Mom, Can My Voting Machine Spend the Night?

Ohio is an election battleground state with perennial problems at the polls. So what have election officials in some precincts of the state been doing to keep their voting machines safe from tampering?

Taking the machines home with them and stashing them in their garages in the days before a big election.

If it sounds like something pulled straight out of an episode of Saturday Night Live, or Borat for that matter, it’s not. The practice has become so widespread that it even has a nickname, “sleepovers.”

Ohio, you may remember, has plenty of reason to be particularly vigilant about the security of its voting machines. The state has been a frequent battleground not only for presidential candidates, but also for lawyers and party representatives who have tangled over accusations of election fraud and concerns about paperless voting machines that incorporate new technology. After the 2004 presidential election, in which Ohio narrowly went to President Bush, some inspectors said they found signs of tampering in a number of precincts throughout the state.

Many local election officials who defend the “sleepover” practice say it makes it easier for them to transport the machines to polling sites, and that it allows them to keep an eye on the machines. But their critics call that nonsense, and argue that allowing people to take voting machines home with them — where they can access them at any time, and potentially hack into them — is the very definition of a security risk.

One of those critics is Ohio’s secretary of state, Jennifer Brunner, who has pointed to reports of poll workers casting ballots on machines in their homes. With Ohio expected to be another critical battleground state in November, Ms. Brunner issued a directive today that put a stop to the controversial practice.

We want Ohio’s voters and the rest of the nation to see that we have prepared a transparent process of transporting voting equipment, ballots and supplies. That begins with security practices at boards of elections and polling places, documented chain of custody, and now procedures to make secure voting machine delivery.

As part of the directive, Ms. Brunner has also ordered that bipartisan teams handle and transport ballots, and that counties make sure that the machines are stored under certain conditions – like the right humidity — that help them function properly. As for the cost and convenience of transporting machines to election sites, officials will now be provided with federal money to help reimburse them for the costs of hiring moving companies. Ms. Brunner, a Democrat, says the new orders will ensure “security best practices” for the upcoming election.

Perhaps. But it remains to be seen what other practices that are, well, unusual, may still come to light.

Original here

Richard Clarke:"Quick Draw John" wanted Iraq war before Bush

The campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain both held conference calls Wednesday afternoon to hammer each other on national security.

McCain's message came a bit muddled. His campaign's call -- which took as its focus the a new report that one of Obama's advisers spoke with Syria's foreign minister last month -- started out with a factual error and ended by cutting off a critical-sounding question from a journalist.

First, McCain surrogate Rudolph Giuliani mistakenly suggested that former Ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer had met with Syrian President Bashar Assad, when in fact he had met with Syria's foreign minister. When McCain foreign policy adviser Randy Scheuneman jumped on the call, he had to "clarify."

Later, when Ron Kampeas from Jewish Telegraphic Agency asked how the McCain could square its critique of Obama's adviser with senior foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann's own lobbying work on behalf of foreign governments, he was suddenly disconnected from the call in mid-sentence. Kampeas told the Politico he thought he was "cut off."

As for the call's substance, it was mostly a re-hash of the "judgment" criticisms previously lobbed Obama's way -- plus some unadulterated speculation. "Maybe this is a playing out of his [call for] negotiating with dictators without preconditions," Giuliani offered.

On the Obama call, foreign policy adviser Susan Rice emphasized that Kurtzer had undertaken his Syrian visit as a private citizen, and that he wasn't even a paid campaign adviser in the first place. "The McCain campaign continues to level dishonest attacks on Barack Obama's integrity and patriotism," Rice said, adding that Americans were tired of "Karl Rove's say anything, do anything politics." Rice also accused McCain of trying to "mislead the American people in order to obscure his own record of failed policy judgments."

Joining Rice on the Obama call was former National Security Council counter-terrorism adviser Richard Clarke, who dubbed the presumptive Republican nominee "Quick Draw John." Clarke drew on his experience on the NSC to talk about McCain's own judgment after Sept. 11, 2001, saying that McCain was pushing for war with Iraq before the Bush administration had even made its own mind up on the matter. "Sen. McCain had already decided," Clarke said. "He and his neoconservative foreign policy types that he agreed with are one of the reasons that George W. Bush decided to go to Iraq."

When asked by a reporter whether it was inconsistent for Obama surrogates to accuse McCain of misleading the public while also saying that discussion of patriotism should be out of bounds, Clarke had a retort ready. "I'm sure he [McCain] loves his country. It's just that loving your country and lying to the American people are apparently not inconsistent in his view."

Romney: McCain Doesn’t Speak For McCain When He Suggests Renegotiating The Colorado River Compact

Last week, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) walked into a bipartisan wave of condemnation in Colorado when he told the Pueblo Chieftain that the 1922 Colorado River compact, which governs the allocation of the river’s water among seven states, “needs to be renegotiated over time”:

“I don’t think there’s any doubt the major, major issue is water and can be as important as oil. So the compact that is in effect, obviously, needs to be renegotiated over time amongst the interested parties,” McCain said while on his way to the Aspen Institute. “I think that there’s a movement amongst the governors to try, if not, quote, renegotiate, certainly adjust to the new realities of high growth, of greater demands on a scarcer resource.”

Sen. Ken Salazar (D-CO) called the compact “sacrosanct,” adding that opening it up “would only happen over my dead body.” Senate candidate and former U.S. Rep. Bob Schaffer (R-CO) agreed, telling the Grand Junction Sentinel, “Over my cold, dead, political carcass.” The Denver Post editorialized that McCain “displayed a disturbing ignorance of the realities of the West’s scarce water resources.”

Now, one of McCain’s top surrogates, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney is claiming that McCain didn’t mean what he said. Romney told 9News that McCain “has no interest in reopening the compact“:

“Senator McCain has no interest in reopening the compact,” Romney said. “Senator McCain believes as I do that a compact that’s been worked out between the governors and between the states is the right way to go. States are the ones who build these kinds of understandings. The federal government shouldn’t meddle in that compact.

Salazar’s Press Secretary Matt Lee-Ashley responded to Romney’s comments: “Either Senator McCain is so out of touch with Western water issues that he needs the former Massachusetts governor to defend him, or he really has some interest in overhauling the law of the river that has been in place since 1922. Both scenarios are troubling.”

ProgressNowAction has a petition telling McCain to keep his hands off Colorado’s water.