[openvotingSTL] Fwd: BBV in NY/NJ & here's the newest investigative report! Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2007 09:33:21 -0500 (CDT) Second of the MOONSHINE ELECTIONS series by Bev Harris. Looking forward to the GODFATHER series coming up next. Pat Berg ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Black Box Voting Date: Sep 20, 2007 7:27 AM Subject: BBV in NY/NJ & here's the newest investigative report! To: pat.rivercritter@gmail.com Announcement - Those in New York, New Jersey: Bev Harris will be in NY, CT, NJ from Sept 22-27 for work on the "Godfather Elections" investigative series, so if you have questions or closeup info on election problems, now is the time to email Bev: bev@blackboxvoting.org -- AND -- On Thurs. Sept. 27 Harris will be speaking, it's a public event, please come if you can! 7:30 pm Temple New Tamid, 936 Broad St, Bloomfield NJ 07003 The film "Hacking Democracy" featuring the work of Black Box Voting has been nominated for an Emmy; the awards are in NYC Sept. 21. Wish us all luck. A donation of $45 and we send you a gift DVD; http://www.blackboxvoting.org.donate.html HERE'S THE LATEST INVESTIGATIVE REPORT, THE SECOND IN THE "MOONSHINE ELECTIONS" SERIES. Click here for printer-friendly version (allow a couple minutes to download): http://www.blackboxvoting.org/moonshine2.pdf or visit the web page: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/54610.html where you can also log in and discuss. SHORT VERSION - An original Black Box Voting investigative report By Bev Harris This report is dedicated to Dave Greenwell of Bullitt County, Kentucky, who ran for sheriff in 2006 with a pledge to clean up nepotism in Bullitt County government. He lost. Last time I met him, his thank-you-for-trying message consisted of three broken ribs. A powerful family now dominates Bullitt County, but if what we have learned will help to achieve reforms (see end of article), Dave's loss can result in a win for Kentucky and many other states. HERE LAY THE 2 MOST FAMOUS MOONSHINE FAMILIES IN THE WORLD West Virginia, Mingo County: The Hatfields Kentucky, Pike County: The McCoys By my count, at least 14 people were murdered during the Hatfield-McCoy feud, not including the hangings of the criminally convicted. Despite their anger management problems, the Hatfields have managed to hold several public offices in West Virginia, and at least one direct descendant of both a Hatfield and McCoy hold office right now. Let's go back in time, for illustrative purposes. Suppose you are a McCoy. Suppose you want to run for office. Would you like the Hatfields to count your vote in secret? Would it bother you to see various Hatfields wandering in and out of the back room while McCoy votes are being counted? "Trust Me" elections are a bad idea whether or not the people who control the counting happen to be related to each other. *Moonshine Election Territories: 4 or more of the following characteristics 1. Rural location 2. Family members hold multiple positions in the local government 3. Problems are noted in financial audits 4. Felony convictions of local officials 5. Questionable election situations 6. Obstructs or ignores Freedom of Information (public records) requests 7. Uses computerized voting systems serviced by small subcontractors 16 states, 210 electoral votes - Black Box Voting has identified of these kinds of election jurisdictions in Kentucky, West Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and parts of southern Illinois, Ohio and Indiana, as well as some of western Pennsylvania, eastern Missouri, and scattered locations in Texas. ELECTION NIGHT, NOV. 2006, BULLITT COUNTY KENTUCKY Two local public officials in each county have especially close proximity to elections and ballot chain of custody: the county elections director and the county sheriff. In the 2006 election that installed Donnie Tinnell as the new sheriff, outgoing Bullitt County Sheriff Paul Parsley was in there helping with the Election Night e-vote tallying, and Parsley's granddaughter, whom nobody can recall being on the payroll or appointed to any official position, was seen handling the poll tapes - results from each individual voting machine - which by the way didn't match up to the official results, but nobody did anything about that. Paul Parsley had already announced that the new sheriff in town was going to be Donnie Tinnell - in fact, he announced that Tinnell would be chosen by the voters some months before the election. Another person getting up close and personal to the e-vote counting was Linda Tinnell, the sister-in-law of Donnie Tinnell. No one could actually view the counting of the e-votes of course, other than noting that someone was doing something to computers. So here we have Donnie Tinnell running for sheriff, and we also had Donnie's cousin, Sherman Tinnell, running for mayor. Here a Tinnell, there a Tinnell, helping with the votes a Tinnell, and all the Tinnell people won, including relatives like Donnie's niece, a schoolteacher named Melanie Roberts who happened to land the most powerful position in the county. The mantle was duly passed from Sheriff Parsley to new Sheriff Donnie Tinnell, who now also sits on the Bullitt County Board of Elections. AREN'T THERE LAWS AGAINST THIS SORT OF THING? Not exactly. Some states have anti-nepotism laws, but most places rely on murky toothless "ethics" recommendations. Others provide exclusions as big as the Hatfield family -- for example, in Texas first cousins don't count as nepotism. The Missouri Constitution requires public officials to forfeit their office if they employ anyone up through a fourth degree relationship by blood or marriage (more in full report). But in Kentucky, county elections boards can include family members and convicted felons as well. I guess you can bring in the James Gang to run your local elections board, if you're in Kentucky. It's legal. No state has nepotism laws that contemplate the unique risks of computerized voting systems. Nepotism laws generally only deal with hiring your family in your own department. If you are a Sheriff running for reelection, and your son is the elections division IT computer guy, that's not prohibited unless you can contort an ethics rule to fit and find someone willing to enforce it. Nepotism laws don't affect dynasties. One family member can succeed another, and indeed this is often used to keep control within one family in situations where there are term limits. In 1966 Governor George Wallace dealt with his own term limit by helping his wife Lurleen succeed him, frankly admitting that he planned to make the decisions. Family dynasties can help protect corrupt locations from having the next guy find their dirty laundry, keep the kickbacks in the family, pass secret recipes for fraud from generation to generation. Nepotism laws generally don't put any restrictions on family members who volunteer to help around the office -- or help with vote-counting, as the case may be. MOONSHINE NICKNAMES Clearly I'm a Yankee, or a left-coasty, or something, because when I went looking for who has the same last name in the moonshine territories the nicknames on the ballots stopped me before I could even get to the last names. Three candidates who go by the names Bugs, Hossfly and Chigger ran for magistrate in the 2007 Kentucky primary election. That election also provided candidate comfort food: challengers named Buttermilk, Puddin, Apple, Peanuts, Hot Dog, Big Mac and Bun, along with Chubby Ray, Heavy Duty, Chunk, Tank and Slim. WHAT WILL STEALING ELECTIONS GET YOU? Two industries have a real stake in moonshine elections counties: Drug-running and coal mining. The next article in the moonshine series will go into the drug-running side of things. Here, let's take a look at how the coal industry -- and the family stakeholders in coal -- have a powerful interest in elections. The vast majority of America's 3,142 counties are rural, and in most states, elections are administered by counties. In rural areas, a limited number of industries control the economy, provide the jobs, and consider themselves stakeholders in election outcomes. Many Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee, Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Utah, and Wyoming counties are heavily vested in mining. WHAT AN INDUSTRY CAN GET OUT OF ELECTIONS Sometimes it's all about who'll let you dump the most in the creek. You may think that coal was just something your grandparents needed, but in fact, coal-fired power plants supply roughly 50 percent of the America's electricity and more than 40 percent of the nation's emissions of the leading greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide. Owners of Big Coal nowadays live in places like Florida (TECO Energy), St. Louis (Peabody Energy), and Virginia (Massey Energy), but many powerful local families still draw their personal power from coal. Wealthy local families have sold, leased, and still manage large coal operations. Whereas the Kennedy family bought West Virginia votes the old fashioned way, one by one with envelopes full of cash, George W. Bush was assisted into office by mining industry moguls and a disgruntled union boss who convinced people that an environmentally friendly president would cost them their jobs. (citations in the main article) Bush flipped West Virginia voters from Democrat to Republican with the help of coal barons like William Raney, director of the West Virginia Coal Association, and James H. "Buck" Harless, another patriarch of the coal industry, along with Charles "Dick" Kimbler, a former miner's union official who helped break the Democrats hold on Appalachian counties. "We were looking for friends," Harless told a Wall Street Journal reporter, "and we found one in George W. Bush." After taking the 2000 presidential election, Bush set up his transition advisory team for energy policies. He named three Peabody Energy executives to assist him. When he installed Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell's wife, Elaine Chau, to her cabinet post, both Bush and McConnell* gained a friendly foe for those pesky mining industry investigations. * McConnell co-sponsored the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), the first bill to muscle voting machines into American politics by force. Resource exploitation produces such a sobering string of deaths every year that the Mine Safety Health Administration (MSHA) keeps a running "Fatalgram" tally on its web site. In charge of investigating these fatal accidents is Mitch McConnell's wife, U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chau. On Oct. 11 2000, about 250 million gallons of black coal sludge gushed into a Martin County Kentucky mine and then flowed into two creeks. Black gunk swallowed backyards, gardens and driveways, annihilating life in the waterways. The spill was 23 times as large as the Exxon Valdez oil tanker spill, but it got less media coverage. Erik Reece, a lecturer at the University of Kentucky who teaches environmental journalism, chronicles the kinds of concerns that arise when death and disaster intersect with married Washington D.C. powerhitters: Just like New Orleans, investigators found out they failed to follow safeguards and knew it was at high risk, but when MSHA investigators recommended a criminal investigation, Bush-appointed McConnell spouse Elaine Chau did not comply; one of the main investigators found himself locked out of his office. It's only toxic sludge and global warming at stake. But -- whether it be through financing elections, intimidation tactics, or working with powerful families inside county governments to rig elections -- mining industry "persuasion" shoots its bullets both upward and downward. Take local citizens' property rights and personal safety, for example. In his book Lost Mountain: A Year in the Vanishing Wilderness, Reece describes the personal toll exacted from a resident of moonshine government territory: ------------------------------------------------------------- quote: On the third of July, I drove across 10,000 acres of boulder-strewn wasteland that used to be Kayford Mountain, W.Va. -- one of the most hideous mountaintop-removal sites I've seen. But right in the middle of the destruction, rising like a last gasp, is a small knoll of untouched forest. Larry Gibson's family has lived on Kayford Mountain for 200 years. ... Forty seams of coal lie beneath his 50 acres. Gibson could be a millionaire many times over, but because he refuses to sell, he has been shot at and run off his own road. One of his dogs was shot and another hanged. . . In 2000, Gibson walked out onto his porch one day to find two men dressed in camouflage, approaching with gas cans. They backed away and drove off, but not before they set fire to an empty cabin that belongs to one of Gibson's cousins. This much at least can be said for the West Virginia coal industry: it has perfected the art of intimidation. FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS CENTRALIZE POWER In the last article, "The Hunt for Joe Bolton,", we showed you pictures of the Salyer family influence in Magoffin County. Salyer Coal Company. Salyer for Judge. Salyer Elementary School. Paul Hudson Salyer, a second cousin of former Kentucky Governor Paul Patton, served three terms in Magoffin county's most powerful position, that of Judge Executive, and the 2005 Magoffin County audit mentions that the County Clerk and his wife were running the office.Elections in Magoffin County were therefore being administered by a husband and wife. (printer-friendly copy of article click here, allow a couple minutes to load: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/moonshine1.pdf Bullitt County is not dominated by the coal industry, but it seems to have issues with both drug trafficking and conflict of interest. Bullitt County just built the new Nina Mooney Courthouse Annex, elections headquarters. Nina Mooney was Queen of Elections for a few decades and now her son, Kevin Mooney, runs elections. During Nina's reign, the Mooney family kept the voting machines in a warehouse they owned, rent paid by Bullitt County taxpayers. Bullitt County no longer houses its voting machines in the Mooney family's warehouse, but 2007 Bullitt County financial documents show thousands of dollars in taxpayer money going to "Mooney's Auto Supply." In Feb. 2007 alone, while Kevin Mooney owned it and while he worked for the county, over $2600 was disbursed by Bullitt County to Mooney Auto Supplies. A new owner took over in May 2007, but documents show that Bullitt County was equipping its road services division from Mooney's auto supply shop while he was running the elections division for the county. Bullitt County's voting machine technician is a woman named Tina Drury. She ran away from me when I asked her who pays her. We found her all by herself in a room full of voting machines and upon seeing us videotaping, she literally ran out of the room and bolted down the stairs, and refused to answer who pays her. We have been unable to learn much about Tina Drury's qualifications, except that her grandfather was the voting machine technician before her. NOT JUST IN KENTUCKY Here is a short online video I ran across pertaining to Loving County Texas, where a leading public official is explaining all the family relationships in Loving County government. http://www.brightcove.tv/title.jsp?title=662859766&channel=494910445&lineup=663334211 Several citizens in Knox County, Tennessee have been grousing online that the county commission features the son of an ex-commissioner, the father of a current commissioner, and the wife of another ex-commissioner. They say a former commissioner is now the Knox County Clerk (read: runs elections now). Before you say "that's just an online forum," well you're right, but I'm finding time after time that the locals know best, and for this reason, there is no substitute for field work if you want to know what's really going on. NEPOTISM GONE WILD And then there's Clay County, Kentucky. You won't get far researching Clay County before you bump into a half-dozen Sizemores, who exist in abundance on both sides of the law. I just can't top this article, written by Bryan Burrough. It illustrates the pitfalls of family-run government so eloquently you simply must read these excerpts -- and bear in mind that ol' Crawdad Sizemore won his latest election in May this year: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- quote: In Clay County, Ky., It Takes Some Doing To Avoid a Sizemore The Wall Street Journal(24) . . . Meet the powerful Sizemore clan, whose grip on this isolated mountain county is surpassed only by the violence that clings to its name. Bombings, murders, alleged jury tampering, bootlegging -- the saga of the Sizemores weaves together all the strange and troublesome themes of politics in Appalachia's hamlets. There is Sheriff Harold Sizemore, whose father and predecessor as sheriff was killed in a backwoods hollow by a sniper's bullets in 1969. There is County Judge Carl "Crawdad" Sizemore. There is Constable "Black Jack" Sizemore, whose father was shot in the back by a county sheriff in 1922. And the tax assessor is James Sizemore, called a "double Sizemore" because his parents were both Sizemores. . . . Indeed, with control over the two largest sources of jobs -- the schools and the county payroll -- the Sizemores hold sway over much of Clay County's populace. Few folks hereabouts, including the Sizemores' political opponents, will criticize them . . . To understand Clay County's contradictions, one must first understand the Sizemores -- which isn't easy since many Sizemores can't untangle their own family tree. "There are about four or five sets of us, but as long as you're a Sizemore, you're a Sizemore, no matter what," says Black Jack Sizemore, the constable. "Above all, we stick together." . . . They first came into prominence hereabouts because of what is now known as the great Sizemore feud of 1931. . . And before the killing stopped, family members recall, nine Sizemores were dead, including a deputy sheriff ambushed by his two first cousins in an argument over election results. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE GREAT "TRUST ME" ELECTIONS FOLLY When you introduce computers into the voting process this forces the citizens - who own the government - to trust government insiders to tell the truth about election results. That's intolerable. But family-run government manages to turn even our rudimentary dog-and-pony-show checks and balances into a farce. Citizens can see paper ballots counted in public at the polling place, but we can't see what goes on inside a computer. Government insiders control those computers, and in too many counties, these insiders are related to each other. Intolerable. Farce. That is not democracy. WHAT ABOUT AUDITS? The so-called "audits" in state and federal legislation are actually spot-checks, not audits. Unfortunately, it is difficult to do an actual audit of any kind in the short time between Election Night and the mandatory election certification deadlines. Real audits take months, and they don't just check whether numbers add up -- they examine whether procedures were followed and look at chain of custody, called "segregation of duties." Random spot checks like those done in Minnesota, Arizona, and North Carolina are better than nothing but they won't really stop insider fraud. Government insiders control chain of custody for the very election items that are spot-checked. There are no outside sources for documents, like banks or merchants, just the one source: the government insiders who hold all the keys. Spot checks use records handed over by county insiders, the same people who control access to ballot warehouses and custody of all the logs. CITIZEN CONTROL OVER ELECTIONS Citizen control is the inalienable birthright that the "Trust Me" model tramples. The Declaration of Independence states that The People have the right to "alter or abolish" our government. A milder form of this is to alter our governors. There are really only two ways to do this: through elections or using the method of 1776. Try this: Ask the king of elections in the land where you live if he can secure his laptop from himself. The answer is always the same: "You have to trust us." Next time you hear the words "You Have To Trust," please bust out laughing. IS THERE ANY PLACE FOR "TRUST ME" ELECTIONS IN AMERICA? It's unfair to ask citizens to become clairvoyants, trying to guess whether they should or should not "trust" a bunch of insiders, especially when they happen to be related to each other. It is the duty of the government to "protect and secure" the rights of The People. Forcing us to trust insiders does not secure and protect our rights. We need to look at these things as structural issues, and put structures in place to protect the rights of The People. THREE ACTIONS TO CLEAN UP NEPOTISM At least, get the farce out of the way. It may take longer to correct the intolerable. Cleaning up nepotism is one area where reforms may be achieved quickly. By itself, this won't give you elections you can trust, but it will reclaim meaningful territory. Short term: 1) Demand local policies for the following matters pertaining to elections: a) Require all election workers and poll workers to sign an affidavit: "I am not related to anyone on the ballot" b) Do not permit family members of election staff or candidates to volunteer in any capacity that provides access to election records or computers. These are decisions that can be implemented locally regardless of whether the state requires such measures. 2) Short term: Identify the family relationships in your local elections jurisdiction. Anyone can do this, with a little legwork. Long term: Push for Personal Relationships Disclosure Requirements. Disclosing family ties should be simple. We know who our family is. If it takes too long to fill out the form listing family members employed by local and state government, you've got too many relatives on the payroll. 3) Work to secure state legislation or a constitutional amendment similar to the Missouri Constitution anti-nepotism clause. (It is ironic that a current candidate for Kentucky governor thinks it's more important to change the constitution to allow gambling than to eliminate Kentucky's nepotism problem). Exterminating nepotism will help deal with farcical elections. The next article in the Moonshine series will address the intolerable: felonious conduct by public officials. The Complete Moonshine Elections Series: 1 -- The Hunt for Joe Bolton: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/moonshine1.pdf 2 -- Family-Run Government: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/moonshine2.pdf Still to come 3 -- Felonious conduct by public officials 4 -- The Bullitt County Experience 5 -- Moonshine Solutions ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Extraordinary work by Bullitt County citizen Kathy Greenwell triggered this investigative report. It's not often you read in the newspaper that a candidate for sheriff -- in this case, Kathy's husband, Dave Greenwell -- is running a campaign with an explicit promise to clean up nepotism in county hiring practices. That flagged the issue for us, and a closer look reveals that this problem is significant, jeopardizes computerized elections, and is not limited to Bullitt County. When Dave announced his intent to run for Bullitt County sheriff, he was fired. He is now a police officer in nearby Pioneer Village. Election rights attorney Paul Lehto has done a masterful job of framing the issues of counting votes in secret, and provided several of the frames used in this article. Black Box Voting administrative assistant Natalie D'Arielli has contributed astute insights and suggested some of the practical solutions. She trekked around Kentucky with me capturing video and asking questions. And thanks also to the mighty Nancy Tobi, from whom I purloined the "gone wild" concept for the "Nepotism Gone Wild" subhead. Her "Citizens Gone Wild" concept in New Hampshire is an empowering way to take action. Citizens who wish to become more involved: Black Box Voting has prepared an easy to follow "Citizens Tool Kit" for you, available for free online: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/toolkit.html The work Black Box Voting is doing is supported solely by citizen donations. We are gearing up for 2008, and your tax-deductible donation is always very much needed and appreciated! To support our work: Click http://www.blackboxvoting.org/donate.html Or, mail to: Black Box Voting 330 SW 43rd St Suite K PMB 547 Renton WA 98055 * * * * * You are receiving this occasional bulletin because you signed up for it or donated and thus, receive updates. If you wish to be removed from any further updates, hit "reply" and type the word "remove" in the subject line.