Progressive Democrats Sonoma County

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For a schedule of all of the upcoming PDA IOT calls, click here

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CLICK HERE to learn more or register for the calls.

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The holidays are coming …

With the holiday season upon us, we have had to tweak the call schedule a bit for December.

Brad Friedman
August 21, 2010

Same systems to be used by millions of voters this November…

... The Pac-Man hack onto the Sequoia/Dominion voting machine was revealed this week. It was accomplished without breaking any of the “tamper-evident” seals that voting machine companies and election officials claim are used to ensure nobody can physically hack into them without being discovered.

Read the Full Story Here

link to original

Take Action: PDA’s Amend to Suspend Corporate Personhood Conference Call is TONIGHT, Wednesday, July 28.
Learn more here: https://www.thedatabank.com/dpg/309/personalopt1.asp?formid=meet&c=387273

Members of PDA national team will be on the road in Pennsylvania and California from April 7th to the 21st, so we have had to change the conference call schedule a bit.

CLICK HERE TO SEE APRIL SCHEDULE

John Nichols
March 11, 2010

Join PDA’s Clean, Fair, Transparent Elections Issue Organizing Team (IOT); learn more here .

Local Focus: Join the IOT above & then Help get the CA Fair Elections Act passed in June election!; learn more here

Published by The Nation.

Doris “Granny D” Haddock, whose 3,200-mile walk across the United States at the age of 90 drew thousands of activists into the movement for political reform, has died Tuesday evening at the age of 100.

The Dublin, New Hampshire, grandmother’s death came ten years and ten days after she finished the remarkable two-year walk, which she undertook to promote the passage of campaign finance reform legislation (in particular the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform law).

Read the Rest Here

March 9, 2010

We highly encourage signing up for a PDA Issue Organizing Team (IOT) if you wish to actively engage in the work of PDA and PDSonoma County. If you have not already done so, you can get started by clicking on Committees on the menu at the top of the PDSonoma website home page and there you can:

**sign up for a PDA Issue Organizing Team via the PDA website and

**find the name and contact information for the local PDSonoma chapter team leader for that IOT. If you have not already done so, let that person know that you have signed up for the PDA IOT and they can add you to their local chapter list of activists on that particular issue.

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Join PDA’s Clean, Fair, Transparent Elections Issue Organizing Team (IOT); learn more here.

Thank you to everyone who participated in last month’s Clean, Fair and Transparent Elections Call. A recording of the call can be found here.

Thank you to Wayne Williams and Trent Lange for their updates on the California Clean Elections Act. Find out more about this important piece of legislation here.

Also thank you to Emily Levin from Velvet Revolution who gave us a presentation about some of the work she has been doing lately.

NOTE: There will be no call this month as it has been agreed on that it would be too close to the holidays. The next call will be on January 26th. Please RSVP here.

On this call Wayne Williams and Trent Lange updated us on the CA Fair Elections Act, Emily Levy updated us on the “Diebold Return Our Money” campaign and we did state reports.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

Wayne Williams and Trent Lange updated us on the California Fair Elections Act that will be on the ballot in CA. Emily Levin updated us on Diebold-Return Our Money campiagn and a campaign the Election Transparency Coalition in NY is running.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

Diebold/Premier’s Equipment and Software Must Be Immediately and Permanently Decertified and a Criminal Investigation Launched

As A Result Of The California Secretary Of State’s Findings and Diebold/Premier’s Own Admissions That Its Voting Systems Do Not Meet Federal Standards, Velvet Revolution Calls on the Company to Return the Well Over $100 Million in Taxpayer Funds Spent by Californians on Failed, Faulty Voting System Hardware and Software.

Learn more and take action: http://dieboldreturnourmoney.com

By Mimi Kennedy

For activists and organizers, cyberspace often functions as the meeting place, a place of deep community. We meet—and come to know, cherish, admire, help and love one another—in this virtual realm. We learn names and written voices from e-mail; sometimes we hear each other’s physical voices on conferences calls.

Read the Rest Here

By Brad Friedman, PDA Clean, Fair Transaprent Action Group Coordinator
April 28, 2009, Seatlle, WA

It is with much sadness we report this news. John Gideon was a fine human being and an important contributor to PDA’s Clean, Transparent Elections Action Group. Our friend will be sorely missed. PDA extends our deepest sympathy to John’s family.
Published by The Brad Blog.

“I will choose to celebrate his life.”
- Ellen Theisen, John Gideon’s co-director at VotersUnite.org on his passing.

It was a very lonely time for advocates of democracy in the U.S. when John Gideon posted his first guest blog here in the dark days of October 2005, and when we began to carry his vital Daily Voting News on Election Day, one month later, in November of that same year.

Read the Rest Here

Legislation to Require Disclosure of Product Flaws Clears First Hurdle

SACRAMENTO – Secretary of State Debra Bowen today announced she has withdrawn state approval of Premier Election Solutions’ Global Election Management System (GEMS) version 1.18.19, which contains serious software flaws.

Premier GEMS 1.18.19 contains the “Deck Zero” anomaly, a software error that can delete the first batch of optically scanned ballots under certain circumstances without alerting elections officials to the deletion.

In addition, the system’s audit logs fail to record important events and “clear” buttons permit deletion of key records, both of which violate federal standards.

Read the Rest Here

Hello Clean Money working group members and supporters —

We’re just starting to ramp up for the California Fair Elections Act that will be on next year’s ballot (June 2010) thanks to all of you who helped AB 583 get through the legislature. So we can start reaching out to the public, we’re having our first speaker’s training and in-depth intro on it in the Bay Area on Saturday, March 21 from 2-5pm and in Los Angeles on Sunday, March 29 from 12pm-3pm.

You’re invited whether you’d like to join our speaker’s program, would like to learn how to talk about it at tabling events or to your friends and neighbors, or would just like to learn more about it.

A draft summary of what I see as the most important, most doable, federal election reform priorities for 2009…

— Brad Friedman, The BRAD BLOG

Okay, so I’ve been asked on several occasions, since the election last year, what I regard as the top priorities for election reform in the U.S. of A. In hopes of keeping it simple, stupid, at least until I hear opinions on these back from you folks, here is a summary list of the most important, and most eminently-doable-at-the-federal-level reforms as I see it.

The democracy the U.S. helped to create in Germany gets it, while, as usual, the U.S. itself remains largely clueless and/or indifferent to the need for transparency in its own …

The use of electronic voting was challenged by a father-and-son team. Political scientist Joachim Wiesner and son, physicist Ulrich Wiesner complained that push button voting was not transparent because the voter could not see what actually happened to his vote inside the computer and was required to place “blind faith” in the technology.

Read the Full Article Here

German High Court’s Ruling Strikes Down
Electronic Voting Under Principles of Democracy
Signed by and Imposed by USA After WWII
Paul R Lehto, Juris Doctor
Lehto.paul@gmail.com

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

According to a ruling by Germany’s highest court yesterday, computerized voting machines used by 2 million of Germany’s 5 million voters in 2005’s parliamentary elections are unconstitutional because they are not in line with democratic standards and principles — especially the “publicity” of the vote counting (i.e. transparency, visibility). The court added that “specialized technical knowledge” may not be demanded of observing citizens, and that government-defined checks or audits are no substitute for the constitutional requirement of publicity via observation.

From the Sonoma County Democratic Party Newsletter:

What an amazing transition we witnessed last Tuesday – one we hope will define a new era of Democratic activism and organizing.

Your Sonoma County Democratic Party cordially invites you to attend a

Political Organizing Committee Special Event:
February 18th

Have you ever wondered what happens to all the ballots in the ballot box at the end of the day? Or what happens after you send in your absentee ballot? What is the big deal about provisional ballots? Why does it take so long? These questions and more will be answered next month at a special event of the Political Organizing Committee:

Everything you ever wanted to know about casting and counting ballots
Wednesday, February 18, 6:30 p.m.
Democratic Party Headquarters, 701 2nd Street, Santa Rosa

PDSonoma GuestBlog
by Dale Axelrod
member, PDSonoma County

Meaningful election reform MUST be MADE a top priority for Obama.

We have a chance to organize SUPPORT for this issue, but we need YOUR HELP NOW, TONIGHT, THIS WEEKEND (or at the very latest by DEC 31st). Not money—-but by taking a few moments and SIMPLY VOTING FOR the issue at:

http://www.change.org/ideas/view/move_the_country_towards_transparent_election_systems
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IF YOU CARE:

If you care that missles are flying between Palestinians and Israelis.

If you care that Bush & Co are about to walk after pardons.

If you care that unions are scapegoated while banks get unsupervised bailouts.

Peace on Earth image, courtesy of the BradBlog

Philosophical corporate media question: If the biggest potential whistle-blower since “Deep Throat” dies an untimely death and the mainstream media doesn’t cover it, did it really happen?

Last Friday evening, Michael Connell, a top IT consultant to Karl Rove, the Bush administration and the Republican National Party died when his single-engine plane crashed into a vacant house in Ohio. No one else was on board. Connell, Rove’s IT guru, created the alternate email system for the White House — the one about which the Bush administration claims an untold number of emails were destroyed — and was set to testify as a key witness in a lawsuit claiming fraud in the 2004 Presidential Election in Ohio, in which he was alleged to have helped electronically flip votes.

It is Tuesday morning, four days after Connell’s plane fell from the sky. What could possibly be the mainstream media’s justification for so conspicuously ignoring a story of this magnitude?

Read the Rest Here