Breaking:Lockyer/MacPherson Joint Investigation Voter Registration Fraud

[rumpel]

Attorney General Lockyer and Secretary of State Bruce McPherson Announce Joint Investigation Into Allegations of Voter Registration Fraud

By: Office of the Attorney General
Published: Apr 7, 2006 at 15:41

Attorney General Bill Lockyer and Secretary of State Bruce McPherson today announced the formation of a joint investigation into allegations of voter registration irregularities in Riverside and Orange counties. Secretary McPherson had previously opened his own inquiry into the allegations and requested the Attorney General's assistance.

"The right to free and fair elections is fundamental to our democracy," Lockyer said. "The allegations of voter fraud not only involve serious crimes, they also strike at the heart of our constitutional form of government. We will aggressively investigate these claims and vigorously prosecute those who broke state laws."

"Ensuring that eligible voters have the ability to vote is my top priority," said Secretary McPherson. "This office has zero tolerance for fraud. I will continue to do everything within my power to make sure that the integrity of our democratic process is protected and the rights of our citizens are preserved."

As the state's chief elections officer, the Secretary of State is in charge of overseeing the elections process and partnering with local election officials to ensure fair and accurate elections. McPherson's Elections Fraud Investigation Unit vigorously responds to allegations of voter fraud and recommending for prosecution of those who would corrupt the people's basic right to a free and fair election.

Under state law and the state Constitution, the Attorney General has concurrent jurisdiction with county district attorneys to enforce criminal laws. The state Elections Code establishes criminal penalties for specified acts of voter registration fraud. Although district attorneys are primarily responsible for investigation criminal wrongdoing within their own county, the Attorney General often will get involved where related acts of criminal conduct allegedly occurred in multiple jurisdictions.

http://www.yubanet.com/artman/publish/article_34037.shtml

[FogerRox]

1. your 1st vote, whos next?

[EFerrari]

2. I've started seeing these stories while posting the daily thread

in the last coupla weeks. So far, only Thugs.

Thanks, Bruce, for charging in to save our votes. :sarcasm:

[Amaryllis]

3. "This office has zero tolerance for fraud."???? Then why did he recertify

Diebold?????

[Votergater]

26. Diebold was recertified partly because

Los Angeles' election supervisor Connie McCormack has real power which connects to the Governor's office, and Ms McCormack is working for Diebold Inc.

[Amaryllis]

4. Damn! typical RNC tactic; make it about voter fraud and ignore election

fraud....grrrrr...
"McPherson's Elections Fraud Investigation Unit vigorously responds to allegations of voter fraud "
All those dead people voting again...major threat to our democracy.

[Amaryllis]

5. And why didn't Lockyer prosecute Diebold for criminal activity back

when Kevin Shelley decertified them? They broke all kinds of contractual conditions. I smell a big ole rat here.

[Wilms]

10. He did.

http://ag.ca.gov/newsalerts/2004/04-130b.pdf

And settled for 2.6MM.

http://ag.ca.gov/newsalerts/2004/04-130.htm

[Amaryllis]

12. That was a civil suit, not a criminal suit. and all the penalties were

civil penalties. They should have had criminal charges brought against them.

[Wilms]

13. Now I see.

Shelley called for one...

California official seeks criminal probe of e-voting
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4874190


And it seems at first Lockyer looked at it, but..

Criminal investigation of voting machine maker Diebold dropped
http://dallas.bizjournals.com/dallas/stories/2004/09/06/daily13.html


Choosing, instead, to duck for cover in the civil suit bbv had going.

State joins Diebold suit
http://www.fcw.com/article86060-09-08-04-Web

[Amaryllis]

16. Thanks for the links, Wilms! I reallly respect your insistence on sources;

I didn't even know where to start looking on that one.

[Amaryllis]

17. This shows more Diebold lies & shows what Shelley was up against:

The first article has a bunch of ads placed over the text but if you go to the bottom and click on print version, you can read it.

One of the reasons Shelley decertified Diebold was because of the abyssmal
failure rate in the March primary which cause many voters to be disenfranchised:

"The ban immediately affects more than 14,000 AccuVote-TSx machines made by Diebold, the leading touchscreen provider. Many were used for the first time in the March primaries and suffered failures."

And:
"A state investigation released this month said Diebold jeopardized the outcome of the March election in California with computer glitches, last-minute changes to its systems and installations of uncertified software in its machines in 17 counties.
It specifically cited San Diego County, where 573 of 1,611 polling places failed to open on time because low battery power caused machines to malfunction."

And here is Diebold saying, "Diebold officials, in a 28-page report rebutting many of the accusations about its performance, said the company had been singled out unfairly for problems with electronic voting and maintained its machines are safe, secure and demonstrated 100 percent accuracy in the March election."

HOw can they SAY that thier machines "demonstrated 100 percent accuracy in the March election" when it's on RECORD that there were so many failures?

Then: “I anticipate his (Shelley's) decision will have an immediate and widespread impact,” said Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation and a frequent critic of the machines. “California is turning away from e-voting equipment, and other states are sure to follow.”

What Shelley was doing was having a huge impact on the rest of the country. Too bad Lockyer didn't follow through with criminal charges against Diebold. Shelley gave him all he needed to do it. Things could be very different now if he had.

[Amaryllis]

20. Wow! Look at this:

"Shelley decides against a blanket statewide ban, the Legislature is also considering a pair of bills that would ban touch-screen voting this November."

From one of the links you posted that linked to another article:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4857054/

Why was the rest of the country covering all this a lot more than CA media?
Seems all CA media wanted to do was blast Shelley.

[nicknameless]

6. The article isn't specific. Is this about Dem voters having their

registration changed to rethug? :shrug:

McPherson has repeatedly proved that he is only concerned with *preventing* people from voting.

[bleever]

7. #6, because either they're chasing bogus "voter fraud" as a distraction,

or they're looking hard at "election fraud" as currently practiced, and my gut reaction isn't favorable.

The new registration system is heavily skewed to denying eligible voters their franchise.

No one even knows if there is a significant problem with ineligible voters.


Eagerly awaiting more info.

[glitch]

8. If they aren't investigating Sproul Associates it's probably puff.

Every state Sproul operated in should be investigating them.

[Wilms]

9. Is it that hard to figure out? Or is speculation much more fun?

It was Dems being defrauded by Repubs. McPherson is running for office.

O.C. voters were duped into GOP registration

Petitioners lie, cajole and commit forgery while duping more than 100 O.C. residents into joining the Republican Party.

By TONY SAAVEDRA, KIMBERLY KINDY and BRIAN JOSEPH
The Orange County Register

Nearly 700 Orange County residents were signed as Republicans on affidavits circulated by Christopher Dinoff and his associates in December and early January. The Register examined seven dates with the most activity and attempted to reach more than 200 people who were registered on those days. Of the 134 people interviewed, 112 - 84 percent - said they were flipped to the Republican Party without their consent.

More than 100 Orange County residents who thought they were simply signing petitions to cure breast cancer, punish child molesters or build schools were duped into registering as Republicans, an Orange County Register investigation found.

The ruse took place over several days in December and January at shopping centers throughout Anaheim, Santa Ana, Buena Park, Westminster and Garden Grove, where paid petitioners begged, cajoled, lied and committed forgery to get so-called Republican converts. Petition circulators were paid as much as $7 for each GOP registration.

Orange County election officials have received complaints from 167 people who were flipped to the Republican Party without their permission. The Register found the problem was far wider, interviewing 112 others who were not only switched, they were tricked and deceived. Among the victims is a lifelong Democrat who was pressured to fill out forms even though she didn't have her glasses and couldn't see what she was signing.

The Register traced the bogus registrations to Christopher Scott Dinoff, who took out 13,000 blank affidavit cards from the Orange County Registrar of Voters Office, records show.

Each affidavit is numbered, linking Dinoff to the doctored cards.

snip

http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/homepage/abox/article_1083406.php

[rumpel]

11. Thanks Wilms, that's what I thought. OC & Riverside is quite red,

but I was not sure what or who.

They are in for a big fix in CA. The moment we lost Shelley...we lost oversight.

:mad:

[Amaryllis]

18. Not following this - can you elaborate?

"It was Dems being defrauded by Repubs. McPherson is running for office."
Are you saying that because he is running for office...what?

[Wilms]

22. I could give McP the benefit of the doubt...

...but it's possible he's following up on this case only because he's running for the office, and ignoring it would give Debra Bowen an opportunity to rub his nose in it.

[Amaryllis]

23. Got it. thanks. Plus with people being so furious about the recert

of Diebold and the voter reg database, it's something that will make him look good.

[BushSpeak]

14. SOS: It's the "Scrub Lists" stupid

Take this seriously folks. The Republican's come at you from all angles, but these "Scrub Lists" or (voter purge lists) are one of the main reasons they won in Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004!

In Florida 2000, Jeb Bush had 94,000 "convicted felons" purged from the voter lists. A study by Greg Palast proved that 91,000 were illegally purged. They are still trying to get back on the lists.

http://www.gregpalast.com/printerfriendly.cfm?artid=122">THE GREAT FLORIDA EX-CON GAME How the 'felon' voter-purge was itself felonious

This just came out a couple of weeks ago, but apparently in Ohio 2004, 308,000 names were purged from the lists in the four big cites between 2000 & 2004. This in part explains why turnout in the Democratic big cites was so low - 54% against 70+% in Bush country.

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_549.shtml">Did 308,000 cancelled Ohio voter registrations put Bush back in the White House?

I'm beginning to think that Diebold is becoming a Red Herring to draw attention away from other tricks. At lease, keep an eye out for anything they try.

Please bring this to the attention of the election integrity groups in California.

Anybody got the background on Attorney General Bill Lockyer? What's his stand on elections? Is he collaborating with or being manipulated by McPherson?

[Amaryllis]

21. See Wilms post number 14 for some Lockyer stuff and my replies.

[BushSpeak]

15. Looks like Debra Bowen already got the message

I was going to write Debra Bowen about voter disenfranchisement, but it looks like she beat me to the punch.

http://www.debrabowen.com/">Debra Bowen web site

http://ga3.org/campaign/voter_registration">TAKE ACTION: Tell Secretary of State McPherson to stop disenfranchising voters

[Amaryllis]

19. Llinks don't work; they go to Microsoft website.

[Steve A Play]

24. Corrected links

There was an extra 'http://' in them. :)

http://www.debrabowen.com/

http://ga3.org/campaign/voter_registration

[BushSpeak]

27. Thanks Steve

Yeah, I missed the extra http:

I'm in France, so I've got different working hours. Nice to know that we're covered by other DUers.

[Melissa G]

25. kickin' and r'in