Posted on 01/16/2005 8:44:04 AM PST by Seattle Conservative
BEV HARRIS HAS tangled with election bigwigs around the country. Now the Renton resident is claiming that there are local examples of lax security, too—at the KC Department of Records, Elections, and Licensing Services. She says the elections office has John Elder, a convicted drug dealer, printing ballots and Jeff Dean, a 23-count embezzler, programming software.
//snip
Dean Logan, the King County Director of Records and Elections, confirms that Elder is in a supervisory position with Diebold, which prints and sorts the county’s absentee ballots, but he says Elder’s criminal history is not an issue.
//snip
In 1990, Dean was convicted of first-degree theft in King County for 23 counts of embezzlement of more than $385,000 from a law firm, where he was “a computer systems and accountant consultant,” . . . The crimes and their cover-up involved a high degree of sophistication and planning in the use and alteration of records in the computerized accounting system that defendant maintained for the victim. . . . ”
Before his release, Dean told prison officials he had secured employment with Postal Services of Washington, in Seattle, which today is known as PSI. For years, the company has sorted and aggregated mail for clients, including ballots for King County Records and Elections.
... 1995 - general manager for Spectrum Print and Mail Services ..... In 1998, Spectrum won the contract to print ballots for King County’s new optical-scan voting system, which is in use today. By 1999, Dean was also the point man for implementation of a new software system to manage voter registration in King County.
//snip
....John Elder, the general manager of the Election Services Division of Diebold Election Systems in Everett, who oversees many aspects of absentee ballots in King County: printing, mailing, and sorting after voters return them.
(Excerpt) Read more at seattleweekly.com ...
Their postprison employment histories intersect for several years after their release. Both men worked for companies that held important contracts for ballot printing and voting software with King County.
//snip
Currently, Elder is in charge of the shop where King County’s absentee ballots are printed, inserted into envelopes, and mailed to voters. He also subcontracts the work of sorting the incoming ballots from voters to his old employer, PSI, although Pitney Bowes, a larger corporation, now owns the company."
//snip
"Activist Harris says there are two ways that someone who supervises absentee ballots could manipulate election results: vote suppression, in which outgoing absentee ballots are “lost” from key precincts, and vote reduction—losing incoming ballots for a portion of voters in key precincts. Her remedy is simple. She wants King County to get the U.S. Postal Service to provide a receipt for the number of ballots that go out and the number that come back in. Each receipt could be a link in an audit trail. Logan thinks such measures are unnecessary."
This is an old article, I just found in comments on sound politics. It's an interesting read and, may be pertinent to the WA election. While there may be nothing to the involvement of these 2 guys (don't want to accuse them), it is interesting that they had involvement with the ballots. It is also 'interesting' that King County has now said it sent the absentee ballots to Snohomish County to be mailed (I have no idea why they would do this, especially since it appears they sent some from King County, which is the main bulk mailing facility for the area ). Ms Harris was asking for election clean up in Feb 2004.
If you can't access the whole article via the link, just go to seattleweekly.com and enter jeff dean in the search and the story will come up. BTW the Seattle Weekly is somewhat of a fringe paper (IMHO) and is certainly not pro-Pubbie
Please do not fall for the latest Bev Harris scam! Oh, and don't ever type the letters BBV or she'll sue you!
The day Jim Florio won NJ (barely) and instantly raised taxes was the day the GOP won control of the legislature by fiat, and the day Christie Todd Whitman's star rose.
Take heart Washington.
"Please do not fall for the latest Bev Harris scam!"
Sorry, I don't know anything about Bev Harris. I 'assumed'(perhaps incorrectly so) that the columnist, George Howland (who appears to write frequently for the SW) had done the research for the article (or a lot of it) and only used Harris when he quoted her.
She may be a freak, but in this case, she seems to have the goods on King County.
I wonder, if she had realized that King County's procedures would be the subject of a Republican challenge, would she have still made a big deal about this?
Now quit picking on these men. They've paid their debt to society, have been rehabilitated, and are working to become citizens in good standing in the community. "Once a CON always a CON," that's the "Old Cop on the street" and he was usually right.
See the links in #9. Read some of what's already been posted about Bev.
Logan thinks such measures are unnecessary."
Big surprise.
Yeah, real big surprise - -if they put security measures in it will be harder for them to cheat.
Did I read this right? Dean Logan is a criminal ?????????
BUMP!!
I know. But no one has refuted the facts in this article (indeed, they have all been admitted, so far as I can see), and the one safeguard Harris promotes here seems perfectly sensible to me.
You seem to be saying that we should ignore King County's clear malfeasance because Bev Harris brought it up.
If your reaction results from a kneejerk desire to defend Republicans, keep in mind that Harris's targets in this case are Democrats who, through a combination of incompetence and malfeasance very probably swung the Washington governor's race wrongly to the Democratic candidate.
Of course, as I said before, I question whether helping the Republican argument was her intent.
Sounds like he's not only a criminal, but a criminal who specializes in altering computer records...
records like voter data bases, etc.
This has gone beyond weird!
Did I read this right? Dean Logan is a criminal ?????????
While he probably is, the story is referring to Jeff Dean (convicted of 23 counts of embezzleement with a computer accounting system) who then went on to work for various companies who either printed or mailed ballots for King County and also the computer optical scan system for KC
Thank You, just woke up.
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