The drive to have California’s electoral votes awarded by congressional district instead of a winner-take-all system seems to have run into some trouble. The LA Times reports that the campaign is now short on money… and staff.

Unable to raise sufficient money and angered over a lack of disclosure by its one large donor, veteran political law attorney Thomas Hiltachk, who drafted the measure, said he was resigning from the committee.

Hiltachk’s departure is a major blow to the operation because he organized other consultants who had set about trying to raise money and gather signatures for the initiative. Campaign spokesman Kevin Eckery said he was ending his role as well.

There remained a chance that the measure could be revived, but only if a major donor were to come forward to fund the petition drive. However, time is short to gather the hundreds of thousands of signatures needed by the end of November. And backers said Thursday that they believed the measure was all but dead, at least for the 2008 election.

Could have been the actor Bradley Whitford’s YouTube plea to the citizens of California that stopped the initiative? Guess we’ll never know.

Previously on WT?BLOG
Alter: C.A. GOP, N.C. Dems trying to steal elections?

Posted in Election Reform, Election 2008, Electoral College, California | 1 Comment »

* Update: It was the episode! Here’s a short review of Boxer’s performance, and an article about the show. I thought she was pretty funny.

I’m pretty sure that tomorrow night U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer appears on HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm in a cameo role. I’m not positive, but I’m fairly certain after seeing the teaser for the episode, called The Anonymous Donor, just now on HBO. Last October, after driving across the country talking with our elected officials about Tuesday voting, I went behind the scenes at the episode’s filming to talk with the Senator about election reform. Check out the video below, and watch Senator Boxer tomorrow night on HBO.

Interestingly, according to the New York Times, Larry David is no stranger to the cause of election reform. To see why, click below.

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Posted in Election Reform, Get Out The Why?, California, Legislation, National Holiday | Comments Off

This morning on NPR member station KPCC, local officials from Los Angeles, Riverside and Orange counties discussed California Secretary of State Debra Bowen’s decision to decertify a specific voting machines and place further restrictions on others.

The audio, from AirTalk with Larry Mantle, is available here (RealPlayer).

Posted in Election Reform, California, Electronic voting | Comments Off

Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter calls out what he deems the “mischief” of gerrymandering and two current plans by Democratic and Republican politicians in North Carolina and California, respectively, which, he writes, attempt to “rig admission to the Electoral College for strictly partisan purposes.” Both plans would award candidates presidential electoral votes based on the number of congressional districts they win. In California, the attempt - a ballot initiative - may not be constitutional.

Alter explains why he thinks change would make certain votes “count” for more than others - and his own plan for direct election of the president by popular vote without having to amend the Constitution - after the jump.
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Posted in Election Reform, Electoral College, North Carolina, California | Comments Off

Following a study by University of California voting security experts during which they were able to hack into electronic voting machines, Friday California Secretary of State Debra Bowen put into place new security procedures for electronic voting, and decertified the use of a certain type of voting machine used in Los Angeles County. She issued the order just minutes before a midnight deadline in order to ensure the changes to go into effect before the February 5 California presidential primary election. From LA Times:

[Bowen] withdrew state approval of the InkaVote Plus machines used in Los Angeles County, saying that the machines’ maker, Election Systems and Software, had failed to submit its equipment to her office in time to analyze its vulnerability to hacking.

She said her office would examine the InkaVote machines and expressed optimism that they would win approval in time to be used in next year’s elections, but did not say what would happen if the machines failed her tests.

“When NASA discovers a flow or a potential safety concern in the space shuttle, it doesn’t continue launching the missions…,” Bowen said. “It scrubs the missions until the problem is fixed.”

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Posted in Election Reform, Optical scan machines, California, Electronic voting | Comments Off

Threat Level is a blog in the WIRED blog network. It’s a blog about “privacy, security and crime online,” but many of the posts are about the technological side of election reform. I just bookmarked it, and will be visiting often. Here are a few recent posts that will be of interest to the Why Tuesday? audience:

• Senate to Hold Hearing on Security of Voting Machines (Today)

In the wake of the California report released last week showing that Red Team security researchers were able to hack voting machines from three of the top voting machine companies, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California) announced today that the Senate Rules and Administration Committee will hold a hearing in September to examine the report’s findings.

[snip]

One wonders where the senator has been the last four years that she’s surprised by the findings revealed in the report. Feinstein introduced a bill earlier this year that would require voting machines nationwide to produce a paper trail, but the bill has received little support in the Senate thus far.

• CA Releases Results of Red-Team Investigation of Voting Machines: All Three Systems Could Be Compromised (July 27)

The team found that it could compromise all three of the top voting systems used in the state made by Diebold Election Systems, Hart Intercivic, and Sequoia Voting Systems, with the caveat that many, but not all, of the attacks they were able to accomplish on the machines could be mitigated with proper physical security of the machines, security training of staff, and contingency planning.

• GAO Briefs House on Investigation into Disputed Florida Election (July 27)

The Government Accountability Office will be providing a closed briefing to Congress today regarding the progress of its investigation into last year’s disputed election in Sarasota County, Florida. You’ll recall that the race in question, in Florida’s 13 Congressional District, is under investigation due to questions about more than 18,000 ballots that registered no vote in that race and complaints from numerous voters that touch-screen voting machines used in the election failed to respond to their touch.

Click here for all of the Threat Level posts about E-Voting. All that I’ve seen are written by journalist Kim Zetter.

* A new post from Kim: CA Releases Source Code Review of Voting Machines — New Security Flaws Revealed; Old Ones Were Never Fixed

Posted in Election Reform, California, Florida, Electronic voting | Comments Off

Former Senator and WT? honorary co-chair Bill Bradley’s appearance at UCLA last Friday got some press today in the school’s Daily Bruin newspaper. Alexandra Bornhoft writes that Bradley brought up WT? in a response to a question about low voter turnout:

Bradley answered by introducing the Why Tuesday? movement, a nonpartisan organization seeking to increase voter turnout by questioning the placement of Election Day on a Tuesday.

As honorary cochair of Why Tuesday?, Bradley said the idea of switching the day of the week on which elections are held could increase active citizen participation in politics.

Currently ranked 139th internationally in voter turnout, only 50 percent of Americans cast a vote, according to the Why Tuesday? Web site.

The No. 1 reason Americans cited for not voting was being too busy with schedule conflicts, normally because the day falls in the middle of the work week. Bradley said he believes a simple solution would be to move Election Day to the weekend.

Click here for the entire article.

* Update, April 19: The Los Angeles blog LAist also has a piece up about Bradley’s appearance.

Posted in Election Reform, WT? in the news, California | Comments Off

Senator John Edwards, now running hard for the Democratic presidential nomination, visited UCLA today for a rally in Bruin Plaza. The Road Team’s own Jacob Soboroff had a chance to catch up with him afterwards on the Kerckhoff (sic) Patio. Jacob shouldered his way to the front of the press pool in time to be the second-to-last question Edwards answered; the presidential hopeful didn’t have a chance to really dive into the topic beyond a general affirmation of making Election Day a holiday, but with a little luck this won’t be the last time we get the opportunity to put some questions to him.

Regarding the soundtrack to this particular clip: please refer all questions to Jacob. We try to control him, but it’s very difficult.

America is going to be looking hard at a handful of politicians over the next year or so (unless some calendar-happy state moves its primaries up even further). We’re going to do our best- beginning humbly with this clip- to make sure that election reform is a part of the conversation the nation has with these candidates. An Executive Branch with a real commitment to election reform could set the tone for change, and a major campaign that addresses this issue might remind people to pay attention to something we tend to talk about AFTER elections rather than before them.

Please join us. If a candidate is coming to your town or school- pop the question, and ask them their thoughts on election reform. We all might be surprised by some of the answers we get.

Posted in Get Out The Why?, Election Reform, Election 2008, California, National Holiday, Weekend voting | Comments Off