For those of you who don't know about this story, here's
Brad Blog's summary.
On December 6th, 2004 , The BRAD BLOG (www.bradblog.com) published a sworn affidavit by Florida software programmer Clint Curtis. In his affidavit and videotaped sworn testimony presented before members of the U.S. House Judiciary committee, Curtis claims to have been asked by U.S. Congressman Tom Feeney (R-FL) to design a "vote-rigging software prototype". This request took place in October 2000 during meeting at Yang Enterprises, Inc. (YEI), a computer consulting firm in Oviedo, Florida.
Video Testimony. Much more after the jump.
For those of you who don't know about this story, here's
Brad Blog's summary.
On December 6th, 2004 , The BRAD BLOG (www.bradblog.com) published a sworn affidavit by Florida software programmer Clint Curtis. In his affidavit and videotaped sworn testimony presented before members of the U.S. House Judiciary committee, Curtis claims to have been asked by U.S. Congressman Tom Feeney (R-FL) to design a "vote-rigging software prototype". This request took place in October 2000 during meeting at Yang Enterprises, Inc. (YEI), a computer consulting firm in Oviedo , Florida .
Curtis, a life-long Republican up until then, had been a programmer at YEI, which had several top-secret clearance contracts with the state, NASA and other government agencies. Curtis' understanding at the time was that the prototype he was being asked to create (built to the very precise specifications of Feeney) was to address Feeney's concerns that the Democrats might attempt to electronically rig the election and Feeney wanted to know what to look out for in that event After informing YEI CEO Mrs. Li-Woan Yang that he would not be able to hide the vote-flipping routines in the software source-code as Feeney had requested, Curtis testified that Mrs. Yang informed him that the program was needed to "rig the vote in South Florida ".-
At the time of the alleged meeting, Feeney was the incoming Speaker of the Florida House, and also a registered lobbyist and the general corporate counsel for YEI. Previously, he had been the running mate of Jeb Bush during his 1994 unsuccessful first bid for Florida Governor. In November 2000, Feeney gained national notoriety after declaring open defiance of the Florida Supreme Court by vowing to choose Presidential electors for George W. Bush regardless of whether a court-ordered recount showed that Gore won Florida . He eventually ascended to the U.S. Congress and today sits on the House Judiciary Committee. Although he was outspent two to one by his Democratic opponent in 2002, Feeney beat him handily at the polls and then ran unopposed for the same seat in 2004.
There's alot more in the full summary
over at Brad Blog. Also, a
link to stories in the Clint Curtis / Vote Rigging series.
Democrats.com has a new feature starting up called BlogCall, where they interview a progressive blogger on something important they've been covering in detail. Today's BlogCall is about the Clint Curtis story, today at 10 AM Pacific Time. Check out the pre-call discussion here or the post call discussion here if you see this after it's over.
If you want to see a video of Clint Curtis's testimony of what happened and how he ended up being asked by Florida Representative Tom Feeney to write software to rig election results, go here.
The Florida Inspector General who originally investigated Curtis' claims was found dead in a Georgia motel room two weeks after he told Curtis that "this goes all the way to the top." Police called it a "suicide," but Friedman has discovered a number of troubling new facts and inconsistencies about the police "investigation" (which was re-opened after Friedman's reporting emerged on the Internet) including photographs of the crime scene which the police had previously said in their report did not exist.
Now, let me make myself clear. I don't know that this means anything as to whether or not any vote rigging actually HAPPENED. This may have been planned and considered, then never actually done. The software that Curtis says he was hired to create was a prototype - a demo they could use to see if the idea was viable. It wasn't fully operational and wasn't ready to be actually used, so at least if Curtis is being 100% truthful, his particular software wasn't used to rig any votes. However, the fact that a Florida Representative was trying to figure out how to rig the votes in Florida is a pretty big deal.
I'll be following this closely at Dirty Greek Dot Org