One of the most irritating bumper stickers that I see somewhat regularly (remember where I live) is You Can’t Be ‘Pro Child’ And ‘Pro Choice’. Today, I saw a car that had that sticker on one side of its bumper and an even more irritating one on its other side “there would be no christmas if mary had been pro choice”. Argh. What the fuck kind of moron doesn’t understand that being pro-choice doesn’t necessarily mean being pro-abortion and really definitely doesn’t mean that you have to have an abortion. My mom is pro-choice and gave birth 5 times and raised us to be pro-choice, too. I got irritated enough that I wrote a little slogan in MS Word, ran it over into MS paint, saved it as a PNG and created a cafepress store with it.

My slogan is the very simple “My Mom is Pro Choice”.

I’m not doing this to make money. I would really love nothing more than to see some kids in the kid clothing they let you sell, but if I ever see any adults wearing it, that would rock, too. I put a 5% markup on the items. If I ever make any money off this stuff, I’ll use it to hire someone to make a real logo out of this phrase and then the rest will go to NARAL. If someone (I’ve got a couple of friends who are graphic designers) makes me a logo, then any dime I make off selling this stuff will go

I really want to read the book discussed in this article by its author Lance deHaven-Smith, an academic expert on Florida elections, electoral trends, and elections law. He’s written a book on the Florida debacle in 2000. He makes several really interesting points just in the interview, some directly related to the 2000 election and some not.

1. There were 175,000 spoiled ballots. Most of those were not the famous “undervotes” with hanging chads, etc. About 2/3rds were “overvotes” where the ballot was marked for two candidates. From his sampling, it appears that a large portion of those were ballots where Al Gore was selected and then written in, too. Black voters in Florida so often have found their votes disqualified on minor technicalities that they have a tendency to try to make extra sure that their intent is clear. Gore “overvotes” outnumber Bush “overvotes” by nearly 3 to 1.

2. The political elites on both sides no longer really respect democracy and the need to put it ahead of partisan interests, etc. Politics has become more of a win at all costs game in recent decades.

3. The GOP knows that Florida’s demographic trends are working against it. They have a vested interest in seeing that votes aren’t counted, especially when they know those votes are coming from minority precincts. Katherine Harris’s attempt to make the legal standard for a valid vote murky ran counter to all sorts of case law on the subject. Under precedents well established in Florida law, any ballot where Gore’s name was selected and written in should have been counted as vote for Gore because the intent of the voter was clear. When it became clear that their attempts at subverting Florida law wouldn’t stop the votes from being counted and that the legal standards for counting votes was quite clear, despite media portrayals, they went to the partisan U.S. Supreme Court and got it to put the election on ice.

Since there was no way for the court to do that and be consistent with its own rulings and judicial philosophy, they stipulated that the ruling was a one off that would set no precedent for future courts. Gore, doing what our own political tradition would dictate as the right thing, accepted the ruling. And that, too, related to part of what deHaven-Smith wsa saying. Once you get to that stage where one or both sides is willing to do whatever is necessary to win, it becomes an escalating arms race. Gore may have been willing to just submit. In a similar case in the future, Democrats can lay down and take it again or they can escalate. Both are bad for democracy.

This was sent to me by email, but the information is also available at http://www.blackboxvoting.org

Leon County, FL to Dump Diebold After Undetectable Hack Reverses Test Election!
Results Completely Flipped Despite 800 Documented Officials Told by Diebold That It Couldn’t be Done!
Election Supervisor Requests Funds to Replace Diebold in County, Says ‘We will never use Diebold in an election again’

The bad news keeps rolling in for Diebold. But that is hopefully good news for democracy and America! And it doesn’t get any plainer than this stunning report from election watchdogs at BlackBoxVoting.org

Even as the beleaguered American Voting Machine company smarts from yesterday’s filing of a securities fraud class action suit a test election was carried out on Diebold voting machinery in Leon County, Florida. Diebold’s security measures failed miserably and were easily defeated by a hack performed by a computer security professional on a Diebold Touch-Screen Voting Machine and Central Tabulator.

In a post yesterday about the test and its remarkable results, BBV’s Jim March gave this stunning summary of what happened: Due to security design issues and contractual non-performance, Leon County supervisor of elections Ion Sancho told Black Box Voting that he will never use Diebold in an election again. He has requested funds to replace the Diebold system from the county. He will issue a formal announcement to this effect
shortly. Finnish security expert Harri Hursti proved that Diebold lied to Secretaries of State across the nation when Diebold claimed votes could not be changed on the memory card.

A test election was run in Leon County today with a total of eight ballots - six ballots voted “no” on a ballot question as to whether Diebold voting machines can be hacked or not. Two ballots, cast by Dr. Herbert Thomson and by Harri Hursti voted “yes” indicating a belief that the Diebold machines could be hacked.

At the beginning of the test election the memory card programmed by Harri Hursti was inserted into an Optical Scan Diebold voting machine. A “zero report” was run indicating zero votes on the memory card. In fact, however, Hursti had pre-loaded the memory card with plus and minus votes.

The eight ballots were run through the optical scan machine. The standard Diebold-supplied “ender card” was run through as is normal procedure ending the election. A results tape was run from the voting machine.
Correct results should have been: Yes:2 No:6
However the results tape read: Yes:7 No:1

The results were then uploaded from the optical scan voting machine into the GEMS central tabulator. The central tabulator is the “mothership” that pulls in all votes from voting machines. The results in the central tabulator read: Yes:7 No:1

This proves that the votes themselves were changed in a one-step process that would not be detected in any normal canvassing procedure - using only a credit-card sized memory card. Diebold Elections Systems head of research and development Pat Green specifically told the Cuyahoga County [OH] board of elections that votes could not be changed on the memory card.

According to Public Records responses obtained by Black Box Voting in response to our requests shows that Diebold promulgated this misrepresentation to as many as 800 state and local elections officials. March added later, “this was all done without getting any passwords for any system. All we had was the same degree of physical access that any mid-to-high level elections staffer or official would have.”

Case closed? One would think so! But remarkably, states and counties around the country are still entering into contracts with this company to count your votes in upcoming elections! Be sure to let California’s Sec. of State know about this latest knews, as well as your local Elections Board! Otherwise, these machines may well be coming to a hacked election near you!

UPDATE: John Cole points out that Leon County is one of “those” counties from FL 2000!

(Thanks John Gideon for the assist!)

Growing up in Tallahassee with a father who was an AFL-CIO lobbyist and election organizer, I sort of absorbed Florida politics by osmosis. Tallahassee is a company town and the company is government. In the 90s and up through the 2000 election, I had a damn near perfect record in picking primary winners and general election winners. My powers peaked in 2000. I was telling anyone who would listen that Florida was not “leaning Bush” as most prognosticators had it. It was a toss up and, I felt, trending toward Gore. I made some desperate and, at times, mean-spirited attempts to sway friends and associates from voting for Nader.

I moved away from Tallahassee in the fall of 2000. I spent just under a year in Boston, came back to Tallahassee for a bit less than a year, then moved to the Orlando area. It’s much harder to stay up on politics here. We don’t have an all day news & talk NPR station. Our local network affiliates just give highlight coverage to state politics until you’re within a few weeks of an election. I need to get back in the habit of reading papers from around the state.

In 2002, the Democrats really screwed up the governor’s race. I still don’t believe there’s a chance in hell that Janet Reno would have beat JEB! had she been the nominee. Bill McBride turned out to be a terrible candidate. Among friendly audiences, he seemed sharp, well versed, and able to put a good “broad appeal”* spin on some very progressive ideas. At the debates, he looked like some dumb good ol’ boy who who had less grasp of the details than our president. I cringed all the way through it.

I utterly failed to give enough political weight to the surprisingly effective relief efforts after Florida’s fall 2004 hurricanes. I was kind of blindsided by how solidly Bush tied the state up.** I am not going to let that happen again. Over the next year, I’m going to get my finger back on the pulse of politics in this state. Expect to see a fair amount of entries on that topic.

* I don’t think McBride put a “centrist” spin on things, though that is probably how most pundits would characterize it. In opinion polls, progressive ideas generally poll well with the american public on specific, individual issues. I believe that they can be well communicated and appeal to the majority of the population without being diluted into centrism.

**I firmly believe that there was widespread voting fraud in areas where electronic voting was used without creating a paper trail. I think that’s true outside of Florida. I’ve read enough credible, not conspiracy theory, stuff to be convinced. I think Bush probably won Florida without the fraud this time, though.