South DaCola

Editorial Cartoonist from South Dakota

Secretary of State

Secretary of State

The plot thickens over the SOS scandal

l3wis 7Comments

There is so many angles to this story, I could have never imagined this many termites coming out of the woodwork.

Apparently this all started in 2010 when Gant was running for office, with the help of BK Jr;

In light of the recent developments regarding Secretary of State Jason Gant and his possible impeachment, I would like to bring forth additional information that shows this inappropriate commingling of business and public service between the duo goes back at least as far as his run for the current office he now holds.

Back in my run for office in 2010 against Jason Gant and Ben Nesselhuf, I wanted to order signs from a South Dakotabusiness. The only one that I could find online just so happened to be Pat Powers’ business. The reason I completely ruled it out was that Gant had basically taken over part of his website stating that using this business would be like contributing to his campaign for Secretary of State. He implied in writing that proceeds from Powers’ sign business would help him to get elected.

There were 3 things that had immediately jumped out at me regarding this situation:

1. Any contributions made through doing business with Dakota Campaign Store would be in essence unreported and undisclosed political contributions that could be hidden from the public under the disguise of sales by a business rather than political contributions subject to reporting requirements and the maximum donation limit by an individual of $4,000.

2. In Sioux Falls alone, Jason Gant’s signs blanketed the area. If these signs were in a round about way donated to Jason Gant’s campaign through Pat Powers’ business, the value should have been in the thousands of dollars and should have been reported as “in kind” contributions on Gant’s campaign finance report. I never found anything on his reports that could have taken into account the potentially large dollar amount of the value of these signs.

3. Any candidate that had a potentially unlimited supply of campaign materials would certainly hold an unfair advantage over his 2 opponents.

Oh, but Stacey’s story is just the tip of the iceberg (a IT specialist who just happens to be a loyal foot soldier sent me this information this morning);

DWC was down so they could move their server to a private server routed through an Albany NY service from a public Utah service.  In this process they can attempt to lose the archives to send investigators into blank servers.  The data posted as #50 testor15 on 05.11.12 at 4:21 pm was the old server where the offending data was located.

dakotawarcollege.com, dakotacampaignstore.com, patpowers.com all have the same hidden webserver 66.152.109.31.

The last known link to each is through an IP, Tech Valley Communications, Albany NY.  Tracing route to each is  [66.152.109.31] you will notice in the document below 16 jumps labeled “ *        *        *     Request timed out.”  This means the IP translation service is attempting to find the actual server but is now hidden.  It could be located in a garage in Pierre or Timbuktu.  This is very likely someone playing a game they should not be.  Someone in Pierre with Brookings connections may have been working very hard on his ‘vacation’ from the web to cover his tracks.

PP is trying to keep the site private.  “Bill Clay” was on ‘vacation’ during the time it was ‘down’. His post telling us so:

Stop jumping to conclusions

Jun25
2012 4 Comments Written by Bill Clay

I went on a family vacation for a week and when I got back to town I was told told a certain respectable legislator wants to put my face on a milk carton for a missing persons report.

(I suppose I should have given notice before going out of town)

Lots has happened over the past week and I’m looking forward to posting about it.

IP trace document; trace

 

Elections SD Attorney General Secretary of State South Dakotans

Stan Adelstein asks the AG to remove Pat Powers from his state employment

l3wis 47Comments

As you may or may not know, South DaCola broke the story on Pat Powers involvement with a consulting business while serving as the SOS’s Chief of Operations. Stan left these comments today on my site;

I hate even the whiff of “Chicago Politics.” When I saw the website for Powers, and for that matter Gant – I wondered who would not purchase their campaign stuff from the office that had final say in a close race, who had final say for campaigns, or campaign committees of their expenditures, disclaimers, filing data, reporting, etc, etc. On top of that the Secy’s office has final say in close races, and between candidates on close issues. Why was this Secretary the first one to endorse the power of Speaker of the State house over an excellent seated REPUBLICAN state senator?

 

Thanks everyone on this blog site. I agree, and as to Testor 15, I have asked the Attorney General to give us all those “invesigators” that you asked for. That is the advantage of being elected by people – who even when the disagree with me – think I care about the system that I love and gave me everything that I cherish. (despite Power’s comments about my social position, supposed wealth, more than one home — and unlike rest of SD, my religious faith)

And Testor 15 — finally getting the media attention — due to this letter to our Straight Arrow Attorney General:

Dear Attorney General Jackley

I request that you investigate the office of South Dakota Secretary of State. I am concerned about allegations of impropriety, conflict of interest, and possible illegal activity.

A political commercial enterprise “Dakota Campaign Store” solicits political consulting, and sale of campaign material. It appears that it may actually be operating out of the Secretary’s office – by Mr Pat Powers, who is an apparent full time employee of that office, and has primary responsibility, in that office, for some of the same IT services that he is advertising.

Does “DakotaCampaignStore.com,” use political filings from candidates to solicit business? It is obvious that Mr. Powers is the first to see any such filing – and with the new “assistance” program offered by his office has access to private information, not available to his competition.

I am concerned about the endorsement in a primary election, of the incumbent Speaker of the House of Representatives. Does that endorsement arise out of any financial arrangements with this “consulting”service? Were any of the campaign material used in that primary race purchased through or by that enterprise?

Does the Secretary himself directly or indirectly participate in earnings of this political operation? By indirectly, I mean discounts for material, utilization of services pro bono, etc.

Has the Secretary purchased, even at market value, campaign material from that enterprise for his re-election campaign, or made use of mailing lists, etc?

Has any of the business of this commercial service utilized State computers, office space, lists, office supplies, etc. in the conduct of it’s affairs.

Time may be of the essence! I went online at 12:40 mountain time, June 15 and perused in detail Mr Powers advertising on DakotaCampaignStore.com. Shortly thereafter I expressed my concern to most of my Senate Colleagues. Since my posting to them, that website has been taken down! Mr Powers, among other things, is well known as a computer Guru – and I fear that evidence of wrongdoing could be erased, revised or otherwise distorted.

If you establish apparent impropriety or misbehavior, I am also asking for your advice with regards two sections of Article XVI of the SD Constitution. Is it possible that Section 3 – “impeachment” – is something I should be seeking as a Senator or possible (and to my Engineers mind) more likely Section 4, “Removal from Office.” My education and background makes the distinction between the offences listed in each somewhat unclear.

Stanford M Adelstein State Senator, District 32

Some are crying sour grapes, ‘Troy’ who I would assume is ‘Troy Jones, a frequent contributor to Pat’s former site Dakota War College made this comment on Madville Times;

I agree Doug. In the end, this is just a personal vendetta against Pat as we all know there is no love lost between Stan and Pat.

Another commenter ‘Jane’ disagrees, and rightfully so;

Troy, I’m sure that the “Powers” that be want this to be dismissed as a personal issue between two feuding politicians. But that misses the entire point.

There are clearly two sets of rules, ethics, and professionalism in the Office of the Secretary of State. One for the favorites and one for the rest. Gant, Powers, Gosch, et al are all caught in the same web of sloppy, partisan arrogance.

One wonders if the AG and Judge Barnett might be caught in the partisan web as well.

The State Board of Elections might have a different view of the level of hackery taking place at the SOS’s office. That will be interesting to watch.

As I told someone today, ‘Would this have happened under Chris Nelson’s watch?’ Probably not. While I have my reservations about Nelson, I don’t think Nelson bungled as much as Gant has. It seems anytime Gant has to do something important (like running elections properly) he screws up. Could this be Gant or his staff.

There seems to be this attitude by some politicians in Pierre that once they get elected they can do what they want and they can ignore the public’s wishes and the rules. Sorry, but this South Dakotan as many others are fed up with this attitude. This is a democracy, elections should be fair and unencumbered.

 

 

 

Elections Mitchell Secretary of State

SOS is on the hot seat once again

l3wis 10Comments

How do over 1,000 votes disappear?

After Tuesday’s primary, the Secretary of State’s Office reported about 6,100 votes were cast. But later on, the auditor reported that just more than 5,500 votes were cast.  And after Thursday’s recount, the official count was around 4,400.

I suppose I could go on another rant about the incompetence of Jason Gant, but why keep beating a dead horse? How do these many ballots going missing? Or the bigger question, were ballots overcounted?

Some say the only thing that will satisfy them is a re-vote.  Candidates have ten days after the election day to file a petition for a re-vote.

This should not have to be the case. Why should they inconvenance voters if these ballots exist, not to mention the tax payer money it will cost because of this incompetence? And the bigger question is how could they be off by that much? The AG’s office needs to do an investigation into election fraud (either intentional or accidental). It is blatantly obvious someone in the Davison county auditor’s office either screwed up accidentally or on purpose. This episode better end with someone in handcuffs.

Elections Open Government Open Meetings Secretary of State

Misc.

l3wis 6Comments

I have a few tidbits I wanted to share, so I thought I would just throw it all into one post.

MUSICAL PRECINCTS

I sent this email out today to the entire SF school board, Minnehaha county commission, SF City Council, city clerk, county auditor and mayor. I have already gotten two responses that are very positive;

Normally I do not email my elected officials, especially the entire city council, the county commission, the school board, the mayor, the city clerk and the county auditor all at once, but I did a recent post about the ‘musical precincts’ this city continues to play with elections and the mass confusion it has on voters. It’s time you all sat down in a room and figured out a standard already, this has gone on long enough!

As soon as most of them get back to me about it, I will do an indepth post about it.

LATE FILINGS

Ellis blogged about the supposed investigations the SOS’ office is going to conduct AFTER the election (yeah, that makes a lot of sense);

Secretary of State Jason Gant said his office will begin investigating a number of campaign finance violations as soon as Tuesday’s primary is concluded.

“We will begin investigating Wednesday morning,” he said while touring a polling place at Hawthorne Elementary in Sioux Falls.

Some groups have not filed required campaign finance reports, even though they’ve sent out flyers. Other committees have sent out illegal mailings that do not include the appropriate disclaimers.

“Tomorrow we are full steam ahead on working out those issues,” he said. “If they are not filing, we’re going to find out.”

I have often thought instead of fining late filings (of candidates) they should just leave their names off of the ballot. If you file late, you lose your opportunity to run. To heck with silly fines, if you can’t follow the rules you don’t get to play the game. As for the PAC’s I think you should revoke their status.

ARE EMAIL’S OF PUBLIC OFFICIALS PUBLIC RECORD

Ellis also blogged today about his battle with city hall over public records from an administration of ‘one of the most transparent’ mayor’s ever 🙂

“The law includes data, data fields and e-mail in its definition of public records, and it lets citizens bring their own devices to a government agency to make electronic copies. Georgia thus joins a growing number of states that explicitly open electronic communication to and from government officials to the public.”

I’ve written before about how backward South Dakota’s open record laws are. Many states make emails among government officials public records. South Dakota is also the rare state in which police reports aren’t available to the public. Oh, and mugshots.

As for data fields, I’ve been fighting to get the names of data fields used by the city of Sioux Falls in a database since December.

Ellis makes a good point. Why can’t we see emails? It would put rumors to rest about how involved the mayor is in local politics and his supposed quest for higher office. As for the data fields, I know what this is about, but I will let Ellis break this story, that is if he gets the data.

 

 

 

 

Secretary of State

SOS’s website; A gigantic mess

l3wis 18Comments

I had a legislative candidate point out to me last night that the SOS’s website is a mess when it comes to searching candidate financial reports. No surprise, the state isn’t big on functionality with their websites. I had an IT person look at it and give me their 2-Cents:

So much for Powers being an expert web designer.  We call this an eye candy site.  It will blind you with glitz and no function.  Lots of blinking, 1990’s moving lists to nowhere, unlabeled icons, text headers not linking to anything and no ergonomics.  Wow what a mess.  Two things come directly to mind as I look:

1.       Sdsos.gov/elections/default.aspx is the elections page.

a.       The scrolling ‘2012 Candidate Filings’ box is not in any sort order, is annoying and does not link to anything useful.

b.      Links on the page are to ‘stuff’ with no explanations leaving you to guess what they are presenting.

2.       C.A.S.H. System <https://sdsos.gov/campaignfinance/default.aspx> was found to be the campaign / reporting link.

a.       Web standards for access links are not used, you have to figure out how to find the link to get to process you are looking for.

b.      Donation Search, try putting in a district number, such as 10.  The list of districts displays up, not down.  This may seem minor but it does not make the search process very ergonomic.

c.       Did a search for all donations in District 10, the presentation is not smooth and as you continue to use the system you get fewer results until you realize the ‘Clear’ search button must be clicked between searches to clear fields.

d.      Bouncing between fields is cumbersome

e.      Try screen scraping results with your mouse to highlight, it will not collect all data.

I guess they are ‘working on it’. Rumor has it they are manually typing in the paper filings instead of scanning them. That leaves room for inaccuracy. The biggest problem with this site is that NOT all of the filings are up yet.

Look at Minnesota’s site, very searchable.

We are only a few days away from the primaries and not all of the reports are up yet. This is unfortunate.

 

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