There’s been a fair amount of media coverage (at least in California papers), since our scoop yesterday of new CA SoS Debra Bowen’s brilliant appointment of dogged E-voting critic and VoterAction.org attorney Lowell Finley to the post of Deputy SoS for Voting Systems Technology and Policy.
There are a couple more ironic points to the Finley appointment above and beyond the ones we mentioned yesterday. One we knew about, another we hadn’t.
In his report on the matter, Oakland Tribune’s Ian Hoffman reminds us of the qui tam lawsuit filed by Finley against voting machine company Diebold and joined by the state in 2004, which eventually resulted in a settlement:
In a point we hadn’t previously known, the Los Angeles Times blogger on state capitol and gubernatorial issues, Robert Sallady, highlighted our coverage here — describing us as “The state’s most persistent blogger-watchdog on the dangers of voting technology” (thank you, sir) — and advanced the story a bit with this irony-laden chestnut about the man who will now, officially, be working as an appointed member of Schwarzenegger’s own Executive Branch:
Office Christmas parties next year in Sacramento ought to be a hoot. Hopefully the Governator supplies the medication.
dripping with irony
“The Chairman of the laboratory which the New York Times revealed has been barred last week from approving any new electronic voting machines after federal investigators discovered appallingly haphazard testing regimes at the firm dumped 25,000 common shares of stock in the company less than two weeks before the bad news was announced, netting himself almost $175,000, the MadCowMorningNews has learned.”
http://www.madcowprod.com/01102007.html
mick
Caption – Oh Shit ! ! ! What’s Brad Friedman Doing Here ?
This guy cost “The Terminator” four and a half million bucks. Whew! That’s what I call a watchdog!