On Monday, I told you about a claim made by BlackBox Voting's Brad Spencer. The charge? Advanced Voting Solutions provided Northampton County with electronic voting machines different from those certified by Pennsylvania's Department of State. The result? We voted with machines that the state never approved.
Today, BlackBox Voting substantiated these accusations with documentary evidence that includes a bill of materials, technical drawings as well as Pennsylvania's own examination.If you look at the WinVote machines above, you'll see two black boxes that look pretty much identical. But pop open the hood, and you'll see two completely different animals, as illustrated on the right. One of these is what was delivered to Pennsylvania and the other is what was approved. I'm no rocket scientist, but even I can see there's a huge difference. I don't want to rush to judgment without hearing from AVS, but these are serious questions that need answers.
9 comments:
"Lehigh Valley Ramblings" blog may not be "rushing to judgement" on the touch-screen "voting" machines, but the billybytes blog is.
Billybytes and thousands of other concerned citizens of Northampton County entreated its chief executive officer, Democrat John Stoffa not to purchase these machines for use in the county's electoral process.
Stoffa ignored our pleas and bought the machines anyway, and the Northampton County Board of Elections allowed their use.
Stoffa allowed himself to be used by a government south of the "Lehigh Valley" and far remote from it - in more respects than one - that increasingly tightens its noose around the neck of Constitutionally-protected civil liberties.
The visit of Secret Service agents to the home of Northampton County citizen octogenarian Dan Tilli was not the first.
A cadre of Secret Service agents accompanied President Bush's Chief-of-Staff Andrew Card when on at least one previous occasion he visited Lafayette College President Arthur J. Rothkopf, one of the rogues identified along with Pennsylvania Governor Edward G. Rendell, 136th legislative district representative Robert Freeman, Northampton County Executive Glenn Reibman, and Easton Mayor Philip A. Mitman in the Fall 2004 edition of Lafayette Magazine - in a rogues' gallery posted on the http://www.billybytes.com/blog/.
A selection committee was well in place long before Stoffa became exec and that was the committee recommendation. Council went along seven to zip. The only person with any questions was Cusick, who was worried about the absence of a paper trail. He was assured there are three separate backups and that a printer could be attached to the machine if needed.
Don't forget this decision was forced on council by HAVA, which I like to call the Help America Not Vote Act.
Bernie,
Local officials often blame their profligate spending the flows into their political war chests and slush funds on state and federal "mandates."
John Stoffa is no exception: HAV or the K Street electron-voting lobby reeled out to the rest of the country the touch-screen voting- machine bribe.
Some wary jurisdictions, however, such as Northampton's Bucks County neighbor to the south, didn't take the bait.
And Stoffa swallowed HAV's bait - hook, line, and sinker.
Because Stoffa
County council candidates should have command of the facts. They should not create them to fit in with their arguments.
Every county in the commonwealth now is using some form of voting machine, and that includes Bucks County. Your argument to the contrary is Alabama bullshit.
And there was no "bait" involved. It was a MANDATE. They HAD to do it.
Are the voting machines bad? YES. But they were shoved down our throats. Now I'll blame council for many things, but not that. And Stoffa wasn't even on board when they selection committee decided on AVS.
John Stoffa's been hooked, reeled in, gaffed, gutted, even fileted, and put on ice as far as his effectiveness as Northampton County executive goes.
The Billy Bytes blog has caught Stoffa with a piece of cotton twine tied at one end to a locust tree branch and the other to a safety pin.
And not even your Eddie Bauer-inscripted "Lehigh Valley Ramblings" rod and reel's Democratic spin can revive Stoffa and put him back in the swim.
As I stated before Northampton county simply could have gone back to paper ballots and not taken the federal money.
Billy, As much as I admire your lyrical use of the English language, you're still full of Alabama horseshit. I understand you don't like Stoffa. But when you make an argument, you need to have your facts right. Invariably, you don't. It's a shame because you write so damn well. I appreciate the poetry in your writing.
Bernie, Ol' Buddy,
Your designer fly rod still spins out the blustering bullshit of Ed "Willie Stark" Rendell.
The Guv careens back and forth on already deteriorating I-78 between Harriburg and Bethlehem.
Willie's Pennsylvania State Police driver, never identified by either The Morning Call Girl or the The Excess-Times, but whom I know from my Billy Bytes sources to be the embodiment of Robert Penn Warren's Sugar Boy Sheehan.
Sugar Boy expertly maneuvers Willie's black Caddy over the Minsi Trail Bridge spanning the Lehigh River to Don Cunningham's and John Callahan's South Side neighborhood and Starters Pub.
Callahan and Cunningham already wait there. (For those who may not know, Rendell plucked Cunningham from his mayoral seat in Bethlehem in a political rapture and transported him to a Harrisburg office.)
From there Callahan purchased from the world over Pennsylvania's goods and services, including those of the Las Vegas Sands Casino of Sheldon Adelson, the New York City real estate firm Newmark & Co. of international real estate czar Barry Gosin, Manhattan law firm Feinstein, Badillo, Wagner, and Harding, and the Guv's homeboy Philadelphia pal PGCB Chairman Thomas "Tad" Decker, who managed the Philadelphia office of Cozen O'Connor.
This is the law firm that represents the Delaware-Lenape Native Americans' Walking Purchase of 1737 land-grab lawsuit against Northampton County and its partner Binney & Smith - in the manner that "Casino" Jack Abramoff ripped off the inheritance of America's aboriginals.
But though you handle your rod-and-reel blog with the deftness that Sugar boy handles the black Caddy, careful not to cast in the direction of Stoffa, a jerk of Billy Bytes tree limb, tipped with knotted-together scraps of cotton cord tied to a night crawler-skewered hook fashioned from a straight pin, has managed to hook him.
And toss him into the creel, in which he flounders around, as a fish out of its element does, soon starting to stink up the voting scandal-befouled air at which he gasps to survive.
with the deftness smoothness can't reverse the jerk of my tree limb and knotted-together scraps of cotton cord attached to a night crawler skewered on a hook fashioned from a straight pin
Billy - are you having trouble refilling your prescriptions?
It seems like you are off your meds again.
Post a Comment