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Thursday, February 2
Ed Fallon: Culver, Other Dems "All Too Comfortable with Present System"
by
Linda Thieman
on Thu 02 Feb 2006 06:17 PM CST
 Ed Fallon: Culver, Other Dems "All Too Comfortable with Present System"
State Representative and gubernatorial candidate Ed Fallon (D-Des
Moines) held a press conference at the Capitol today to show how
Secretary of State Chet Culver’s campaign finance reports show the need
for a Clean Elections Law in Iowa.
“The
whole campaign finance system is corrupt, with elections being sold to
the highest bidder, rather than won by the candidates with the best
ideas for moving our state forward,” Fallon said.
Over 65%
of Culver’s donations in 2005 came from outside of Iowa, including over
$300,000 from Washington DC, Maryland and Virginia.
“I think
it’s obvious that donors from Chevy Chase, Maryland or Dallas, Texas
who gave Chet tens of thousands will probably have more influence than
a donor from Creston or Cresco who gave him $10,” Fallon said.
While
refusing donations from political action committees, paid lobbyists and
large donors, Fallon still received 2114 donations in 2005, compared to
Culver’s 2080. However, Fallon’s average donor gave $52.08, while
Culver’s average donor gave over $658.
“For my
average donor, their donation is the price of a night out at the movies
with their family,” Fallon said. “For Culver’s donors, it’s the cost of
the monthly payment on a Mercedes Benz.”
Fallon went on to say that many of his opponents have become “all too comfortable” with the present political system.
“I think
they’re all good people, but they’ve been sucked into a system that is
flawed,” Fallon said. “It’s not that they’re dirty, but they are all
too comfortable with the current system.”
Iowa's Voting Machines: Making Sausage and Counting Votes
by
Linda Thieman
on Thu 02 Feb 2006 04:00 AM CST
 Iowa's Voting Machines: Making Sausage and Counting Votes
This just in from the Great Northwest - Iowa, that is. Lots of
wind, not too many people. However, there is one fine fellow over
here, Jerry Depew of Laurens, who has decided to make his voice
heard in a bigger way. Jerry is a long-time paper-ballot and open-elections
advocate who seems to think that when we vote, our votes should
actually be counted accurately. A novel idea these days.
Jerry recently set up his own non-partisan blog, Iowa Voters for Open
and Transparent Elections, where he posts updates on the Iowa
scene. Not only can't you get this kind of information in one place anywhere
else in Iowa, but in addition to that, Jerry has graciously agreed to allow Blog for Iowa to
reprint some of his posts.
First
up, Jerry reports on Monday's meeting of the Iowa Board of Examiners
for Voting Machines in Des Moines, which he attended as a concerned
member of the voting public.
Making Sausage and Counting Votes
by Jerry Depew, Laurens, Iowa
The room was too small and the table was too crowded. The ballot marking machine
locked up once and had to be rebooted. The ballot scanner got tripped
up by a test ballot and had to be reprogrammed. The voting machine
managers from ES&S were unable to answer some questions about their
equipment. They spent a fair amount of time on the phone to HQ getting
things worked out.
That was the scene Monday in the office of the Iowa Secretary of State.
Election Systems and Software of Omaha had come to town to get state
certification of a new piece of voting equipment. It is intended to
make it easier for blind voters and others to cast private ballots.
More ballots were cast in Pocahontas, Iowa, in 2004 than were used to
test the equipment Monday. There was NO testing of security, even
though security concerns were raised.
The three official examiners were underpaid for their time and woefully
underpaid (Iowa Code 52.6) for the responsibility they shouldered. They
had already announced their plans to purchase the equipment they were
about to review. They had an obvious interest in running trouble free
elections, but not much curiosity about implications of the errors they
uncovered. They could have benefitted from outside expertise (Iowa Code
52.5), but the Secretary of State had not provided them with any.
Nevertheless, at the end of the six hour session, the equipment was
approved. No surprise here. Just another step in the implementation of
the Help America Vote Act, a disaster as bad as the 2000 Florida
recount that it was supposed to address.
They say you should never watch the making of sausage or the crafting
of legislation. Add the certifying of voting machines to the list. And
the next time someone tells you that voting machines are “tested and
tested and tested,” send that person to me.
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