Travis County Commissioners Court
April 29, 2008
Citizens Communication
The first item is citizens communication, we have four people signed up to speak on items not on the agenda, there is a three minute limit. Ms. Phillip a. Dick is first. Folded by vicki carp.
>> good morning,.
>> good morning.
>> to the court and ms. Gomez and to the people at the court. My name is ms. Phillip a. Dick. I am here to talk and complain about what has happened to me in my lawsuit g.n. 30316. It was -- it was medical malpractice lawsuit, pack trick okeele signed my judgment in order for me, November the 23rd, 2004. Judge Biscoe and I have been looking all over the county clerk's office and everywhere for those records. He told me ms. Dick I believe you. I know you want it. We need to find the evidence. Lo and behold, the evidence is judge scott jenkins on January the 5th, 2005, had the original orders of me and judge patrick okeele in his hands, waving them above his head, hollering at me, telling me how he wasn't going to sign the order to enforce my judgment of judge patrick because he didn't want to see me with that much money and people like me didn't know what to do with that kind of money. Then he turned around and said well, sir, those are the originals, I don't have a copy. May I have a copy of my original documents that was signed in my name for my judgment? He told me no. So that's theft. His name and judge -- judge laura livingston's name are now on these documents. And I wasn't in either one of their courtrooms on the date that they claimed. So -- so this is what you call stealing and I am going to the -- going to the police department and I want to file criminal charges because this is criminal activity. And I知 going to -- because I知 my own self, a paralegal, I知 my own self a -- an attorney. I have to speak up for my rights. And I know what happened to me. Because it happened to me. And this is what happened to me. Judge, scott jenkins and judge laura livingston, carroll o'connor lee and paula hale are all in a conspiracy together to try to revise and reverse judge patrick okeele's judgment and orders for me. It states that I didn't have expert witness on file. Here is the clerk's file right here. They said that I didn't file this. This was filed January the -- I mean not this one, but January 31st, 2003. It's when I filed my lawsuit. All of these same documents here was on file. To prove medical malpractice. This is where my doctor states, annually, this is the one that proves medical malpractice against the doctors. This is where it was filed in April and here is where another one was filed November the 15th, sent to the defendants and this is where I got the return receipt in carla koller's name, and these documents was in there. So they cannot say that I did not file these documents and send them, you know, they was not on file. But that's what they are trying to claim and said that I did not have an expert witness report. But that's just not true at all.
>> thank you.
>> criminal activities and criminal charges of being -- are being filed. Thank you.
>> thank you, ms. Dick.
>> uh-huh. Vicki carp.
>> good morning, thank for you this opportunity to speak to the court. I知 vicki carter, vote rescue, Austin based election integrity group and my colleagues Karen re unless nick and I and several other rescue members met most of you, I believe, all of you except for the judge last year when we came to speak to you about our concerns about the problems with electronic voting. We considered them to be very unsafe systems. And -- and this is a follow-up visit based on something -- a piece of news that's happened along those lines that we wanted to make you aware of and give you information about. Presently our concerns have focused on the hart intercivic voting machines, the type used here in Travis County. There is extremely disturbing recent news that william singer, a former programmer for hart has filed a federal fraud
>> [indiscernible] lawsuit against hart on behalf of the federal government. This suit had actually been filed in 2006, but under seal until approximately March 27th, just two to three weeks ago. Although singer has been called by hart a disgruntled employee, the actual employee records, and we have documentation about this, indicate otherwise. We also have -- we have a number of items that we want to leave the court today in this regard. The a.p. Article summarized the case saying william singer "is alleging the company cheated the federal government by falsifying information about the accuracy and security of its voting system." he alleges "that hart intercivic lied to election officials around the country about the reliability of its voting system in an effort to obtain federal money, allow -- allocated to the states under the 2002 help america vote act. We have brought with us today, for each of you which we will leave with you, a copy of the lawsuit itself, it's 45 pages, we also have experts from it that we're going to leave with you. And -- we have several other things that we will be leaving you today as well. This is a review of the hart source code that was done by professors at the university of california at the request of the california secretary of state, deborah bowen last year. Which resulted in the dessert indication of hart intercivic machines in california. They were subsequently decertified in ohio and colorado. I think in california they had been recertified under strict conditions. I do not know for sure. But there is a -- but that was before this lawsuit was unsealed on March 27th. And the allegations that are being made here, as I知 sure you're aware, already you are probably -- from the looks on your faces are registering, this is pretty serious stuff.
>> [buzzer sounding]
>> we will be continuing with our other comments to fill you in further, have these handouts for you.
>>
>> [indiscernible]
>> [inaudible - no mic]
>> did you also give one to the county clerk I mean to the county attorney? Their office right here, so they can each have a copy of that.
>> thanks so much.
>> asking for -- for our money back as taxpayers.
>> thank you.
>> Karen rennick, followed by jenny clark.
>> good morning.
>> good morning.
>> thank you for having us here. My name is Karen rennick, I am the founder of vote rescue, which is an election integrity group based here in Austin, we do work not only at the county level, but we have worked at the state and federal level for many years now, trying to get officials to wake up and understand the seriousness of the issue with these electronic voting machines. And I知 going to continue the statement that vicki carp started, we can only imagine that having approved the purchase of this equipment for Travis County there's a big responsibility that you have to the voters regarding the safety and security of our votes in the upcoming November election and elections thereafter. When you read the entire lawsuit, we think that you will agree that there is room for -- for reasonable doubt about the integrity of these machines and that our county clerk, dana debeauvoir, may have been misled by the vendor in her purchase of this voting equipment. We believe dana did her due diligence in researching the very best options available when she chose to purchase these machines. None of this condemning information was known at that time. I believe dana did purchase these machines roughly around the year 2000, which was prior to the purchase of -- of most of these machines by other states and counties. Many -- I would say the majority of the purchases of these machines across the nation have occurred -- based on the passage of the help america vote act in 2002, which released 4 billion -- close to $4 billion to the states. I would say a great deal of that money has found its way into the pockets of four major vendors, hart is one of those four. Over the last several years abundant evidence has come to light, proving that neither these machines or any others can be trusted with their votes. Now that this lawsuit and its many disturbing allegations have been unsealed we urgently request the Commissioners court close its purse strings to any further financing of hart intercivic machines or any other voting machines for use in the upcoming general election. There is still time to recommend that this equipment be set aside and make plans to hand count -- is this on? Thank you. Make plans to hand count the November elections to comply with the help america vote act arrangements could be made with the secretary of state's office to find a remedy to allow a non-electronic voting method per precinct for the disabled, such as the vote pad would be used to comply with the hava mandate for the disabled community. There is also a ballot marking machine that many of the counties already have purchased, it's called the accumark, I believe Travis County ask not own any of these machines, but that is a ballot marker. If counties are more comfortable with staying with electronic voting. Thank you very much.
>> thank you.
>> and jenny clark.
>> hello, Commissioners.
>> good morning.
>> good morning.
>> nice to see you this morning. As news of -- I値l continue with our statement. I have a few other comments. As news of our lawsuit spreads, Travis County voters and other county officials around the state will greatly appreciate your leadership in ensuring every vote is countly accurated in this very important upcoming election. We also ask you to consider the Travis County district attorney to launch an investigation to protect the interests of our taxpayer dollars. A return of these machines to hart should be considered as well as a demand for refund of tax dollars spent to purchase them. Similar to the way that a person would -- would request a refund on any fraudulent or malfunctioning piece of equipment anywhere. We gave you a little teaser about the lawsuit. I will read some excerpts. Mr. Singner 2004, the plaintiff in the lawsuit, wrote the secretary's estate estate -- for the states of Texas and ohio in 2004 to alert them to hart's misconduct. He received no substantive response. We have been around talking to state officials, federal officials, local officials, all -- all elections are local. And I believe it is the responsibility of the Commissioners court to select and pay for the electronic -- the electronic -- I知 sorry, for the voting systems used in the county. Is that correct? Right? Some of the background, each described act or omission was knowing committed by hart to secure federal funds through purchase of its voting system or was knowingly committed by hart in an attempt to retain federal funds already paid it and to avoid disgeorgement of those funds. Number three, failure to test software properly. Faked certification tests. Dummy reporting to election officials. Dummy reports to info centry audit trails. While generating a sample of each report that e slate system could produce, mr. Singer discovered that the system's software audit trail had invalid entries, thus rendering every box audit report false. Many people's -- people misunderstand the problem. The problem is any type of electronics in the voting system is subject to manipulation, fraud and just plain innocent error. The best solution that I致e learned after my 10 years of studying this issue, is a hand counted paper ballot system. Now, when we say this, people get nervous and think oh, my goodness, we're going back to the dark ages. Well, no, if you have a -- if you have a transparent system at the precinct level, each physical paper ballot is marked by the person, that ballot is put in a public place
>> [buzzer sounding] where maybe even video camera kansas keep an eye on it, that's counted throughout the day, totals are posted at the end of the day at the precinct level. Those totals then cannot be manipulated down the line at a centralized tabulation center. I watched in horror when dana debeauvoir tried to sell the electronic vote systems to the city council in 2000 and saw just a few council people, I think daryl slusher at the time was a council person question it. I believe he told me that that system was approved only on a temporary basis. New information comes out every day about these problems and I think that we need a refund on these machines, thank you so much for your time.
>> thank you.
>> thank you for yours.
>> are there any other speakers who have -- who haven't signed up yet? Jennifer gale.
>> hi travis.
>> good morning.
>> county judge Margaret Gomez, sounds pretty good.
>> [laughter] Commissioner Gerald Daugherty, again thank you for the work that you did on securing the median on highway 71. Commissioner sarah eckhardt and my own Commissioner Ron Davis. There's only three of you representing all of our large county. Wow, that's pretty impressive. I wanted the city of Austin to have 30 members representing the people of Austin. Right now people are screaming to be listened to and they are not being heard. I have to agree. The vote counting machines are very easily manipulated. You talk to any computer expert they will say that that's possible. You will never hear them not say that. Now, I ran for mayor up in dallas last year and while I was gone, I wanted to say one more thing. It's springtime, our springtime election is right now. So everyone get out and vote. That's everybody, especially in the city of Austin for school board and for Austin community college. While I致e been gone up in dallas, murders have gone from 20 to 30. 50% rise in murders when every year that I was here it went from 40 down to 20. Lowering. People are swearing -- swearing is a sign of anger. Traffic. You can't cross the street without being run down. Saying hi to somebody on the street, people don't say hi back like they used to. We are losing our small town and we need to have our small town charm back but we need the leadership there. Now I know that the three -- on the Commissioners court are trying to do that. Jim coronado said that we should allow sleeping in public because it's a constitutional right. Yet the Austin police department is harassing beyond belief the homeless community, 25% who are veterans. We are attacking our veterans all day long, every day. We need to let congressman doggett know we want that that housing that's being offered. Illegal immigrants are stealing our jobs. How can we pretend to have representation on the Austin city council when we are losing jobs in -- as a high school we clearly don't have the leadership on the Austin independent school district with superintendent pascal forgione, we have got to have leadership coming from the county or the city. Illegal immigrants are stealing our jobs, making it impossible for someone that is incarcerated to find a job. That's why you voted to find people who come here to need a job if they have been incarcerated. How about the 50 percent that don't make it through our high schools? Where are they supposed to go?!! We have got to have jobs for them and we have got to take the jobs back from the people from other countries. Light rail, they are -- the mayor is talking about light rail when we are in the middle of an election. The light rail --
>> [buzzer sounding] the light rail path that they have now is the same one that they told us they were going to give us before. Only now they are asking for nearly a half a billion dollars. 500 million-dollars. For a new light rail and the light rail they have got now I have heard they spend a third more than we authorized. Where are the -- where's our representation.
>> thank you.
>> you are not going to -- five more seconds. You are not going to find out about the candidates, the Austin chronicle did not put my picture on the face of the chronicle. They are discriminating against three candidates and not even discussing them. How is the electorate supposed to find out for whom to vote for and then have to deal with the very election machines that aren't going to tabulate their vote. I warrants to consider going back to paper ballots.
>> thank you.
>> thank you ms. Gale.
>> thank you, jennifer.
The Closed Caption log for this Commissioners Court agenda item is provided by Travis County Internet Services. Since this file is derived from the Closed Captions created during live cablecasts, there are occasional spelling and grammatical errors. This Closed Caption log is not an official record the Commissioners Court Meeting and cannot be relied on for official purposes. For official records please contact the County Clerk at (512) 854-4722.
Last Modified:
Wednesday, April 30, 2008 8:51 PM