more detailed and accurate requirements.
Cronin, under fire for the Caldwell ruling and knowing that the actual law says nothing about withdrawals being in writing in all circumstances, knew he was vulnerable if a ruling on it ever got before a judge.
Just the fact that Caldwell wasn’t challenging his ruling wasn’t enough because there was an outstanding Republican Party-filed suit contesting the “in writing” decision. And if a judge read the actual law he was pretty sure to overrule Cronin- overrule him in a case that was high profile, one for which Cronin has been under continual fire in the press and the blogs and only one of the myriad of Cronin’s actions that have put the elections chief’s job in jeopardy.
What to do, what to do?. How could he make his Caldwell decision go away?
Easy- by essentially suing himself to put the situation with Eads before a judge and getting an official ruling on her case without anyone to challenge it (because no one knew) and fait accompli allowing the Democrats to re-select Choy based on Eads case, not Caldwell’s... all before anyone knew about the done deal.
We had suspected that maybe in the early confusing days after the filing deadline- when the chickens were all first decapitated- someone filed a case thinking it was Eads who was being replaced by Choy rather than Caldwell due to erroneous press reports.
Eads, for those who don’t remember, did not get her papers filed with enough signatures until after the 4:30 p.m., July 22 deadline but was allowed by Honolulu County Clerk Denise Decosta to collect signatures and file at 4:50 p.m.- an action that Decosta said constituted a non-filing in a decision she made that week.
But Cronin, seeing a little wiggle room revived the filing, saying essentially that the clerk’s mistaken action in accepting the papers late constituted a filing.
And so he went to court to challenge the filing, got a ruing on Aug 7, wrote to the Democratic Party Chair Brian Schatz- who had earlier used his influence to get Decosta to accept Eads filing- who then re-selected Choy to be the replacement candidate, this time for Eads.
And that, Cronin claims, makes his Caldwell decision irrelevant, so moot.
This is sure to cause Republican’s heads to explode when they realize that Schatz’s phone call to Decosta at the 4:30 July 22nd filing deadline asking her to “err on the side of inclusion” and allow Eads to go outside, gather signatures and then file her papers, ended up assuring the Democrats would have a candidate in the race for a House seat in a Democratic stronghold district which otherwise would go to the only person left in the race, a Republican.
Cronin is claiming that even though Eads filing was not legal and should by all reason be adjudged to have never happened, because of Decosta’s error in accepting it- at Schatz’s request- Eads had to be “disqualified” for the office she never qualified for.
The file contains no briefs from anyone but Cronin and his brief goes into convoluted detail as to supposed legal reasons why no one needed to be notified or allowed to challenge it.
Even though Decosta had ruled the filing wasn’t complete, Cronin now says it wasn’t “officially” not filed until he got a ruling from the court – a ruling that re-opened the door for Schatz’s Democratic Party to re-insert Choy’s name on the ballot without having to deal with the actual law in the Caldwell decision.
We’re not sure what’s contained in it but, as reported today in an article about an appeal of a recent administrative hearings officer’s ruling blasting Cronin for selecting an overpriced, second-rate-security election system from Hart InterCivic :
The Republican Party filed another suit Aug. 8 alleging that Cronin and the Office of Elections improperly allowed Democrat Isaac Choy to stand as a state House candidate for the 24th District (Manoa).
We haven’t seen that suit but fear it will spur another chapter in the Hawai`i Shyster Chronicles... making the three main mayoral-wannabe dunces and 15 or so clueless council would-be-clowns on Kaua`i very happy we suspect..
Don’t worry- we’ll get to you
Monday, August 18, 2008
OUTFOXED AGAIN
OUTFOXED AGAIN: Just when it couldn’t get any more devoid of rationality it turns out that there’s now another wrinkle in the Dance of the Headless Chickens in the Honolulu filing deadline debacle today after Honolulu Advertiser reporter Derrick DePledge dug up an Aug 7 court ruling certifying a “replacement” for a candidate that was never an official candidate.
The replacement candidate, Isaac Choy, is the same one that was named in the Kirk Caldwell mess on July 26. But in a “that was our story and we were sticking to it but this one is much better” spiel from self declared “De Facto” Elections Chief Kevin Cronin, it is now Chrystn Eads- who never filed completed papers- that was “disqualified” to put Choy on the ballot.
And that didn’t happen until a formerly secret Aug. 7 court ruling.
Cronin claims that Eads’ whatever-it-was was not official until Aug 7 when a judge ruled on a case apparently filed by Republicans in the confusion as to who was being replaced when they filed the challenge.
Conflicting newspaper reports in the days after the filing deadline resulted in the Republicans originally challenging the “replacement” based on erroneous-at-the-time reports by Richard Borreca in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin that Eads was the one that “needed” replacing
But DePledge’s report at the time that it was indeed Caldwell that was being replaced turned out to be the correct one.
Caldwell was eliminated for filing for a second office-Honolulu County Council- at the same time he was still running for his House seat. Cronin ruled Caldwell’s verbal withdrawal wasn’t sufficient and when Caldwell filed “in writing” the next day Cronin’s subsequent ruling left him not running for anything.
The Republicans challenged the date of the Caldwell withdrawal saying it happened the day of the filing deadline, July 22, and in a ruling that flies in the face of the actual law Cronin ruled that the withdrawal came the day after the filing deadline and a “three day replacement” rule let the Democrats put Choy on the ballot- and do it via telephone on a Saturday after Cronin had ruled that Caldwell’s withdrawal via telephone was not sufficient.
But, it appears the Republican case or perhaps one from Honolulu County Clerk Denise Decosta, either on her own or as a reaction to the Republican challenge in the Eads matter (the article doesn’t make it clear who filed for the court ruling), went to court and in an August 7 ruling Eads was “officially” not on the ballot, which Cronin appears to be interpreting as a “disqualification”.
There was no explanation of how a candidate who never officially filed could be disqualified.
Therefore the state is claiming that Decosta’s ruling a few days after the filing deadline that Eads filing was incomplete wasn’t official” until the Aug. 7 ruling and therefore- get this- the Democrats had three days from Aug 7 to pick Choy (again).
And therefore, supposedly, the date of Caldwell’s withdrawal is moot because now Choy is replacing Eads.
Borreca is obviously psychic.
Actually though, the law requires that county clerks go to circuit court for these rulings and though we have some reason to believe it was Decosta who filed for the Aug 7 ruling, she refused to get a court ruling for the one she made that disqualified Caldwell.
This all means that, Cronin and the state is contending, it doesn’t matter when Caldwell withdrew for purposes of the actual Republican challenge saying that the withdrawal took place Tuesday July 22 and therefore the clock ran out on Friday- and therefore the Democrats missed the three day deadline.
And since Caldwell is not challenging when his withdrawal actually took place- even though he would be eligible to run for council if it had been “official” on July 22 instead of the 23rd- Cronin’s ruling in that case that is wasn’t official until the 23rd is for all intent and purpose now irrelevant.... and so it’s legality is no longer a question
In another odd yet relevant tidbit, today it was reported that, in trying to justify his contrary to law ruling in the Caldwell withdrawal, Cronin cited a state “Candidate Information Sheet” we exclusively reported on a week or so ago.
The sheet contains erroneous “written withdrawal required” information but contains a disclaimer that says the pamphlet may not be in compliance with the law and to check the actual law if need be
Cronin’s list of dirty deeds grows. So far he has:
-Failed to register to vote, a requirement for his job, until this month after being hired in February. He said he was too busy and always intended to take the required 30 seconds to complete, stamp and put the form in the mail. He declared himself the “De Facto” Elections Chief when the lack of voter registration came light.
-Ruled that Caldwell’s withdrawal had to be in writing despite past practices of the clerk’s and elections’ offices, and the clerk’s assurance to Caldwell that his withdrawal was official. Caldwell’s oral withdrawal was followed by a call by Decosta’s office to Cronin’s office saying he’d withdrawn. Cronin’s ruling came despite the fact that the law itself does not call for a written withdrawal except under for “health reasons”.
-Sent the ballots to the printer without the legally required review by non-partisan and party observers. Cronin said it was all ok because they turned out to be accurate- and has parsed rulings and manipulated the courts to keep them correct.
-Was severely chastised and reversed by a hearings officer for picking a known-to-be-remarkably-hackable Hart InterCivic election system- a firm he reportedly has had ties to- at a cost almost three times that of a competing bid. Cronin blamed the procurement laws rather than take responsibility
-Was reported here, in an exclusive report, to have been a defendant in a suit regarding keeping blacks off the ballot in 1988 when he was a lawyer for the Wisconsin elections office. After two lower court rulings apparently said he had acted so negligently or purposefully that he had to stand civil trial, a US appeals court ruled he had immunity from the suit- the type of immunity that all officials have for decisions in their official capacity.
We probably left out something. Perhaps the most egregious thing in all this is that the Elections Commission has given him a clean bill of health and is not even considering firing him.
--------------------#-------------
The replacement candidate, Isaac Choy, is the same one that was named in the Kirk Caldwell mess on July 26. But in a “that was our story and we were sticking to it but this one is much better” spiel from self declared “De Facto” Elections Chief Kevin Cronin, it is now Chrystn Eads- who never filed completed papers- that was “disqualified” to put Choy on the ballot.
And that didn’t happen until a formerly secret Aug. 7 court ruling.
Cronin claims that Eads’ whatever-it-was was not official until Aug 7 when a judge ruled on a case apparently filed by Republicans in the confusion as to who was being replaced when they filed the challenge.
Conflicting newspaper reports in the days after the filing deadline resulted in the Republicans originally challenging the “replacement” based on erroneous-at-the-time reports by Richard Borreca in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin that Eads was the one that “needed” replacing
But DePledge’s report at the time that it was indeed Caldwell that was being replaced turned out to be the correct one.
Caldwell was eliminated for filing for a second office-Honolulu County Council- at the same time he was still running for his House seat. Cronin ruled Caldwell’s verbal withdrawal wasn’t sufficient and when Caldwell filed “in writing” the next day Cronin’s subsequent ruling left him not running for anything.
The Republicans challenged the date of the Caldwell withdrawal saying it happened the day of the filing deadline, July 22, and in a ruling that flies in the face of the actual law Cronin ruled that the withdrawal came the day after the filing deadline and a “three day replacement” rule let the Democrats put Choy on the ballot- and do it via telephone on a Saturday after Cronin had ruled that Caldwell’s withdrawal via telephone was not sufficient.
But, it appears the Republican case or perhaps one from Honolulu County Clerk Denise Decosta, either on her own or as a reaction to the Republican challenge in the Eads matter (the article doesn’t make it clear who filed for the court ruling), went to court and in an August 7 ruling Eads was “officially” not on the ballot, which Cronin appears to be interpreting as a “disqualification”.
There was no explanation of how a candidate who never officially filed could be disqualified.
Therefore the state is claiming that Decosta’s ruling a few days after the filing deadline that Eads filing was incomplete wasn’t official” until the Aug. 7 ruling and therefore- get this- the Democrats had three days from Aug 7 to pick Choy (again).
And therefore, supposedly, the date of Caldwell’s withdrawal is moot because now Choy is replacing Eads.
Borreca is obviously psychic.
Actually though, the law requires that county clerks go to circuit court for these rulings and though we have some reason to believe it was Decosta who filed for the Aug 7 ruling, she refused to get a court ruling for the one she made that disqualified Caldwell.
This all means that, Cronin and the state is contending, it doesn’t matter when Caldwell withdrew for purposes of the actual Republican challenge saying that the withdrawal took place Tuesday July 22 and therefore the clock ran out on Friday- and therefore the Democrats missed the three day deadline.
And since Caldwell is not challenging when his withdrawal actually took place- even though he would be eligible to run for council if it had been “official” on July 22 instead of the 23rd- Cronin’s ruling in that case that is wasn’t official until the 23rd is for all intent and purpose now irrelevant.... and so it’s legality is no longer a question
In another odd yet relevant tidbit, today it was reported that, in trying to justify his contrary to law ruling in the Caldwell withdrawal, Cronin cited a state “Candidate Information Sheet” we exclusively reported on a week or so ago.
The sheet contains erroneous “written withdrawal required” information but contains a disclaimer that says the pamphlet may not be in compliance with the law and to check the actual law if need be
Cronin’s list of dirty deeds grows. So far he has:
-Failed to register to vote, a requirement for his job, until this month after being hired in February. He said he was too busy and always intended to take the required 30 seconds to complete, stamp and put the form in the mail. He declared himself the “De Facto” Elections Chief when the lack of voter registration came light.
-Ruled that Caldwell’s withdrawal had to be in writing despite past practices of the clerk’s and elections’ offices, and the clerk’s assurance to Caldwell that his withdrawal was official. Caldwell’s oral withdrawal was followed by a call by Decosta’s office to Cronin’s office saying he’d withdrawn. Cronin’s ruling came despite the fact that the law itself does not call for a written withdrawal except under for “health reasons”.
-Sent the ballots to the printer without the legally required review by non-partisan and party observers. Cronin said it was all ok because they turned out to be accurate- and has parsed rulings and manipulated the courts to keep them correct.
-Was severely chastised and reversed by a hearings officer for picking a known-to-be-remarkably-hackable Hart InterCivic election system- a firm he reportedly has had ties to- at a cost almost three times that of a competing bid. Cronin blamed the procurement laws rather than take responsibility
-Was reported here, in an exclusive report, to have been a defendant in a suit regarding keeping blacks off the ballot in 1988 when he was a lawyer for the Wisconsin elections office. After two lower court rulings apparently said he had acted so negligently or purposefully that he had to stand civil trial, a US appeals court ruled he had immunity from the suit- the type of immunity that all officials have for decisions in their official capacity.
We probably left out something. Perhaps the most egregious thing in all this is that the Elections Commission has given him a clean bill of health and is not even considering firing him.
--------------------#-------------
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
ANOTHER LABRADOR IN THE LABYRINTH
ANOTHER LABRADOR IN THE LABYRINTH: Apparently Maui attorney Lance Collins isn’t going to let Chief Elections Officer Kevin Cronin get away with conducting this year’s election using the Hart InerCivic machines if he can help it.
As we detailed yesterday an administrative hearings officer found that Cronin seemingly did everything in as wrong a manner as possible and apparently did it on purpose- in fact he blamed it on the fact he didn’t like the procurement code and so ignored it.
Cronin was apparently too lazy, too pompous, too busy or too crooked to enact the required HRS Chapter 91 administrative rules for using electronic machines, has no remorse for not doing it and plans to use the machines anyway this fall.
In an extensive brief we received today Collins points out that there is no need to use the electronic machines as planned because they are being used in conjunction with “optical-scan” paper ballots which could be used instead
He says that the “irreparable harm” of having potentially crooked elections should take precedence over the claim of the “late date” of the ruling especially since there is a remedy that can be fashioned without using the electronic devices.
Collins primarily cites the lack of any administrative rules for using computers at all to accept, tabulate and transmit votes and his brief goes into detail about the history of vote counting and transmission both nationally and in Hawai`i.
He expresses an understated almost disbelief that we could be soliciting electronic machines without having the proper rules in place for tabulating counting and transmitting the vote- rules to insure the integrity of the elections when using this new form of voting.
He points out of course how the proprietary nature of the code for these computer machines makes transparent observation impossible.
But he also points out that although machines of the past- such as the old Thomas Edison- invented “pulling the lever” type- were used for many years on the mainland, they could be examined by any “reasonable person with good eyesight”. But that person cannot observe much less examine something that goes on at the level of electrons.
He then cites all the horrors the administrative review found with Cronin’s “bad faith” actions and how Cronin “attempted to manipulate both the data and the facts in order to justify the award” to Hart as well as Cronin’s “reckless disregard” for the state procurement code.
The problem is, Collins noted, that with all that tells us “don’t use these machines and this vendor” the hearings officer is going to let Cronin force us to use an unreliable open-to-abuse bunch of electronic machines in the 2008 election anyway.
The brief says that the plaintiffs stress the “potential for imminent irreparable harm” and points out that the ruling said that Cronin “acted in bad faith” with the unstated conclusion of “and this guy wants to run our elections where integrity and good faith are essential?”.
Collins says that “unlike many jurisdictions that have moved totally to DRE systems (“direct electronic recording” i.e.- voting on computers) DRE’s will be used on election day in parallel with marksense (optical scan of black-pen-marked on paper).ballots. The state is intending to use the older system for a portion of the voting.”
In other words the we could just scrap the electronic machines and use the optical scan ballot - the method where you pick your choice on a piece of paper with a black pen- and feed them into a machine as we have done for many years now, possibly using the electronic machines only for those who are visually impaired who previous to electronic balloting had to sacrifice privacy in order to vote.
“Clearly” Collins writes “the limited time remaining before the election is not sufficient equitable basis to allow an unsecured illegal election to proceed”.
We’ll see what the court says but if you want your vote to count in Kevin “the Minotaur” Cronin’s elections this year best to use a pen and paper.
As we detailed yesterday an administrative hearings officer found that Cronin seemingly did everything in as wrong a manner as possible and apparently did it on purpose- in fact he blamed it on the fact he didn’t like the procurement code and so ignored it.
Cronin was apparently too lazy, too pompous, too busy or too crooked to enact the required HRS Chapter 91 administrative rules for using electronic machines, has no remorse for not doing it and plans to use the machines anyway this fall.
In an extensive brief we received today Collins points out that there is no need to use the electronic machines as planned because they are being used in conjunction with “optical-scan” paper ballots which could be used instead
He says that the “irreparable harm” of having potentially crooked elections should take precedence over the claim of the “late date” of the ruling especially since there is a remedy that can be fashioned without using the electronic devices.
Collins primarily cites the lack of any administrative rules for using computers at all to accept, tabulate and transmit votes and his brief goes into detail about the history of vote counting and transmission both nationally and in Hawai`i.
He expresses an understated almost disbelief that we could be soliciting electronic machines without having the proper rules in place for tabulating counting and transmitting the vote- rules to insure the integrity of the elections when using this new form of voting.
He points out of course how the proprietary nature of the code for these computer machines makes transparent observation impossible.
But he also points out that although machines of the past- such as the old Thomas Edison- invented “pulling the lever” type- were used for many years on the mainland, they could be examined by any “reasonable person with good eyesight”. But that person cannot observe much less examine something that goes on at the level of electrons.
He then cites all the horrors the administrative review found with Cronin’s “bad faith” actions and how Cronin “attempted to manipulate both the data and the facts in order to justify the award” to Hart as well as Cronin’s “reckless disregard” for the state procurement code.
The problem is, Collins noted, that with all that tells us “don’t use these machines and this vendor” the hearings officer is going to let Cronin force us to use an unreliable open-to-abuse bunch of electronic machines in the 2008 election anyway.
The brief says that the plaintiffs stress the “potential for imminent irreparable harm” and points out that the ruling said that Cronin “acted in bad faith” with the unstated conclusion of “and this guy wants to run our elections where integrity and good faith are essential?”.
Collins says that “unlike many jurisdictions that have moved totally to DRE systems (“direct electronic recording” i.e.- voting on computers) DRE’s will be used on election day in parallel with marksense (optical scan of black-pen-marked on paper).ballots. The state is intending to use the older system for a portion of the voting.”
In other words the we could just scrap the electronic machines and use the optical scan ballot - the method where you pick your choice on a piece of paper with a black pen- and feed them into a machine as we have done for many years now, possibly using the electronic machines only for those who are visually impaired who previous to electronic balloting had to sacrifice privacy in order to vote.
“Clearly” Collins writes “the limited time remaining before the election is not sufficient equitable basis to allow an unsecured illegal election to proceed”.
We’ll see what the court says but if you want your vote to count in Kevin “the Minotaur” Cronin’s elections this year best to use a pen and paper.
Monday, August 11, 2008
DIGGIN’ UP THE YARD
DIGGIN’ UP THE YARD: Our statement yesterday- based on various press reports- that Chief Elections Officer Kevin Cronin had no election experience in Wisconsin turns out to be wrong.
And one of the experiences he had was being sued for violating the voting rights of 80 black people in the town of Blackwell, Wisconsin in 1987 while he was legal counsel for the Wisconsin state elections board from 1983 to 1988.
The town sued Cronin apparently for giving them the advice not to allow them to vote, allegedly in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1983, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the 14th and 15th amendments and Wisconsin state law..
According to filing in the US Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit argued Feb. 25, 1987.and decided May 29, 1987 these were some of the facts.
The plaintiffs filed this action purporting to represent themselves and a class consisting of Blackwell Job Corps Center members who were denied their right to vote either because they were Black or because they were job corps members. The plaintiffs contended in their complaint that at a Blackwell polling place on November 6, 1984, they were asked by the defendant Henkel whether they intended to reside in Blackwell in the future. Those who did not answer in the affirmative were considered non-residents and ineligible to vote. Some apparently were not permitted to vote at all, while others were permitted to vote only in the presidential election. The plaintiffs assert that this action of Henkel and other Blackwell election officials violated the laws of Wisconsin, the 14th and 15th Amendments to the United States Constitution, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.
The Town and Henkel filed a third-party complaint against Cronin, an attorney for the State Election Board, wherein they alleged that Cronin advised a member of the Town Election Board that any person who indicated to election officials that he did not consider himself a resident of Wisconsin was ineligible to vote and should not receive a ballot. The third-party complaint further alleged that Blackwell election officials, acting upon this advice, refused to permit certain members of plaintiffs' class to vote. While the third-party complaint also named Nicolet National Forest as a defendant by reason of the fact that it administers the Job Corps Center at Blackwell, Nicolet was subsequently dismissed and there is no issue raised in the present appeals regarding that dismissal.
Though two lower courts would not dismiss the case against Cronin the US Court of Appeals, in a very complicated rationale and convoluted ruling found that Cronin had immunity in the case and so he could not be sued.
In overturning the lower courts rulings the Appeals Court 7th said:
(T)he Town and Henkel contend that Cronin forfeited his qualified immunity by violating clearly established Wisconsin election law, Wis.Stats. Sec. 6.92 et seq. In Wisconsin, when a voter is challenged as to residence, he is to be placed under oath and asked whether he intends to make his home in the ward in which he is seeking to vote. If notwithstanding the answer given, the vote is still challenged, the voter may take an oath that, among other things, he is a resident of the ward. He may then submit a ballot under challenge which is retained separately from unchallenged ballots. The fact that Cronin's advice did not include all of the implementing details under the Wisconsin statutes is plainly insufficient to permit a finding that Cronin violated clearly established Wisconsin election laws.
We do not mean to imply in so stating that had Cronin violated a Wisconsin election law, under the facts of this case, it would have constituted a violation of clearly established federal law. Cronin would forfeit his qualified immunity for liability under federal law by violating state law only if the violation of state law provided the basis for the federal cause of action. Davis v. Scherer, 468 U.S. 183, 104 S.Ct. 3012, 3020 n. 12, 82 L.Ed.2d 139 (1984). We need not and do not address that issue in this case.
For the reasons stated, pursuant to the order issued in this case by this court on February 26, 1987, the cross-appeal of defendants and third-party plaintiffs Town of Blackwell and Jennie Henkel is dismissed for lack of appellate jurisdiction and the district court's denial of third-party defendant Kevin B. Cronin's motion to dismiss is REVERSED and REMANDED with instructions to dismiss him. Costs are taxed to defendants, third-party plaintiffs Town of Blackwell and Jennie Henkel.
In other developments and updates to yesterday’s column, the first reported- by Larry Geller at Disappeared News today- is an interesting California analysis of the Hart InerCivic voting machines that Cronin chose spurring an administrative ruling that he royally screwed up
It’s really scary to read how hackable the Hart system is and it’s clear that anyone reading what they found in California would not and could not have approved the Hart system unless they were either dumb or corrupt or both.
And Hawai`i is using those machines this November as it stands now.
Second is an interesting paragraph in an article at Wing-Nut-Central, the Hawai`i Reporter, by Republican Robert R. Kessler who says he filed two challenges to House candidate Isaac Choy’s eligibility as the Democratic replacement for Kirk Caldwell. He notes that although Cronin ruled that only Caldwell’s written withdrawal was official Cronin’s determinations may depend on what he ate for breakfast- or, for the cynical, who buttered his toast.
According to Kessler, Cronin wrote the following regarding the reporting of the replacement within the three day window the law requires.
“I authorized the Democratic Party of Hawaii to inform me of the name of the individual the Party appointed to fill the vacancy by email, fax or telephone no later than 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, July 26, 2008. The Democratic Party so informed me timely.”
All deadlines are apparently not created equal.
Maybe that can be explained by another interesting paragraph from a July 30 article in Honolulu Weekly.
In a piece by Travis Quezon on the “dance of the headless chickens” that occurred in Honolulu on and after candidate filing deadline called “You call this democracy?; Insiders' edge helps Democrats pull a fast one on Hawai`i voters” Travis tells us that:
“In a 2002 court decision involving then-governor Ben Cayetano petitioning for a writ that directs then-Chief Election Officer Dwayne Yoshina to wave time limits mandated under HRS §11-118, the court acknowledges that the election officer has discretion to waive any or all of the law’s requirements in “special circumstances.”
We haven’t been able to track down the case to which Quezon is referring yet but if that’s the law of the land it could go a long way toward explaining the arbitrary and capaciousness of Cronin’s rulings.
And one of the experiences he had was being sued for violating the voting rights of 80 black people in the town of Blackwell, Wisconsin in 1987 while he was legal counsel for the Wisconsin state elections board from 1983 to 1988.
The town sued Cronin apparently for giving them the advice not to allow them to vote, allegedly in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1983, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the 14th and 15th amendments and Wisconsin state law..
According to filing in the US Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit argued Feb. 25, 1987.and decided May 29, 1987 these were some of the facts.
The plaintiffs filed this action purporting to represent themselves and a class consisting of Blackwell Job Corps Center members who were denied their right to vote either because they were Black or because they were job corps members. The plaintiffs contended in their complaint that at a Blackwell polling place on November 6, 1984, they were asked by the defendant Henkel whether they intended to reside in Blackwell in the future. Those who did not answer in the affirmative were considered non-residents and ineligible to vote. Some apparently were not permitted to vote at all, while others were permitted to vote only in the presidential election. The plaintiffs assert that this action of Henkel and other Blackwell election officials violated the laws of Wisconsin, the 14th and 15th Amendments to the United States Constitution, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.
The Town and Henkel filed a third-party complaint against Cronin, an attorney for the State Election Board, wherein they alleged that Cronin advised a member of the Town Election Board that any person who indicated to election officials that he did not consider himself a resident of Wisconsin was ineligible to vote and should not receive a ballot. The third-party complaint further alleged that Blackwell election officials, acting upon this advice, refused to permit certain members of plaintiffs' class to vote. While the third-party complaint also named Nicolet National Forest as a defendant by reason of the fact that it administers the Job Corps Center at Blackwell, Nicolet was subsequently dismissed and there is no issue raised in the present appeals regarding that dismissal.
Though two lower courts would not dismiss the case against Cronin the US Court of Appeals, in a very complicated rationale and convoluted ruling found that Cronin had immunity in the case and so he could not be sued.
In overturning the lower courts rulings the Appeals Court 7th said:
(T)he Town and Henkel contend that Cronin forfeited his qualified immunity by violating clearly established Wisconsin election law, Wis.Stats. Sec. 6.92 et seq. In Wisconsin, when a voter is challenged as to residence, he is to be placed under oath and asked whether he intends to make his home in the ward in which he is seeking to vote. If notwithstanding the answer given, the vote is still challenged, the voter may take an oath that, among other things, he is a resident of the ward. He may then submit a ballot under challenge which is retained separately from unchallenged ballots. The fact that Cronin's advice did not include all of the implementing details under the Wisconsin statutes is plainly insufficient to permit a finding that Cronin violated clearly established Wisconsin election laws.
We do not mean to imply in so stating that had Cronin violated a Wisconsin election law, under the facts of this case, it would have constituted a violation of clearly established federal law. Cronin would forfeit his qualified immunity for liability under federal law by violating state law only if the violation of state law provided the basis for the federal cause of action. Davis v. Scherer, 468 U.S. 183, 104 S.Ct. 3012, 3020 n. 12, 82 L.Ed.2d 139 (1984). We need not and do not address that issue in this case.
For the reasons stated, pursuant to the order issued in this case by this court on February 26, 1987, the cross-appeal of defendants and third-party plaintiffs Town of Blackwell and Jennie Henkel is dismissed for lack of appellate jurisdiction and the district court's denial of third-party defendant Kevin B. Cronin's motion to dismiss is REVERSED and REMANDED with instructions to dismiss him. Costs are taxed to defendants, third-party plaintiffs Town of Blackwell and Jennie Henkel.
In other developments and updates to yesterday’s column, the first reported- by Larry Geller at Disappeared News today- is an interesting California analysis of the Hart InerCivic voting machines that Cronin chose spurring an administrative ruling that he royally screwed up
It’s really scary to read how hackable the Hart system is and it’s clear that anyone reading what they found in California would not and could not have approved the Hart system unless they were either dumb or corrupt or both.
And Hawai`i is using those machines this November as it stands now.
Second is an interesting paragraph in an article at Wing-Nut-Central, the Hawai`i Reporter, by Republican Robert R. Kessler who says he filed two challenges to House candidate Isaac Choy’s eligibility as the Democratic replacement for Kirk Caldwell. He notes that although Cronin ruled that only Caldwell’s written withdrawal was official Cronin’s determinations may depend on what he ate for breakfast- or, for the cynical, who buttered his toast.
According to Kessler, Cronin wrote the following regarding the reporting of the replacement within the three day window the law requires.
“I authorized the Democratic Party of Hawaii to inform me of the name of the individual the Party appointed to fill the vacancy by email, fax or telephone no later than 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, July 26, 2008. The Democratic Party so informed me timely.”
All deadlines are apparently not created equal.
Maybe that can be explained by another interesting paragraph from a July 30 article in Honolulu Weekly.
In a piece by Travis Quezon on the “dance of the headless chickens” that occurred in Honolulu on and after candidate filing deadline called “You call this democracy?; Insiders' edge helps Democrats pull a fast one on Hawai`i voters” Travis tells us that:
“In a 2002 court decision involving then-governor Ben Cayetano petitioning for a writ that directs then-Chief Election Officer Dwayne Yoshina to wave time limits mandated under HRS §11-118, the court acknowledges that the election officer has discretion to waive any or all of the law’s requirements in “special circumstances.”
We haven’t been able to track down the case to which Quezon is referring yet but if that’s the law of the land it could go a long way toward explaining the arbitrary and capaciousness of Cronin’s rulings.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
UNTRAINABLE
UNTRAINABLE: When we heard that the 2000 elections Florida fiasco was spurring election balloting reform we thought maybe there would finally be a universal, impeccable criterion for casting and counting the vote- maybe even (gasp) a national standard.
But the dolts in Congress instead thought that electronics and technology was the answer and so decided to promote the use of the most easily compromised of all balloting techniques- computers.
Then the states followed suit selecting big-black-opaque-box methodologies rather than the obviously superior paper ballots and optical scanners.
The latter is the method endorsed universally by international election observers and national organizations like FairVote and The League of Women Voters (LWV) - not to mention standardized school-test providers- as the most accurate, transparent and untamperable technology of all.
Not only was a national standard not on the table but some of the individual states’ elections bureaus seemed as though they never gave a thought to how to run an accurate, fair and verifiable election.
Inquiring minds wanted to know- “who are these idiots who don’t get it - where do they come from”? Who were these people who were ignoring all the protests over a lack of a verifiable paper trial and potential electronic hacking- not to mention the absurd use of outside, contracted, propriety systems rather than transparent in-house arrangements?.
Now we know. They apparently come from Wisconsin and their name is Kevin Cronin, the new Hawai`i Chief Elections Officer .
Today an administrative hearings officer tore Cronin a new one- or more accurately widened the one that was originally augered by a slew of other self-induced orifice expanding procedures- finding that Cronin used “a ‘reckless disregard” for state procurement laws (and) attempted to manipulate both the data and the facts in order to justify the award of a contract” to Hart InterCivic to conduct our next election, according to today’s Honolulu Advertiser.
The article says that Cronin, who reportedly had previous business ties to elections equipment provider Hart “was unqualified to do the cost analysis” and according to the administrative ruling his conclusions were “incomplete, inaccurate, unreliable and misleading”, in approving Hart’s bid of $52.8 million over an $18.1 million bid by Election Systems & Software (ES&S) to provide election equipment.
The judge called Cronin’s decision "clearly unreasonable." according to the article.
The shenanigans of King Cronin- who last month claimed he was still the “de facto” Elections Chief when it was found he didn’t comply with the requirements for the job in not registering to vote in Hawai`i - have reached the point where lunatics like racist Ken Conkin and Republican stalwart State Senator Sam Sloam sound like reasonable, sane people in calling for him to be fired.
Cronin has apparently succeeded in doing something no one in the islands has been able to do- bring the Democrats and Republicans together.
But let’s remember how this “new” chief elections officer came to the office.
Arguably Dwayne Yoshina administered Hawai`i elections as flawlessly as could be expected for a decade.
But in the election when Hawai`i switched from the old punch cards to the new optical scan of paper ballots, horror of horrors, they took until way after midnight to get the count right what with the use of new equipment- mostly because the usual election observers and the staff were not yet experienced with the new system so kept asking for reviews and safeguards to make sure everything was accurate and all the new procedures were being followed.
This was described to us by a source at the elections bureau- one who we know to be of impeccable integrity- who was “at the podium” in the vote counting center in the State House chamber with Yoshina that night as his assistant-in-charge.
Well the media blew a gasket. “How dare Yoshina keep us waiting” they whined. In the days after the election the actual results were give short shrift compared to the recriminations over the delays that inconvenienced the reporters from the papers and TV news outlets.
And, sensing political gain, joining them in their sniveling and taking up the battle cry was gubernatorial loser Linda Lingle who called for Yoshina’s head.
Then, after a long somewhat ugly battle where all the pols distanced themselves from Yoshina, Lingle was elected four years later and they finally had the wherewithal to replace all the election commissioners with enough anti-Yoshina-ites to force him out by refusing to renewing his contract.
And who did they pick as a permanent replacement? Some government lawyer from Wisconsin who had not only never been involved with Hawai`i elections and was unfamiliar with our election laws and procedures but had never even been involved in any elections anywhere.
And they picked a guy who makes the words “arbitrary and capricious decision making” sound like a compliment..
Cronin’s imperial administration has become the biggest laughing stock in Honolulu and across the state- and that’s hard to do considering the usual band of connected, appointed baboozes that head up many of our state government entities.
Perhaps the “tearing of a new one” we referred to earlier helped facilitate the extraction of some of Cronin’s other rulings of late, such as the one that held that all withdrawals from election races had to be in writing despite the fact that the actual law doesn’t require it and in fact denotes the singular circumstances- for health reasons- under which a written withdrawal is necessary.
Or his order to print the ballots while challenges were still pending and failing to let anyone examine them beforehand, both of which are violations of state law.
As we detailed* quite a few times the candidate withdrawal ruling threw the Honolulu County Clerk’s office into turmoil since it called into question whether a replacement candidate for Kirk Caldwell was selected in the “three day window”- as a lawsuit filed by the Republican Party this week claims- and therefore in fact who would be on the ballots... which were already printed.
Through the Kaua`i and State LWV we often worked with Yoshina and many in his office as observers and never had a complaint about his running anything but a fair and transparent election.
Dwayne bent over backwards to integrate all observers into the process and no one we ever heard from left the tabulation centers without all reasonable concerns being addressed.
Yet political hacks like Lingle and some in the legislature-especially the leadership at the time- couldn’t leave well enough alone. They had to bring in an inexperienced pompous ass from 4000 miles away to do things as wrong as he could for as long as he could and then, rather than acknowledge mistakes, defend them and claim the privilege to make more.
And the big winner in all this? Well let’s just say don’t expect to hear much about Rex “got Porn?” Johnson this week.
---------
*Correction and Note: We reported in error last week that only withdrawals after the filing deadline could spur a replacement but, though the wording in HRS 11-118 was a little unclear, we did misinterpreted the plain meaning. Strangely enough no one pointed out our mistake. We regret the error.
But the dolts in Congress instead thought that electronics and technology was the answer and so decided to promote the use of the most easily compromised of all balloting techniques- computers.
Then the states followed suit selecting big-black-opaque-box methodologies rather than the obviously superior paper ballots and optical scanners.
The latter is the method endorsed universally by international election observers and national organizations like FairVote and The League of Women Voters (LWV) - not to mention standardized school-test providers- as the most accurate, transparent and untamperable technology of all.
Not only was a national standard not on the table but some of the individual states’ elections bureaus seemed as though they never gave a thought to how to run an accurate, fair and verifiable election.
Inquiring minds wanted to know- “who are these idiots who don’t get it - where do they come from”? Who were these people who were ignoring all the protests over a lack of a verifiable paper trial and potential electronic hacking- not to mention the absurd use of outside, contracted, propriety systems rather than transparent in-house arrangements?.
Now we know. They apparently come from Wisconsin and their name is Kevin Cronin, the new Hawai`i Chief Elections Officer .
Today an administrative hearings officer tore Cronin a new one- or more accurately widened the one that was originally augered by a slew of other self-induced orifice expanding procedures- finding that Cronin used “a ‘reckless disregard” for state procurement laws (and) attempted to manipulate both the data and the facts in order to justify the award of a contract” to Hart InterCivic to conduct our next election, according to today’s Honolulu Advertiser.
The article says that Cronin, who reportedly had previous business ties to elections equipment provider Hart “was unqualified to do the cost analysis” and according to the administrative ruling his conclusions were “incomplete, inaccurate, unreliable and misleading”, in approving Hart’s bid of $52.8 million over an $18.1 million bid by Election Systems & Software (ES&S) to provide election equipment.
The judge called Cronin’s decision "clearly unreasonable." according to the article.
The shenanigans of King Cronin- who last month claimed he was still the “de facto” Elections Chief when it was found he didn’t comply with the requirements for the job in not registering to vote in Hawai`i - have reached the point where lunatics like racist Ken Conkin and Republican stalwart State Senator Sam Sloam sound like reasonable, sane people in calling for him to be fired.
Cronin has apparently succeeded in doing something no one in the islands has been able to do- bring the Democrats and Republicans together.
But let’s remember how this “new” chief elections officer came to the office.
Arguably Dwayne Yoshina administered Hawai`i elections as flawlessly as could be expected for a decade.
But in the election when Hawai`i switched from the old punch cards to the new optical scan of paper ballots, horror of horrors, they took until way after midnight to get the count right what with the use of new equipment- mostly because the usual election observers and the staff were not yet experienced with the new system so kept asking for reviews and safeguards to make sure everything was accurate and all the new procedures were being followed.
This was described to us by a source at the elections bureau- one who we know to be of impeccable integrity- who was “at the podium” in the vote counting center in the State House chamber with Yoshina that night as his assistant-in-charge.
Well the media blew a gasket. “How dare Yoshina keep us waiting” they whined. In the days after the election the actual results were give short shrift compared to the recriminations over the delays that inconvenienced the reporters from the papers and TV news outlets.
And, sensing political gain, joining them in their sniveling and taking up the battle cry was gubernatorial loser Linda Lingle who called for Yoshina’s head.
Then, after a long somewhat ugly battle where all the pols distanced themselves from Yoshina, Lingle was elected four years later and they finally had the wherewithal to replace all the election commissioners with enough anti-Yoshina-ites to force him out by refusing to renewing his contract.
And who did they pick as a permanent replacement? Some government lawyer from Wisconsin who had not only never been involved with Hawai`i elections and was unfamiliar with our election laws and procedures but had never even been involved in any elections anywhere.
And they picked a guy who makes the words “arbitrary and capricious decision making” sound like a compliment..
Cronin’s imperial administration has become the biggest laughing stock in Honolulu and across the state- and that’s hard to do considering the usual band of connected, appointed baboozes that head up many of our state government entities.
Perhaps the “tearing of a new one” we referred to earlier helped facilitate the extraction of some of Cronin’s other rulings of late, such as the one that held that all withdrawals from election races had to be in writing despite the fact that the actual law doesn’t require it and in fact denotes the singular circumstances- for health reasons- under which a written withdrawal is necessary.
Or his order to print the ballots while challenges were still pending and failing to let anyone examine them beforehand, both of which are violations of state law.
As we detailed* quite a few times the candidate withdrawal ruling threw the Honolulu County Clerk’s office into turmoil since it called into question whether a replacement candidate for Kirk Caldwell was selected in the “three day window”- as a lawsuit filed by the Republican Party this week claims- and therefore in fact who would be on the ballots... which were already printed.
Through the Kaua`i and State LWV we often worked with Yoshina and many in his office as observers and never had a complaint about his running anything but a fair and transparent election.
Dwayne bent over backwards to integrate all observers into the process and no one we ever heard from left the tabulation centers without all reasonable concerns being addressed.
Yet political hacks like Lingle and some in the legislature-especially the leadership at the time- couldn’t leave well enough alone. They had to bring in an inexperienced pompous ass from 4000 miles away to do things as wrong as he could for as long as he could and then, rather than acknowledge mistakes, defend them and claim the privilege to make more.
And the big winner in all this? Well let’s just say don’t expect to hear much about Rex “got Porn?” Johnson this week.
---------
*Correction and Note: We reported in error last week that only withdrawals after the filing deadline could spur a replacement but, though the wording in HRS 11-118 was a little unclear, we did misinterpreted the plain meaning. Strangely enough no one pointed out our mistake. We regret the error.
Sunday, August 3, 2008
PNN REQUEST FOR DOCUMENTS
PNN REQUEST FOR DOCUMENTS: The following email was sent at 3:10 p.m. Sunday August 2. 2008.
To: Kaua`i County Clerk Peter Nakamura
From: Andy Parx- Editor, Parx News Net
RE: Request for documentation of filing sufficiency for candidate Mel Rapozo in the Special Mayoral Election, 2008.
Dear Mr. Nakamura,
As you probably know, this week the Chief Elections Officer of the State of Hawai`i Kevin Cronin ruled that withdrawals of filings for electoral office are unofficial unless submitted in writing.
That ruling is available at http://ilind.net/misc%20/2008/choy-ruling.pdf
I am requesting inspection of the documentation of Councilman Mel Rapozo’s time-stamped, written withdrawal from the 2008 county council election Rapozo filed on 2/22/08 and his 7/22/08, time-stamped filing for the office of mayor in the special mayoral election of 2008.
I am requesting your review of records for the sufficiency of Mr. Rapozo’s mayoral petition in light of Mr. Cronin’s .ruling as well as the ruling of Honolulu County Clerk Denise Decosta, available at http://ilind.net/misc%20/2008/caldwell-ruling.pdf , in the case of Rep. Kirk Caldwell’s multiple filings for State house and Honolulu county council.
Please email or call me at 332-7878 as soon as your office is able to locate the two documents and/or make a determination on this matter.
If necessary for action, please consider this an official challenge as to validity and/or sufficiency of Mr. Rapozo’s mayoral filing.
Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter,
Andy Parx,
Editor Publisher, Parx News Netcc: Readers of got windmills? at http://parxnewsdaily.blogspot.com/
To: Kaua`i County Clerk Peter Nakamura
From: Andy Parx- Editor, Parx News Net
RE: Request for documentation of filing sufficiency for candidate Mel Rapozo in the Special Mayoral Election, 2008.
Dear Mr. Nakamura,
As you probably know, this week the Chief Elections Officer of the State of Hawai`i Kevin Cronin ruled that withdrawals of filings for electoral office are unofficial unless submitted in writing.
That ruling is available at http://ilind.net/misc%20/2008/choy-ruling.pdf
I am requesting inspection of the documentation of Councilman Mel Rapozo’s time-stamped, written withdrawal from the 2008 county council election Rapozo filed on 2/22/08 and his 7/22/08, time-stamped filing for the office of mayor in the special mayoral election of 2008.
I am requesting your review of records for the sufficiency of Mr. Rapozo’s mayoral petition in light of Mr. Cronin’s .ruling as well as the ruling of Honolulu County Clerk Denise Decosta, available at http://ilind.net/misc%20/2008/caldwell-ruling.pdf , in the case of Rep. Kirk Caldwell’s multiple filings for State house and Honolulu county council.
Please email or call me at 332-7878 as soon as your office is able to locate the two documents and/or make a determination on this matter.
If necessary for action, please consider this an official challenge as to validity and/or sufficiency of Mr. Rapozo’s mayoral filing.
Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter,
Andy Parx,
Editor Publisher, Parx News Netcc: Readers of got windmills? at http://parxnewsdaily.blogspot.com/
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