In the mind of Utah's top election official, (Lt. governor Gary Herbert), That whole episode where Emery Utah county clerk Bruce Funk called in experts to check out his Diebold voting machines and made national news for exposing security flaws that shocked national experts never happened!

There was a program on C-SPAN2 covering a forum in Washington D.C. about problems with the 2006 elections. It was basically as interesting as watching paint dry, and was little more then watching election officials congradulate each other about what a great job they did, but there were a couple of panels. One of the panels had 8 people including Lt. governor Herbert, Thad Hall, and a guy from B.Y.U. who oversees exit polls in conjunction with the Lt. governors office named David B. Magelby.

The following is a word for word quote from Lt. governor Herbert (Caps and bold letters for emphasis):

"We got all of our 29 counties, all of our 29 clerks, all of the commissioners who have to fund this, it's been a very expensive process, and said let's build it from the bottom up and get everybody's buy-in and get some kind of a consensus about how we're going to go about the implementation of the Help America Vote Act. And truly, that's been one of the smartest things I did, and the fact that we have a statewide system that all 29 counties, all 29 clerks VOLUNTARILY JOINED THE SAME STATEWIDE SYSTEM, AS OPPOSED TO ME HAVING TO USE SOME KIND OF DICTATORIAL APPROACH, and I think that's fostered a lot more cooperative spirit of proactive, positive approach to make sure that we do the best we can with what we've got."

There you go! Apparently, some people have to right to make their own world. We just live in it!

OT,.. update on New Hampshire Demo Get Out The Vote - phone line jamming by the Republican Party. Proceeding to a civil law suit,.. Rethugs ask the court to limit damages to less than $5,000.00,.. court disagrees allowing the Demo Party request to recover $2 million dollars in total damages if final ruling in their favor.

Pound the Fascists were it hurts them most,.. in the wallet and their bank accounts. If you disrupt democracy with your Nazi games,.. then pay through the nose to undo the damage you wrought and restore democracy until made whole once again. Then and only then will Nazi/Fascists not be so eager/hell bent to tamper with our political systems, hijack democracy, and covertly install their shadow governments, in complete disregard for the will/intentions/desires of the electorate.

Link to Boston Globe article for details.