SpokaneGOP.com

Source: The Tacoma News Tribune

New statewide test scores released this week paint a picture of, at best, stagnation in student achievement.

Performance was up in some subjects, down in others. Seventh- and eighth- graders demonstrated a better grasp of key subjects, but students beneath and above them stumbled. The most immediate concern: high school sophomores, whose scores slipped nearly across the board.

Let the calls for cutting the Class of 2013 a break on graduation requirements begin.

Another huge red flag was the performance turned in by last year’s fifth-graders, who showed some of the biggest losses with drops in every content area.

State schools chief Randy Dorn said the mixed bag may actually be a victory, given all that students have been put through in the last two years. He thinks the lackluster results can be at least partly attributed to budget cutbacks and the introduction of new tests and testing methods.

His prescription for improvement – which curiously could include yet another revision of the state tests – is a bureaucrat’s answer to a reformer’s problem.

[continued...]

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August 30, 2010

To: Spokane County Canvassing Board—Public Testimony

CC: County Auditor Vicki Dalton

Re: Ballot Processing in Spokane County

The Spokane County Republican Party is a partisan citizen advocacy
organization that has had a team of representatives observing the 2010
Primary Election process in Spokane County. It has been an eye-opening
new experience for our citizen volunteers, many who have never seen the
process before from the inside. We are very grateful to the Auditor and
her staff for their cordial patience with us. Their training efforts and
courtesy throughout this lengthy, complex process, have been exemplary.

Auditor Dalton has stated clearly that her goal is to properly secure
and process ballots, and we share that goal. We therefore respectfully
submit the following recommendations to the Canvassing Board to assist
in the ballot processing evaluation:

l. PRE-MAILING BALLOT PROCESSING: Since the voter has the ballot at
home, the home becomes the polling place. We feel it is inappropriate
electioneering for Auditor Dalton to have printed her name on the
ballot, especially in an election in which she is participating. Ballots
were sent to over 250,000 registered voters in Spokane County. If only
the other candidates had such a budget to send mailers with their names
on them to over 250,000 people!!! This needs to stop and her name should
not be on the General Election ballots.

2. HANDLING OF MAILED IN BALLOTS: We are concerned about the processing
of ballots at the US Postal Service. The public puts their trust in the
USPS and indeed pays them to secure items entrusted to them and make
sure that mailed items arrive at their exact destination in good order.
Our observer, a retired postal service employee, watched ballots in open
trays with no covering, being picked up at the US Postal Station on
Riverside Avenue. The courier sorted through ballots in open trays on
the loading dock when he was taking them off of a rack and putting them
into his delivery truck. We have not seen the contract, but we have been
told by Elections Dept. staff that this person is a contract employee of
a courier service hired by Spokane County to transport their mail. (And
what is the cost of this service?) He admitted that he made stops on his
route before arriving at the Elections Department with his open boxes of
ballots in the back of his truck. We have observed jail mail
inter-mingled with ballots delivered to the Elections Dept. offices.
This is not what we would term “secure handling’ of the ballots. We have
already contacted the Post Master General in Spokane to discuss this
issue. It is our feeling that in line with past procedures as recently
as 2008, ballots should be sorted into their own boxes under a distinct
P.O. Box number for the Elections Dept. only. These boxes should be
protected and “sleeved” with plastic wrap, not transported in open
trays. There should be no co-mingling of County mail and ballots. It is
interesting to note that under the prior poll site system of voting,
ballots were placed in metal boxes locked with a metal lock at the poll
sites, and transported directly to the Elections Office with a sheriff’s
officer or police officer accompanying them.

3. PROCESSING OF BALLOTS ON ELECTIONS DEPT. SITE: We are concerned about
the time it is taking to process mail-in ballots, as well as the labor
intensive nature of the process. We question whether this process is
actually less costly than the prior poll site system. The Duplication
system whereby over 10% of the ballots have to be remade by human hands,
was especially time consuming. A cost effective Voter Education program
needs to be instituted, so that people understand—every time they write
in “Mickey Mouse’ or some such on a ballot, every time they use blue or
red ink, every time they rip, tear or spill coffee on a ballot, it has
to be duplicated. Every time there is a frivolous write in place on a
ballot, it has to be hand processed and duplicated. This is costly. We
were surprised to find out that all signatures are checked by human eyes
viewing computer screens. We wonder if—like Bank of America and every
major bank in the world, signature verifying machines might be more
accurate and less expensive. We would like to ask that the Canvassing
Board recommend that a study be done of other counties and states to
compare their signature verifying systems to ours. We further request
that the Elections Dept. publish a free-standing, detailed cost analysis
of the Spokane County ballot processing for this 2010 Primary Election
and every election after this, that includes in particular, ballot
costs, labor costs, courier costs, and machinery costs—purchase as well
as repair and maintenance.

TEST BALLOTS: Machine test ballots should be used for testing and then
sealed in boxes so that there is no chance of getting them mixed up with
regular ballots later in the process. We are wondering if the small
markings on these test ballots could be “whited-out” and these ballots
could be counted on the tabulating machines?

4. We applaud the designers of the Elections Dept. processing facility
for the open, windowed design. The “Un-Voted” ballot room and “Voted”
Ballot room have big windows in them so we could see in and observe the
activities there while observing a separate process in another room.
However, we would like to see the walled in tabulating room which is
located in the back northeast corner of the area, be windowed also and
possibly re-located to an area where people in multiple rooms could view
it. The lighting in this facility, is very poor….we suspect it causes
eye strain that could needlessly tire workers and add to the error ratio
when they are counting and processing ballots. This lighting system
needs to be re-evaluated.

5. Red and green pens are utilized by staff to make markings in all
areas where ballots are being processed because these colors of ink were
in the past, not allowed to be counted as valid on ballots and were not
read by the counting machines. Now red marks are counted as valid votes
and those ballots become duplicated. (We also saw purple pens used by
supervisors in the ballot processing areas. Do the machines read dark
purple ink?) This is of concern to us. Any color of pen that workers use
in processing ballots should not be allowed to be counted as a valid
vote. There are many, many blank areas on ballots where the voter has
decided not to vote at all. Staff could conceivably mark ballots with
their red pens in these blank spots and vote for the voter. Not good.

6. Some voters have reported to us that they do not like leaving blank
spots in races on their ballots. They have asked that a space be made
for every race on the ballot that has a proper oval and the word “NONE”
on the line that machines will read. They do not want this item causing
duplication of ballots.

7. Our understanding from Mike McLaughlin, is that thousands of blank,
unmarked ballots that are in cubby holes (sorted by precinct) in the
“Un-Voted” Ballot room are not inventoried. This is a problem for us. We
would like to see all ballots not mailed out that are stored in the
ballot processing area, be marked somehow. These ballots are pulled out
for Duplication and for requests made at the front desk, but our view is
that they need to be delineated from mail in ballots that are being
processed. There is a real danger of blank clean ballots being marked
and introduced into the marked ballot stacks by corrupt staff, as
happened in the first Rossi gubernatorial race.

8. VOTER REGISTRATION: In our view, for security reasons, Voter
Registration needs to be re-done across the state en masse every four
years. This is as much a security issue as it is a house-cleaning issue.
We know that there are homes still receiving ballots for residents who
long ago left the county. We are not sure that the signature
verification system is reliable. This would solve a lots of problems in
our view. We would like the County Canvassing Board to make this
recommendation to the Secretary of State on behalf of our citizens.

9. NOTICE OF CANVASSING BOARD MEETINGS AND AGENDA: We have all been at
the Elections Department many days and hours over the past month, and
yet, we have not been able to find the notice of the Canvassing Board
meeting today (Monday). The Wednesday certification meeting is on the
department calendar, but we are unsure as to the agenda- setting
procedure that the Auditor uses. We request your help on this-- better
and wider notice needs to be given to interested parties as to
Canvassing Board meetings and agenda setting.

10. AUDITING OF COUNTY ELECTIONS SYSTEMS: We find ourselves wishing that
our Secretary of State Sam Reed was more actively auditing the
processing of ballots in Spokane County. His office has a wider frame of
reference statewide as to what is efficient and cost effective than we
observing citizens do in our county. Training sessions for elections
observers in our county we feel would be enhanced by a representative of
his office participating in at least one training session for observers.
We ask the Canvassing Board to meet with Mr. Reed and discuss outreach
and training innovations for citizen observers.

We are grateful for the high quality, hard working employees of our
county, including those in the Elections Department. We know that Vicki
Dalton has increased the efficiency and security of the ballot
processing effort. But there is always room for improvement, and it is
in that spirit, that we submit these our recommendations on behalf of
the hundreds of duly elected PCOs and self-identifying members of the
Spokane County Republican Party.

Yours truly,

Cindy Zapotocky Chairman

509-534-5707

Elections Canvassing Board received these and reviewed them on Sept. 1. Auditor will review them and hold a meeting to respond in late September.

It is that time again to go enjoy some great food and spread the Republican message. The Spokane County Republican Party is sponsoring a booth at Pig Out in the Park and we need volunteers. This is a great chance to talk to people intersted in the Republican Party.

If you would like to sign up for a 3 hour shift please call Cindy Zapotocky at 509-389-1141

Shifts are on September 1st-6th from:

#1  10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
#2  1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
#3  4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.
#4 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.  

By Adam Cohen

Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn't violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway — and no reasonable expectation that the government isn't tracking your movements.

That is the bizarre — and scary — rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants — with no need for a search warrant. (See a TIME photoessay on Cannabis Culture.)

It is a dangerous decision — one that, as the dissenting judges warned, could turn America into the sort of totalitarian state imagined by George Orwell. It is particularly offensive because the judges added insult to injury with some shocking class bias: the little personal privacy that still exists, the court suggested, should belong mainly to the rich.

This case began in 2007, when Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents decided to monitor Juan Pineda-Moreno, an Oregon resident who they suspected was growing marijuana. They snuck onto his property in the middle of the night and found his Jeep in his driveway, a few feet from his trailer home. Then they attached a GPS tracking device to the vehicle's underside.

After Pineda-Moreno challenged the DEA's actions, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit ruled in January that it was all perfectly legal. More disturbingly, a larger group of judges on the circuit, who were subsequently asked to reconsider the ruling, decided this month to let it stand. (Pineda-Moreno has pleaded guilty conditionally to conspiracy to manufacture marijuana and manufacturing marijuana while appealing the denial of his motion to suppress evidence obtained with the help of GPS.)

In fact, the government violated Pineda-Moreno's privacy rights in two different ways. For starters, the invasion of his driveway was wrong. The courts have long held that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their homes and in the "curtilage," a fancy legal term for the area around the home. The government's intrusion on property just a few feet away was clearly in this zone of privacy.

The judges veered into offensiveness when they explained why Pineda-Moreno's driveway was not private. It was open to strangers, they said, such as delivery people and neighborhood children, who could wander across it uninvited. (See the misadventures of the CIA.)

Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, who dissented from this month's decision refusing to reconsider the case, pointed out whose homes are not open to strangers: rich people's. The court's ruling, he said, means that people who protect their homes with electric gates, fences and security booths have a large protected zone of privacy around their homes. People who cannot afford such barriers have to put up with the government sneaking around at night.

Judge Kozinski is a leading conservative, appointed by President Ronald Reagan, but in his dissent he came across as a raging liberal. "There's been much talk about diversity on the bench, but there's one kind of diversity that doesn't exist," he wrote. "No truly poor people are appointed as federal judges, or as state judges for that matter." The judges in the majority, he charged, were guilty of "cultural elitism." (Read about one man's efforts to escape the surveillance state.)

The court went on to make a second terrible decision about privacy: that once a GPS device has been planted, the government is free to use it to track people without getting a warrant. There is a major battle under way in the federal and state courts over this issue, and the stakes are high. After all, if government agents can track people with secretly planted GPS devices virtually anytime they want, without having to go to a court for a warrant, we are one step closer to a classic police state — with technology taking on the role of the KGB or the East German Stasi.

Fortunately, other courts are coming to a different conclusion from the Ninth Circuit's — including the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. That court ruled, also this month, that tracking for an extended period of time with GPS is an invasion of privacy that requires a warrant. The issue is likely to end up in the Supreme Court.

In these highly partisan times, GPS monitoring is a subject that has both conservatives and liberals worried. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit's pro-privacy ruling was unanimous — decided by judges appointed by Presidents Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. (Comment on this story.)

Plenty of liberals have objected to this kind of spying, but it is the conservative Chief Judge Kozinski who has done so most passionately. "1984 may have come a bit later than predicted, but it's here at last," he lamented in his dissent. And invoking Orwell's totalitarian dystopia where privacy is essentially nonexistent, he warned: "Some day, soon, we may wake up and find we're living in Oceania."

Cohen, a lawyer, is a former TIME writer and a former member of the New York Times editorial board.