Tesxt of a now removed article from the Seattle PI:
Former King County Elections Superintendent Julie Anne Kempf was booked into jail Tuesday, July 19, on investigation of forgery, theft, criminal impersonation, and assault on a police officer, Seattle Weekly has learned.
The probe that led to her arrest is related to events that occurred after she left her county job in December 2002, but it involves recent incidents connected to the elections office.
No formal charges have been filed, and details are sketchy. But sources say Kempf, 40, allegedly sent current King County Elections Director Dean Logan an e-mail, pretending to be someone else. She is also suspected of inserting false documents into a file of public records while she was reviewing them, allegedly constituting forgery. Sources also say she stopped payment on a check that she had used to pay for the documents and, during an investigative interview attempt last week, allegedly tried to hit a sheriff's detective with her car.
more on the flip...
Read the discussion that the thread generates, and read the DU thread linked there; much of what happened here goes back to Andy Stephenson's seminal work in Washington State.
This thread at our website has the original text of the Seattle news article. It was removed before I could get this Kos post up(!)
Longtime old school original EVoting activist Roxanne, with whom I am personally acquainted,is a member of our site. She posted this and I thought it worthy enough to bring it to the larger world's (ie Kos)attention.
Like Roxanne, many Evoting activists are convinced that those that get too close to the truth in this issue are systematically harassed and, if they fail to cooperate, ultimately arrested on trumped up charges or otherwise intimidated.
Now, part of what gets the whole issue and it's many adherents into questionable territory involves what on first blush seems like rampant paranoia. Many of the pontificatory logical vulcanites here and elsewhere in the blogosphere can find a very reasonable explanation for all of the incidents that have befallen these people. Failing all else , the term "sheer coincidence" becomes operative.
But this logical approach is flawed itself.
The flaw is to assume this is a partisan battle; Democrats vs. republicans. Republicans winning; stealing elections through brutal manipulation of the system. The logical response is "parties have been gaming the system and stealing elections since the first voter was registered" thereby satisfactorily smoothing the ripples in the logical minded's pond.
But, without getting conspiratorial, I have to tell you this: IT'S ABOUT TOP DOWN CONTROL. The power mongers in this world are chameleons who change parties depending on who's more beneficial to them personally.
It took a long, and yes, logical examination of all the factors to see this. There are Democrats involved in this, particularly in Georgia, but elsewhere as well. This partially explains, to my mind, why Democrats in congress are sometimes maddeningly complicit in things whose ultimate goal seems to be to shrink the middle class, or put another obstacle up to the impoverished seeking to bootstrap out of their situations.
Power, and responsible exercise of same, is what the ultimate game of politics boils down to. The stakes are reduced to economic factors because that is the framework within which we have chosen to reside. There is a reason there are some 400 corporate lobbyists for each member of congress.
So, are you outraged by the apparent framing of yet another activist?
Or is there enough logic left to smooth over another ripple in your pond?