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The Iowa Health Freedom Coalition, www.IowaHealthFreedom.org, enthusiastically invites you to attend our Day at the Capitol for consumers and practitioners interested in the growth of the healing arts in Iowa. Our purpose is to continue to create awarenss of issues regarding freedom of access to all of the healing arts. We also will be educating legislators in regard to our health freedom legislation and provide them with an opportunity to experience, first hand, some of the healing modalites involved.

Practitioners of un-licensed healing arts are invited to bring treatment tables, product displays, or materials. We will provide treatment, examples, samples or information to legislators on benefits and importance to Iowans of these healing methods.

We have room for apporximately 35 eight foot tables (or bodywork tables). You must bring your own tables and chairs (see "rules" below).

Please RSVP to Trilby Sedlacek, Green Angel Herbs, 319-247-1243 or e-mail Trilby Sedlacek <gangel999@aol.com>.

Our day at the Capitol is scheduled from 8:00 AM unitl 4:30 PM. We have reserved the East and South wings on the first floor Rotunda. We will be informing as many legislators as possible.

Please feel free to bring Healthy treats and snacks / beverages to share with legislators.

We are planning an opening ceremony prayer of Love and Gratitude.

See you there.

From all of us at IHFC, www.IowaHealthFreedom.org
In Love and Gratitude,

Larry Hanus              Jon Royal
Launie Sorem           Lisa Kamphuis
Dr. David Sands       Linda Dietz
Syvilla Hewett            Ivy Sievers
Cindy Reed               Julie Halevan
Sandi Smith              Willy Lansing
Linda Hedquist

Please Note:

It is important for you to call your State Senator and State Representative and invite and encourage them to attend and to support the Health Freedom bill sponsored by Senators Hatch and Boettger (e-mail is not as effective, but please e-mail them too so they have it in writing.)

You can find your State Senator and State Representative by typing in your zip code on this web page, http://www.legis.state.ia.us/FindLeg/.   The Capitol swithchboard number in Des Moines to call during the week is:
Senate 515-281-3371
House   515-281-3221

Or after you find your legislator you may want to go to this link, Home Addresses, and find their biographical sketch and home phone number and call them at home on the weekend. This is a great idea because at the Capitol, you may only get to leave a message. Always be sure to tell them you live in their district.

Please contact any media, newspaper or TV / Radio, with a Capitol reporter that you may have a relationship with and tell them about our event.

Excerpts from the Dept. of Administrative Services Rules follow:

Access to electrical will require extension cords and securing them.

1. Delivery can only be at the West entrance.
2. NO TABLES OR CHAIRS ARE PROVIDED. When bringing your equipment in, do not scratch floors.
3. No tape or fasteners can be attached to any part of the building structure. Matting tape may be used to adhere cables to the floors.
4. Food may be brought in. Cooking is not allowed.
5. No balloons. (Set off motion detectors)
6. Clean up after yourself.

Leave Comment | Permanent Link | Cosmos

More on Monday's Meeting of the Iowa Board of Examiners for Voting Machines from Jerry Depew

by Linda Thieman on Fri 03 Feb 2006 04:00 AM CST

More on Monday's Meeting of the Iowa Board of Examiners for Voting Machines from Jerry Depew

by Jerry Depew, Laurens, Iowa
Iowa Voters for Open and Transparent Elections

You would have to be blind not to see that the Automark voting machine needs more work. Actually, it was a blind woman named Penelope who first saw it in Des Moines Monday. Or at least she discovered it. The people looking over her shoulder really did see it.

Penelope had come to the meeting of the Iowa Board of Examiners of Voting Machines to test the device being examined. It marks ballots for people who need help. It helps them while keeping their votes private. It enabled Penelope to use headphones to hear the ballot read to her and provided her with a button to push to mark her choices in every race on the ballot.

No one knows what Penelope did to upset the machine. She did not know anything was wrong because the machine gave her the marked ballot at the end of her testing. But the machine had also locked up and put an error message on the screen. There was no audio error message, Penelope said.

I was sitting where I could not see the screen. But we were all told that an “argument out of range exception error” had occurred. No one knew what that meant. The machine’s advocates called headquarters to find out. They reported that this had occurred before in Illinois’s testing, and a repair to the software was already being written in Omaha.

Not to worry. Penelope was happy. She said she would cease voting absentee and actually go to the polls in the future. She said it was “about time” provisions were being made for blind voters.

The Board of Examiners decided the machine could stand to be rebooted if this happened on election day. They focused on the fact that no damage had been done to Penelope’s ballot. They certified the machine. Several Iowa counties are planning to use it.

But I contacted John Washburn, a software tester with a decade of experience. He said such an error “is usually indicative of bad code being passed to an interpreter of some sort.”

Bad code? Already detected in testing in Illinois? If this stuff gets past the extensive federal testing we always hear about, how extensive can it be?

We are indeed lucky to have this problem appear on the device that marks paper ballots. But this same company has also sold computer voting terminals (with NO PAPER TRAIL) to seven Iowa counties. Did they use any bad code in those machines? Was Penelope present the day those machines were tested? Penelope - HELP US!

Jerry Depew of Laurens, Iowa, runs the non-partisan blog, Iowa Voters for Open and Transparent Elections, and has granted Blog for Iowa permission to reprint his report.

Comments (1) | Permanent Link | Cosmos

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