Winners

Disastrous screw-ups are often systemic. Ever notice how companies, groups and governmental agencies with what looks like one big problem on their hands actually are up to their elbows in general incompetence or misdeeds? Take, for instance, the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department. Though Sheriff Brian Gilbert remains innocent until proven guilty, there’s clearly something wrong somewhere in that department when more than $100,000 from a traffic stop turns up missing. And now it turns out that Dallas County Jail Administrator Deke Gliem was charged last week with three counts of sexual misconduct with an offender and three counts of invasion of privacy after he allegedly had sex with three female jail inmates in 2005 and 2006 and secretly watched the inmates for his private jollies. It makes a person wonder what else may be going on in that department.

Meanwhile, Iowa Workforce Development is also awash in allegations. The agency garnered no end of disdain after it failed to properly monitor the Central Iowa Employment and Training Consortium, better known as CIETC. But like the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department, IWD has multiple systemic problems. Last week, the Iowa Legislature’s Government Oversight Committee met to hear allegations of racial discrimination in IWD’s own hiring and promotion practices. Frankly, you have to wonder how much political game-playing was involved in this hearing, since the Republicans called the meeting right before Tuesday’s election, drawing attention to an agency under control of the Vilsack (read: Democratic) administration. Another clue that this is about politics: Senate Democrats, those same nervous fellows who didn’t want to buck the guv over eminent domain, said the hearing was too close to the election and didn’t bother showing up. Well, maybe the hearing was politically motivated opportunism. At this point, we’ll take it. Thirteen employees at IWD are accusing the CIETC parent agency of racism. One employee, Beverly Clark, won $250,000 last year from the state in a settlement after she sued because she had been passed over for promotion at IWD more than 56 times.

Losers

Can’t Stew Iverson just go away? The former Senate majority leader is making a pest of himself over Spanish-language absentee ballot request forms at the Iowa Secretary of State’s office. Iverson asked Attorney General Tom Miller to find that Secretary of State Chet Culver was violating Iowa’s English-only rule. But Miller concluded that, actually, Culver has discretion to do what he thinks is appropriate for Iowa’s voters. Iverson’s move was obviously a thinly veiled attempt to make Culver look like he’s — what? Not a racist? — before election day.

It seems TouchPlay isn’t the only automated machine creating controversy this election season. The nonprofit organization Iowans for Voting Integrity is warning that the touch-screen voting machines that were used in 58 counties on election night could be fraught with technical loopholes. “With touch-screen machines, votes are recorded as a chunk of computer code that the voter cannot view,” said the group’s chairwoman, Carole Simmons, in a recent press release. “This leaves the door open for error or fraud. And with no voter-verified paper record, there is no sure way a recount or audit would be able to prove that a mistake had occurred.” It’s prudent to remember that states like Ohio, which used the paperless voting machines in 2004, didn’t know the extent of widespread technical errors (and, some say, vote rigging) until months after the election. Many Iowa counties are using touch-screen machines manufactured by Diebold — a name that was almost as dirty a word as Halliburton after the 2004 presidential election. (Diebold chairman Wally O’Dell famously raised hundreds of thousands for George W. Bush’s reelection campaign in ’04, then promised to help “Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President.”) Several states have passed laws that require all electronic voting machines to spit out a paper tally — like an ATM receipt — proving to voters that their ballots were recorded correctly. Iowa would be wise to follow suit.

“Local control” has become a buzz-phrase in the waning days of election season, but what does it really mean? According to a Radio Iowa report, even though many candidates have used the phrase, it’s not likely to make headway once the election hubbub has finally, mercifully, died down. Why? There’s not enough support at the statehouse. Both Republicans and Democrats have expressed doubt that laws allowing local communities more say over animal-confinement facilities (many of which are run by out-of-state entities) will garner enough support to pass. Who better to make the call about hog lots and turkey farms in rural Iowa? A bunch of politicians in Des Moines? Or the farmers and rural Iowans forced to breathe that methane-ridden air day after day?

John Kerry says he simply botched a joke that was to be aimed at President Bush rather than the United States military. And he probably did. But the Massachusetts Democrat said he would not apologize for the harsh comments he made last week, only to do so later after taking heat from fellow Democrats. But Kerry has been known to flip-flop before.  Only this time, the senator was appropriately asked by his cohorts to remove himself from the campaign trail. All this hoopla from two sentences stated at Pasadena City College near Los Angeles, where Kerry said to students into a microphone behind a podium: “You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework, you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.” Or, apparently, you become a senator from Massachusetts. Mr. Kerry, either learn how to read a joke, or keep your comments to yourself before you do any more harm. Your party is doing fine without you, and what you think is no longer relevant. CV

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