Submitted by J Krawitz on Tue, 06/07/2005 - 1:38pm
This really sucks to have to respond to, but I suppose it's not surprising given Bev Harris' behavior over the past several months. Help America Recount was totally unrelated organizationally to Bev Harris or Black Box Voting, as was Audit the Vote, an organization that involved literally hundreds of activists.
The donation plea that you posted was from the BBV site, not Help America Recount's, as you seemed to indicate. Bev posted this shortly after the election, which we appreciated very much at the time. She was not involved in setting up or running the organization. In fact she had nothing whatsoever to do with our organization, website, or anything else beyond the following:
Initially (early November) we thought she might be able to contribute evidence to obtain a recount in Florida. However, she had nothing of sufficient substance and did not communicate with anyone, including Lowell Finley, from mid-November until January. She did mention us on one radio interview before that time, and Andy mentioned us in another the second week after the election. That was helpful, as everyone, including us, still had a great deal of faith in Bev back then, but it did not amount to an organizational relationship in any way. Blackboxvoting was listed as an ally on the site because at the time HARF was formed, we considered her an ally. Here's our list of allies from the site. BBV is included because we did consider her an ally at the time. However, we had a great deal more to do with the other groups on the list:
Common Cause
www.VotersUnite.org
AudittheVote.org
National Ballot Integrity Project
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Public Citizen
National Voice
BlackBoxVoting.org
VoteWatch.org
In fact, I worked with Common Cause Florida to put together a group of Common Cause Volunteers who were willing to pick up all of the information that Bev had filed for in every county in the state. I put together a training package for these people, and spent a considerable amount of time trying to make it happen. Bev decided that she wouldn't allow this despite her initial willingness to do so. She never notified either us or Common Cause about that, though. This took place in mid-November, and was our last contact with Bev.
Lowell Finley is her attorney for cases involving BBV. He is not the business attorney for BBV. He is an election law attorney period, and the only one int the country with extensive knowledge of the entire electronic voting issue. Beyond that, he is passionately dedicated to the cause.
He acted as general counsel for Help America Recount, which not only filed for the recount in NM, but spent ten weeks in the state and prepared and filed 5 different lawsuits to obtain a recount for less than the $600,000 the state decided to demand in advance, despite the fact that the law required only the $114,000 in advance and the entire recount should not have cost more than $350,000.
HARF also literally ran and paid for the entire recount operation in New Mexico at the request of Mr Cobb and Mr. Badnarik. The recount operation had to be up and running from the day we filed until the final suit failed, and had to employ several people in state to do so, as well as identifying and training several hundred volunteer poll watchers, because we had to be ready on a moment's notice if any of the very well documented lawsuits succeeded.
You must not have gone beyond the home page of our website, as there are two large sectinos of the site which are devoted to New Mexico. They are at
http://www.helpamericarecount.org/nm1.html and
http://www.helpamericarecount.org/election.htmlThe recount didn't go forward after the Supreme Court ruled that it would cost $600,000 in advance, but not for lack of a lot of incredibly hard work on the part of a lot of people, including two local attorneys. Lowell is an excellent attorney, who has an incredible amount of knowledge and passion for getting rid of the damn paperless machines. The man literally drove himself to exhaustion in New Mexico.
We wound up returning $150,000 in donations to large donors when the recounts did not go forward. Every other penny was spent in furtherance of obtaining and supporting recounts in New Mexico and Ohio. The home page of our site says this:
The Help America Recount Fund is a 527 organization affiliated with the Audit the Vote network and National Ballot Integrity Project, a consortium of national, state and local organizations committed to the transparency and integrity of our elections. The sole purpose of the Help America Recount Fund is to provide support for and citizen financing of presidential ballot recounts, election contests and lawsuits to audit the 2004 election. The Help America Recount Fund is a not-for-profit organization, and is not affiliated with any political party.
Raise Funds for Recounts
Recounts cost money. States charge large sums of money for recounting elections that have already been counted by vendors' software . even if it has demonstrated major inaccuracies in the vote count. The Help America Recount Fund serves as a central clearing house for the funds needed to support election recounts and audits of the 2004 Presidential race. We provide funds where needed depending on the specific election laws of each state.
Legal Strategy and Groundwork
Currently, we are on the ground coordinating and assisting with recount strategy, and groundwork in Ohio and New Mexico. Our legal team has spent more than 100 hours in Florida, analyzing documentation from key Counties and developing strategies to further investigate and act upon the pattern of vote counting and tabulation irregularities reported there. Documented reports in several additional states reveal similar patterns of anomalies; Help America Recount is coordinating with grass roots efforts in as many of these states as possible.
Support and Organization
Help America Recount is working to coordinate, train and supply volunteer observers, as well as lawyers, computer experts, statisticians, coordinators, and other support personnel to ensure that recounts and audits are properly conducted under careful monitoring procedures in every state where recounts of the 2004 presidential race take place.
Strategies and Public Awareness
Help America Recount facilitates getting the right information to affiliated organizations, news services, and journalists in order to get the information out to the public.
That is precisely what we did and precisely where the funds went. Every penny was properly accounted for.
Audit the Vote is a completely separate organization that had no relationship to Bev and did not collect funds for the recounts. It worked primarily on media and public outreach.
Help America Recount was a 527 organization because it could affect the outcome of an election (didn't but could have). Neither Help America Recount nor Audit the Vote is currently active. Thanks for reminding me that I'm still paying for the HARF website through my personal bank account and not getting reimbursed for it. It should have come down months ago.
I hope this satisfies your curiousity. Whatever Bev may or may not be doing with funding she received after the election, has no bearing at all on the work of HARF or vice versa.
Joan Krawitz
http://blackboxwatchdog.com/node/4?PHPSESSID=5aea7bc43d76e4dcd98d6169063434f6#comment-1
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
