Contrary to what the Secretary of State's office would have you believe, some of the problems in this state will not be solved with the introduction of easy-to-use Diebold voting machines. And, contrary to the claims of the SOS's press manipulator,
Chris Riggall, there are some very real problems that will affect the outcome of several key races.
Redistricting caused major problems across this state, but the main problem it produced was the difficult task of assigning voters to the right precinct, the right state house seat, the right state senate seat, the right county commission seat, etc. And, we understand the difficulty experienced by each county's registrar in updating their respective voter files as well. Many of them are shortchanged operating funds from the state in order to maintain their lists. Many of them are just run by a bunch of good 'ole boys and girls who could care less about ensuring the voter file is accurate and up-to-date.
BUT there is one state office that should be proactive in taking responsibility for updating the voter files, and they have, instead, chosen to shirk their responsibility. Indeed, when someone presented to them, in a very non-confrontational manner, a list of problems with the voter data, they chose to attack the messenger rather than dare examine the messenger's message. That office is the
Secretary of State, and it is run by
Democrat Cathy Cox.
So, in this issue, we will examine the messenger's message, and point out exactly the problems on the horizon...and, the litany of lawsuits that will be filed against Cathy Cox and her office for, at minimum, negligence and incompetence. And, if her little attack dog, Chris Riggall, continues to play the "not us" game and cover-up for Cox, there might even be grounds for calling her corrupt.
The MessengerThe messenger of these data problems is a guy by the name of
Mark Davis. In June of this year, Davis made a presentation in front of the State Elections Board.
You can download a copy here to review and see that it was not confrontational in any way.Now, as personal witnesses to this meeting, we were in a pretty good position to observe exactly what transpired. After Davis finished his presentation, Cathy Cox's response was "Well, this all very interesting and I see you have done an admirable job in compiling this and bringing it to our attention. But, the State Elections Board is not responsible for this voter data. It is up to the individual county registrars."
The conversation between Davis and the Board progressed a bit further, and the board was asked by Davis or someone else "How often does the Secretary of State update the addresses using the National Change of Address database with the U.S. Postal Service?"
Linda Beazley responded "Once every even-numbered year" In other words, once every two years, and during an election year! By the time this is done, close to a half a million address changes have piled up!
Since that meeting, we know Davis has tried to help the SOS understand the problems via lots of e-mails to Cox and her employees in that section of the SOS. However, instead of working with Davis, Cox's response has been to deny, shift blame and, by way of Chris Riggall in an
Augusta Chronicle article several weeks ago, to belittle his efforts. Mark also contacted people like Bill Nigut, Jim Galloway, and Larry Hartstein with this information. They all initially acted interested, then dropped it. Perhaps had he used vulgarity in his e-mails, the AJC and WSB TV would have been more interested in writing a story...
The MessageThere are three basic problem areas contained within the voter file that Mark Davis uncovered:
1) Problems with voters being assigned to house districts that no longer exist.2) Problems with households containing more than one voter who vote in different precincts and vote for different legislative offices.3) Problems with voters being assigned to the wrong precincts in the wrong geographical area, and thus voting for the wrong legislative offices.Problem #3 was uncovered by using mapping software and "geo-codes" from the census data. Problem #3 is a bit difficult to present here due to needing a map of the data and a pointer to help you see the problems. We hope to have copies for you to download and see the problem for yourself, but for now, we'll place #3 in the to-be-done file. The number of potential errors associated with Problem #3, involving precinct and/or district assignment problems, number in the 10s of thousands.
Problems #1 and #2 were uncovered by using simple queries of the voter data file with no fancy programming or software required.
Problem #1 is especially glaring because due to the 2001 redistricting process, the house districts now count-up to 147 districts. There are still 180 seats, but the missing district numbers are contained within multi-member districts. Multi-member districts are designated by the individual "Post 1, Post 2, Post 3" etc. designations within a particular multi-member district.
But, Cathy Cox's voter file has 7,532 voters who have house districts assigned to them that do not exist anymore. The breakdown of erroneous house district assignments is as follows:
HD#156 = 7 Voters
HD#157 = 25 Voters
HD#158 = 2 Voters
HD#159 = 6 Voters
HD#160 = 2881 Voters
HD#161 = 2131 Voters
HD#165 = 96 Voters
HD#171 = 1 Voters
HD#173 = 10 Voters
HD#178 = 3 Voters
HD#179 = 2369 Voters
HD#180 = 1 Voter
This database is supposed to be current as of September 9, 2002. But, Cathy Cox, through her press manipulator Chris Riggall, denies these problems exist, and accuses anyone who questions the accuracy to be "obsessed" with the data.
To put this in more understandable terms, this means that:
- The City of Bainbridge, Cathy Cox's hometown, has 4,312 voters who are assigned to a house district that does not exist.
- The City of Newton has 1,438 voters who are assigned to a house district that does not exist.
And, there are 39 other South Georgia cities who have voters facing this same problem. A view of the data by Voter Sex produces this result:
- 4264 Female voters may not have a house district candidate to vote for
- 3268 Male voters may not have a house district candidate to vote for
A view of the data by Voter Race produces this:
- 2867 Black voters may not have a house district candidate to vote for
- 4615 White voters may not have a house district candidate to vote for
Interestingly enough, 7521 of these voters reside in (what we presume to correctly be) the 2nd Congressional District, or Sanford Bishop's territory. The remaining 11 voters reside in the 1st Congressional District, which is Jack Kingston's neck of the woods.
Perhaps the ballots that are printed have some sort of secret algorithm that converts house district numbers that don't exist into ones that do when they are printed. Who knows what mysteries exist in the bowels of the Georgia SOS's office?
Problem #2:This problem promises to produce the most in terms of litigation potential on the day after the General Election. And, litigation from both the R and D side of things, if not the L side of things if they so desire to join in on the fun.
Let's use some actual data to demonstrate this problem. Let's look at the 11th Congressional District with Phil Gingrey (R) vs. Roger Kahn (D). Now, our primaries in our state this year (and in previous years) should remind everyone that every single vote counts in a lot of races, and the 11th is setting up to be a very tight race this year.
So, we picked the household of Ethan and Melka W. in Cartersville out of the database. (NOTE: We will not use their last names because we don't want Nancy-boy Bill Nigut to go dashing over to their house and stick a microphone in their face and ask "Republicans claim you will be disenfranchised from voting in the correct Congressional disrict this year. What do you think of that?")
Ethan and Melka are registered at the same house number, same street name, same zip code...in other words, they live in the same house. Ethan lives, according to Cathy Cox's completely accurate and anyone-who-thinks-otherwise-is-obsessed-with-proving-otherwise database, in the 11th congressional district. Melka is designated as living in the 7th congressional district. We do not know which district these two people should be assigned to, but we know there is a problem.
And, there is a major problem because Ethan and Melka also happen to be assigned different state house seats and different state senate seats. But, they live in the same house. Did Roy Barnes draw lines through houses and divvy-up voters that way? Maybe so.
There are many more instances of this "non-existent problem" existing. Out of 28 contested state senate seats, 20 of them have these types of problems. Since the GOP is focusing on trying to takeover the state senate, you can bet that there will be lawsuits filed the day after for any GOP candidate that loses a close race in any of these 20 seats. For that matter, if the Dems lose, they will be interested in filing a lawsuit as well...but, we aren't going to be identifying the seats here. They can do their own analysis.
And, because the SOS's office has insisted that nothing is wrong with their data, this should set Cathy Cox up for being sued for negligence, if such a legal theory could be applied to government bureaucrats. Maybe Cox is immune from all this. Maybe she thinks all problems will be solved by buying $54 million worth of pretty machines.
Maybe she should be replaced by someone who is more willing to address problems rather than playing the blame game. She has proven herself to be quite capable of using her elected office to play partisan political games. One needs only to look back to her overruling an administrative law judge in the case of party-switcher Randy Sauder in 2000. Or, more recently, her stalling for 6 months the assignment of the Cynthia and Billy McKinney election night 2000 interference case to an administrative law judge for a non-partisan hearing of the facts.
Maybe it's time for Cox to get her ass kicked for burying her partisan head in the sand so many times to protect her party.
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If you wish to examine the files containing the households whose occupants vote in different precincts and districts, go to this FTP site and download the file titled CONFLICT.XLS or CONFLICT.ZIP:
ftp://press:files@199.174.101.108/
