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Take that Sheldon Adelson!

November 7, 2012 /0 Comments/in /by

Via TPM, most Jewish voters found Romney’s rhetoric about Israel, the United States and Iran, and that of his surrogates, completely unpersuasive. The president got 70% of Jewish voters, a slight shift down from 2008, but Romney managed only 30%! Can the media now stop shouting for a while about this topic, and enabling shouters like Rudy Giuliani, whose campaign excesses this time were egregious, even for him. It’s remarkable how much of Romney’s attacking rhetoric against the president was unavailing.

Grateful

November 7, 2012 /0 Comments/in , /by

Grateful, relieved, happy, and hopeful for so many things, a handful of them below:

1) Grateful that our president will be returned to office with the support of a majority of the nation’s voters; that so many progressive women will be serving in the Senate; and that marriage equality has been affirmed on the east coast and the west coast.

2) Relieved that the policies and cohort of the challenger won’t be installed in the White House.

3) Happy that I was able to lend my support to the Obama campaign with some phone banking (not as much as in 2008, though I still made some calls); that I connected with the Obama Campaign’s digital outreach staff, especially Teddy Goff and Erica Sackin, and was able to inform this blog with their informed content; and that the curation and writing of this blog spread accurate information and motivating commentary about the campaign to a widening circle of readers and sharers. Thanks to all.

4) Hopeful that four more years of President Obama’s astute leadership will heal our economy with more opportunities for all; nurture civil and human rights; and lead to more global understanding.

As this first day after the 2012 election goes along, I may have more items to list, but for now these will suffice. As always, thank you for subscribing, reading, and sharing from The Great Gray Bridge. If you care to, please share some things for which you are grateful, relieved, happy, and/or hopeful in the comments field below.

A PA Voting Machine Changes an Obama Vote to Romney

November 6, 2012 /0 Comments/in /by

Via PoliticalWire.com I see that Zachary Roth of NBC News is reporting on a voter in PA who uploaded a brief video of a worrisome glitch on the voting machine he was using. Under a youtube account name ‘centralpavoter,’ he left a very reasonable-sounding comment just below. He doesn’t claim anything more than what he observed, but what happened is disturbing. Please note that Roth reports the machine was taken out of use, after ‘centralpavoter’ alerted officials to the problem.

“My wife and I went to the voting booths this morning before work. There were 4 older ladies running the show and 3 voting booths that are similar to a science fair project in how they fold up. They had an oval VOTE logo on top center and a cartridge slot on the left that the volunteers used to start your ballot.

I initially selected Obama but Romney was highlighted. I assumed it was being picky so I deselected Romney and tried Obama again, this time more carefully, and still got Romney. Being a software developer, I immediately went into troubleshoot mode. I first thought the calibration was off and tried selecting Jill Stein to actually highlight Obama. Nope. Jill Stein was selected just fine. Next I deselected her and started at the top of Romney’s name and started tapping very closely together to find the ‘active areas’. From the top of Romney’s button down to the bottom of the black checkbox beside Obama’s name was all active for Romney. From the bottom of that same checkbox to the bottom of the Obama button (basically a small white sliver) is what let me choose Obama. Stein’s button was fine. All other buttons worked fine.
I asked the voters on either side of me if they had any problems and they reported they did not. I then called over a volunteer to have a look at it. She him hawed for a bit then calmly said “It’s nothing to worry about, everything will be OK.” and went back to what she was doing. I then recorded this video.
There is a lot of speculation that the footage is edited. I’m not a video guy, but if it’s possible to prove whether a video has been altered or not, I will GLADLY provide the raw footage to anyone who is willing to do so. The jumping frames are a result of the shitty camera app on my Android phone, nothing more.”
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This is the .18 sec video:

My Polling Place at 7 AM, Election Day 2012

November 6, 2012 /0 Comments/in /by

I was voter #36 voter in my election district on the Upper West Side of Manhattan this morning. It was a thrill to vote for President Obama, having earlier voted for him when he was still “Senator” Obama. Now I’m free to volunteer at the local campaign office during the day. Here’s what my polling place on W. 103rd Street, the lobby of an apartment building, looked like this morning.

Unsettling Report on Last-Minute Installation of New Vote Reporting Software in Ohio

November 5, 2012 /0 Comments/in /by

Tuesday Update: The AP’s reporting today that U.S District Court Judge Gregory Frost has refused to hear the lawsuit brought by Ohioans Bob Fitrakis and Gerry Bello over the last-minute installation of new vote reporting software by Secretary of State Jon Husted. Husted’s conduct throughout the campaign has been despicable.
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Evening Update: TheBradBlog’s post, which I’d linked to earlier today, has been cross-published in Salon.com. I’m glad to see this puzzling matter of Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted’s installation of new vote reporting software getting noticed before voting day tomorrow.
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Just saw this tweet from indie journalist Dan Gillmor alerting his followers to this post on the Brad blog about a new piece of software that Ohio Secretary of State John Husted has installed very recently into Ohio’s vote tabulating system. I quickly retweeted Gillmor’s tweet. Here are the first eight paragraphs from Brad Friedman’s post, with links to earlier reporting on this story:

“Last week, Bob Fitrakis and Gerry Bello at FreePress.org reported an important story concerning what they described as “uncertified ‘experimental’ software patches” being installed at the last minute on electronic vote tabulation systems in 39 Ohio counties.

The story included a copy of the contract [PDF] between Republican Ohio Sec. of State Jon Husted’s office and ES&S, the nation’s largest e-voting system manufacturer, for a new, last minute piece of software created to the custom specifications of the Sec. of State. The contract itself describes the software as ‘High-level enhancements to ES&S’ election reporting software that extend beyond the current features and functionality of the software to facilitate a custom-developed State Election Results Reporting File.’

A subsequent story at The Free Press the following day included text said to be from a November 1 memo sent from the OH SoS Election Counsel Brandi Laser Seske to a number of state election officials confirming the use of the new, uncertified software on Ohio’s tabulator systems. The memo claims that ‘its function is to aid in the reporting of results” by converting them “into a format that can be read by the Secretary of State’s election night reporting system.’

On Friday evening, at Huffington Post, journalist Art Levine followed up with a piece that, among other things, advanced the story by breaking the news that Fitrakis and his attorney Cliff Arnebeck were filing a lawsuit for an immediate injunction against Husted and ES&S to ‘halt the use of secretly installed, unauthorized ‘experimental’ software in 39 counties’ tabulators’. Levine also reported that Arnebeck had referred the matter to the Cincinnati FBI for criminal investigation of what the Ohio attorney describes as ‘a flagrant violation of the law.’

‘Before you add new software, you need approval of a state board,’ says Arnebeck. ‘They are installing an uncertified, suspect software patch that interfaces between the county’s vote tabulation equipment and state tabulators.’ Arnebeck’s alarm is understandable.

Since the story initially broke, I’ve been trying to learn as much as I could about what is actually going on here. During that time, a few in the mainstream media have gotten wind of the story as well, including NBC News and CNN, and have been able to press Husted and other officials in his office into finally responding to the concerns publicly. The Ohio officials have attempted to downplay the concerns, though in doing so, they appear to have given misleading information which, at times, seems to conflict even with the contract itself.

I’ve also spoken to computer scientists and election integrity experts, in trying to make sense of all of this, though many of them seem to be scratching their heads as well. My own queries to the Sec. of State’s office have gone unanswered, as had Fitrakis’ and Bello’s before they published their initial story, begging the question as to why, if this software is as benign as Ohio officials are suggesting, they didn’t respond immediately to say as much. Furthermore, why did they keep the contract a secret? Why did they wait until just before the election to have this work done? And why did they feel it was appropriate to circumvent both federal and state testing and certification programs for the software in the bargain?

And, just to pre-respond to those supposed journalists who have shown a proclivity for reading comprehension issues, let me be clear: No, this does not mean I am charging that there is a conspiracy to rig or steal the Ohio election. While there certainly could be, if there is, I don’t know about it, nor am I charging there is any such conspiracy at this time. The secretive, seemingly extra-legal way in which SoS Husted’s office is going about whatever it is they are trying to do, however, at the very last minute before the election, along with the explanations they’ve given for it to date, and concerns about similar cases in the past, in both Ohio and elsewhere, are certainly cause for any reasonable skeptic or journalist to be suspect and investigate what could be going on. And so I am…”
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I will be watching for updates on this story, especially the lawsuit filed by Fitrakis and Arnebeck that’s been filed seeking an injunction to prevent use of the new software. The odious Mr. Husted is also in court today, with national DEMs trying to prevent him from enacting an onerous burden on voters who use provisional ballots. A ruling is expected on that before voting day tomorrow.

Riverside Park, post-Sandy

November 4, 2012 /0 Comments/in , /by

In Friday’s New York Times, I’d seen an article with updates on the condition of the city’s parks, post-Hurricane Sandy. My own nearby park was listed like this:

RIVERSIDE PARK Large areas of the park, which stretches along the Hudson River on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, were under four feet of water after the hurricane, according to the Riverside Park Fund. Dozens of trees were destroyed, and hundreds of others damaged. Some paved walkways were washed away, and falling branches damaged park lights, playground equipment and benches.

The article went on to say that many of the city’s parks would officially be reopening Saturday, though I was not sure they’d be able to open Riverside. Checking the NYC Parks Dept. website Sunday I see that Central Park has re-opened, but the part of Riverside Park nearest my Upper West Side apartment is still closed, especially the stretch between 116th and 125th Street. Sunday and Monday I took my first bike rides since the hurricane, and found evidence of the storm’s prolific destruction. These photos show a tree care crew cleaning up from a really big oak, originally standing in the grove to the right, that fell across the paved path in the center. The butt of the fallen tree is impaled on the black iron fence bordering the path. It’s going to be a long while until our parks are back to anything like they were before the storm.