http://www.charlotte.com/204/story/349531.html

 

This article sent out by the AP was written by harvesting exclusively the negative comments made in a "local feature" article

that was actually meant to honor NCVV and myself. The original article, the good one, ran in the Nov 4, 2007 Winston Salem Journal.

“Vote-counting done correctly is her goal “ [i] . But, the AP removed anything positive and changed the title to something akin

to what you would see in a gossup rag.

 

Some un-named person at the AP drastically edited "Vote-counting done correctly is her goal", renamed it

“Fair-election advocates battle for turf”  and tried to paint the worst possible picture of myself, and the

NC Coalition for Verified Voting.  Then they spread it across the entire state.

 

The article trivialized the goal of fair and accurate elections, attributed the issue to “paranoia” and slapped

on a title about an imagined "turf battle".  This "turf battle" is the result of a vivid imagination.

 

I called the writer of the original (good) article, James Romoser, thinking that maybe that Bob Hall had been

taken out of context.  But Romoser said that he was so shocked that he felt it necessary to print what was said.

If true, its ironic that on one hand,  Bob Hall champions transparency in campaign finance, (and rightly so),

but on the other hand thinks it "paranoid" or "fringe" for citizens to demand transparency in vote counting.

I hope that somehow this is all a big mistake. 

 

Mon, Nov. 05, 2007 

Fair-election advocates battle for turf

The Associated Press

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. --

Two years ago, Joyce McCloy led a push to require that all voting in machines in North Carolina keep a paper trail that can be used to verify election results.

But now McCloy's efforts to ensure fair and accurate elections has put her in conflict with other activists with the same goal. McCloy, of Winston-Salem, has been vigorously opposing both touch-screen voting machines and run-off elections.

"The main thing we want is transparency in elections," McCloy said, noting that electronic machines have caused problems in the past, including a 2004 episode in Carteret County in which one machine lost 4,400 votes. "We want everyone's vote to count."

Other Raleigh activists view her N.C. Coalition for Verified Voting as a fringe group that focuses too narrowly on the electronic machines.

"They come at it from basically a paranoia or a caution or a fear of votes not being counted," said Bob Hall, executive director of Democracy North Carolina and one of the state's foremost activists for clean elections and political reform.

"They're focusing on an issue of a rigged system, and we're focusing on trying to make the system more accessible to more people."

Hall also said he doesn't very much respect how McCloy's group has advocated the issue, referring to her opposition of an instant-runoff pilot program in the town of Cary.

Instant-runoff elections allow voters to rank their choices to produce an instant runoff if nobody gets enough votes to win a seat.

Hall said most voting-rights leaders support instant-runoff elections because voters turn out in low numbers to costly runoffs. McCloy opposes such elections, saying they can be confusing to voters.

McCloy supports the use of "optical-scan" voting machines. Those are paper ballots that are tabulated by a scanning machine. She says the touch-screen machines are vulnerable to being hacked and are more difficult to verify.

Cary held its municipal elections last month and tested the instant-runoff voting in a close race for a town council seat. Election officials said the system performed well and saved the town tens of thousands of dollars.

Many other municipalities will hold elections Tuesday.