A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Masson's Blog

Electronic voting has problems in Indiana

by 3 Comments

Niki Kelly has an article for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette entitled “State yet to approve May 2 vote software: 9 area counties ponder paper ballots.” The Indiana Election Commission says that MicroVote Infinity machines contained uncertified software and can’t be legally used in the May 2 primary. This affects 47 counties. The commission is working to certify the software, but there is no guarantee of completion in the next 2 weeks, causing County Clerks to contemplate making copies of paper ballots and counting them by hand.

[Kosciusko County Clerk Sharon Christner acknowledged] the software being installed was uncertified by state election officials but said MicroVote officials assured her it would be soon.

But MicroVote didn’t even file the application for certification until Tuesday. Now it is waiting on required documentation from an independent testing laboratory that the software meets federal election standards. That testing could be completed by Friday or next week, according to testimony Wednesday.

The MicroVote vendor’s assurance has a certain “check is in the mail” ring to it.

Mary Beth Schneider’s article in the Indianapolis Star discusses the MicroVote problems but also mentions problems with Election Systems & Software (ES&S) which primarily affect Marion, Johnson, and St. Joseph counties.

Those problems already have resulted in Marion County deciding it will not be able to meet the federal requirement to have at least one voting machine in each precinct that a disabled voter can use without assistance.

Wednesday, clerks from Marion, Johnson and St. Joseph  counties all testified about the problems they have had with ES&S. Marion County Clerk Doris Anne Sadler said she has gone through 14 sets of ballots, as ES&S made mistake after mistake, correcting old errors only to make new ones.

It makes me a little nervous that Diebold appears to be the “most reliable” major electronic voting vendor out there. Diebold has come under fire for creating voting systems without reasonable auditing, no paper trail, security holes, and software bugs.

Possibly this is just a hiccup and these electronic systems can be made fool proof. But this is our democracy we’re monkeying around with. Probably even more important than having the votes accurately counted is making citizens confident that the votes are being accurately counted. Without that, everything else in the democracy breaks down. Without that confidence, elected officials are robbed of their legitimacy and lose the consent of the governed to do anything. So we need to be extremely careful with these voting machines.

School funding lawsuit

by Leave a Comment

The planned lawsuit by the Indiana State Teachers Association (ISTA) challenging the legality of the level of school funding figures prominently in most papers today. Lesley Stedman Weidenbener has a good article for the Louisville Courier Journal.

The article reports that,  as a state, Indiana is about average in its level of school funding, ranking 22nd. However, the problem might be at a district by district level. ISTA’s spokesperson said that the General Assembly hasn’t funded schools at a level sufficient to meet the accountability measures it has set. Failure to meet those measures will result in sanctions for underperforming schools. ISTA’s spokesperson also predicts that inadequate funding will lead to failure to meet the standards which will lead to another round of hand wringing about our broken school system which will lead to renewed voucher proposals which is something ISTA really does not want.

The Governor’s office wouldn’t comment, saying “they hadn’t seen the lawsuit.” Senator Kenley, on the other hand, was more willing to discuss the issue. (A minor point, but yet one more indicator of why Indiana would have been better off had Sen. Kenley beaten out Gov. Daniels for the Republican nomination in ’04.)

Senate Tax and Fiscal Policy Committee Chairman Luke Kenley,
R-Noblesville, said he was aware the teachers association had been
discussing a lawsuit. But he said he was surprised that it would focus, at least in part, on funding for students in need.

The school funding formula he helped write for the current state budget includes a redesigned complexity index, a method of distributing additional dollars to schools with students who are poor, live in single-parent households and have limited ability to speak English. The index also considers the number of young adults living in the district who did not earn a high school diploma.

“The formula is designed to look at the child and measure whether there’s a need there and then drive the dollars to those children,” Kenley said. “Indiana has been much more sensitive than other states to funding children in need.”

ISTA’s spokesperson, Dan Clark, said that the weight the formula gives to any of the factors is arbitrary and, consequently, the amount of money the formula provides to schools with more children in need is arbitrary. Sen. Kenley said that the index factors were based on a study done by IU to advise the General Assembly, but also says he’s interested to see the suit and suggests that it may be a source of good information for the legislature as they develop the next two-year state budget.

I might be wrong, but this does not look like the sort of issue a court is well suited to address. School funding within broadly defined parameters strikes me as a legislative matter. The suit might be useful in producing information that can educate the General Assembly, but this seems like a very inefficient way of conducting a study.

Medians as Metaphors: The Mitch Daniels Story

by 5 Comments

I am happy to announce that I have completed the return drive from North Carolina. In total, the round trip was about 1,500 miles with my wife, my 2 year old son, and my 8 month old daughter in an SUV for approximately 25 driving hours. As I was doing this, I encountered a scene which struck me as a metaphor for bureaucrats of Mitch Daniels’ nature. I’m not saying it is insightful or elegant; in its delerium, one’s mind can conjure up all sorts of metaphors during that sort of road trip.

In several states, but particularly in Indiana — perhaps by coincidence, I saw long stretches of road torn up for construction while only a very small portion of that road was actually being worked on, creating delays for drivers that are longer than apparently necessary. I’m sure there is a reason for this. My non-cynical suspicion is that it is cheaper to do stages of construction in fewer longer stretches than to do the stages in more numerous short stretches. My cynical suspicion is that contractors want to rip up the road before anyone changes their mind.

Going with the non-cynical explanation, that it’s cheaper this way, it occurred to me that it’s only cheaper for the costs that are being measured. If you count the cost to individual motorists of lost time, inconvenience, fuel, increased time in close quarters with a screaming infant, and decreased family harmony as the occupants of the vehicle turn upon one another (o.k., those last few may not be generally applicable), then the cost/benefit equation looks a lot different. And here is where Mitch comes in. His brand of “smaller” government seems, in many cases, to be nothing more than shifting costs to where they can’t be measured. Sweeping them under the rug, as it were. In fact, the road construction I described is probably a little more useful as a metaphor than as an example. I doubt this method of construction is at all peculiar to Indiana or Gov. Daniels. But he seems to have a passion for shifting costs in this fashion. A better example is FSSA closing the state hospitals. It doesn’t eliminate the costs, it just shifts them on to those in need who will in turn create other costs, most likely for local law enforcement which ends up being the provider of last resort. The jails can’t say no.

At the moment, I’m a bit road weary to develop this idea further at the moment (yet another cost!), but when you hear Mitch or purported advocates of “small” government like him bragging about cutting costs, look closely to see whether the costs have actually been cut or merely externalized where they can’t effectively be measured.

Primary challenge in 45th district state senate seat

by Leave a Comment

The Louisville Courier Journal has an article on the primary challenge of Steve Meyer against Sen. Jim Lewis for Indiana’s 45th district state senate seat in southern Indiana. Unlike many primary challenges, there do not seem to be any significant policy differences or particular dislike for something the incumbent has done. Instead, the main complaint against Sen. Lewis seems to be that he’s been there a long time. Sen. Lewis admitted that his energy level had been fading from knee pain until he had them both replaced about two years ago.

IN-08: Hostettler calls for the arrest of brown people

by 13 Comments

John Hostettler is in the paper today criticizing the Bush administration for not arresting people at Monday’s rallies.

“It was stunning to realize that so many lawbreakers concentrated in one area were given a free pass by federal law enforcement,” said Rep. John Hostettler, chairman of the immigration and border security panel on the House Judiciary Committee.

If Hostettler knew of a particular individual committing a crime at Monday’s immigration rallies, he had a duty to advise the proper authorities of that crime. If he’s suggesting that the Bush administration should infringe upon the right of the people peacebly to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances by having police harass citizens for their papers because they are brown and may be in the vicinity of non-citizens, perhaps he should spend less time talking and more time reading his Constitution.

Tough Crowd

by 1 Comment

The Morgan County Reporter Times has an AP story by Mike Smith entitled “Capitol Eye: Daniels winning no popularity contest.” He describes the boos raining down on Governor Daniels from Conseco Fieldhouse during Reggie Miller as being so loud that Reggie was reported to have told Daniels “Tough crowd.” And, after his heroics at Madison Square Garden, Reggie is a guy who knows about tough crowds.

When asked about the boos the next day, Daniels brushed it off as ”pretty much a tradition,” and said it probably didn’t help that the Pacers were down by 14 at the half. It probably didn’t help, either, that Daniels was behind by 18.

His approval rating in a statewide poll by The Indianapolis Star in March 2005, a few months after he took office, was 55 percent. A year later, this past early March, it had dropped to 37 percent.

The article singles out the Toll Road Privatization, Daylight Saving Time, and the BMV branch closings as major reasons for discontent among citizens for Governor Daniels. The article notes that, while candidate Daniels campaigned on “big change,” the toll road privatization was not part of the publicized game plan. And, while his platform did include a desire for statewide observance of Daylight Saving Time, his stance on time zones, from the campaign to the legislative session and still now “has been all over the map.”

Due largely to that low popularity rating, and arm-twisted votes they cast on behalf of their demanding governor, several House Republicans left on the last night of this past legislative session frowning about their chances of staying in charge of the chamber. Many Democrats left grinning.

. . .

But thousands spoke about Mitch with boos at Conseco Field House, and he sagged in the latest poll. He’s not up for re-election until 2008, and has shrugged all this off.

But Indiana House Republicans aren’t shrugging it off. They’re grinding their teeth, while House Democrats are sharpening theirs.

Could Steve Buyer facilitate nuclear war with Iran?

by Leave a Comment

O.k., I’ll grant you that the title of the post is inflammatory. But, for maybe the first time, I’m actually scared rather than extremely disgruntled. Sy Hersch has an article in the New Yorker reporting that a preemptive nuclear strike against Iran is being considered as a serious option. You might recall Hersch is the reporter who first unearthed the Abu Ghraib torture scandal.

This is the part that really made me nervous:

The attention given to the nuclear option has created serious misgivings inside the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he added, and some officers have talked about resigning. Late this winter, the Joint Chiefs of Staff sought to remove the nuclear option from the evolving war plans for Iran—without success, the former intelligence official said. “The White House said, ‘Why are you challenging this? The option came from you.’ ”

The Pentagon adviser on the war on terror confirmed that some in the Administration were looking seriously at this option, which he linked to a resurgence of interest in tactical nuclear weapons among Pentagon civilians and in policy circles. He called it “a juggernaut that has to be stopped.” He also confirmed that some senior officers and officials were considering resigning over the issue. “There are very strong sentiments within the military against brandishing nuclear weapons against other countries,” the adviser told me. “This goes to high levels.” The matter may soon reach a decisive point, he said, because the Joint Chiefs had agreed to give President Bush a formal recommendation stating that they are strongly opposed to considering the nuclear option for Iran. “The internal debate on this has hardened in recent weeks,” the adviser said. “And, if senior Pentagon officers express their opposition to the use of offensive nuclear weapons, then it will never happen.”

The adviser added, however, that the idea of using tactical nuclear weapons in such situations has gained support from the Defense Science Board, an advisory panel whose members are selected by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. “They’re telling the Pentagon that we can build the B61 with more blast and less radiation,” he said.

Reading the article called to mind Steve Buyer’s support for using nuclear weapons in Afghanistan.

Buyer said Thursday that it’s too risky to send large numbers of ground troops into mountain hideouts. Instead, small special operation forces could fight their way into caves and bunkers and plant timer-detonated tactical nuclear devices powerful enough to bring down entire mountains.

Add to those things the Bush administration’s recent drumbeat against Iran that has a striking resemblance to the drumbeat leading up to war with Iraq that for the first time makes me legitimately concerned that this lameduck President with minimal support at home, all of his policy initiatives in shambles, and a messianic notion that he is an instrument of the Almighty might actually drop a nuclear bomb in Iran and that he would have the support of members of Congress like Steve Buyer.

Tim F over at Balloon Juice has a good post on this subject. In particular, I agree with the sentiment reflected in the exchange between one of the commenters on that post and Tim F.:

I’m willing to entertain the notion that this is part of a grand bluff to Iran – look how nutty Bush is, he’ll do anything.

However such a plan would require a disipline and coordination that, given the observations of the last 5 1/2 years, does not exist in this administration.

However, if it isn’t an attempt to bluff, that leaves us with the only other explanation – the entire administration is batshit insane.

You can call that the Mel Gibson strategy, a la Lethal Weapon. Many of us figured that was what he was up to in Iraq, but – oops – it turned out that he was serious as a heart attack. Don’t make that bet unless you want to lose money.

You know, it’s a sign of the times where, in a bet between bluff and batshit insane, the smart money’s on batshit insane.

TDW on DWD job reporting error

by 1 Comment

Taking Down Words has done some original reporting and has discovered that Indiana’s job creation over the past year was even more lackluster than previously thought. TDW noticed the feds had substantially (by about 7,000) revised down the number of jobs Indiana created in January and February 2006. TDW A friend of TDW placed a call to a BLS economist who stated that Indiana changed its estimate because it discovered a reporting error. So, between February 2005 and February 2006, about 12,000 new jobs have been created as opposed to 44,000 created during the last year of the Kernan administration (Feb. 2004 – Feb. 2005.) (The usual caveats apply as to how influential any government is in creating jobs.)

Atrios on S.Dak. abortion ban

by 3 Comments

Atrios has an entry on the South Dakota abortion ban. (For those who don’t know, South Dakota recently adopted a law banning all abortions in the state. I believe there is an exception to preserve the mother’s life, but not to preserve her health.) He points to this article reporting that opposition to the ban has been stronger than anticipated and concludes by saying:

Elsewhere in the article you get the key lesson national Democrats should take from the South Dakota case: most voters don’t think Republicans are serious about banning abortion. Well, they are, and most people don’t like that very much. If this gets on the ballot in November, and the voters of that state vote to nullify the law, I hope people finally understand that choice is, in fact, a winning issue.

IN-09: Primary opponent for Mike Sodrel

by Leave a Comment

Lesley Stedman Weidenbener has written an article about Sam Schultz, challenger to Mike Sodrel in the Republican primary to represent Indiana’s 9th District. His campaign site is here.

He isn’t given much of a chance because he is running against an incumbent in a primary and because he doesn’t have much in the way of campaign money. According to the article, his main disagreement with Sodrel is on issues of trade.

Schultz said the biggest contrast is on trade. Sodrel has supported free-trade agreements, including one with Central America. At the time, Sodrel said the deal “will create U.S. jobs by opening these markets, solidify our status as the leading supplier of goods and services to the region, and make more than 80percent of U.S. exports duty-free.”

But Schultz said such agreements aren’t good for the United States.

“Free trade is anything but free or fair,” he said. “It’s for big businesses and multinational corporations. They put profit ahead of the public good.”

This highlights one rift in the Republican party – the more supply side, corporate friendly side versus the more nativist, blue collar side. Not that there is anything to suggest the rift is overly wide in the 9th District. It would probably take the proverbial dead girl or live boy in Mr. Sodrel’s bed to give Mr. Schultz a real shot at unseating the incumbent. Nevertheless, his candidacy gives the GOP the opportunity to at least have the discussion on such issues, so it’s not a waste of time even if his chances of winning are slim.