Archive for November, 2006

Social responsibility: Whose business is it?

Tell us what you think. Reuters, The Conference Board and the Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative at Harvard University have gathered a panel to debate on Nov. 9 how corporate responsibility has changed. Panelists include Doug Bauer from Rockefeller Philanthrophy Advisers, Clive Cook from the Atlantic Media Co., John Demsey, group president of Estee Lauder, Samuel DiPiazza, CEO of PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Reuters Chairman Niall FitzGerald. You can follow the debate live from this link

Web Roundup: Voting irregularities

One of the more contentious allegations of irregularities came before the polls opened. Think Progress reports that the FBI is investigating complaints of voter intimidation and suppression in Virginia. Most of the complaints came from people given improper information about their precincts, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported

Elsewhere, the Boston Herald reported voters were forced to wait until after 8 p.m. to vote due to a shortage of ballots and some English speaking voters were given ballots intended for Vietnamese voters. In New York, The New York Times said Chelsea Clinton showed up to the polls shortly after they opened in New York only to be told that she wasn’t on the voters list and turned away. 

The big worry leading up to the elections was whether there would be problems with new electronic voting machines that have been put in place in districts around the country. 

FOX news reported that Ohio and Indiana had early problems with the machines, with 175 of 914 precincts in Indiana’s Marion County turning to paper ballots because volunteers didn’t know how to use them.   

According to the Washington Post, technical problems with voting machines prevented many people from voting in several states, but the glitches “did not appear to be widespread or politically motivated.”  The Baltimore Sun declared that Maryland’s second run at an entirely electronic election has gone much smoother than its first.”

Still, the left-leaning blog, Daily Kos has called today the end of electronic voting machines, saying that neither the Democrats, nor the Republicans trust them and that they “damage the integrity of our democracy.” 

Apparently, at least one person agrees: a man in Allentown, Pennsylvania was convinced the Republicans were conspiring to steal the election using electronic voting machines, so he took a metal paper weight to one of the machines, smashing the screen and landing himself in trouble with the law.