Aug 23-31 1999

From merope@Radix.Net Mon Aug 23 18:04:37 1999

Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 18:04:36 -0400 (EDT)

From: merope <merope@Radix.Net>

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Live, from New York...its Your Daily Board Show!

*warning* contains editorial content. Read at your own risk!

Thursday 19 August 1999:

Two Board members [Election Committee Chair Jim Powell and Board Secretary

Bill Oliver] post the results of the run-off election.

Friday 20 August 1999:

There is no Board-L material on this date.

Saturday 21 August 1999:

There is no Board-L material on this date. [but this does not mean the

Board members haven't been busy! See below!]

It Ain't Over Til Its Over Corner: Defeated NC candidate Fred Smoot has

forwarded a list of questions regarding the election procedures to

Election Committee Chair Jim Powell, with a CC to the State Coordinators,

the EC, and some individuals involved with the election and Fred's

campaign [the DBS received a courtesy copy]. Most of the questions are

quite simple [what is the software used? Why was the voting procedure

changed for the runoff? Where are the logs of the election kept?] Others

are a little more detailed [How many unconfirmed votes were there? Who

monitored the election other than R$W employees?] Another project member

has been asking the EC for a "certified election", meaning that in

accordance with accepted parliamentary procedure, the EC Chair [or a

designee] would "personally review each ballot and certify that it is

valid, then make a report to the officers of the organization (in our

case, that would be the "advisory" board) to certify the election."

[originally posted to CC-L]. There is no publicly available response to

these concerns by either the EC or the Board at this time.

The Board, at least, is not unaware of these issues. In an

interesting series of exchanges forwarded to me from an anonymous

correspondent, the Board handles the concerns raised by their fellow

project members in their usual fashion: by calling them names. In

response to a fellow Board member's personal observation that "Fred Smoot

is asking the questions openly that I have heard in private since the new

voting systems was announced", Board member-elect Shari Handley describes

Mr. Smoot as a "self-important wind-bag" and a "bully", and characterizes

his post as a "sickening-sweet, oily,

smile-on-the-face-knife-behind-the-back pile of trash." She suggests the

Board consult an attorney before they make any response to Fred's

questions. At-Large Representative-elect Holly Timm, who will be

representing Fred before the board, calls him a "poor loser" and

characterizes his post as "one calculated to smear". Joe Zsedney,

recently re-elected to the Archives representative post, who also

represents Mr. Smoot before the board [Fred coordinates the Map Project

and is thus an Archives Project member] has this to say, "If a board

member or other had doubts about the software or anything else they should

have brought it up BEFORE they got their butt whipped in the election...

Like the census mess it's a matter of ethics, some have it and some

don't."

[Ed. note: this material appears to have come from Board-Exec, but since

the anonymous correspondent stripped the headers, I cannot be sure. If it

is from Board-Exec, its very interesting to see how quickly the

not-yet-seated new board members have been welcomed into the secret club.]

How Now? Corner: While we're on the topic of elections, lets revisit the

last election, the one that started late because Dale "Doc" Schneider

"lost the software in a HD crash." [per Kay Mason, SC-L, Jan 15, 1999.]

You remember; the one that got at least three people banned because they

publicly questioned the cover story? Well, it appears they may have been

right all along. According to information received privately from someone

who knows, there was no "hard drive crash"; rather, "The board was only

told that since Doc had vanished at a rather critical time before the last

election that Tim Pierce had been persuaded to do it."

Breach of Confidence Corner: We hear that anyone can get into and view the

listowners' administration screens for Root$web lists, even without the

proper password, although they are prevented from editing them. Not to

worry though; last we heard, RW employees were working to plug this hole

in the system [which ought to come as a great relief to those who remember

the revelation only a couple of weeks ago that RW apparently keeps

passwords in publicly available directories.]

"The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the

one who lies with sincerity."

Andre Gide, The Counterfeiters

This has been your Daily Board Show.

-Teresa Lindquist

merope@radix.net

-------

From merope@Radix.Net Tue Aug 24 21:45:13 1999

Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 21:45:12 -0400 (EDT)

From: merope <merope@Radix.Net>

Reply-To: merope <merope@Radix.Net>

To: usgw_all@listbot.com

Subject: Daily Board Show

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Sunday 22 August 1999:

There is no Board-L traffic on this date.

Election Update: Jim Powell has posted the following regarding certifying

the run-off election for NC: "To the USgenWeb Advisory Board. The

Election Committee has examined the vote. After our examination we have

dropped 2 duplicate votes that somehow slipped through the machine. This

makes the final machine total 332 votes for Tim Stowell and 320 votes

for Fred Smoot. We have also taken a random sampling and found those

votes to be 100% correct. Then there were 4 (1 for Tim and 3 for Fred)

emailed votes, making the totals 333 for Tim Stowell and 323 for Fred

Smoot." The statement is "signed" by the members of the Election

Committee. [The remaining several Board races are not addressed and

apparently remain uncertified.]

Not As Inactive As They Seem Corner: From the "Announcements" page of

the USGenWeb National Pages, updated August 13, 1999, under Recent

Actions of The USGenWeb Advisory Board: "The formation of two committees:

Elections Committee and By-Laws/Website Standards Committee. While

informal discussion of this has been ongoing, these have only just been

formed (the names aren't even official yet), but plans are to include

additional non-board volunteers as members to be involved with the

processes of both."

Notes From the Fringe Corner: A correspondent tells me that when she

visited Root$web recently, the USGenWeb ad banner was prominently

displayed on the very first page! [interestingly enough, she reports, the

commercial ads seems to have disappeared entirely from most pages.]

Today's quote is from a reader. They asked that it be dedicated to "Holly

(poor loser), Joe (its a matter of ethics) and Shari (self-important

wind-bag) in recognition of their respect for their constituents":

"History is made at night. Character is what you are in the dark."

- Lord John Whorfin

This has been your Daily Board Show.

-Teresa Lindquist

merope@radix.ent

----------

From merope@Radix.Net Wed Aug 25 09:32:03 1999

Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 09:32:02 -0400 (EDT)

From: merope <merope@Radix.Net>

To: usgw_all@listbot.com

Subject: Daily Board Show

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Some pig!...its Your Daily Board Show!

*warning* contains editorial content. Read at your own risk!

[this is a long one. buckle in!]

Monday 23 August 1999:

Jim Powell, Election Committee Chair, posts the statement of the election

committee certifying the outcome of the NC run-off election. Bill Oliver

forwards it back to the Board.

Trey Holt states that he is satisfied that everything in the regular

election was handled properly and the results as presented to the project

are correct. He states "unless there are objections that as one of this

boards last actions we should entertain a motion to thank the committee

and accept the results."

This idea/motion is seconded by Bill Oliver and Joe Zsedney.

A draft response to NC candidate Fred Smoot's questions is posted by Jim

Powell. Answers are, in order:

1) The software has no name or version number. Tim wrote it from scratch

between the first election and the runoff, with three goals in mind:

accuracy, efficiency and easier voting. It is written in Perl and runs on

a Unix server. The Perl scripts are short (they total about 300 lines of

code) and are straightforward for a Perl programmer to understand. Tim

would not have any objection to posting the source code if it would help

allay anyone's concerns about whether it accurately tracks each vote. The

`back-end' database software -- the server software that actually kept

track of each person's e-mail address and how they voted -- is a server

package called MySQL. MySQL is an industry-strength opensource SQL

database package: more details about it are at http://www.mysql.org/."

2) "The reasons were to benefit everyone (not just the committee but also

the candidates and the voters). I didn't like having to make excuses for

not running a single-candidate election, when knew perfectly well that

better software would make such a thing trivial. I also didn't like

running software that was unforgiving about the format of submitted

votes, and simply could not process some of the votes that were sent to

us. These were the most important reasons (in my mind) for revising the

election process." [quote from Tim Pierce] (The Election Committee worked

with Tim to debug the system. We tried hard to break it. When we found

something that we thought could be confusing or that just didn't work,

Tim fixed it. We did this before we announced the new system. We

decided it was the greatest thing going and asked Tim if it would be ready

to use. The rest is history)"

3) There was no `on-scene teller', just a Perl script that confirmed votes

and put them into a database. The only things that Tim monitored along

the way were the Web server's error logs, looking for any sign of

malfunctions in the script. Tim did not monitor the vote submissions

themselves, and only looked at how an individual voted when they asked us

to confirm their vote manually."

4) Quote from Tim "To do these things, I ran this SQL command against

the vote database:

SELECT VOTE, COUNT(*) FROM VOTES ORDER BY VOTE"

5) Tim does. vote.rootsweb.com is an alias for his personal workstation.

The Web server logs that record each vote that was submitted to us are

stored on Tim's machine. Each vote is physically stored on RootsWeb's

database server, which is housed in a network center in Anaheim,

California. The vote database includes this information about the voter:

* their e-mail address

* who they voted for

* the confirmation code they were sent

* the date and time they voted

* the Internet host (i.e. ISP) from which they voted

* the date and time they confirmed their vote

* the Internet host from which they confirmed

(Each of the Election Committee Members now holds a copy of email

address and their respective vote. We could individually count them. I

hope that is not necessary. Which we have now examined and certified to

be correct - Jim)

6) 33 people submitted 39 votes that were never confirmed. There are more

votes than people because a few of them submitted two or three

unconfirmed votes. During the vote, we added e-mail addresses to the

list of eligible voters whenever a SC notified us that someone's address

had changed. So some of these unconfirmed votes may have come from

people who subsequently voted successfully using their new address. In

any event, we have examined the vote counts for these 39 votes and

confirmed that these votes break down roughly the same way as the

confirmed votes. (The committee did check the totals. Even though we

believe they can not be added, because they were not confirmed. We

would like to let you know that the percentages are roughly the same in

the favor of the same candidate. Jim)"

Bill Oliver posts, "In talking with Jim, he assures me that the subject

title was not changed and that this was not a "draft" but rather a final."

He asks if the Board wishes to forward it to the distribution lists.

Tomorrow's news today: Board Secretary Bill posts the url for a county

page in a state where the NC is the State Coordinator. According to Bill,

"It is my impression that I was to notice that the NC will suggest others

resign if they can't administer their states while his home state has some

of the same deficiencies." [deficiences noted by Bill include the absence

of the USGW logo and the GAGenWeb logo. More interestingly, however, the

page in question has not had a query posted since September 1998. ]

Hey Hey My My Corner: I have received independent confirmation that the

charming conduct exhibited by three recently elected [re-elected in Joe's

case] representatives did in fact take place on Board-Exec, the Board's

secretive "executive session". Its good to see they've jumped right in to

the spirit of the Board's way of doing business, but it does pose a

question: what exactly are people who don't take their seats until

September 1 doing participating in the deliberative business of the

executive session of the Advisory Board? Another pertinent question might

be: given these so-called representatives' openly stated opinions, is it

likely that "self-important gas bag" and "bully" Fred Smoot [or any of a

number of people they've recently "discussed"] will ever have impartial

representation before the board? [quotes by Shari Handley]

Incidentally, the discussion of Mr. Smoot's personal qualities is not the

only discussion in which these not-yet-full board members are

participating with gusto. They are also opining freely on the

appropriateness of CCs asking openly for cash donations on their county

homepages. Its apparently hunky-dory with them, although it is in direct

violation of the bylaws [but this is, of course, one of those "the bylaws

don't mean what they say" circumstances]. This pretty much guts the

bylaws section dealing with this, since virtually any money beg that a CC

chooses to put on their pages [including for example, the Ancestry.com

click-throughss] can be chalked up to "for the good of the project".

Clarification Corner: In response to the notice yesterday that the Board

has an announcemence regarding the formation of a Bylaws-Web Standards

Committee in its "Recent Actions" section at

http://www.usgenweb.org/official/announce.html, I have been informed by no

less a personage than the NC that these "recent actions" are actually over

a year old and relate to the formation of the original bylaws committee in

1998. Although this "announcements" page was updated on August 13, 1999,

apparently its text was not substantially changed. [So, we can all

breathe a little easier; the Board is apparently not currently planning to

tinker with the bylaws.] Sorry for any confusion!

"The lesser of two evils is evil."

--- Seymour Leon

This has been your Daily Board Show.

-Teresa Lindquist

merope@radx.net

------------

From merope@Radix.Net Thu Aug 26 19:06:08 1999

Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1999 19:06:07 -0400 (EDT)

From: merope <merope@Radix.Net>

Reply-To: merope <merope@Radix.Net>

To: usgw_all@listbot.com

Subject: Daily Board Show

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*warning* contains editorial content. Read at your own risk!

Tuesday 24 August 1999:

The Board Secretary, Bill Oliver posts a message to "Board Members and

Members-Elect" pertaining to the project-affiliated web site at:

http://www.rootsweb.com/~gachatha/. According to Bill, the web site "is

quite attractive, even if it doesn't contain either the USGWP or the

GAGenWeb logos and is copyrighted by Tim Stowell. It is my impression

that I was to notice that the NC will suggest others resign if they can't

administer their states while his home state has some of the same

deficiencies." [As noted yesterday, this site apparently has not had

queries updated for almost a year.]

NC Tim Stowell asks "Is there any discussion on Trey's motion, seconded

by Bill and Joe?" This is the motion to thank the Election Committee and

accept their results; it has not been given a motion number yet.

Here We Go Again Corner: It seems the troubles with GenConnect never

stop, even though its the best thing since sliced bread and all. A little

bird tells us that recently a GenConnect Board "lessee" tried to remove

their OWN POSTS from a GC board they manage, preparatory to posting the

material elsewhere. Since GC squirrels monitor the boards for just this

sort of thing, they caught on pretty quick, and locked the admin out of

the boards. The admin contacted GC and explained they were removing

their own copyrighted posts and no others and they still fully intended

to manage the boards. The admin was told the circumstances would be

investigated and the passwords restored if nothing untoward was found

to have occurred. However, not only were the passwords _not_ restored,

the admin found that they could no longer even _post_ messages to the

board.

Take home lessons from this? Well, 1) people are apparently not allowed

to remove their _own_ posts to GC boards; and 2) contributors that ask to

do so apparently are blocked from posting further helpful information to

the boards.

We hear from Mysterious Sources that this was presented to the Advisory

Board as a formal grievance yesterday. We'll keep you posted with new

information as we receive it.

"We were all guilty in letting the regime function."

---Vaclav Havel

This has been Your Daily Board Show.

-Teresa Lindquist

merope@radix.net

------------

From merope@Radix.Net Fri Aug 27 15:54:10 1999

Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 15:54:09 -0400 (EDT)

From: merope <merope@Radix.Net>

Reply-To: merope <merope@Radix.Net>

To: usgw_all@listbot.com

Subject: Daily Board Show

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MIME-Version: 1.0

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Let 'er rip!...its Your Daily Board Show!

*warning* Contains editorial content. Read at your own risk!

Wednesday 25 July 1999:

The three NW/P SC and CC reps submit a grievance to the Board from a SC

and CC in their region who has found herself locked out of her GenConnect

boards for removing HER OWN posts. The substance of the complaint is as

follows:

"Below is a copy of what has transpired in the last few days between the

staff of GenConnect (Pam Durstock) and myself. I need your advice as to

what to do next. Because I deleted some of my own obituaries on the Linn

County, Oregon Obits Board, GenConnect has taken away my board and put it

up for adoption. They did this right after telling me they would return

my password and board as soon as it was determined whether or not the

messages "should" have been deleted.

I have had no response from Pam Carey Durstock since Message #5. I also

wrote Elaine Bukove, at 4:53 p.m. Aug. 18, with no response so far.

These tools were provided for our use, and we innocently accepted them.

They are in wide-spread use throughout the project, and I'm sure the

majority of county coordinators have no idea that by deleting your own

posts, you have put yourself in jeopardy of losing them. Their rules

clearly state any posting belongs to the poster, who is the only person

who may request a message to be removed. In my case, I was the poster, and

I requested to have my messages removed.

I ask you to bring this to the Advisory Board's attention, on behalf of

all the CCs for the USGenWeb Project. Is there anything the Board or the

USGenWeb Project can do to intervene to bring a matter like this to

resolution? I would like to see action taken immediately to resolve this

issue."

[correspondence between the SC/CC and the GenConnect staff is attached and

available publicly on BOARD-L.]

Update on the News Corner: The NC informs us that the GA county page

posted to Board-L yesterday and discussed here is copyrighted by him

because he wrote it for a new CC. He does not maintain the page and

thanks the "page police" for bringing it to his attention. He also states

"I'll not make further excuse for this site as I'm sure there are

countless others in just the same shape or worse." [There you have it;

guess we can all stop updating our queries now.]

Dodge Ball Corner: In an interesting message posted to the CC-L list

yesterday, NC Tim Stowell makes the following statement: "the Board-Exec

list is not an official list of the Project. It is a private mailing list

of the Board, set up as a list where members could be free to express

themselves without fear of being criticized for every thought. It is a

place where Board members can share information, or just sit around and

chat. The Board-L list is where the business of the Project takes place."

This is interesting indeed, since at least one motion was made, discussed,

and voted on entirely on Board-Exec, and another was motioned but failed

to come to a vote [although its provisions were later posted as policy to

the USGW web page anyway]. If Tim's description above is correct, this is

comparable to conducting project business around the office water cooler.

A fair amount of ink has been slung by Board members and non-Board members

supporting the idea of an "executive session" as being fair, legal,

proper, above-board, etc. The welcoming notice used by former NC Bob

Bamford for both Board-Exec and Campaign98 reads in part, "This list

replaces campaign98 as the board's, executive session list." He also

defined the purpose of the list thusly: "This closed list is used for

discussions and information transfer. We discuss an issue and once we

reach a relative consensus, someone proposes a motion to be placed on the

board list. Assuming their [sic] is a second we then call for a vote. If

their [sic] is further disagreement it is discussed HERE." A Board member

who has unsubbed himself from Board-Exec because he is opposed to its

secret nature indicated to his constituents that he may very well not be

able to fully represent them without access to the information on that

list. Yet we are now to believe that Board-Exec is not "official", it is

merely a chit-chat list, and no important project business occurs there?

Yeah, right.

New Sheriff In Town Corner: We hear that the USGENWEB-ALL list has a new

whip-cracker. According to a message posted late last evening, recently

elected almost-Board member Ginger Hayes is the new list owner of the

once-proud CC mailing list. Interestingly enough, she's dropped Linda "The

Hatchet" Lewis' restriction on political discussion. The new list rules

state, "The purpose of this list is for USGenWeb Project volunteers to

discuss matters relevant to the project. There will be no vulgarity or

unnecessary personal attacks on this list. Project members are free to

discuss any issues related to the USGenWeb Project as long as it is

conducted in an atmosphere of decorum and good manners." [Having seen

Ginger's idea of good manners, I'm not optimistic that free discussion

will be allowed on -ALL any more than it was when it was under Linda's

oppression. And doesn't the banning of "unneccesary personal attacks"

kind of imply that some personal attacks are necessary and will be

tolerated?]

BTW, its been pointed out to me privately that the re-opening of the -ALL

list to "decorous" political discussion is an effort to draw subscribers

away from the active CC-L list where, of course, the Board and R$W can

exert no control over content or participants.

"He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating

with it."

---Martin Luther King, Jr.

This has been your Daily Board Show.

-Teresa Lindquist

merope@radix.net

----------

From merope@Radix.Net Sun Aug 29 10:19:27 1999

Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 10:19:25 -0400 (EDT)

From: merope <merope@Radix.Net>

Reply-To: merope <merope@Radix.Net>

To: usgw_all@listbot.com

Subject: Daily Board Show

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Naughty but nice...its Your Daily Board Show!

*warning* contains editorial content. Read at your own risk!

Thursday 26 August 1999:

Pam Reid notifies the Board that she will be out of town this weekend and

may be unable to chekc mail while she is away.

Megan Zurawicz tells her to "have fun!"

Friday 27 August 1999:

Yvonne James-Henderson responds to a question put to her by a constituent,

"It has been suggested publicly, but neither admitted, nor disclaimed,

that Ms. James Henderson may have some kind of direct financial interest

in Rootsweb.com, Inc., whether as an employee, contractor, shareholder or

holder of stock options. As a result, I am also requesting that Ms. James

Henderson so advise me since her acting as my representative in this

matter would be inappropriate and a possible conflict of interest given

the fact that Ms. Brausch's statements included the subject of Rootsweb

(reference to me as "anti-RW"). The same request applies to any other

representatives of this email." Yvonne's response is that she has "no

direct financial interest in Rootsweb" and has no idea how such a rumor

started. Also, as far as she knows, "there is no position of the Advisory

Board on "anti-RW" or "anti-USGWP"". [As you may recall, the DBS posted a

rumor some few days ago that Yvonne was a R$W employee; we've heard this

rumor numerous times from various sources and do not know its specific

origin.]

David Young notes that he is on vacation this week and is behind on

reading his mail but will do his best "to read all your stands on the

issues. And if there is a vote on the floor will make my vote before my

term ends in a few days."

The NC posts, "Hearing no discussion on the Motion by Trey, now numbered

99-22, please vote on said motion by sending in either an affirmative,

negative or an abstention notice." [this is the motion to accept the

election results without certification.] There is one "aye" vote before

the end of the day.

Tomorrow's news today: The cover-up progresses apace, with four more "aye"

votes on Motion 99-22.

Smoke And Mirrors Corner: Shari Handley has posted a notice to the

State-Coord list and to various other lists in which she says "I regret

that my private words were made public, though my post was forwarded from

the private list without my knowledge or consent, and I regret that I used

such a tone as I did. The ideas I expressed were my opinion only, but

publicly I would have chosen more diplomatic and less inflammatory language than

that which I used privately... I don't customarily use the tone I used in

the post to BOARD-EXEC, and I apologize for having done so." [you will

note that nowhere in this excerpt or in the full post is an apology to Mr.

Smoot or a retraction of her words. Basically, she's sorry she got

caught, and for some reason seems to think that telling us she'd have

called Mr. Smoot more decorous names if she'd known she was being watched

is supposed to make this alright.]

In our experience, Shari has rarely minced her words in public forums, so

its not surprising she behaves the same in "private". Herewith, a small

sampling of "the wit and wisdom of Shari Handley", all the result of 5 to

10 minutes searching on USGENWEB-ALL and submitted by a reader:

"Who is it that has been filling our mailboxes with this endless drivel?

You have become a sad parody of yourself. My God, don't you have anything

else to do? I've deleted, like, 20 message from you, all coming in rapid

succession, all saying. Step away from the computer for 5 minutes or so,

before you end up the Repetitive Stress Injury Poster Girl ." [16 Sept

1998]

"This (non)-issue won't tear the USGenWeb Project, just as all the

previous brouhahas haven't torn it apart. Not that there won't be those

who will continue to try! When this manufactured "problem" is resolved,

or dies mercifully on its own, it'll only be a matter of time before one

of the "malcontents" starts braying about something else ("Hey! So-and-so

did/said/didn't do/didn't say such-and-such! waaah! WAAAH!")" [16 Sept

1998]

"You really seem to have inflated your importance in all of this, as

though you are some Essential Force To Be Reckoned With. What makes you

think that you represent the rest of us and that we need you to "come to

an agreement" for us with Megan or the Board? Let us speak for ourselves

-with our vote. If we don't like the bylaws, we'll vote no. If we do,

we'll vote yes. Megan and the Board, I'm sure, don't have the time or the

inclination to get into endless back-and-forth messaging with every

self-righteous, self-appointed Savior of The Project. All you've been

doing is cluttering up our mailboxes with your pompous, ceaseless puffery.

If you are trying to "win people over" to your point of view, I would

submit that never-ending, petulant whining is not the way to get it done.

" [29 May 1998]

Hoo! Wait a minute - wiping the tears of laughter from my eyes . . .

Sniff! Ok. Apparantly, what is Good For the Goose is *not* Good For the

Gander, then, right? No matter what kind of spin you try to put on it,

there is still "something rotten in the state of Denmark". In the

medical field, we'd say you have a "high serum porcelain" (that's a crock,

in layman's terms)." [1 July 1998]

"This guy sounds like he thinks the world is hanging breathlessly waiting

for his Next Official Utterance!" [31 May 1998]

[Interestingly enough, the records also indicate that as recently as

November 1998, Shari was vocally in favor of the Board conducting all its

business publicly and going into "executive session" only rarely and for

specific purposes. Guess those specific purposes include talking nasty

about fellow volunteers.]

This has been Your Daily Board Show.

-Teresa Lindquist

merope@radix.net

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From merope@Radix.Net Mon Aug 30 21:06:59 1999

Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 21:06:57 -0400 (EDT)

From: merope <merope@Radix.Net>

Reply-To: merope <merope@Radix.Net>

To: usgw_all@listbot.com

Subject: Daily Board Show

Message-ID: <Pine.SV4.3.96.990830063002.11391A-100000@saltmine.radix.net>

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Status: RO

X-Status:

Seen it all before...its Your Daily Board Show!

*warning* contains editorial content. Read at your own risk!

Saturday 28 August 1999:

Six aye votes are cast in favor of Motion 99-22, the motion to accept the

election results without certification.

Tomorrow's news today: Along with 5 new votes in favor of Motion 99-22

[which pretty much passes it], the Election Committee posts a cryptic

message denying a request made of them by Fred Smoot and suggesting he

refer it to the Board [see below].

The Election That Will Not Die Corner: The gist of Fred Smoot's request

to the Election Committee is 1) that he be provided with the votes and

date voted (not names or email addresses); and 2) that he be told the

vote count of the 33/39 unconfirmed voters. Turns out that only 5

miscounted votes would change the election results, so no wonder the Board

is reluctant to comply. In the DBS newsroom pool, the odds favor the

Board thumbing its nose at Mr. Smoot, since they have just completed a

vote to accept the election results. [Anyone ever read Robert Caro's

biography of LBJ? Remember how LBJ won election to the Senate by only 87

votes in one of the most corrupt elections on record in a state that's

known for dubious politics? Remember the ballot box that they refused to

open? If that box was opened, would history have changed? Think about

it...its only 5 votes.]

Update on the News Corner: We hear that the blatant beg for money to

support the CC has been removed from the front page of the Kent county, MI

pages. In its place, the CC has posted a "Funding FAQ" in which full

instructions for sending money are provided.

Pretty Is As Pretty Does Corner: Looks like Shari "Trash Talkin'" Handley

has the full support of former (not)NC Bob "Bitter" Bamford. In an

encouraging message posted to the USGENWEB-ALL list, Bob says, "it is too

bad that board members can't engage in free and open discussion,

expressing their real feelings and opinions (right or wrong). The result

is a board which spends its time being "politically correct" and not

working to resolve problems...never apologize for being honest." [*sigh*

back in the day when "politically correct" just meant being polite and

courteous...]

Who Do You Trust? Corner: We hear that our NC doesn't trust the Board-Exec

list anymore and is now privately emailing a select group of his fellow

board members to discuss his legal exposure in the case of a lawsuit over

the election. Among the "trusted" is about who you'd expect: Barbara

Dore, Shari Handley, Holly Timm, Joe Zsedney, etc. [Waddya know...the

secret list has a secret list!]

Empty Plate Corner: We hear that _all_ the commercial ads have

disappeared from Root$web. Has the gravy train skipped the station, or is

it just the end of the month?

"If we must lose dissenting CC's to maintain continuity, it will be sad,

but necessary for the good of the project. Those who cannot move forward

with us must ultimately be left behind."

---Don Kelly, USGENWEB-ALL, 29 Aug 1999

This has been your Daily Board Show.

-Teresa Lindquist

merope@radix.net

---------

From merope@Radix.Net Tue Aug 31 19:08:34 1999

Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 19:08:32 -0400 (EDT)

From: merope <merope@Radix.Net>

Reply-To: merope <merope@Radix.Net>

To: usgw_all@listbot.com

Subject: Daily Board Show

Message-ID: <Pine.SV4.3.96.990831183251.1443B-100000@saltmine.radix.net>

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Status: RO

X-Status:

Can they do that on TV?...its Your Daily Board Show!

*warning* contains editorial content. Read at your own risk!

Sunday 29 August 1999:

There are six additional "aye" votes for Motion 99-22.

Jim Powell, Chair of the Election Committee, posts the following, "Mr.

Smoot... Your request has been denied. It is the consensus of the

Committee that we do not have the power to do so. We suggest you make

your request of the Board. Please refer any future requests directly to

the Board. The Election Committee will await further direction from the

Board." It is signed by "The Election Committee". [This is apparently in

response to Fred Smoot's request for information on the unconfirmed votes]

Tomorrow's News Today: The NC declares Motion 99-22 passed.

The Energizer Election: It keeps going and going and going...We hear

through the grapevine that Fred Smoot is formally protesting the election,

citing the following reasons:

"1. No certified lists of eligible voters were ever published.

2. The election was not conducted by a neutral third party, but by an

organization, Rootsweb.com, Inc., which had a vested interest in the

outcome of the election, and was aware of my positions in regard to

their numerous recent actions, including, but not limited to, my having

questioned the role of Rootsweb.com, Inc. in relation to the USGenWeb

Project, claimed ownership of compilation copyrights to List Archives,

GenConnect databases, permanent rights to store Archives, etc. whereas

my opponent had stated publicly that he did not believe there was any

conflict at all between the Project and Rootsweb.

3. The change in software for the run-off election was not approved by

the Advisory Board.

4. The software used in the 2nd election was insecure. Anyone with FTP

access to the software and data could have easily hacked the results.

5. Although voting closed on 8/18/1999, the web page

http://www.usgenweb.org/elections/election-central.html indicated that

the polls would not close until the 23rd.

6. Requests by myself for additional data necessary to attempt to

determine if results were valid based on software used, etc. were

denied."

It will be interesting to see if this formal protest goes anywhere, but

the betting here is that it won't. The Board will just cite Motion 99-22

and shrug.

Well, What Have We Here Corner: This may add some fuel to Fred's fire.

An anonymous and very appalled source tells me that Barbara "Rootslady"

Dore voted twice in the recent runoff election, using two different email

addresses. The Election Committee apparently caught this "anomaly" when

they checked the votes following the request for certification. Now, I

can almost understand how someone, even someone as smart as Rootslady,

could "accidentally" vote twice if they mistakenly receive two ballots in

their inbox. But I'm having a little harder time understanding how

someone could visit the same webpage twice, enter a different email each

time, vote twice, and confirm twice, without realizing they'd already done

this once before. And her state coordinator, also a Board member, must

have approved both of those email addresses for voting. Curious, isn't

it? I wonder if she managed to vote twice in the original election as

well.

"The campaigning I'm seeing for the runoff election scares the bejayzus

out of me in that the folks we're seeing adamantly support Smoot are the

very people who seem to be doing their damnedest to destroy the project."

---Megan "Piglet" Zurawicz, 16 Aug 1999, BOARD-EXEC

This has been your Daily Board Show.

-Teresa Lindquist

merope@radix.net

------------