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| Multi-Candidate /Multiple Winner Elec... |
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John Dralla
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Alpinecounty
Post Number: 1
Registered: 9-2009
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, September 28, 2009 - 5:17 pm: | 
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An upcoming election for a public water district board has three positions to be elected. Four candidates are running. Three are incumbents. The election therefore is "plurality-at-large" or "Block Voting" or "Bloc Voting." The voting is also not "one person, one vote." It is a "weighted vote" based upon land value. Four developers have 27% of the vote out of 691 rate payers. The County Clerk has given instructions "Vote for Three" on the ballot. Voting Theory has a concept of "Bullet Voting." That is, we may want to place only one vote for our candidate and not vote for any other candidate to give our candidate a better chance of unseating the incumbents. The language should have been "Vote for up to Three." The County Clerk is refusing to change the printed ballot. What can we do? Was the language proper? The county is Alpine County in California. |
V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 3081
Registered: 4-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, September 29, 2009 - 5:57 am: |
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I can't speak to California statute on this, but in most states, the proper and complete phrase is, "Vote For Not More Than Three".
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Sometimes, every once in a while, the real reason "your side" lost an election is because more people really DID vote for the "other guy", hard as that may be to fathom.
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Bob Lee
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Elecfact
Post Number: 1
Registered: 11-2009
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, November 19, 2009 - 12:08 pm: |
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Kurt's assertion that the Philadelphia Pollbooks did not contain a DOB is absolute, total non-sense. The Philly election district pollbooks have had a DOB in each voter record in the pollbooks since they were implemented in 1997.
And as far as Kurt's Philly "van voters" scam - it just more of the same old, often wing-nut, urban legend stuff. |
V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 3294
Registered: 4-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, November 19, 2009 - 1:31 pm: |
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Bob,
I could have sworn that YOU PERSONALLY told me (at a HAVA meeting) in about 2003 that your pollbooks had no DOB. (It was either you or Monna.)
As for the van scam, I believed it was Jeff Piccola urban legend stuff too until a guy that now works up here repeated it to me with "first person" corroboration.
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"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." - Carl Sagan
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Bob Lee
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Elecfact
Post Number: 2
Registered: 11-2009
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, November 20, 2009 - 9:21 am: |
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Kurt: Key is HAVA meeting. It wasn't our pollbooks that were the issue. IT WAS SURE. SURE originally did not print the DOB on the Voter ID Card. Philly pushed and pushed to get it added because we have hundreds, or thousands of households where there are two people at the same address, with the same name (father/son; mother/daughter). The only way anyone would know whose ID was delivered or had to be returned as undeliverable in cases where the son / daughter had moved out, or if the mother or father passed away was to include the DOB on the ID Card. Otherwise they could all be carrying around the wrong card.
We have always had the DOB in the Pollbook. Our first system was designed by us and implemented by IBM - I wrote the print specs for the bid for a vendor to print them. the DOB was there. |
V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 3297
Registered: 4-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, November 20, 2009 - 10:47 am: |
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I just went back to my oldest SURE reg. card, and it had my DOB on it. It would seem you won the day, as you generally did.
Bob Lee is one of the finest election officials in the nation, bar none. He works in a tough town with a tough reputation for corruption of all sorts. He is ONE reason why it hasn't become a complete cesspool. I give the same kudos to Lenny Piazza up in Luzerne. Tough places to be honest guys, both.
A good man trying to hold together a bad place, in some unfortunate ways.
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"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." - Carl Sagan
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Mark E. Smith
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mymarkx
Post Number: 701
Registered: 7-2005
Best of Black Box? 
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, November 20, 2009 - 11:45 pm: |
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Kurt writes, "As for the van scam, I believed it was Jeff Piccola urban legend stuff too until a guy that now works up here repeated it to me with 'first person' corroboration."
I coulda sworn that you'd made it seem as if YOU had first hand knowledge of the mythical van scan, Kurt. Now it seems you heard it from a guy who heard it from a guy.....
Perhaps Bob Lee would care to verify Kurt's assertion that "EVERYONE who has access to the pollbook is a co-conspirator. If a whistleblower lands a spot in one of the precincts, they shut that one down...." and that elections officials don't have access to the pollbooks.
As I understood Kurt's explanation of what for some reason appeared to be his personal knowledge of the van scam, it was run by Democratic Party Committeemen who enlisted ACORN to help register the fraudulent voters. And this was a great danger because it could open a vector to some other urban legend I've forgotten.
Like the ACORN training manual that never actually turned up, these things always start out seeming to be something that Kurt has personal first-hand knowledge of, and then the knowledge turns out to be inferred, or second-hand.
But it does serve to shift the focus from election fraud to voter fraud and make retail fraud appear to be as great a danger as wholesale fraud--in fact Kurt says that there is no difference, that fraud is fraud whether it is 24 fraudulent voters in the entire country over the last decade, or 16,000 votes vanishing into thin air in an instant as happened in Sarasota.
Kurt also has a habit of frequently stating how untrustworthy he thinks I am, that if I said that the sun rose in the east and set in the west, he'd want to verify it, but he seems to feel that there is little need to verify elections because elections officials, with rare exceptions are all as honest as Bob Lee and Lenny Piazza. That seems to be another contradiction, so now I don't know whether Kurt is saying that you two are the rare exceptions to a corrupt group, or that you are just like all the other honest elections officials.
Kurt also had a heartrending story about how ACORN waited until the last minute to dump a bunch of registrations at his office, which forced him to work so much overtime that he was unable to properly care for his seriously ill mother, who perished as a result. He didn't say that ACORN killed his mom, or even that they knew his mom was ill or that their action would force him personally to work overtime and neglect his mom, but he blames them for his mother's death.
I went to see a movie today called, "The Informant." Not a really good movie, but loosely based on a true story and a book of the same name about a guy who turned informant for the FBI with regard to price-fixing at Archer Daniels Midland, only it turns out that the good-guy informant wasn't such a good guy and had ripped ADM off for at least nine million dollars. The informant ended up going to prison, some top ADM guys were also sentenced to prison, ADM paid a big fine, and nothing has changed. The replacement of nutritious foods with corn syrup, the global price-fixing, and the kickbacks are still business as usual. I rather doubt that the election biz is very different. If the big money wants somebody elected, or wants to get rid of somebody, they spend whatever it costs and do whatever it takes to make it happen. |
V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 3301
Registered: 4-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, November 23, 2009 - 5:37 am: |
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Mark,
I'd STRONGLY advise you not to goad Bob Lee into commenting on ACORN, if you like your present position of opinion. The Bob Lee I knew from 2001-2005 was perhaps the most vocifierous critic of ACORN I've ever heard. And Bob, unlike me, is a Democrat of LONNNNG standing, not a relative newbie like me.
In my experience, the ONLY people who have anything admiring to say about ACORN are ideologues drawn to their stated "message and/or mission". No one who ever has had to deal with them in any practical or legal or quasi-legal way has anything positive to say about ACORN. They brandish an "outlaw" mentality like a metaphorical billy club. If ACORN's practices represent what our cities would be like under "democracy", count me out as favoring "democracy". They are thugs, plain and simple. They may be thugs with a laudable goal of expanding the franchise to a chronically underserved demographic, but thugs nonetheless. The end most certainly does NOT justify the means.
It was Bob Lee who told me in late 2003 what ACORN would be doing. He was NOT amused. They had hit HIM in 2000. At least Bob hadn't been forced onto a SURE system that didn't have the capacity to handle the surge of registrations as only my county (Berks) and Lehigh County had in 2004 (among ACORN-targeted counties). In 2004, neither Bob nor I wanted ANY PART of SURE because it lacked capacity and scalability. I was forced onto SURE. Bob was not.
And Bob, unlike me in 2004, HAD the staff, HAD people who were more than willing to work overtime, HAD a software system that could handle the work, and HAD Commissioners who could appreciate what ACORN was capable of, and would plan accordingly. I did not. I was understaffed, underequipped (by the state's SURE system), underfunded, and in my first Presidential election, with an AFSCME union seemingly hell bent on being obstructionist.
And you seem to be being intentionally "dense" again. Bob Lee and Lenny Piazza are noteworthy because they continue to operate honestly in some ethically VERY suspect places. Both Philadelphia, and more recently Luzerne County, have become infamous because of rampant indictments and ongoing criminal investigations of all manner of politicians in those areas.
That Bob and Lenny maintain their ethical center is amazing and praiseworthy. It can't be easy in the political culture of both counties.
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"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." - Carl Sagan
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Brant Lamb
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Brantl
Post Number: 2457
Registered: 1-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, November 23, 2009 - 10:06 am: |
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How do they manage that, Kurt, when you couldn't? I don't get it. |
V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 3302
Registered: 4-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, November 23, 2009 - 10:20 am: |
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Different problem, Brant. My politicians were merely painfully ignorant and self-serving, but not corrupt per se. More like basking in blissful ignorance. They couldn't be corrupt, they were lacking in the funds, personal and/or campaign, to be corrupt. They were driven by staying in office and ideology, not finance per se.
They were merely wrong, not corrupt and evil. The FBI swept through Berks, too, and found plenty of low level corruption, but not at high levels. In Philly and Luzerne, the FBI says the corruption is systemic, pervasive and at ALL levels, even the courts, in Luzerne.
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"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." - Carl Sagan
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Mark E. Smith
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mymarkx
Post Number: 706
Registered: 7-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, November 23, 2009 - 12:35 pm: |
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So despite your lack of staff, funding, etc., you'd been forewarned about what ACORN would do and you'd had plenty of time to arrange for care for your mother? It didn't take you by surprise?
I'd be very interested in learning how ACORN "hit" Bob and to learn his criticisms of ACORN.
I've never counted you as favoring democracy, Kurt, as you have made it quite explicit many times that you do not. You, like this country's founding fathers and the framers of our Constitution, appear to believe that oligarchy is a preferable form of government because the rich and powerful are best suited to govern, and that ordinary citizens are not suited to self-governance.
As for the FBI, they've had plenty of corruption within their own ranks, even at the highest levels. I have no evidence that the campaign against ACORN isn't yet another FBI COINTELPRO type operation, and it does seem to fit a long-standing pattern of persecution of any individual or group attempting to change the status quo. The truth will, as usual, only be revealed fifty or sixty years from now, if ever.
Kurt writes, "In my experience, the ONLY people who have anything admiring to say about ACORN are ideologues drawn to their stated "message and/or mission". No one who ever has had to deal with them in any practical or legal or quasi-legal way has anything positive to say about ACORN."
Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FLA) had some good things to say about ACORN:
http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_politics/2009/02/grayson-acorn-take-bows-f or-foreclosure-decision-.html
Do you consider Rep. Grayson an ideologue? Was the judge in the foreclosure case also an ideologue? Are all the people who got to keep their homes due to the efforts of Rep. Grayson and ACORN also ideologues? Come to think of it, do you consider all Democrats (except Bob and Lenny, if Lenny is also a Democrat) to be ideologues, and all Republicans NOT to be ideologues?
My dictionary defines "thug" as a brutal ruffian or assassin. Involvement in litigation and voter registration is not the same as hitting people over the head or killing people. Not even your illogical example of how you believe ACORN's late registrations contributed to the death of your mother, comes close to anything that could be described as thuggish behavior. When a thug wants to kill somebody, they kill them, they don't figure out when that person is likely to become old and sickly, start a twenty or thirty-year program beforehand, find out where the person's son works, and smother him with paperwork.
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Brant Lamb
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Brantl
Post Number: 2460
Registered: 1-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, November 23, 2009 - 7:24 pm: |
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That explains even less why these two paragons of moral virtue still have jobs, Kurt. |
Phillip Caine
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Phillip_caine
Post Number: 79
Registered: 3-2008
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, June 27, 2010 - 9:58 am: |
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what about termite? what does your dictionary say a termite is? |
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