Judge impounds all absentee ballots

Election officials will be required to place all paper and absentee ballots - unopened and untallied - under lock and key at county boards of election until at least Nov. 9. The decision from state Supreme Court Judge Robert Lippmann came Thursday.

State Democratic Chairman Judith Hope and state Republican Chairman William Powers jointly sought the ruling, pointing to the anticipated closeness of the Nov. 7 election, according to Lippmann. If the race is close it could be decided by the absentee ballots.

"If we are dealing with a close election, people won't say `We lost them' or `They got ruined,' " Lippmann said.

New York state Board of Elections spokesman Lee Daghlian said, "It eliminates any question that there would be any attempt to stuff the ballot box."

Lippmann's decision also means that if absentee ballots play a pivotal role in the race, New Yorkers may have to wait until Nov. 13 or later to learn the results of the elections between Democratic candidate and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and Republican candidate Rick Lazio, a Long Island congressman.

On Nov. 9 Lippmann will consider the post-election arguments of state party officials on both sides in deciding when to lift the impoundment order.

If the gap in the tally is less than the number of absentee ballots issued to New Yorkers, he could choose to extend the order until Nov. 13, the last day that absentee ballots sent by mail can arrive at county boards of elections.

The ballots must be postmarked by Nov. 6.

Vote buying common on Seneca reservation

As many as two-thirds of Seneca voters will carry on a legacy begun in the mid-19th century when they are handed paper bags filled with money before entering the voting booths on Nov. 7.

The going rate ranges from as little as $10 to $200 or more.

At stake is control of a nation of about 7,000, a $12 million-plus budget and, most importantly, more than 700 patronage jobs in an economy where government is the biggest employer.

The nation holds an election every two years. In 1998, almost 2,000 Senecas voted.

Even those opposed to buying votes say there is little they can do about it.

"I, personally, do not have money to buy votes, and I have discouraged members of our party from doing it," said Richard K. Nephew, a retiree. "But, I have to be honest with you: I cannot guarantee that no one in our party will try to buy votes."

The money comes from political parties and their supporters, businesses and, according to former tribal councilor Larry Ballagh, "from off-reservation vendors who want to protect the business they do on our reservations."

That extends to casino gambling backers, said Susan Abrams, who has led the battle against a high-stakes gaming casino.

"There is no question in my mind that casino interests from the outside are pouring money into the pockets of the people here who want casino gambling," Abrams said.

Several Senecas remember their fathers telling them the stories their fathers told them about William "Willie" Hoag, who ran for president in the early 1900s and was very open about his vote buying.

"They told how `Willie' campaigned through the reservations on his horse-driven buckboard loaded with food," said John Mohawk, a Seneca historian and associate professor at the University at Buffalo. "He stopped at every house to hand out food and ask for votes."

On Election Day, the eventual winner handed out silver dollars to people lined up to vote, according to some accounts. Mohawk believes Hoag's win helped vote buying become an accepted practice.

Hoag's grandson, the late Robert Hoag, was indicted by a federal grand jury for embezzling $10,000 in nation funds to buy votes in 1976. But he was never charged with buying votes. During the trial, Hoag's attorney admitted his client bought votes but said he paid for them out of his own pocket.

Hoag was acquitted in 1979 and went on to be elected president twice.

Mohawk believes vote buying dates to the mid 1800s, when the Senecas adopted a democratic form of government.

The payoff is reportedly higher for the roughly 50 percent of Senecas who live off the Cattaraugus and Allegany reservations than for those who live on the reservations.

"I think the so-called buying of votes began years ago when some of our people had to travel long distances to reach the reservations," explained Maxine Smith, a member of the Sovereignty 2000 party, "and it was just the polite thing to do to offer them something to eat and to drink and maybe to help pay their expenses."

Martin Seneca, a presidential candidate in the Sovereignty 2000 Party, and his cousin and opponent J. Conrad Seneca of the New Age Reform Party, both oppose vote buying but are not optimistic the practice is going to disappear soon.

Federal PCB review on target, report says

General Accounting Office probe notes differences in EPA, GE computer models

However, the report does note that there are scientific differences between the EPA, General Electric Co. and other interested parties.

U.S. Rep. John E. Sweeney, R-Halfmoon, requested the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, to look into the EPA's decade-long study of PCBs pollution in the upper Hudson River.

Sweeney has said that the EPA is conducting a study biased toward a river dredging solution to remove the hundreds of tons of PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls, a suspected carcinogen) discharged into the upper Hudson from General Electric Co. capacitor plants in Fort Edward and Hudson Falls from the mid-1940s until 1977, when the practice was banned.

The EPA is expected to announce a proposed river cleanup plan, or remedy, next month.

Both GE and many local governments in the upper Hudson region are opposed to a PCB "hot spot" dredging of the Hudson, saying it would disrupt the river's natural recovery and hurt the region's economy.

"This report is helpful in providing the public with information on the current scientific disagreement in this matter," Sweeney said about the GAO study that he requested last year.

"This report clearly proves to me that independent, objective science, in the form of the National Academy of Sciences report, must be considered to bridge this gap," Sweeney said from his Washington, D.C. office.

The National Academy of Sciences report on the effectiveness of environmental river dredging technologies is expected to be released later this month.

Cara Lee, environmental director for Scenic Hudson, said Tuesday she had read the GAO report and concluded that it showed that "the EPA did what they were supposed to do."

"The EPA conducted the process appropriately," Lee said. Scenic Hudson is a Poughkeepsie-based environmental watchdog organization that supports environmental dredging to remove PCBs from the Hudson. What the GAO report did was document what the EPA has done over the past 10 years and how the EPA's computer river model differs from the computer model developed by GE.

The computer models predict PCB levels in the upper Hudson in future years using a large body of data about river flow, PCB concentrations and river sediment.

The GAO found the computer models are "generally similar in structure and have produced generally comparable outcomes."

However, the models are not identical, and therefore "could lead to different conclusions regarding the extent to which PCBs pose an unacceptable level of risk to human health and the environment."

For example, the EPA river model shows that 32 percent of the PCBs in river-bottom sediments in the Thompson Island pool below Fort Edward were released downstream while GE's model calculated that only three percent of the PCBs in these river sediments were released.

Sweeney noted that the federal report indicated only one area of agreement in the two sophisticated river computer models.

He said that both studies showed that if nothing were done and the PCBs left alone, "PCB levels in the Hudson River would decline over time but at different rates and that a major flood would probably not significantly release PCBs that have been buried in sediment."