HELP AMERICA VOTE ACT (HAVA) LOBBYIST LIST

[kster]

THE ROAD TO BOONDOGGLE IS PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS

(Warning: You might really hate this story.)

This story represents months of original research by Black Box Voting. We went into this looking for the defense industry contractors we'd heard had lobbied for the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). That legislation has been blamed for the touch-screens (DREs) that showed up all over America. Well, that's not what we found. The real story on who was behind HAVA may come as a surprise to you. It was to us..

THE ROAD TO BOONDOGGLE IS PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS:
HELP AMERICA VOTE ACT (HAVA) LOBBYIST LIST

Question: What happens if you lobby a lawmaker for $4 billion in expenditures for touch-screen voting machines and go back to that same lawmaker two years later asking to dump DREs?

Answer: You lose credibility. It might be hard to lobby for other things. It's politically embarrassing. And your members, or funders, might have a few questions to ask about the prudence of your lobbying expenditures.

BUT HOW COULD ANYONE HAVE KNOWN?

The road to voting computers was paved with good intentions. No one knew that some of the programmers for voting computers would turn out to be convicted embezzlers.
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/2197/14318.html

No one realized that the main sponsor of the HAVA bill -- Rep. Bob Ney -- would end up going to jail on corruption charges.
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/8/46466.html

Few realized that the federal testing labs, Ciber and Wyle, weren't doing their jobs and their overseers -- NASED and now the EAC -- failed to check their work.
Wyle failures (Bowen Hearing): http://www.blackboxvoting.org/itahearing.pdf
Ciber failures: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/8/46428.html

HAVA bought a lemon.

WHO BIT INTO IT?



http://plate0shrimp.blogspot.com/2007/02/help-america-vote-act-hava-lobbyist.html

[Stevepol]

1. K&R!!