0 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
Thursday, March 25, 2010 - 3A
NEWS BRIEFS
WASHINGTON
Obama seeks $2.8
billion for Haiti
President Barack Obama is ask-
ing Congress for $2.8 billion in
emergency funding for the recon-
struction effort in Haiti following
January's devastating earthquake.
The president's request comes
one week before a U.N. donors
conference March 31 in New York.
Haitian officials plan to ask for
$11.5 billion in reconstruction
assistance.
Senate Foreign Relations Com-
mittee Chairman John Kerry says
the Senate is close to introducing
legislation to meet Obama's request.
The Jan. 12 earthquake that
ravaged the capital of Port-
au-Prince killed an estimated
230,000 people and left more than
1 million homeless.
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich.
Granhoim scolds
AG Cox on health
care reform
Gov. Jennifer Granholm said
yesterday that Attorney Gen-
eral Mike Cox doesn't have legal
authority to put Michigan on
record as opposing the federal
health care overhaul.
Cox joined a dozen other Repub-
lican state attorneys general in
filing a lawsuit challenging the con-
stitutionality of the measure Presi-
dent Barack Obama signed into law
Tuesday. Granholm, a Democrat
and supporter of the health over-
haul, said Cox had overstepped his
bounds.
"His primary client as the attor-
ney general is the executive branch
of government," Granholm said
in an interview following a public
appearance in Traverse City. "And
no one in the executive branch has
authorized him to take this posi-
tion."
She described Cox's action as "a
political ploy" and noted he was
running for the GOP nomination
for governor.
In a letter to Cox released by the
governor's office, Granholm said
that under the Michigan Constitu-
tion, the governor's law enforce-
ment authority is "superior to that
of the attorney general" - the office
she held before her election as gov-
ernor in 2002.
WASHINGTON
Treaty to cut nukes
in Russia and U.S.
The U.S. and Russia reached a
breakthrough agreement yesterday
for a historic treaty to reduce the
nuclear arsenals of the former Cold
War rivals, the most significant pact
in a generation and an important
milestone in the decades-long quest
to lower the risk of global nuclear
war.
After long and trying nego-
tiations, President Barack Obama
and Russian President Dmitry
Medvedev are to sign the treaty
in two weeks in Prague, once final
technical details are worked out,
officials in Washington and Mos-
cow said. The accord is expected
to cut, the number of long-range
nuclear weapons held by each side
to about 1,500, and it raises hopes
for further disarmament in the
years ahead.
The deal is seen as sealing an
increased level of trust and coop-
eration between the U.S. and Rus-
sia, who possess the vast majority of
the world's nuclear arms and have
labored under strained relations in
recent years.
MELBOURNE, Austrailia
Officers' e-mails
under investigation
Up to 100 police officers in the
Australian state of Victoria are
under investigation over racist
e-mails that have been circulated in
the internal police e-mail system, a
top official said today.
Chief Commissioner Simon
Overland said the police ethical
standards department had found
multiple e-mails that were too
shockingto be released publicly.
He would not confirm the subject
matter of the emails but said some
were "extremely serious, some are
offensive" and raised questions
about some officers' suitability to
their jobs.
"If the Victorian public were
aware of the nature of that materi-
al, I believe that it's of such a nature
that it would cause -significant
concern within the Victorian com-
munity," Overland told Australian
Broadcasting Corp. radio.
- Compiled from
Daily wire reports
MSA
From Page 1A
nally voted for the person who
appeared first on the list, but that
when they went back to the ballot
the person in that slot at the top of
the list could have changed.
The problem was discovered
early this morning when students
reported problems with the site.
Just before 8 a.m., ITS officials
disabled the randomization fea-
ture to prevent further problems.
Turning off the randomization
feature means the same party
will appear at the top of the ballot
for each person who votes. How-
ever, Deshpande said the order
currently being used was chosen
at random.
Michael Benson, chair of the
MSA Rules and Elections Com-
mittee, said last night that it
seems unlikely that the random-
ization feature will be able to be
fixed and restored for the rest of
the current election. However,
he said he plans to meet with ITS
officials to further review the
problem after the election to pre-
vent a similar malfunction from
occurring in the next election.
Benson said approximately
1,000 students voted before the
randomization feature was dis-
abled this morning. However,
the issue affected only students
who revisited their ballot after
reviewing the ballot confirma-
tion page.
Benson said ITS was reaching
out to students last night who had
voted before 8 a.m. yesterday and
therefore may have experienced
problems. Those students will
receive an e-mail with a link to a
new, secure website that will allow
them to verify their ballot and
make any necessary corrections.
Students who do not visit the
website or change their ballot
will be assumed to have cast their
ballot properly and their votes
will still be counted, Benson
explained.
Benson stressed that though
ITS is able to pair a student's
unique name to their individual
ballot to recall who a student
voted for, the information is con-
fidential and is not shared with
anyone else. The information, he
said, is maintained specifically
for situations like this.
MForward Presidential Can-
didate Chris Armstrong told the
Daily last night he was dissatis-
fied with the problems on the vot-
ing website.
"I am very disappointed,"
Armstrong said, pointing out
that last fall the election website
crashed temporarily. "I think the
fact that a similar glitch occurred
this year is just very frustrating
because it shows that these prob-
lems aren't being fixed, that there
isn't proper oversight or mainte-
nance of a simple thing like the
voting website."
MVP Presidential Candidate
Ian Margolis said in a statement
last night that he was disappoint-
ed with the technical voting dif-
ficulties.
"It is unacceptable that this
issue arose, especially because
every student has the right to
vote and should be confident that
their vote is counted fairly so that
their voices can be heard," Margo-
lis wrote in an e-mail. "While the
election board has offered a rem-
edy for the glitch, I remain disap-
pointed that this happened at all."
Multiple phone calls to DAAP
Presidential Candidate Kate
Stenvig went unreturned.
Some student voters also expe-
rienced a second problem when
trying to access the voting web-
site. Benson encouraged students
to vote using the vote.umich.edu
website. Though a second web-
site, mvoteblue.com, was set up
for this election, some students
have reported problems with the
site.
The sites are redirected to the
same URL, Benson explained
- meaning students could
use either address. However,
because some students have
reported problems with mvote-
blue.com, Benson is encouraging
students to use vote.umich.edu
to ensure they are able to access
their ballot.
From left, Jim Gill, Barb Gill, and tinily Gill all at Iowa City, cheer durng a speech atla Stand Up far Freedom tally yesterday.
Democrats face threats
in light of health care bill
Unrest over reform
led to vandalism,
violent messages left
for legislators
Unrest over sweeping federal
health carelegislation has turned to
vandalism and threats, with bricks
hurled through Democrats' win-
dows, a propane line cutatthe home
of a congressman's brother and
menacing phone messages left for
lawmakers who supported the bill.
The FBI is investigating the
instances, which include shat-
tered windows at four Democratic
offices in New York, Arizona and
Kansas. At least 10 members of
Congress have reported some sort
of threat as of yesterday, and no
arrests have been made.
The brick flung through the
window of a county Democratic
Party office in Rochester, N.Y., over
the weekend had a note attached:
"Extremism in defense of liberty
is no vice," roughly quoting 1964
Republican presidential nominee
Barry Goldwater.
A New York congresswoman
whose office window also was
smashed with a brick accused the
Republican leadership of failing to
denounce attacks against lawmak-
ers who supported the legislation.
The vandalism was at Democrat-
ic Rep. Louise Slaughter's district
office in Niagara Falls early Friday,
two days before the House passed
the health care overhaul bill.
"It's more disturbing to me that
Republican leadership has not con-
demned these attacks and instead
appears to be fanning the flames
with coded rhetoric," said Slaugh-
ter, a key supporter of the bill.
House Republican leader John
Boehner of Ohio said in a state-
ment that while many Americans
are angry over the bill's passage,
"violence and threats are unac-
ceptable."
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Would you like to get more involved with currentissues surrounding the student body?
The Vice President for StudentAffairs is looking for students to serve on her student
advisory board for the 2010-2011 academic year, and advise her on the topics that are
most pressing to the students at the University of Michigan. Applications and more
information can be found at: http://uuis.umich.edu/studenLmatters/dsa-advisory.html
The deadline for applications is5 pm March 26, 2010
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