This information is NOT intended to discourage voting.  It is important information about problems with Vermont’s election system.  The more people vote, the better.  So get out the vote!  But we must correct these problems and restore confidence in our system.

——————-

Dear Vermonter,

Many of you are not aware of the significant security vulnerabilities with our state’s election system.  The Diebold optical scanners used to count most of the votes in our state have been proven to be vulnerable to both computer bugs and malicious hacks.  In both cases, it is possible for the wrong results to put the wrong person in office, without anyone knowing.

Many independent tests on the Diebold system have confirmed these problems.  The most significant was the widely accepted report from the William Brannan Center for Justice.  It was put together by the heads of security for Microsoft and Lawrence Livermore Labs, as well as many other of the world’s most prominent computer security experts.  You can read the report here.The report confirmed the problem and made strong recommendations to conduct random audits on every election.  These audits would consist of randomly sampling a small number of ballots to count by hand and compare to the Diebold results.

Twenty-two other states have adopted some form of mandatory random audits on their elections.  Vermont has no mandatory random audit, but Deb Markowitz has done some (very small) auditing on a few of the last elections.   However her auditing procedures, and the amount chosen to audit, do not comply with the recommendations of the Brennan Report.  This leaves the vulnerabilities essentially unchanged.

There will be an audit on this November’s election.  However, once again it is far smaller than the recommendation.  And it will only be on one or two races, leaving all the other races completely vulnerable.

To make it clear, these vulnerabilities indicate that an employee at Diebold (who changed their name to Premier Election Systems) or LHS, the distributor for Diebold, could easily pre-program the memory cards for an election to change the results.  They could do this before the election takes place, when all the memory cards are held in a central location.

I’m not a conspiracy theorist, and I don’t accuse them of doing this.  But the problem I see is simply that it could be done.  That alone is something that needs to be mitigated.  And while I’m not a conspiracy theorist, it should be noted that the President of Diebold once promised to help George Bush get re-elected, and they do have some people on their staff who have been convicted of computer fraud already.

The stakes couldn’t be higher in the election next week.  At this point we can only hope that our votes are being counted properly.

Jim Condos told me that if he is elected he will conduct more (and better) audits than Deb Markowitz is doing now.  Let’s hope that happens.

Regards,

Gary Beckwith

Vermonters for Voting Integrity

http://vtvoters.org

The Bennington Banner:

Mr. Dubie’s negative campaign, which smacks of the tactics of national Republican consultants like Karl Rove and has no place in Vermont. His ads have been too slick and cynical and tended to discourage honest debate

Margolis:

(Dubie) continues to make statements that are simply false, and that he must know are false unless he is willfully refusing to acknowledge what is obviously true.

Congratulations, Brian. Mission accomplished (quote can be heard here, at 6:37 into the audio).

(I wrote this yesterday, put a little time into it, and its languishing in Huffington Posts’s overburdened, pre-election queue. Rather than wait for it to show up and crosspost here, I’ll just go ahead and throw it up on GMD…

It’s the year of the angry conservative. Of the tea party republican, no less. Voters think Obama is too liberal and are swinging to the far right. The GOP stands to overwhelm the House of Representatives and may take the Senate. Enthusiasm gap! Voter outrage! Dems running against “Obamacare!” Dogs and cats living together…!

And then there’s Vermont. Or perhaps you haven’t heard of us…

Vermont is different in a lot of currently emblematic ways. Yes there’s a tea party candidate for US House, but he is no threat to the staunchly liberal incumbent.

A true blue state you say? Then why has the Governor for most of the decade been a Republican? Why is the Lieutenant Governor a pro-life, anti-gay marriage, conservative Christian who is solidly supportive of GOP mass-market positions such as opposition to the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque?”

And why in a state that is the nation’s most rural (which, the media narrative goes, should therefore be the most conservative), does the national narrative stand to be flipped on its head? In Vermont, it’s been a long time Republican administration in executive power, and the voters stand ready to possibly promote a progressive Democrat to the position, despite the fact that he trailed in the polls around 20 points earlier in the summer.

So what gives? The media has neither the wherewithal nor the interest to actively examine this phenomenon. These mainstream narrative mills tend to be uninterested in things that might prove their analyses inadequate, and instead simply cast Vermont as so innately quirky and silly as to merit complete dismissal (and that’s if they acknowledge the state at all). Vermonters are just some kind of seperate species, apparently. They don’t count.

Vermonters tend to embrace this “unique species” branding too (because it’s kind of fun), but they’re obviously humans (and if that seems like too obvious a point to make, well… maybe).

What is the case is that Vermont political dynamics are not beholden to the same overarching guide on what’s-what that our media institutions are promoting as hard truth. And whatever those counter-convention-wisdom dynamics are, they tend to resonate when given a hearing on the national stage. This was evident when the little known former Governor of Vermont, Howard Dean, ran for President in 2004 and was roundly laughed at by the political and media establishment. None of them were laughing only a few months later, when his offering of some of that same Vermont to the nation at large resonated with enough in the Democratic Party that he very nearly walked away with the nomination (in fact, he likely would have if not for the panicked coordination of his opponents in the Washington Democratic Party establishment, notably current Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs, to craft one of the more strikingly negative advertising images in recent political memory).

Vermont’s politics can fairly be called dialectic, in the sense that they are the synthesis of many seeming contradictions, therfore defying simple explanations. Almost any issue can serve as an example, but take the politics of the environment. Vermont is considered a haven of liberal environmentalism to many outsiders (and even to many on the inside). Largely that’s due to appearences; it’s rural quality, natural vistas, recreation opportunities, even the lack of billboards along roadsides, banned as the were decades ago. Some of those vistas (along with the relatively low impact of the housing market bust in the state) reflect the success of the landmark land use regulatory regime that has been in place in one form or another for decades. Hidden behind those vistas are the repeated failures to implement natural resource protection laws and strong progressive energy policies.

The fact is that there is nothing in the air, the water or the genes that makes Vermont such a different place – the kind of place that elects both an open socialist to the Senate and a conservative Christian pro-lifer as Lieutenant Governor. In fact there is no one reason to account for the dynamics; it is neither some simple small-town-versus-big-town, nor do the political divisions and discrepencies break down along the lines of “native born” versus “outsiders,” as much as many find it politically advantageous to try and cast it as such.

But here’s the point; instead of looking for the reason why Vermont political society breaks the plotlines of the rest of the country, it makes more sense to explain why the rest of the country isn’t more like Vermont. The easy, pre-digested media narratives, institutional lines of seperation (whether those be institutions defined by distinctions of religion, region, gender, race, income, whatever…) simply haven’t come to define voters in Vermont the way they have in other states. It’s not say they aren’t important – just that they shake out differently. The answer to “why” is probably a complex soup of reasons, rather than one or two easy ones – but we should all be taking a good look at what those reasons may be, and how they can translate to the rest of the country.

It is the paradox of population that the more of us there are and the more we then communicate via mass media, the more we tend to coagulate into monolithic mentalities, depite our increased diversity as a collection of individuals.

What Vermont shows us, though, is that trends, generalities and simplistic media narratives are not necessarily destiny, even as those narratives and the simple stereotyping they feed exert powerful pressures towards their own self-fulfillment.

(Vermonters: Visit votegreengov.org and take the pledge to vote green in 2010!)

The Vermont Department of Public Safety) made public a November 2009 cruiser video showing state Auditor Tom Salmon being stopped and eventually arrested in Montpelier for drunken driving.

Assistant Attorney General Kate Whelley McCabe had argued in court on the department’s behalf that the video was part of a criminal investigation and therefore was exempt from disclosure under the state’s public-records law.

[…] “Does this mean all trooper videos … are a public record?” Sorrell said.

Yes.

( – promoted by Sue Prent)

It's getting to the time when I should be quick and succinct, which is a bit unnatural for me.  We've seen that on the trail, where I will stand there chatting with voters for however long it takes, seriously cutting into the number of doors we can knock.  Hey, I'm a professor sometimes and talk for a living, plus spending most of my day with a baby makes me starved for adult conversation!

Anyway, we're now in the critical final few days of this campaign.  No more filibustering on the front porch, even though we're having a great time.  No more blogging about policy solutions, even though I have lots more to say.  I mean, after this post.

I must note that the last couple days have pushed us over the fundraising goal, with $1025 raised since the September finance report.  That's astonishing.  I originally hoped to get 400 bucks, saw that threshold shattered quickly, then upped the ante to a very aggressive thousand.  You all came through on that, literally fueling the campaign as we drive around our very rural, dispersed district.  You paid for postcards and postage, card stock and printer cartridges, cell phone minutes and blog hosting.

Almost 100 contributions averaging about 36 dollars made this campaign possible.  Sam, Ericka and I thank you humbly for that amazing amount of faith and support.

Not only did we have scores of donors, we also had dozens of volunteers hit the phones and doorsteps.  Mostly friends and family, and also people who up until recently were really complete strangers and now we consider friends.  Between them, we've been able to canvass hundreds and hundreds of homes, call hundreds and hundreds of voters and send hundreds and hundreds of cards and letters.

Thank you so much for the investment of time and energy.  It has put us into a great position to perhaps surprise some people on Tuesday.

I'm not sanguine about our electoral prospects.  The odds are stacked against an obscure stay-at-home-dad who jumps into a race without any party support.  Obviously we need to catch a few breaks in a 5-way race for two seats when there are essentially 3 incumbents on the ballot.

Yet failure is only guaranteed when you don't try.  We all have worked wicked hard had to make success possible.  So we've already won a huge victory, whatever the vote count is next week.

Seriously, I want to win, and we've campaigned to win.  No matter what, though, we're going to party like it's 1999 after the polls close because this was just such a wonderful experience and awesome team effort.  Whether Todd Pritsky is in Montpelier or Fletcher, there's a lot of stuff that needs to be done over the next couple of years, and we will keep plugging away at it all.

All that said, let's remember there a still 4 days left to campaign.  You have time to volunteer and/or donate to help get additional votes.  I appreciate the support we've already gotten so much and would like to ask you to do just one more thing before it's over.  Then we can crash knowing we did all we could and sleep soundly with no regrets.

todd

( – promoted by JDRyan)

Here is what they said:

Finally, we endorse Democrat Donny Osman for the seat vacated by Republican Phil Scott, who’s running for lieutenant governor. Osman, who lives in Plainfield, has a wide range of experience. He was a state representative from 1996 to 2002 and has held a variety of professional and volunteer positions with a wide spectrum of organizations -from Washington County Mental Health to the Vermont state colleges.

We like Osman’s broad experience and his expertise in conflict management and mediation. These skills will serve him well in consensus-building in the Legislature.

Brian Dubie’s no holds-barred-what-ever-it-takes campaign has drawn plenty of criticism and hand wringing. According to reports Republican office holders in Vermont have urged him privately to cool it claiming it is doing him more harm than good. Taking no heed of that advice he has several times declared he stands by his ads accuracy.    

While wondering about Dubie’s character I searched back and found an AOPA magazine puff piece from early in 2010 at the start of his campaign. Naturally AOPA (Aircraft Owners and Pilots) magazine highlighted his being a pilot. They reference that Dubie sees a direct parallel between the qualities of being a pilot and the skills needed to be a politician and assuming leadership role in government. Vermonters have heard this leadership linkage ad nauseam for eight years. What exactly are these skills he feels he needs to run for office?  

From the AOPA magazine piece is one incident Dubie strangely mentions an example from pilot training of parallel lines that may exist between the qualities of a pilot and useful leadership skills. If a student pilot “busts three rides,” they are washed out.

Some might also see the parallels between his story, his campaign and his remaining reputation. It’s actually surprising he brought this story up at all, but he must be quite proud of his accomplishment.      

One way to bust a ride was to get airsick.  Dubie climbed into a T-37 for his first military training flight on a hot summer day. After flying the pattern for a while with his instructor, he began to feel the effects of the heat. On the last pattern, the instructor turned to him and asked him how he felt. Increasingly queasy, he set the switch to “cold mic.”  

“At that moment, I blew chow,” Dubie said, telling the story in his Montpelier office. “I filled my cheek.” But he didn’t acknowledge to the instructor that he was sick.    

“I swallowed hard and said, ‘I’m feeling great.’ … I didn’t bust that ride. I didn’t bust any ride,” he said. "

UPDATE: More thoughts on this below the fold.

Shay Totten has the story tonight. Earlier today Shay posted a diary that David Blittersdorf had sent Brian Dubie a letter demanding that he retract allegations that Blittersdorf

had provided campaign contributions to Shumlin in exchange for a seat on a board that eventually provided his firm with $4.3 million in tax credits.

Tonight there's more. Shay Totten is now reporting that Blittersdorf has sued Dubie for defamation. Totten links to the complaint filed in Chittenden Superior Court alleging that

“In their reckless zeal to impugn Defendant Dubie's political opponent, Defendants have maliciously chosen to attack Mr. Blittersdorf with false and defamatory statements.”

Blittersdorf is represented by Ritchie Berger, known in the legal community as one of Vermont's best trial lawyers (he's good). Don't expect Berger to shrink from a fight.

In almost thirty years of living and observing and participating in politics in Vermont, I've never seen anything like this. Anything that anyone has said so far about Dubie running a dirty, negative campaign pales in comparison to this latest revelation.

In the opinion of this reporter, it's hard to see how Dubie can salvage his previous “nice guy” image. Even if he thought the attacks on Shumlin and Blittersdorf were justified, did he really need to open himself up to fighting a two-front war? Would he have been better off making a retraction?

I guess we'll know Wednesday morning.

There are a couple of other points that seem interesting.

1. The defendants in this case are not just Dubie himself, but his campaign group, Friends of Brian Dubie, and Corry Bliss.  I've never seen a campaign manager's contract. Does anyone know if they typically provide that the campaign will cover your libel judgments for you?

2. Remember when the whole state was up in arms about the UVM hockey hazing scandal? And everyone was on the side of the students and against the hockey program? Ritchie Berger was the lawyer for UVM who dismantled the case against the university. 

3. The complaint alleges that Dubie made his statements kowing that they were false, or with reckless disregard of whether they were true or false. This is the standard the Supreme Court adopted in New York Times v. Sullivan for libel suits by a public figure.

4. The complaint includes a claim for punitive damages.

5. Dubie's people continue  to try to spin this, quoting Corry Bliss as saying:

I have to wonder how much he'll be saying that if he's got this libel case hanging over his head for a couple of years after he's left Vermont and tried to catch on with another right-winger's campaign.

( – promoted by Jack McCullough)

I was stunned to read the list of Free Press endorsements for Chittenden County Senate. The Free Press predicated its Senate endorsements for Chittenden County on transparency and accountability in government. It went so far to say it is the “number one issue of this campaign.”

Dennett for Attorney General Campaign Video

Unleashing a barrage of hard-hitting radio ads across the state, Attorney General candidate Charlotte Dennett has taken her opponent Bill Sorrell to task for a string of what she says are improper dealings with Yankee, including advice 2 years ago to the Dept. of Public Health to avoid hearings on a 20% radiation increase, Sorrrell's defense of that radiation increase based on a discredited study paid for by Entergy, Yankee's owner, and entering into a confidentiality agreement with Entergy as a part of a criminal investigation of false statements made by Entergy concerning buried pipes now discovered to be leaking tritium and other radioactive substances. 

 As well, Dennett has accused both Sorrell and the VT Dept. of Public Health (VDPH) of hiding alarming rates of three radiation-linked cancers in VT, include childhood cancers.  Dennett has produced internal data not released by the VDPH on women's thyroid cancer, as well as Centers for Disease Control (CDC) data on pediatric cancer and skin cancer, three of the six types of cancer associated with ionizing radiation damage, according to the American Cancer Society.  The other types are stomach, lung, and breast.  Dennett stresses that, although there is no way to establish a direct correlation between the cancers and VT Yankee particle contamination, the presence of not just one but three out of six radiation-induced cancers should seal the fate VT Yankee.

Regarding his alleged help for and defense of the 20% radiation increase which came to light in 2008, Dennett wrote in a 2009 Times-Argus piece (reprinted here in ChelseaGreen.com):

“This past year, Vermonters learned that the Health Department had failed to contact (as required by law) the Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules about a change in the way it evaluated low level radiation emissions at the plant. By avoiding the Rules Committee, VDPH also avoided public hearings. Had the hearings occurred, an important issue of public health would have emerged: Once the plant increased its power output (beginning in 2006) by 20 percent, radiation levels at the plant's fence line also increased, surpassing acceptable legal limits…

When public hearings finally occurred last fall, the Rules Committee asked Dr. William Irwin of VDPH: “Who advised you not to contact us?” His response was barely audible: “Counsel.””

Dennett says both Dr. Irwin and Assistant Attorney General Dixie Henry confirmed that “counsel” referred to Bill Sorrell, and also refered reporter to the office of State Senator Mark MacDonald, who told Dennett:

“If you’re going to investigate employees of Entergy for not being truthful with the public, you should also investigate their regulators because they have not been forthcoming and are part of a pattern of knowledge not being shared.”

Dennett has since filed a public records request for communications between the VDPH, Entergy, and Sorrell's office regarding hearings on the radiation increase.  

In a debate on VT Public Radio last month,  Sorrell explained that he believed the absence of hearings for the 20% radiation increase to be proper because “the Department of Public Health spent $150,000 for an organization to come up with a conversion factor” which, Sorrell said, distinguished between different definitions of radiation and allowed an adjustment to radiation readings.  However, the methodology adopted by the study on the conversion factor was officially withdrawn by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) in 2001.  Moreover, Dennett discovered through a public records request that the study had actually been paid for by Entergy, Yankee's owner, through a reimbursement to the VDPH of the $150,000 paid for the study.  The study was performed by Oak Ridge Associates, a research group with close ties to the nuclear industry.  

 The confidentiality agreement between Sorrell and Entergy came to light in an article in Seven Days, when journalist Shay Totten reported that since “the report is covered by a confidentiality agreement signed by Sorrell, he refuses to release it publicly.” Sorrell also refused a public records request for the report made by the Conservation Law Foundation [CLF]. The Foundation eventually forced the Vermont Public Service Board to release the report after Entergy failed in its bid to have a court order to suppress it.

In the same VPR debate, Sorrell denied Entergy’s report was ever covered by the confidentiality agreement, a direct contradiction of what he told Totten of Seven Days. “There was never an agreement on our part not to release the investigative report,” he said. Dennett is filing a public records request for the confidentiality agreement to find out what exactly it covered.

The Dennett Campaign has composed a presentation “What is VDPH Hiding?” outlining the ways in which three cancers with links to radiation have been dismissed and underplayed by the VDPH and Attorney General Sorrell.  In the VPR last month Sorrell said that, with respect to cancers relative to the rest of the country, Vt does “not have a bad story to tell.”   But in three types of cancer which have been found to have strong links to nuclear radiation, according to the American Cancer Society, VT is high.  In skin cancer VT is number one in the nation.  In thyroid cancer, women in VT have experienced a 400% increase in the years from 1996 to 2005, twice the national rate of increase among women overall.  In pediatric cancer (cancer of all types in children ages 0-19,) VT is number one in data combined from 1999 to 2005.

The Dennett campaign found that the data on womens' thyroid cancer was being withheld by the VDPH from the public, when a VT nurse leaked the document with the data to the Dennett campaign.  

The presentation “What is VDPH Hiding?” highlights ways in which cancer rates are mistated by, in the case of thyroid, combining men and women's data, when in fact much grimmer picture emerges when the data for women alone is examined. 

Dennett Facebook

Dennett website