[VoteRescue] VoteRescue Radio for 9/12: John Washburn, Ellen Brodsky and John Brakey

[Karen Renick]

Hello, from /*VoteRescue Radio - Where Citizens Count...One Vote at a 
Time!*/
/**/ 
This Friday, September 12th, from 6 - 8 pm Central, we'll be 
interviewing three activists in the election integrity movement who are 
fighting the good fight.  One has taken on the Governor of Texas using 
the Freedom of Information Act, the second is running against her 
county's Supervisor of Elections and the third was arrested for pointing 
out gaping security holes in a recent hand-counted audit!
You don't want to miss these firsthand accounts from folks who are doing 
much more that watching and commenting.  In the inspiring words of one 
of our guests, /"We were and are given the task of chaining down 
government and binding its powers so that it does not transform from a 
shield protecting the powerless into a club abusing the powerless.  The 
first action step to this end is to assert your duty to oversee the 
government which acts in your name."/

Vickie is on vacation, so Jenny and Karen will be the emcees for the 
show this week.
****
** 

_
HOUR ONE:  6 - 7 pm Central_

During the first segment from 6 to 6:15, we'll give a brief run down of 
our three guests and then give a progress report on our efforts here in 
Travis County (Austin), Texas.  In the time remaining until the break, 
we will touch on a few news stories from the past week. There are always 
plenty to choose from!

After the 6:15 break, we have as our first guest, *John Washburn*, an 
election integrity activist in Wisconsin, who will be receiving the 
prestigious  James Madison Award from the Freedom of Information 
Foundation of Texas for single-handedly challenging Texas Governor Rick 
Perry about his questionable practice of deleting his office emails 
after /only 7 days /!  John will give us the scoop on "The Purge"  - the 
name given to John's saga by an Austin TV news reporter, Elise Hu of 
KXAN, who initiated and has followed the story in her political blog 
"Political Junkie". We may also have Elise join the conversation if her 
schedule allows.

*John *has been a software quality professional since 1994 and a 
software developer from 1985 to 1994.  His areas of expertise include 
test planning, test execution, test tracking, defect analysis, root 
cause analysis, software configuration management, tool integration and 
test automation. Whew!  John's interest in election procedures began in 
1992 when he was asked to research the book "Votescam: The Stealing of 
America" by James and Kenneth Collier for a talk radio program in 
Madison, Wisconsin.  Now, flash forward to the November election of  
2004 when irregularities  in several Wisconsin municipal races led him 
to file a number of open records requests in an attempt to audit the 
election. But, it was the need to request, examine and copy the records 
related to testing the voting systems that sparked a passion for open 
records and open government in John. The rest is history.

_ HOUR TWO:  7 - 8:00 pm Central

_During the last half of the show, we have two guests back-to-back who 
are true kindred spirits and have recently been in the headlines of 
election integrity news stories.

First, we will be speaking with *Ellen Brodsky* who lives in Broward 
County, Florida. Ellen is the first NON-PARTISAN candidate to run for 
the position of Supervisor of Elections for Broward County and is up 
against the current Supervisor, Brenda Snipes. Quite surprisingly, Ellen 
found herself forcibly barred last week from legally observing the 
manual recount of a judicial race in the recent primary elections.

*Ellen* is the Founder of the Broward Election Reform Coalition, a 
member of the Palm Beach Coalition for Election Reform and the Florida 
Voters Coalition.  She is a longtime voting integrity leader in South 
Florida, best known for election monitoring, the creation of citizen 
audits known as the Parallel Election Projects and speaking truth to 
power.  Ellen is fighting for citizen control of our elections and 
advocates for Citizen Advisory Boards on Elections and Citizen Oversight 
Committees.  She is the moderator of the popular 
ElectionReform at yahoogroups newsgroup.

At 7:30 pm Central to finish out the show, we will be bringing on *John 
Brakey, *Co-Founder of AUDIT-AZ, who has been on VoteRescue Radio before 
to talk about his group's successful campaign to get the release of the 
electronic voting databases for Pima County, AZ for the past elections 
going back to 1998 and for all future elections. This was the first 
victory of its kind in the country giving citizens the kind of access 
they deserve to election records. John is the Special Task Force Leader 
of the Arizona Democratic Party Election Integrity Committee and 
Co-Coordinator for Investigations along with David Griscom for the 
Election Defense Alliance (EDA).

*John* made a big splash a week ago on September 6, when he dared to 
perform his job as an election observer on behalf of the Democratic and 
Libertarian Parties in Pima County (Tucson) by /"attempting to assure 
accuracy, fairness and transparency in voting and in the reporting of 
the election results" /to quote Brad Friedman from his Bradblog article. 
/"The problem erupted after Brakey had noticed a number of ballot bags 
being counted in the post-election audit were missing their proper 
security seals.  He began to ask questions about those bags, which 
eventually led to his arrest at the demand of of Pima County's Brad 
"Election Director Gone Wild" Nelson, a man with whom Brakey has had a 
number of unfortunate (for Nelson) run-ins over the years."
/
John will give us a cuff by cuff report of the incident and of the press 
conference that is scheduled for Thursday, September 11, 2008 and get 
the opportunity to commiserate and celebrate with Ellen Brodsky who will 
stay with us until the end of the show.

*REMINDER:  DON"T FORGET TO VERIFY WITH YOUR COUNTY ELECTIONS OFFICE 
THAT YOUR VOTER REGISTRATION RECORD IS UP TO DATE AND VALID.  CALL _TODAY_!*
*
*

/VoteRescue Radio/ can be heard on the radio in the Austin area at 90.1 
FM, is streaming live on www.wtprn.com <http://www.wtprn.com/> (for "We 
the People Radio Network"), AND can be heard OVER THE PHONE at 
512/485-9010!  /All shows are archived at the above web site, usually 
within a couple of hours after 8pm CDT./ The call-in number for the show 
is:   512-646-1984.  
 
Hope to "see" and hear you "On the Air" Friday!
 
/*WE ARE WINNING--because of citizens like YOU!!*/
 
With thanks for your support,
 
Vickie and Karen
karp at mail.com 
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karen at voterescue.org 
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www.voterescue.org <http://www.voterescue.org/>
www.coalitionforvisibleballots.org 
<http://www.coalitionforvisibleballots.org/>
www.hackedelections.com <http://www.hackedelections.com/>
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