Really long article with multiple problems by CA

California launched DMV voter registration system despite bugs and hackers

y JOHN MYERS

APR 09, 2019 | 5:00 AM

The rollout of the California Department of Motor Vehicles' automated voter registration system was plagued in 2018 by extensive computer programming problems that engineers scrambled to fix under direction to activate the system earlier than originally planned. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

California has launched few government projects with higher stakes than its ambitious 2018 program for registering millions of new voters at the Department of Motor Vehicles, an effort with the potential to shape elections for years to come.

Yet six days before the scheduled launch of the DMV’s new “motor voter” system last April, state computer security officials noticed something ominous: The department’s computer network was trying to connect to internet servers in Croatia.

“This is pretty typical of a compromised device phoning home,” a California Department of Technology official wrote in an April 10, 2018, email obtained by The Times. “My Latin is a bit rusty, but I think Croatia translates to Hacker Heaven.”

Although the email described the incident as the DMV system attempting “communication with foreign nations,” a department spokesperson later insisted voter information wasn’t at risk.

The apparent hacking incident was the most glaring of several unexpected problems — never disclosed to the public — in rolling out a project that cost taxpayers close to $15 million.

The Times conducted a four-month review of nearly 1,300 pages of documents and interviewed state employees and other individuals who worked on the project — most of whom declined to be identified for fear of reprisal. Neither the emails nor the interviews made clear who was ultimately responsible for the botched rollout, though an independent audit is expected to be released in the coming days.

The emails present a picture of a project bogged down by personnel clashes, technological hurdles and a persistent belief among those involved that top officials were demanding they make the “motor voter” program operational before the June 5 primary, so that it could boost the number of ballots cast.

“Not meeting the deadline was not an option,” said a project staffer who asked to remain anonymous to speak freely about what happened. Three other team members agreed there was enormous pressure to get part of the program running before the end of April.

Some of the mistakes popped up within hours of the system going live: frozen or blank DMV computer screens; private information remaining on touchscreen devices between appointments; selections sometimes flipping from what a customer had chosen.

Three weeks later, mistaken records showed up at local election offices, upward of 100,000 inaccurate documents by the fall. Party preferences were wrong. Some non-citizens were mistakenly added to the voter rolls. Other DMV customers didn’t know they’d been registered.

http://archive.is/CwOa8

Great Article by prior Democrat Senator on DOJ and criticism of democrats Today

Bob Kerrey: How did Department of Justice get the Trump-Russia investigation so wrong?

By Bob Kerrey Mar 29, 2019

The writer, of New York, is a former Nebraska governor and U.S. senator.

Delusions fascinate me in part because I have so many of my own. Most often delusions are harmless. Sometimes they are not.

At the moment my fellow Democrats are suffering from two that are harmful. The first is that Americans long for a president who will ask us to pay more for the pleasure of increasing the role of the federal government in our lives. That this is a delusion can be seen in the promises made by six successful Democratic candidates in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan: three governors and three senators. Not one of them supported the Green New Deal, a tax on wealth or “Medicare for all.”

The second Democratic delusion is that Americans were robbed of the truth when Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller and Attorney General William Barr concluded that President Trump did not collude with Russia in 2016. All evidence indicates that the full report will not change the conclusion that Donald J. Trump did not collude with Vladimir Putin to secure his victory in 2016.

Rather than investigating the president further, Congress needs to investigate how the Department of Justice got this one so wrong. If the president of the United States is vulnerable to prosecutorial abuse, then God help all the rest of us. Members of Congress cannot do this themselves. We do not trust them enough with such a vital mission.

Congress should create a nonpartisan commission to find out what went wrong and to tell us what needs to be done to make certain it never happens again.

A commission to investigate the FBI needs to focus on four questions:

1. Has the law that gave the director of the FBI a 10-year term of office been sufficient to protect the appointee from political pressure to investigate potential crimes of candidates or elected officials? Neither Democratic nor Republican mobs should decide the outcome of our criminal justice system.

1. How can we write clear rules that govern the behavior of the candidate or officeholder? Tweets can and do stoke the fire of the mob. That is what they are intended to do. When the chief law enforcement officer encourages his audience to chant “lock her up,” this signals the FBI to follow the mob. When he sends out tweets that encourage law enforcement to investigate political opponents, this is also mob rule. Rules of acceptable behavior do not apply just to the president but to Congress as well. In the Twitter age, all of us need to understand when our candidate has crossed the line.

1. When is it appropriate for the FBI to begin an investigation? Once started, these things are hard to stop. A single campaign official suggesting the possibility of collusion with a foreign power or a document written as opposition research or a demand from a member of Congress are very thin reeds upon which to challenge the legitimacy of an elected official.

1. Are federal pardons justified? The commission needs the authority to examine whether some Americans were convicted and sentenced because they did not tell the truth about a collusion that never happened. The commission should be given the authority to recommend a pardon for anyone it believes was sentenced unjustly.

Our democracy will survive the hostility of Vladimir Putin. What it may not survive is distrust of our system of justice. At the moment that distrust is deep and wide. We need a nonpartisan national commission to tell us what has just happened and to advise us on what we need to do to keep it from happening again.

https://www.omaha.com/opinion/midlands_voices/bob-kerrey-how-did-department-of-justice-get-the-trump/article_7b68c700-f356-5cb8-8baf-bbbdc5375bf4.html

This Is In Response To Multiple anons Posting On Abrams Being Inestigates By George Ethics on Election Money

1st Part. I posted this a couple of months ago, she’s very very corrupt

Unethical Abrams: 10 ethics reasons why Georgians should not vote for Stacey Abrams for Governor

MAY

17

2018

William Perry

Stacey Abrams was once a public official I liked… A LOT! But what a disappointment she’s turned out to be with both her leadership and ethics. She has more ethical challenges than any other statewide candidate. She’s become “Unethical Abrams” to me — the Kasim Reed of statewide politics.

I’m tired of the voters of our state electing people to public office, only later to find out that they completely lack ethics. So with the primary election just days away, and many potential voters still undecided, here are 10 reasons why you should not vote for Stacey Abrams for Governor if you care about ethical behavior:

#1 Abrams reimbursed herself over $84,000 from her campaign accounts without itemization of end recipients. This means that she could have pocketed the money, which of course would be illegal. Last month I filed an ethics complaintwith the state ethics commission. When asked about it, she stated “We complied very much so with all of the record-keeping that we were required to do. But if there is any discrepancy and any question, we will certainly provide additional information.” It’s been weeks, and she has still not disclosed where the money went. See WSBTV’s story.

#2 Abrams used campaign resources to sell her book, which she profits from personally. Again, this is illegal and I filed an ethics complaintabout it last month as well. This is illegal because candidates are not allowed to personally benefit from campaign funds. Abrams has been paid by her publisher already for the book, and she’ll surely profit from its sales. It would be okay if the campaign received all proceeds from the book, but that’s not the case. After claiming there was nothing wrong with what her staff was doing, all campaign web pages supporting the sale of the book were removed, and all staffers’ social media tweets and posts were deleted. Read the AJC story.

#3 Abrams lied on multiple occasions about her private business dealings with a business she is a partner in called NOWaccount, which did business with the State of Georgia, and Fulton County. While this may not be illegal, lying about your private business dealings is likely something most voters consider unethical. On two separate occasions Abrams stated publicly that she “walled off” herself from dealings with the state – on WABE 3/22/18 and at the GABWA forum on 4/6/18(1:20:28 mark). Yet the meeting minutes from the Development Authority of Fulton County for May 27, 2014 tell a different story. They state she not only attended, but “…Representative Stacey Abrams… appeared in connection with the request for a letter of inducement for the issuance of $20,000,000 in taxable bonds”. That’s hardly walling herself off….

Part 2 of 3 on how corrupt Abrams is

Unethical Abrams: 10 ethics reasons why Georgians should not vote for Stacey Abrams for Governor

#4 Abrams was not transparent about a second private business

#6 Abrams claimed very high, and some false per diems as a State Representative. She padded her state salary with more than $150,000 in per diem payments (an allowance to cover meals and other expenses while working). In 2011, Abrams claimed more out-of-session expenses than any other Georgia House Member – while this is not illegal, it shows an abuse of taxpayer dollars. Also in 2011, she reported receiving per diem pay on the same day a lobbyist reported buying her a cab ride out of state, which violates House Ethics Rules, and forcing her to reimburse the state $181. According to the Associated Press, “Rep. Stacey Abrams, the Democratic minority leader, received $173 in daily pay plus mileage for working in Georgia on Nov. 20, 2011. That same day, a lobbyist reported buying Abrams a $6 cab ride in Miami. When asked about the discrepancy, Abrams reviewed her calendar and said she made a mistake. Abrams has reimbursed the state $181 for the pay she collected on Nov. 20 because lawmakers cannot claim flat-rate pay for out-of-state work.” [Associated Press, 9/6/12]

#7 Abrams asked for and received a sweetheart deal after working for the City of Atlanta that would make even Kasim Reed’s cabinet jealous. With the shock of large bonuses and payouts to staffers of former Mayor Kasim Reed in the limelight, it seems Kasim wasn’t the first to make such a move. Months after leaving city employment, Abrams was paid $62,000 in taxpayer money as a consultant on The BeltLine Project in 2006 and 2007. Even then, someone apparently raised a concern about her pay and “other agendas”. According to this handwritten note in open records from Atlanta BeltLine dated 9/26, “Someone raised concern about use of Stacey, watch how much in sum paying her and other agendas she’s got going.”

She even bragged about this questionable use of taxpayer funds… according to an interview in Reflections on Georgia Politics with Bob Short, Abrams said, “When I left the City of Atlanta to run for office, I had to figure out a way to afford my house and I started a consulting firm. I had created a couple of opportunities for the city and they hired me to come on board. And when I got ready to leave, they said, you’re not leaving without telling us how this works and so they hired me and I negotiated a pretty good price for myself and built a reputation as someone who understood the intersection of public and private enterprise when it comes to particularly public/private development.”…

Part 3 on Abrams Corruption. It’s incredibly hard to find dirt on her, it’s being scrubbed from Internet she’s a dem darling. I hope this helps

Unethical Abrams: 10 ethics reasons why Georgians should not vote for Stacey Abrams for Governor

#8 Abrams’ business has liens for unpaid unemployment contributions. Her nonprofit discussed earlier, Third Sector Development had four liens totaling $13,000 from the Georgia Department of Labor for unpaid unemployment contributions from 2014 through 2016 as reported in the AJC. Additionally, in 2010 she had a federal tax lien for $29,795 which she claims was filed in error.

#9 Abrams personally loaned her campaign $50,000 while she owes the IRS $54,000. I would think that while running for Governor, especially after making yourself a half millionaire from nonprofits and work as a public official in addition to getting $150,000 for a book deal, you would want to settle unpaid taxes. But apparently not if you are Abrams, instead, she loaned her campaign $50k! According to the AJC, she deferred her tax payments and worked out a payment plan for 2015 and 2016. She claimed financial hardship while working to support her family. Again, she raked in almost half a million from her nonprofits alone in 2014 and 2015 – what kind of hardship could her family have? And what decisions will she make with your taxpayer dollars if she’s elected Governor?

#10 Abrams has a pattern of inaccurate reporting on her personal financial disclosures and campaign finance reports. Public officials have to file Personal Financial Disclosure reports so citizens can see their business interests to know if they have conflicts of interest. Abrams reports have to be repeatedly amended because of “mistakes” – she apparently forgets about hundreds of thousands of dollars she’s earned from companies she owns or serves as a partner, or board of directors she has served on. She also has a history of mistakes on her campaign finance reports. Again, while not illegal, it certainly shows at the very least, troubling incompetency, or most likely clear attempts to avoid transparency. Here are a few examples:

– In 2015, the year she received $85,000 and the year after she received $177,500 (2014) in payments as CEO of Third Sector Development, she filed amended her report from 2005 through 2015 to add this role.

– In 2016, she amended her Personal Financial Disclosures for years 2011-2015 to include her role as advisor to GeorgiaNEXT, Inc.

– In 2016, she amended her 2013 Personal Financial Disclosure to include her direct ownership in Myrina Strategies.

– Over the years, she apparently forgot she served on the board of directors of the Georgia Lawyer Chapter of the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy, Faith in Community Ministries, Board of Visitors for Emory University, Branan Towers Senior Facility of Wesley Woods Foundation, Health Students Taking Action Together and NOW Corp USA. And while she reported service on the following boards some years, she didn’t disclose service in all years she served on the boards of The Atlanta Metropolitan State College Foundation and The Georgia Partnership For Excellence In Education.

– An AJC investigation in 2015 found she had a $3,403 discrepancy in her Financial Disclosure Reports. [Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 11/29/15]

So there you have it — 10 instances of unethical behavior by Candidate for Governor Stacey Abrams. I challenge anyone to find a candidate for statewide office this year with more documented examples

>>6164227

It’s so corrupt there, it’s surprising they can get away with it