John

The Ray Martinez story has me wondering. He had just published a paper, according to your link, from which I quote:

"At the top of his list was the idea that every state perform a regular election audit to determine that the administration of elections is fair, impartial and consistent with voter intent. The results of these audits should be widely dispersed" (your link, bold added).

Of course that is noble, good, sensible, and fundamental.

But what would bring up these obvious statements? I mean its like saying robbers should stop robbing banks. It is so not controversial.

Another quote from your link puts this in perspective. It gives the reason for his statement:

"One of the most alarming trends in our country is the continual erosion of voter confidence in the accuracy of our tabulated results," Martinez said. "The 2000 presidential election has adversely affected the opinion of the average American on our electoral process" (ibid, bold added).

"Since then, voter confidence has continued to trend in the wrong direction," Martinez added, "and it's unlikely to fade any time soon" (ibid, bold added).

One of the most alarming trends in our country! That means the people may know more than we think.

The poster boy of election corruption and conflicts of interest, a la communist Russia of the cold war, is Ken Blackwell of Ohio.

Anyway ... keep up the good work. It concerns something the people are very concerned about, and is not, as KKKarl Rove and the propagandists of the republican dictatorship would have us believe, just the notions of the kook fringe.

The voting issues of the Italian election in the news today are a mirror of some of our own elections.

The difference is that the results are in agreement with the exit polls.

Exit polls predicted that Berlusconi would loose (link here).

The official results agree, even tho they went back and forth (link here).

Again, why does the AP trust exit polls in close elections in other countries, but not in the US where they predicted Kerry to win in 2004?

Even when exit polls are of scientific extract (link here)?

Dredd, Martinez spoke and answered questions at a VoteTrustUSA conference in Washington DC on Saturday. I understand that he gave a background speech on HAVA, as he would to a group that was not aware of what was going on. He then took questions and the questions were very intelligent and quoted Section and subsection from HAVA or other documents. He was visibly surprised that he was facing people who clearly knew what they were talking about and he was not able to answer a lot of the questions.

It has been pointed out that his reasons for retiring are personal and family reasons. The family reasons are understandable and concrete. What about those personal reasons though?? He may just be abandoning ship before it goes down. Who knows at this point??

John #3

As our brother Savantster said awhile back, "I will drink to that ... or anything else ..." (paraphrased).

I would be honored to be in a prison with any of the American insurgency, including you and Savantster