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Count Paper Ballots is a nationwide citizen group dedicated to
proving that privatized election leads to mistabulated
& fraudulent vote counting. We advocate
hand counted, citizen secured, paper ballots as the ballot of record, counted
in full view of citizens, election day &have completed detailed audits of
2004 Election in GA and OH & Audits of the 2010 MA Election |
If 95% of
the world’s democracies count paper ballots, why can’t we? -Lynn
Landis -Bev
Harris |
“A Citizen’s
Evidence: Proof that Privatized Elections Lead to Fraudulent Elections” –
Count Paper Ballots “Elections
Belong to the People” – Defenders of Democracy ElectionsBelongToPeople.pdf content copyright 2010, Count Paper Ballots we
know that Diebold changed it’s name to Premier
Elections to get rid of the bad PR rap, but we know it’s still the same
crooks running the show. |
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HANDEL HAS WORKED AGAINST
HONEST ELECTIONS IN GEORGIA
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Karen Handel “Will the Real Karen Handel Please Stand up?” –
Garland Favorito “Karen Handel’s Hypocrisy on Ethics Raises Questions”
– Democratic Party of Georgia “Handel Against Ethics Before She Was for Them- Jim
Thompson - Online Athens Karen Handel Part of Corrupt Culture – Albany Journal Letter
to Editor Karen Handel has worked
against HONEST elections in Georgia. Her administration is responsible for
supporting and continuing the Diebold machines which rob Georgians of their
right to verifiable elections. She
reversed her position against Diebold voting machines, after she was elected
and started receiving money from corporate interests, specifically Massey
Bowers, the main Diebold/Premier lobbyist.
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“Elections belong
to the people, not to election officials, not to software programmers, not to
private corporations, not to technicians of any description. The proper role
of elections administration is to assist the people in
the conduct of their own elections.”
–
Defenders of Democracy “And Elections
certainly don’t
belong to Republican Secretaries of State who take money from Voting Machine
lobbyists to keep the machines that deprive the citizens of their vote in
operation. Karen Handel is a corporate
agent, working harder for her corporate donors than the citizens of Georgia.” –
Count Paper Ballots |
More Karen Handel
FACTS
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The Face of
Privatized Elections
GA Secretary of State Misdeeds & Election Audit
Results |
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Here’s Why Your Vote Didn’t Count: Because Wally O’ Dell Needs to Live in a GREAT BIG HOUSE!!! This picture (left) is the Ohio Home of CEO of Diebold,
Inc. If you want to know why your vote
did not count in the 2004 election, here’s the reason.
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Diebold Ads Source: |
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KAREN HANDEL QUOTES & TRACK RECORD OF SUPPORTING DISHONEST
ELECTIONS IN GEORGIA
Counter Facts: Former KSU Professor Britain Williams
oversaw 2001 and 2002 certification testing for voting equipment that did not
have an independent audit trail of each vote cast as required by law at the
time. [21-2-301(b) of
GEC 2001] Former KSU CES
Elections Director, Ray Cobb admitted to being “unaware of any audit trails that are independent of the equipment” The CES has downplayed voting
machine deficiencies and advocated unverifiable voting which financially
benefits KSU to the detriment of all Georgia voters.
The original
investigation by LaGrua, who was appointed by Handel,
protected the Lowndes County officials. To date, the Attorney General’s
office has taken no substantive action against any of the officials in either
county.
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“Don’t Replace
Hanging chads with electronic chads.” -Aaron “Election
transparency is not an administrative issue, it is a civic issue. It is about
the people laying claim to their democracy.
Only by way of struggle can we expect to regain democracy, and that struggle has only
just begun.” -Mark |
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Will the Real Karen Handel Please Stand Up?
Will the Real Karen Handel Please Stand Up? Many of us have encountered politicians who
say one thing and do another. We already know the drill. A candidate runs for
office on a given platform or set of promises and then after being elected,
ignores the platform or sometimes even embarks in the complete opposite
direction. There may be no more perfect an example of such a total flip-flop
on an important current issue in Georgia than that of former Secretary of
State (SOS), Karen Handel on Georgia’s statewide unverifiable voting.
But the story is deeper than just a reversal of position. It entails
deception, a betrayal of constituents, and politically motivated power abuses
that local news media outlets are unwilling to touch. It also illustrates how
contributions from vendor lobbyists can negatively impact public policy. I.
THE
UNMISTAKEABLE REVERSAL OF POSITION In 2006, Karen
Handel demonstrated that she clearly understood the deficiencies of our
voting equipment as well or better than any of the ten Secretary of State
candidates in the race. She also showed promise that she was willing to do
something about the equipment that was implemented in 2002 at a cost of $54
million. Although she cleverly avoided making a quotable commitment, her “Basics”
report perfectly articulated the problems with Georgia’s voting
machines. It stated:
Many
E-Voting rights activists, including myself supported her. I personally
helped create scorecards outlining her positions in the primary versus Bill
Stevens. I also assisted in securing a sizeable political donation for her
campaign. I even convinced hundreds of Democrats to cross party lines and vote
for her over opponent Gail Buckner, who staunchly opposed all forms of
statewide voting legislation. But after her election, she took no substantive
action to correct the problems. We were forced to continue our lawsuit
challenging the removal of election audit capabilities all the way to the
Georgia Supreme Court which ruled to uphold unverifiable voting in Georgia. In response
to the ruling on September 28, 2009, a weekly Gwinnett County based news
service that ran ads for Karen Handel published an article that falsely
portrayed our lawsuit as a challenge to all electronic voting although
several plaintiffs including me had actually worked hard at the state
legislature in support of auditable electronic voting. In that article, was
an official statement from Secretary Handel that completely reversed her 2006
position. It read: “Georgia
has the most secure elections in the nation due to four levels of security
testing on touch-screen voting machines, our partnership with nationally
renowned elections experts at the Kennesaw State University Center for
Elections Systems, the dedication by county election officials to provide secure
and fair elections at the local level and our photo ID requirement”. Former Secretary Handel, still uses
the slogan “Bring it On” and boasts that she can take on the tough
issues, after completely ducking this key issue altogether and reversing
herself on the position. She did not take action to ensure that the state
will protect the fundamental voting right for its citizens, thus putting
Georgia at more risk of unnecessary federal intervention which can set new
precedents for a bigger, more intrusive, federal government. At the same time
she also disingenuously claims to be a state’s rights candidate. Many people
would call that hypocritical. But worse yet, her final position on this issue
is not just a complete reversal but also highly deceptive. II.
AN
IMMACULATE DECEPTION Former Secretary
Handel’s last position statement is a textbook example of how a politician
can use phrases to mislead uninformed voters. Only someone who is intimately
familiar with the facts would realize that there are five deceptive or false implications in that one single sentence! I
think it is worth the time to dissect the phrases I this one sentence and
point out the counter facts that
reveal an astonishingly different picture:
Counter Facts: Former KSU Professor Britain Williams
oversaw 2001 and 2002 certification testing for voting equipment that did not
have an independent audit trail of each vote cast as required by law at the
time. [21-2-301(b)
of GEC 2001] Former KSU CES Elections Director, Ray Cobb admitted to
being “unaware of any audit trails
that are independent of the equipment” The CES has downplayed voting machine deficiencies and
advocated unverifiable voting which financially benefits KSU to the detriment
of all Georgia voters.
The original investigation by LaGrua, who
was appointed by Handel, protected the Lowndes County officials. To date, the
Attorney General’s office has taken no substantive action against any of
the officials in either county.
III.
THE TEXT BOOK CASE OF LOBBYIST INFLUENCE
PEDDLING To understand why former Secretary Handel
would reverse a popular position and replace it with such a deceptive
position, an informed citizen need only to follow
the money. That money flowed from what may be the most powerful and
strategically well placed lobbying form in Georgia. Here is the story: In 2002, former SOS Cathy Cox signed a $54 million
contract for Diebold voting equipment that did not have an independent audit
trail of each vote cast as required by law. [O.C.G.A. 21-2-30(b) of the 2001
Georgia Election code] Kennesaw State’s
former director of the Center for Election Systems, Ray Cobb, since admitted
under oath in deposition that the voting machines have no audit trail that is
independent. Sec. Cox’s office chose not to include the audit trail
recommendation from the 21st Century Voting Commission report in
the Request for Proposal. At least two other vendors at that time met the
audit requirement but were not seriously considered. Secretary Cox entered
into the agreement despite numerous warnings from governmental sources and
the general public. Her former boss and former SOS, Lewis Massey, was the
lobbyist for the voting machine vendor, Diebold Election Systems. Lewis Massey then established Massey &
Bowers in partnership with Bruce Bowers, son of Bette Rose Bowers and former
gubernatorial candidate Michael Bowers. Massey & Bowers is the lobbying
firm that represents the voting machine vendor. That vendor, Diebold, has
since changed the name of its division to Premier Election Systems and sold
the division to Electronic Systems & Software after intense national
scrutiny and ridicule. In 2006, then SOS Candidate, Karen Handel,
eloquently explained the nationally recognized voting machine problems in her
white paper entitled “Basics”.
She was elected, in part, with non-partisan support after showing
promise that she would help correct the problems. However, late in her campaign she
acknowledged that she had received significant financial help from Michael
Bowers. Once elected, she reversed her position on the voting machines and
appointed former Massey & Bowers partner, Rob Simms, as her Deputy
Secretary. A simple review of campaign contributions
for the last five years reveals that Bowers family members and other Massey
& Bowers employees have directly contributed about $25,000 toward the
campaigns of Karen Handel. In fact, Rob Simms left his deputy position in the
last few months of Karen Handel’s tenure to raise funds full time for
her gubernatorial campaign. The indirect campaign funds he has raised are
still yet to be identified. Therefore, Karen Handel has a vested interest that
necessitated her reversal of position and forced her to make highly deceptive
statements to protect the various business interests of the voting machine
vendor lobbyist who had so heavily supported her campaigns. Likewise, Karen
Handel and her Inspector General, Shawn LaGrua, had
a vested interest to ensure that elections investigations would not expose
flaws in the voting machines that could further jeopardize the interests of
their lobbyists. IV.
CLASSIC POLITICALLY MOTIVATED INVESTIGATIONS When Karen Handel took over the Secretary
of State’s office in 2007 she established the position of Inspector
General (IG) and hired Shawn LaGrua to fill it. The
position is responsible for conducting elections, securities and licensing
investigations. Several elections investigations, irf
properly conducted by LaGrua for the State Election
Board (SEB) could have exposed flaws in the voting machine acquisition,
certifications and operations. In a January 2009 SEB meeting, David Chastain spoke on the
controversial 2005 Cobb County SPLOST tax referendum. In October, he was
surprised to find out from SEB meeting minutes that Shawn LaGrua
opened an investigation about the matter. But no investigator ever contacted
him, the controversies were never investigated and LaGrua
shut down the investigation claiming everything was in order. Chastain
replied to the board with a list of his questions that were never answered.
In that particular election, 285 blank voted ballots were cast by voters
although the referendum was the only item on the ballot. The referendum was
decided by only 114 votes out of 39,780 votes cast. The contest was plagued
by unexplained modem transmission difficulties, reporting delays and a shift
in preliminary results that took the SPLOST from apparent defeat to a razor
thin victory. Roughly a billion dollars in new taxes were then assessed, the
majority of which is being paid by Cobb County residents. Also In January 2009, I
sent a letter to request an investigation into the initial acquisition and
certification of $54+ million in voting equipment that is currently being
used in Georgia. Over the next few months, I contacted Chris Brown of the IG
office several times. He repeatedly confirmed that the IG office received my
request but could not provide a status of whether the complaint was accepted
for investigation or rejected. Finally, I wrote a formal letter to the State
Election Board members in October requesting a response. Inspector General Lagrua replied in a December letter
that the office could not locate my complaint. When I asked Chris
Brown why he thought the office had my request before but not now he replied:
“That’s a good question.” Perhaps even more astounding is the case of 947 test votes that the Lowndes County Board of Elections certified in the 2008 general election results. Long time voting machine technician, Laura Gallegos, was charged with testing violations even though she was not present, nor had any role in the error ridden accumulation, reconciliation and certification processes. During cross examination at her hearing, SEB witness, James Long, a voting machine engineer hired by KSU, acknowledged what any investigator should have already known:
Although her case was dismissed because she
was never even sworn in properly as a voting machine custodian by her
supervisor, Mrs. Gallegos spent thousands of dollars in attorney fees, her
family suffered a foreclosure, and she was terminated from her job. LaGrua’s office could have logically charged the
supervisor, Deb Cox, with up to 10 or more accumulation, reconciliation,
certification and other violations but Mrs. Cox, a Republican voter is well
acquainted with Karen Handel and lunch with her during a Handel visit to
Lowndes County. Another politically motivated
investigation involved that of Jeff Rayno, a former
Chatham County Commissioner. During the December 2009 meeting, Shawn LaGrua stated that Rayno
submitted forged petitions he collected on a drive to help get another
commission candidate on the ballot for the general election. Rayno determined that only one or two of 200 signatures
he collected was in question and asked to see the alleged forgeries. LaGrua could not produce any, but still recommended to
the board that Rayno be referred to the office of
the Attorney General for further investigation and prosecution. Board member,
David Worley, sought to remove Rayno from being
referred due to lack of evidence but Chairwoman Handel overrode him and
instructed another board member, Mr. Kent Webb, to make a motion. Mr. Webb
motioned to refer Rayno to the Attorney General’s
office and Handel seconded the motion to pass it despite opposition from Mr.
Worley. Mr Rayno’s
sin was that he collected signatures for a candidate who opposed Helen Stone,
who was well acquainted with
Karen Handel and escorted her during a Handel visit to Chatham County. V.
AN INEVITABLE CONCLUSION Complaints about these investigations were filed with the State Inspector
General’s office which reports to Governor Sonny Perdue. They concluded:
“Alleging that the SOS IG office conducts investigations based on
political motivations is impossible to substantiate or refute because it
lacks specificity.” I don’t know how there could be more
specificity than the documents I provided on the Complaints tab at the
Voterga.org web site. The office also found that: “The investigation techniques of an
investigator …are issues outside the purview of this office”. This
means that Georgians have no civil recourse for corrupted investigations. Any remaining doubt as to whether or not this string of dubious SOS
investigations is coincidental or a clear pattern of political motivation
should have been alleviated with a brief look into Shawn LaGrua’s
background. Before being hired by Handel, LaGrua
was appointed as Dekalb Solicitor General by Sonny
Perdue. There she investigated and prosecuted another case involving an investigator
named Guy Antinozzi who she also terminated. This
case was so controversial that LaGrua’s
investigation was actually investigated by Fulton County. The Fulton County District Attorney uncovered evidence found that LaGrua initiated a criminal investigation into Antinozzi without authorization from his or her
superiors. It was also initiated before her appointment officially began and
while she was still a Dekalb Assistant District
Attorney. She filed criminal charges of fraudulent time reporting against Antinozzi but never confronted him or his superiors with
any evidence that there was an administrative issue. The independent Fulton
County investigation exonerated Guy Antinozzi of
any wrongdoing although too belatedly to help him. The investigation noted that his superiors confirmed he was
authorized to work flex time and he entered his time as instructed. His
superiors also confirmed that his work product was consistent, timely and of
high quality while his job performance excelled above and beyond what they
expected. The Fulton County investigation concluded that LaGrua’s
criminal investigation “was motivated by factors other than criminal conduct.”
So what were those factors? Guy Antinozzi’s
crime was that he worked for Democrat, Gwendolyn Keyes-Fleming who had
resigned her position as Solicitor General to run for District Attorney
against LaGrua’s superior, Republican, Jeffrey Brickman. Any type of scandal within Keyes’
office, even a manufactured one, would have damaged her chances of winning.
Gwen Keyes-Fleming was elected to the position anyway but the career of Guy Antinozzi, a top notch employee who had done nothing
wrong, was almost totally destroyed. Karen Handel was aware of the problems with LaGrua’s SOS investigations and chose to defend her.
In the case of Jeff Rayno, she even created the
problem herself. LaGrua’s actions in Dekalb were officially investigated more than once. Karen
Handel also had to know about the Antinozzi case
and Shawn LaGrua’s background before she hired
her and others after LaGrua lost the 2006 Dekalb Solicitor election. LaGrua previously worked at Fulton County where Karen Handel, later became
Fulton County Chairwoman. Prior to that, Karen Handel served as the Chief of
Staff for Sonny Perdue. Just days after his office was notified of the
complaints against Shawn LaGrua, Sonny Perdue
appointed LaGrua to a judgeship on the Atlanta
Judicial Circuit. She is expected to become a Fulton County Superior Court
judge in July. VI.
THE CURRENT AFTERMATH Many of the politically motivated bouts that
Karen Handel has had with the federal court system, the U.S. Justice Dept and civic organizations are somewhat famous. The
cases mentioned here are lesser known, politically motivated investigations
of the Handel SOS administration intended to more fully inform any reader. As
these investigations were being exposed, more individuals came forward with
more information about how Karen Handel ran the SOS office. The picture they
paint is one depicting Karen Handel as the Hillary Clinton of Georgia
Republicans. While investigations may be politically
slanted on occasion, it is obvious that those investigations should not
protect potentially corrupt officials nor attempt to destroy innocent people.
Ironically, while Democratic Party leadership turned a blind eye to these
affairs, some grass roots conservative Republicans tried to expose the
wrongdoings. They led a commendable effort to clean up corruption in their
own party, which eventually resulted in over 50 articles of impeachment filed
against Shawn LaGrua in the Georgia General
Assembly. Republican Judiciary Chairman, Wendell Willard, received letters
from at least five individuals who had first-hand knowledge and were willing
to testify at an impeachment trial in support of evidence cited in the
articles. He took no action. Handel has since rightfully left the office
of Secretary of State in disarray to run for governor but Georgia elections
are still in disarray. There is clear evidence that she ran the SOS office for
the benefit of the Republican Party and to the detriment of the people of
Georgia. Her allegiance to her party over the people is unacceptable to many
Georgians and even some of her fellow Republicans. Worse yet, Karen Handel,
Sonny Purdue and Shawn LaGrua seem to have formed
an epicenter of totalitarianism that threatens the very freedom of all
Georgians. Despite a flip flop for lobbyist dollars,
obvious deception and politicizing of the SOS office (or maybe because of
these things), some Republican power brokers claim that Karen Handel is “clean”.
Several media outlets, like the Atlanta Journal Constitution (AJC) have
repeated these assertions and portray the former secretary as some new form
of ethics queen. The AJC, which endorsed her bid in 2006, is particularly
interesting in this regard. They have done an expose on almost all of Handel’s
primary competitors but have chosen to give her a free pass and suppress
virtually all these topics just previously outlined. The media has even gone so far as to tout Handel’s
plans to offer her own ethics package to clean up the General Assembly. The
bitter irony of it all is that the ethics issues just presented show that she
may be more ethically challenged that any legislator or any other candidate
seeking higher office. Since the topic of ethics is now at the forefront of
Georgia politics, this report was grudgingly necessary. It is intended to do
what the media should have already done in hopes that Georgians, including
myself, won’t get fooled again. Garland Favorito 404 664-4044 CL PERMISSION TO REPRINT OR DISTRIBUTE GRANTED Original Version: May 24, 2010 Minor Editing: July 7. 2010 PUBLIC RECORDS
SHOWING MONEY GIVEN TO KAREN HANDEL’S CAMPAIGN FROM MASSEY BOWERS,
DIEBOLD’S LOBBYIST |
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FilerID |
Type |
LastName |
FirstName |
City |
State |
Employer |
Date |
Election |
Election_Year |
Cash_Amount
|
In_Kind_Amount
|
|
|
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|
C2009000047 |
Monetary |
Bowers |
Bette |
Commerce |
GA |
Realtor |
1/5/2010 0:00 |
Run-Off
Primary |
2010 |
$
300.00 |
$ - |
|
||||||||||||
|
C2009000047 |
Monetary |
Bowers |
Bette
Rose |
Commerce |
GA |
Retired |
3/25/2010 0:00 |
Primary |
2010 |
$
3,600.00 |
$ - |
|
||||||||||||
|
C2009000047 |
Monetary |
Massey |
Charlotte |
Commerce |
GA |
Retired |
3/25/2010 0:00 |
Primary |
2010 |
$
200.00 |
$ - |
|
||||||||||||
|
C2009000047 |
In-Kind |
Massey
and Bowers LLC |
Atlanta |
GA |
11/19/2009 0:00 |
Primary |
2010 |
$ - |
$
915.20 |
|
||||||||||||||
|
C2009000047 |
Monetary |
Massey
and Bowers LLC |
Atlanta |
GA |
11/19/2009 0:00 |
Primary |
2010 |
$
1,000.00 |
$ - |
|
||||||||||||||
|
C2009000047 |
Monetary |
Bowers |
Bette |
Commerce |
GA |
Information
Requested |
5/11/2009 0:00 |
Primary |
2010 |
$
6,100.00 |
$ - |
|
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|
C2009000047 |
Monetary |
Bowers |
Deena |
Marietta |
GA |
N/A |
6/3/2009 0:00 |
Primary |
2010 |
$
1,000.00 |
$ - |
|
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|
C2006000168 |
Monetary |
Bowers |
Michael |
Commerce |
GA |
Balch
and Bingham |
8/23/2007 0:00 |
Primary |
2008 |
$
2,500.00 |
$ - |
|
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|
C2006000168 |
Monetary |
Bowers |
Bette
Rose |
Atlanta |
GA |
Retired |
10/23/2006 0:00 |
General |
2006 |
$
250.00 |
$ - |
|
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|
C2006000168 |
Monetary |
Bowers |
Bruce |
Marietta |
GA |
Massey
Bowers, LLC |
10/15/2006 0:00 |
General |
2006 |
$
2,500.00 |
$ - |
|
||||||||||||
|
C2006000168 |
Monetary |
Bowers |
Michael |
Commerce |
GA |
Balch
and Bingham |
7/19/2006 0:00 |
Run-Off
Primary |
2006 |
$
2,000.00 |
$ - |
|
||||||||||||
|
C2006000168 |
Monetary |
Bowers |
Michael |
Commerce |
GA |
Balch
and Bingham |
6/15/2006 0:00 |
Primary |
2006 |
$
1,000.00 |
$ - |
|
||||||||||||
|
C2006000168 |
In-Kind |
Simms |
Robert |
Atlanta |
GA |
Massey
Bowers, LLC |
10/25/2006 0:00 |
General |
2006 |
$ - |
$
461.06 |
|
||||||||||||
|
C2006000168 |
Monetary |
Simms |
Robert |
Atlanta |
GA |
Massey
Bowers, LLC |
10/25/2006 0:00 |
General |
2006 |
$ 500.00 |
$ - |
|
||||||||||||
|
C2006000168 |
Monetary |
Simms |
Robert |
Atlanta |
GA |
Massey
Bowers, LLC |
7/10/2006 0:00 |
Primary |
2006 |
$
500.00 |
$ - |
|
||||||||||||
|
C2006000168 |
Monetary |
Simms |
Robert |
Atlanta |
GA |
Massey
Bowers, LLC |
7/21/2006 0:00 |
Run-Off
Primary |
2006 |
$
1,000.00 |
$ - |
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