The Voting Woes Continue...

From the Los Angeles Times:
Man Pleads Not Guilty in Voting Device Case
By Hemmy So
Times Staff Writer
February 22, 2006

A word processor accused of stealing damaging documents about electronic voting machine manufacturer Diebold Election Systems was arraigned Tuesday on three felony counts.

Stephen Heller was charged in Los Angeles Superior Court with felony access to computer data, commercial burglary and receiving stolen property. He pleaded not guilty.

From the LA Weekly:
Diebold's Revenge: Steve Cooley goes after a whistleblower
By CHRISTINE PELISEK
Wednesday, March 1, 2006

What would you call a well-meaning employee at a law firm handling Diebold's legal strategies who leaks key documents outlining problems with voting machines to the secretary of state and a newspaper reporter?

If you're Steve Cooley, L.A. County's district attorney, you'd call him a thief and charge him with three felonies. If you're an expert in a state law that protects employees who rat out potentially dangerous and illegal conduct, you'd call him a whistleblower.

From Tribune Media Services:
Whistling Diebold
By Robert C. Koehler
For release 3/9/06

They ain't gonna kiss you just because you're a whistleblower. No matter that you exposed wrongdoing and struck a blow for fair elections. The larger good isn't always obvious to the powers that be.

So Steve Heller, a Los Angeles-based actor whose day job is doing temporary office work, faces three felony charges, all of which are a stretch: felony access to computer data, commercial burglary and receiving stolen property. The Los Angeles County District Attorney's office says he's a thief, an Internet criminal, and that's that. And, oh yeah, he violated attorney-client confidentiality, and cost a big law firm a million dollars in lost business.

Read all three articles in their entirety here.

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While Florida vindicates Ion Sancho, Jeb Bush threatens Sancho's job
From BlackBoxVoting.org:

"You could steal the election and no one would ever know," Leon County (FL) supervisor of elections Ion Sancho says.

Sancho arranged for an independent study by Black Box Voting with security experts Harri Hursti and Dr. Herbert Thompson, discovering critical security flaws in the Diebold voting system. These flaws were confirmed in a study ordered by the California Secretary of state. Today [March 3, 2006] the state of Florida issued a Technical Advisory to all Supervisors of Elections based on these findings.

And today, Sancho received a letter from Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Sec. State Sue Cobb, threatening action by the state of Florida to take over Leon County elections....

Ion Sancho is one of the most highly respected elections officials in the nation. He stood up to the state of Florida, refusing to cooperate with purging voters who are not felons from the voters list, working from lists provided by the state of Florida erroneously claiming they were felons.

For more on this story see "Voting Machine Controversy" on Vox Verax.