state board of elections

The N.C. State Board of Elections should be praised for encouraging counties across the state to open additional polling sites and . . .

Following last week's post, Voting Vendor Lacks Paper Trail, and the subsequent dust-up I have continued with the search for information about Printelect.

Yesterday I received the following communication from the Craven County Register of Deeds where Printelect is headquartered.

That assumed name was filed on 9/19/2007 in Book 2648 page 440.

Thank you Printelect for crossing the "t", and dotting the "i", providing an additional level of assurance for North Carolina voters that their votes are in good hands.
 

When Diebold declined to share proprietary software with NC elections officials in 2005, Electronic Systems and Software (ES&S), through Printelect, became the only approved vendor of election equipment in North Carolina. Printelect is a North Carolina company with offices in New Bern and printing operations in Fayetteville. Printelect is the authorized dealer for ES&S in North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia and the only ES&S certified printing vendor in these states. Printelect specializes in printed optical scan ballots which it supplies nationwide as well as providing other election related products.

Printelect is presented on company websites as "Printelect, Inc.," and as the "Owen G. Dunn Company" doing business as "Printelect". The NC Secretary of State's Office has no record of a corporate filing for "Printelect, Inc.," either as a new company, name change or merger. The last Annual Report filed by the Owen G. Dunn Company was for the fiscal year ending 12/31/2004. The company also operates "Dunn's Office Solutions" in New Bern.

Searches of the records of the Registers of Deeds in Cumberland County, Craven County and Wake County do not indicate the filing of any Assumed Name Forms for an entity named Printelect. The only related filing was in 1998 in Cumberland County for the "Owen G. Dunn Company" DBA "Fayetteville Printing and Office Supply Company".

Today, in a public barbecuing, Les Merritt defended his audit of NC's voter rolls and said he didn't want his review to be seen as partisan. Merritt's defense was mostly his "preliminary" findings or what some call - "cough cough yahomina yahomina hom"... His final report shows nothing wrong with the voting rolls. This had to be painful to watch. Afternoon edit: What is the DOJ up to? That remains to be answered.

Mecklenburg County's election department sent me their trouble reports for the May primary and November General Election.

The report lists the many different problems with the touch-screens and their tempermental thermal printers, printers that often jammed or failed.

The NC Coalition for Verified Voting predicted these problems in advance and had urged all NC counties to purchase the tried and true optical scan systems and not the touch-screen machines. (See www.ncvoter.net )

23 of our NC counties use the ES&S iVotronic RTAL touch-screens.
The other 77 use the more mature and lower tech optical scan voting machines.

(Mecklenburg is the county that had 10 touch-screen machines with no voter verified paper printouts in the May, 2006 primary.)

Many of my friends couldn't understand why I got so upset when the incompetent State Board of Elections let Art Pope and his personal 527 electioneering machine off the hook this year. "What's the big deal?" they said. "Who cares if Art Pope spends all his money trying to influence elections? This is America. Free speech rules. Right?"

Free indeed, especially if you happen to be a member of the monied elite. In fact, the State Board of Elections has swung the door wide open for rich-guy electioneering on a scale that will soon make democracy a quaint memory in a world gone mad with corporate money. Following in the Puppetmaster's bloody footsteps, a new 527 euphemistically called the North Carolina Homeowner's Alliance has been pouring money into two legislative races to the tune of $71,000.

And who are the people doing this dirty work? NO. ONE. KNOWS. That's because the clowns at the State Board of Elections have allowed corporate money to contaminate our electoral process with not even a hint of oversight. The organization's Form 8872 Report of Contributions and Expenditures shows NO CONTRIBUTORS WHATSOEVER. A filing error? Maybe. But you can bet your sweet ass the IRS and the SBOE are not going to do anything about it in the next two weeks.

In the wake of Art Pope's victory over Richard Morgan in District 52, a new Puppet joins the show! Hair salon owner Joe Boylan, now officially on the Puppetmaster's short leash, will be carrying all kinds of water for his evil master. And just in case you have any doubt about what really happened, let me summarize it for you.

1. North Carolina Republicans value party loyalty over effective government.

2. Art Pope wants to be king of the Old North State.

The State Board of Elections has determined that Jim Black's campaign did break election laws by accepting contributions over the legal limit, by making contributions in the name of another contributor and by accepting over $27,000 in contributions from businesses.

While no action was taken against Black, Rep. Michael Decker (R-Forsyth) and Scott Edwards, treasurer of the optometrists' PAC were referred to the Wake County District Attorney's office for possible prosecution.

From the Charlotte Observer:

Investigators concluded that Decker, a Black ally, failed to disclose contributions, transferred campaign contributions for personal use without reporting them and filed false campaign reports. Edwards, a Murfreesboro optometrist, was accused of violating campaign contribution limits and filing a false report