Election Reform and Related News...Saturday, March 22, 2008

[livvy]

Election Reform and Related News
Saturday, March 22, 2008



Please be sure to check out Vickiss's excellent thread from Friday for more very recent news.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=499424&mesg_id=499424

Everyone is welcome to participate. Feel free to:

:redbox: Post stories and announcements you find on the web.

:redbox: Post stories using the new Spring 2006 Edition of "Election Fraud and Reform News Directory" listed here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph ...

:redbox: Re-post stories and announcements you find on DU, providing a link to the original thread with thanks to the Original Poster, too.

:redbox: Start a discussion thread by re-posting a story you see on this thread.

Recommendations for the Greatest Page are always welcomed. It's the best way to share the news with members who don't frequent this forum. It's the link below.

[livvy]

1. States n/t

[livvy]

2. CO: "Excited To Be Back On"...

‘Excited to be back on’
Moffat County to use paper ballots, electronic machines
By Jerry Raehal

March 22, 2008

Craig — Thrilled.

That is how Elaine Sullivan, Moffat County clerk and recorder, summed up her reaction to state lawmakers killing a proposal that would have forced counties across the state to conduct paper ballots in the upcoming election.

That decision, which was made Thursday by the Senate Appropriations Committee, means Moffat County can continue with a voting system and equipment Sullivan expresses high confidence in.

It means Moffat County voters will have an option of using electronic voting equipment by Hart InterCivic or paper ballots — the same as in previous elections conducted in the county.

“This is the equipment that we spent all of the money on,” Sullivan said. “It’s very accurate, and we’ve never had a problem with it. There’s no way it can be hacked into. We love it.”

She pointed out that 47 other counties have purchased Hart InterCivic equipment, and “all of us have had good results.”

more...

http://www.craigdailypress.com/news/2008/mar/22/excited_be_back/

[livvy]

5. NY: New, High-Tech Voting Machines To Make Debut

New, high-tech voting machines to make debut

By Chris Mckenna
Times Herald-Record

March 22, 2008 6:00 AM

Behold the future of voting in New York: the Sequoia ImageCast.

Within weeks, election offices in Orange, Ulster, Sullivan and most other New York counties will get their first shipments of the optical-scan voting machines that will replace the lever-operated devices the state has used for decades.

Every polling station must have one in place for the September primaries, but only for handicapped voters to use. The general population won't confront the ImageCast until the following September — when the lever machines disappear for good.

Prepare for a new polling-station experience when that day comes.

No longer will voters enter a 1960s-era metal booth to flick levers for the candidates of their choice. No longer will they swing a handle sideways to register their votes and jerk open the curtain with a satisfying clang.

more...

http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080322/NEWS/803220318

[livvy]

6. Voters Like E-Voting Systems, But Still Goof

Voters Like E-Voting Systems, But Still Goof
A new study suggests voters are comfortable with e-voting machines, but make errors at higher rates than with paper.
Grant Gross, IDG News Service
Saturday, March 22, 2008 07:00 AM PDT


Voters generally prefer electronic voting machines to paper-based alternatives, but some e-voting machines have error rates of 3 percent or more, according to a study released Friday.


Voters generally were most comfortable with some models of touch-screen e-voting machines, often called direct record electronic (DRE) machines, when tested against paper ballots and e-voting machines using buttons and dials, said the study, published by the Brookings Institute, a centrist think tank.


In five DRE systems researchers tested, the error rate of the worst-performing machines was 3 percent in a simple task such as voting for president, researchers said. In more complex races, the error rate, the rate at which voters voted for the wrong candidate, was higher. Researchers urged voting machine manufacturers and elections officials to focus more on ballot design, saying badly designed ballots caused many of the problems.


"You might think, 'Hey, a 3 percent error rate, that's pretty good,'" said Paul Herrnson, a political science professor at the University of Maryland and lead author of the study. "But ... 3 percent is not good enough in an election, because it can change the outcome. This shows us quite clearly that there's room for improvement."


The researchers tested DREs from five companies, including Diebold, ES&S and Hart InterCivic.

more...

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,143755-c,currentevents/article.html


on edit: also posted at WaPo:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/22/AR2008032201127.html

[livvy]

7. Post and discussion by Wilms: CA SoS Bowen Denies Application for Certification of ES&S Unity EMS/Op

CA SoS Bowen refused, today, to certify ES&S Unity 3.0.1.1 EMS/OpScan and the AutoMARK ballot marker because of the vendor's "continued failure" to provide adequate "Use Procedures" required to operate the system given the security defects discovered by the California Top to Bottom Review.

ES&S can reapply in 45 days if it submits Use Procedures for the AutoMARK by April, 8th, and for the Unity EMS/OpScan by April 15th.

pdf: http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/voting_systems/bowen_to...

SoS Web page with related documents: http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/elections_vs.htm



http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x499438

[livvy]

8. Wilms again:NY: Planned Lawsuit Challenges Constitutionality of E-Vote Counting

Thank you, Wilms! :hi:

Election Integrity: Fact & Friction
NY: Planned Lawsuit Challenges Constitutionality of E-Vote Counting
by Howard Stanislevic

An open letter to New York's election commissioners, citizens and poll workers, penned by Andrea T. Novick, Esq., the attorney who filed the amicus brief in the US Dept. of Justice's lawsuit against the state, suggests that, among other things, electronic vote counting violates the state's Constitution.

In addition to the constitutional claim, the letter also makes the following claim about New York's current voting system, which is comprised almost entirely of non-computerized mechanical lever machines used to count votes only on election day:

The present machines are legal under the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), as long as Accessibility requirements are met with at least one accessible ballot marking device per polling place to accommodate voters with disabilities.
snip

Reading law is hard work

Any reasonable reading of HAVA seems to confirm Kellner's assertion that levers are compliant, since Section 301 of the HAVA statutes, "Voting Systems Standards":

* does NOT require voter-verified paper audit records or ballots (which would make many DRE (usually touchscreen) voting machines non-HAVA-compliant);
* does NOT require the voting system to use a printer to produce the paper records required by HAVA; and
* does NOT contain accuracy requirements that are applicable to either lever machines or hand counted paper ballots.
snip

Novick wrote of the decades-old machines:

"Levers in their mechanical simplicity have a transparency that enables regular human beings to observe both foul play and innocent failures. The evidence of the failed votes can be proven in court just the way the evidence as reflected by the hand-count tally sheets could prove that the people's will may not have been realized."
snip

In its litigation in the Dept. of Justice case, NY State failed to make the case that levers are in fact HAVA-compliant, even though the attorney for the United States admitted recently in his remarks to the court that HAVA does not require voter-verified paper records to be produced. The issue of lever machine compliance therefore remains unadjudicated.

snip

Should New York not wish to return the HAVA money earmarked for lever replacement, Novick says that there is another possible remedy that would satisfy both HAVA and the state constitution: hand counting paper ballots for federal elections, while the lever machines could continue to be used for state and local elections that are not subject to federal law. This would involve at most, three hand counted contests, and in 2008, would involve only two, since there is no US Senate seat up for grabs this year. Under this plan, the lever machines could be used as privacy booths, allowing most voters to hand mark their paper ballots for the one to three possible federal contests, and then proceed to vote in other elections on the familiar mechanical ballot displayed on the lever machine. A supply of federal ballots, pens and clipboards would be the only required changes to the current voting system -- and of course the hand counters for the federal elections.

snip

http://e-voter.blogspot.com/2008/03/ny-planned-lawsuit-...


Original post and discussion:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x499446

[Fredrick]

23. Electoral reform to help increase political freedom.

Hello,

At LocalParty.Org we are interested in helping people get represented at the local level. Though we have a limiting two party system in place nationally, all over the nation we often find a more restricted delivery of just a single party in full control. A single party does not sound very American, does it?

In how far are we willing to discuss the limitations of our two party system, and look at the two alternatives of four party system and ten party system?





This image can be found on: http://LocalParty.Org/engine.html


http://LocalParty.Org/basketball.html

[livvy]

3. World n/t

[livvy]

4. Electoral Body Under Scrutiny

Electoral body under scrutiny

Steve Connolly and Hannah Davies
March 23, 2008 12:00am

THE Electoral Commission of Queensland is facing further allegations of bungling over its handling of last weekend's local government elections.

Problems with the March 15 poll, which the ECQ was running statewide for the first time, ranged from voters receiving postal ballots after the election or getting ballot papers for the wrong councils.
In rural and regional Queensland, where postal ballots were held in 28 of the 73 polls statewide, there were complaints of voters being disenfranchised by the ECQ.

Several mayoral elections in the bush have been cliffhangers, none closer than in Blackall-Tambo Shire in the state's central west, where Blackall councillor Barry Muir leads Tambo's Jan Ross by just two votes in the mayoral race.

Paroo Shire mayoral candidate Ian Tonkin said around 100 people in his region, centred around Cunnamulla in the state's west, didn't receive postal ballot papers for the election.

more...

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,23414946-3102,00.html

[livvy]

9. Electoral Flaws Undermine Free and Fair Elections in Zimbabwe

Electoral Flaws Undermine Free and Fair Elections in Zimbabwe
Saturday, March 22 2008 @ 09:28 AM EDT
Edited by: Kandy Ringer

Repression, Intimidation, Electoral Flaws Threaten March 29 Vote

BBSNews 2008-03-22 -- Johannesburg (HRW) As Zimbabweans head to the polls in the country's March 29 elections, serious electoral flaws and human rights abuses by the government undermine any meaningful prospect of free and fair elections, Human Rights Watch said today.

In a 59-page report, "All Over Again: Human Rights Abuses and Flawed Electoral Conditions in Zimbabwe's Coming General Elections," Human Rights Watch documents how the government and the ruling party ZANU-PF, in the run up to the 2008 elections, have engaged in widespread intimidation of the opposition; have restricted freedom of association and assembly; and have manipulated food and farming equipment distribution to gain political advantage. Human Rights Watch also documented biased media coverage in addition to numerous incidents of police and state-security violence against human rights activists and perceived opposition supporters throughout Zimbabwe. The report is based on research conducted over seven weeks across the country and in the capital, Harare.

"Despite some improvements on paper to the election regulations, Zimbabweans aren't free to vote for the candidates of their choice," said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. "While there are four candidates running for president and many political parties involved, the election process itself is skewed."

Zimbabweans will vote in synchronized presidential, parliamentary, senatorial, and local elections, the first since changes to Zimbabwe's constitution in 2007.

more...

http://bbsnews.net/article.php/20080322092800315

[Fredrick]

24. The different electoral systems in place help deliver different outcomes in our world.

Would you say it matters if you vote yourself for a president or if you get a prime-minister through the regular elections, but for whom you did not vote yourself?




LocalParty.Org presents you this information based on statistics of nationmaster.com. This graph shows how much the top 10% in a nation owns of their nation's wealth, and five different sets of governmental systems are placed next to each other. Nations selecting a president end up giving more to the top 10% of their nations than nations that elect a governmental body only, in which a prime-minister is then part of the outcome (the stack of nations to the right). This is particularly visible when comparing the two stacks of nations with proportional elections, one with (middle stack), the other without a president (stack to the right). There is no distinction made in this graph between nations holding district elections with and without a president, because electing a president is already a district-like election (with a single winner) encompassing the entire nation. By electing a single top figure, many people in a district (or a nation) are not represented themselves (on average this is 40% of the voters), while prime-ministers remain part of the electoral body that was like a pie cut up to represent the voters' outcome.



Here are twelve districts voting for their representative; the striped areas represent voters not getting their representative.



Here you see the pie cut up according to the voters' wishes.

If you place a president on top of these outcomes, the 'political game' gets changed by that additionally empowered entity. And that leads to the top 10% of a nation having more of that nation's wealth than when having a prime-minister be the leading manager of the government.


http://localparty.org/tour.html

[Fredrick]

25. The different electoral systems in place help deliver different outcomes in our world.

Just as a second delivery to the same topic, women also fare worse in general in democratic systems where voters elect winners rather than their specific representatives. In the following visual the nations are set apart according to the number of female representatives that are elected at the national level. Right underneath the same political world is shown but according to their incorporation of fair (or equal) representation. There is not a perfect, but a nevertheless very strong resemblance between political system and outcome of female representatives.





The sources for both maps are: NationMaster.Com, CIAWorldFactBook, and WorldPolicy.Org.

[livvy]

10. OpEd, Blog, Opinion, etc. n/t

[livvy]

11. CA: All-Mail Voting Would Cut Costs And Headaches

All-mail voting would cut costs and headaches
Our view: The best way to solve e-voting’s problems is to go low-tech.

Trying to square escalating costs for maintaining Shasta County's mostly unused electronic voting machines with shrinking county budgets, Supervisor Les Baugh floated a crackerjack idea this week.

Only one problem: It's against the law.

Baugh suggested that, with the state and county alike trying to save money, it's time to study less expensive ways to vote, including switching to all-mail elections.

Alas, County Clerk Cathy Darling told Baugh that all-mail elections are illegal in California except in rare circumstances, for rural districts and votes on certain property assessments.

But laws change, and it's time to change this one.

Oregon and all but two counties in Washington have embraced all-mail elections.

So have most north state voters.

more...

http://www.redding.com/news/2008/mar/22/all-mail-voting/

[livvy]

14. OpEdNews: No Occupation Without Representation (And Other Electoral Musings)

March 22, 2008

No occupation without representation (and other electoral musings)

By Mickey Z.

If America wants to dominate the globe in the name of spreading democracy (sic), how about giving some love to the subjugated? For example, let’s extend the ballot to the citizens of occupied Iraq. Their daily lives are inescapably intertwined with US foreign policy so what better way to teach them about democratic values than to give them a say as to which millionaire is the next figurehead of empire? As Rosemarie “RMJ” Jackowski sez: “No occupation without representation.” (Why am I positive that such a plan would result in a landslide for Obama’s pastor?)

Speaking of Rev. Wright, Senator Obama is taking a lot of heat for things that genuinely shouldn’t matter. It’s quite an illustration of how backward, blind, and racist America is that the worst thing the right wing can manage is Obama’s middle name or what his pastor says. The end result is a general public that sees Obama as a liberal (sic) who wants to change (sic) things. The issues, as always, are ignored. The richer get richer, the sick get sicker, the bombs continue to fall, eco-systems decline and vanish, and American Idol is down to its final 10 contestants.

Some of the many reasons to not vote for John McCain: He’s funded by Wall Street. He voted for every war appropriation bill he faced. He voted against single payer health care. He refused to be photographed with San Francisco’s mayor for fear it’d be interpreted that he supported gay marriage. He supports the death penalty, the Israeli war machine, and the fence on the US-Mexican border. He voted to confirm Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State and to reauthorize the Patriot Act in 2005. Oh shit…wait a minute. Those are some of the many reasons to not vote for Barack Obama. Oops, my bad…

And now for the too-logical-to-ever-be-taken-seriously suggestions I make every four years: vote counting must be made foolproof, debates must be open to all candidates, and genuine campaign finance reform (at the very least) must be enacted. Voting should not be held on a Tuesday but instead of over a full weekend. Turnout is bound to be higher over a Friday-Saturday-Sunday period. Also, a "none of the above" option would not only allow disgruntled voters to express their disdain with the alleged two-party system but might also create a run-off election or even a new set of candidates. Speaking of a new set of candidates…

more...
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_mickey_z_080322_no_occupation_withou.htm

[livvy]

15. OpEdNews: Voter Registration Discrepancies May Result in Voter Suppression

March 22, 2008

Voter Registration Discrepancies May Result in Voter Suppression

By Project Vote


Cross-posted at Project Vote's blog, Voting Matters
Weekly Voting Rights News Update

By Erin Ferns

In recent weeks, two Congressional hearings examined hot button voter suppression issues, voter fraud and voter caging, that have the potential to "taint the November election." These major voting rights issues have moved into broad public consciousness thanks to the 2007 exposure of the U.S. Attorney scandal in which nine federal prosecutors were fired for alleged lack of zeal in pursuing partisan accusations of widespread voter fraud. Now, two states with upcoming primary elections, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, have made local headlines for voter registration discrepancies, creating openings for confusing and discouraging voters and possibly even allowing those with voter suppression agendas to make an impact.


Just one month before the state's presidential primary, Pennsylvania "pulled the plug on a voter registration Web site," on Tuesday. A Web programming error allegedly exposed voter registration forms filled out by state residents online, including personal information such as name, birth date, driver's license and party affiliation, according to International Data Group News Service. "About 300,000 voter registration records appeared to be available on the site."

Typically, voter registration data is accessible - excluding private information that could be 'misused' - so that voters can check their registration status. This is an appropriate practice that helps promote transparency in the electoral process. However, poorly conceived systems can have grave consequences.

The governmental use of "'sophisticated technology in thoughtless ways'" is "'alarming,'" according to Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, a group that examines voting technology issues. "All kinds of dirty tricks could be played...In heated campaigns, we've seen cases where someone will call a whole bunch of voters and tell them that the election date has been changed."

more...

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_project__080320_voter_registration_d.htm

[livvy]

16. kster: Transparency and Accountability are the Life Blood of a Democracy. "Andy Novick"

Thanks! :hi:

The best option for democratic elections remains a full manual hand count of all paper ballots: only then can regular citizens know, without having to rely on experts or government officials, how their votes were processed and counted. However, in light of the fast track the State Board of Elections is pursuing to begin certification testing of these vendors' machines and given the current resistance within government to prepare citizens to hand count their ballots, there is only one computerized voting system New York can consider: A publicly-owned, open source paper ballot optical scan voting system combined with sufficient public in the hands of the people.

Open source code optical scanners begin to restore some of that transparency which would be eliminated by private vendors who bar the public from access to any source code information. The advantage of open source software is that it is available for public inspection by anyone with some level of computer literacy, not just those designated to see the escrowed source code pursuant to a non disclosure agreement. While this is still not the full public scrutiny that manual hand counting would allow, in that the general public still needs to rely on experts to scrutinize the source code, it is clearly more desirable than excluding the public from access to the very information that directs all functions of the voting machines, including vote counting.

Transparency and oversight by the public is enabled by releasing the ballot images of our scanned paper ballots for public inspection and requiring a partial hand count on election night, thereby allowing for a check against the invisibility created by the computer while providing for an inexpensive and comprehensive audit by the public as well as by election officials.

The systems offered by the major vendors deprive the public of transparency and hence the ability to monitor/oversee their elections. Only a publicly owned and controlled electoral process can be considered constitutionally acceptable.

http://www.wheresthepaper.org/AndiNovick070730PubliclyO...

Original post and discussion by kster
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x499457

[livvy]

17. Book Review: OpEdNews- America in Peril by B. Aldridge

March 22, 2008

AMERICA IN PERIL -- book review

By Woody Powell


AMERICA IN PERIL

By

Bob Aldridge


Review by Wilson (Woody) Powell


Bob Aldridge is a World War II veteran and former engineer. He has spent thirty-five years researching government secret and not-so-secret policies and actions undermining Constitutional and Bill of Rights guarantees. He was awarded the Martin Luther King Jr. Award for warning of the Pentagon’s efforts to seek a nuclear first strike capability in the 1970’s. He is an advisor/consultant/sponsor to CCCO, the Nuclear Peace Foundation, British-Institute for Law and Peace. He lives in Santa Clara with Janet, his wife and partner for sixty years.


Mr. Aldridge has produced a meticulous, detailed account of how our Constitution has come to be relegated to the category of “a nice idea, but not really practical” anymore.


He may not say that, but that is what I inferred after reading “America In Peril”, which traces the assaults on civil liberties, international treaties governing the treatment of prisoners of war, the masking of dictatorial power by patriotic appeal, and the imposition of a thick veil of secrecy over the workings of government, by the Bush administration since 9/11.


This is an incredibly scholarly work, citing case after case from the public record, counting in relentless detail the depredations upon civil rights by Bush and his neocon appointees. Warning. It is dense with factual examples, citations of historical precedent and an exacting chronology of the arcane machinations of the Bush administration as it wriggles to escape the twin hooks of constitutional authority and humanitarian ethics.


PNAC and rigged elections
He begins with the stated intentions of the neocons leading up to the rigged election of 2000, starting with then Defense Secretary Dick Cheney’s Defense Planning Guidance document, co-authored by his Under Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and Deputy Under Secretary, Lewis (Scooter) Libby, Richard Perle and Zalmay Khalizad, a Muslim, Afghanistan-born member of Project For A New American Century, special advisor to the State Department on Afghanistan promoting the mujahadeen insurrection against the Soviet Union, and recently, ambassador to Iraq.


Bob Aldridge then examines the election cycle that brought George W. Bush and his cronies to power, with particular attention to the events that unfolded in Florida, disenfranchising a large segment of the voting population that would, undoubtedly, have put Al Gore over the top in a narrowly won election. From there he looks at election irregularities that have persisted to this day, again drawing on the public record, noting the extreme and unprecedented disparities between exit polls and published results.

more...

http://www.opednews.com/articles/life_a_woody_po_080322_america_in_peril____.htm

[livvy]

19. Big Julie's Blank Dice and the Texas Two-Step

This is not news from today, but if you haven't read it yet, it's worth a read.

Big Julie's Blank Dice and the Texas Two-Step

Big Julie’s Blank Dice and the Texas Two-Step:
Thoughts on March 4th and Computerized Elections


by Jonathan Simon, Election Defense Alliance

Last week, as I was watching what could be watched of the crucial March 4th Democratic primary elections and downloading for analysis such data as was made publicly available, a hilarious scene kept coming unbidden to mind. The scene is from Guys and Dolls and it takes place somewhere in the sewer system of New York, where Nathan Detroit’s floating crap game has found a temporary and rather sarcastically colorful and well-lit home.

Big Julie, a scar-faced high-roller in from Chicago to “shoot crap,” is down on his luck and out about 10 Gs. Nathan (Frank Sinatra) says it’s time to go home, but Big Julie is not the kind of mug to go gentle into that good night without his 10 Gs, plus interest. So he challenges Nathan to roll him personally for the dough and Nathan (putting up cash to Big Julie’s “marker” and, to narrow down his choices somewhat, at gunpoint) accepts.

Big Julie, to change his luck, is going to use his own dice. The trouble (for Nathan at least) is that the dice don’t have any spots; they’ve worn off. But, not to worry, Big Julie remembers where they were.

The results (“Hah! Seven! I win . . . . Hah! Snake Eyes! You lose”) are, shall we say, predictable—though Nathan does manage to win when Big Julie rolls him for $1—and Nathan kisses off his last few grand with a resignation worthy of Gore, Kerry, a host of other candidates who would not appear on Karl Rove’s A-list, and the Democratic Party as a whole.

The scene is hilarious, but Tuesday night was not. Nor was New Hampshire, nor 2006, nor 2004, nor 2002, nor any election in America since the vote counting went wholesale into the darkness of proprietary cyberspace and the spots were rubbed off the dice, leaving the equipment vendors, with their avowed partisan proclivities and their secret computer code and memory cards, to tell us who won (“Hah! Seven!”) and who lost (“Hah! Snake Eyes!”).

more...

http://www.electiondefensealliance.org/blank_dice_elections

[livvy]

12. Campaign Finance n/t

[livvy]

13. Gov. Gregoire Campaign Now Accepting Checks

Saturday, Mar. 22, 2008

Gov. Gregoire campaign now accepting checks

By Chris Mulick, Herald Olympia bureau

OLYMPIA -- Chris Gregoire's re-election campaign is accepting campaign checks even as the first-term governor decides the fate of several hundred bills interest groups lobbied to pass and kill during this year's legislative session.

After the Legislature adjourned March 13, Gregoire said she wouldn't be asking for money until she was done signing bills and veto messages.

"I'm not doing any fundraising at all," Gregoire said at the time. "My job is right now to continue to be in the legislative process, and so I've asked nobody to do any fundraising for me. None."


But that won't stop some donors from mailing in checks anyway. And the Gregoire camp will cash them.

"If checks come in the mail, we're not going to be sending them back," said Debra Carnes, communications director for the Gregoire campaign.

The governor isn't being told about them, Carnes said. And information about those contributions won't be publicly available until monthly reports are due April 10 -- five days after Gregoire's deadline to have decided the fate of all 331 bills sent her way.

"We've created our own firewall," Carnes said.

As of Friday morning, Gregoire had more than 200 bills still to act on.

Washington law prevents legislators and statewide elected officials from soliciting or receiving campaign contributions beginning 30 days before a regular legislative session. Until last year the freeze period extended to 30 days after the adjournment of a regular session.



more...

http://www.tri-cityherald.com/901/story/134849.html

[Peace Patriot]

18. Thanks, Livvy! There is no more important issue than transparent vote counting! nt

[Kurovski]

20. Kick to the top!

Thanks, dear livvy! :hug:

[Mnemosyne]

21. An early afternoon kick for Sunday! And thanks

for the mention liv! :yourock::hi:

[livvy]

22. Thanks for all the knr's and kind words everyone! n/t