Among the seemingly staid and often eccentric tenants of the City Club Building who know the secret history of Room 4 on the 14th floor, New Year's Eve is a time of anticipating the return of Marc.

He arrived more than two years ago, an artist who arranged to have his studio painted black. Then, when he realized that the maintenance workers had master keys so they could handle any emergency that might arise with plumbing, electricity, and the like, he asked the tenant next door, "Sam and Rich won't just come in to my studio without knocking, will they?" Assured that the two maintenance workers had too much respect for all tenants to do such a thing, he said, "That's good, because I'm a serious fetish artist and I wouldn't want to have them coming in when I have someone chained to the [overhead] pipes."

The artist was last seen that New Year's Eve. Months passed and rent was not paid, the almost unused studio rented to another artist/photographer/educator doing more conventional work. Then, in July 2007, approximately 18 months following his disappearance, a frustrated and beautiful woman was pacing outside the entrance to the City Club. Discovering I work from the same building, she asked me if I knew Marc. He had called her to talk about a modeling job and was 15 minutes late. Since he had possibly not been downtown for a while and might not know about the parking problems from the construction, I suggested she wait a little longer. Finally, validly frustrated, she left. Marc never showed up.

Now we are approaching the third New Year's Eve since the fetish artist disappeared. Will he resurface, or will we just hear the howling of the ghost of a chained model longing to be painted, photographed and returned to the pipe? Those aware of the history are on the alert. - Ted Schwarz

WECLOME NEW MACHINES

While the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections may now be quickly moving towards high-spee central scanners for the March 2008 primaries, enough concerns remain that local elections officials could find themselves looking for different solutions come November.

Last Thursday, after a second, hours-long round of questions, public testimony and emotional arguments, the four members of the CCBOE finally came to a vote. The Republican members, Chairman Jeff Hastings and Robert Frost, voted to stick with Diebold's touch-screen machines for one more election and take more time to consider a change. Democrats Sandy McNair and Inajo Davis Chappell voted to switch immediately to scanners, arguing that the touch-screen electronic voting system has been so discredited that voters cannot trust it for efficient, reliable and secure elections.

Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, after releasing test results that revealed major security flaws in every electronic voting system used in Ohio, has been recommending that Cuyahoga County replace its touch-screens with central scanners that read paper ballots. At press time on Friday (early due to Christmas), she was expected to cast a tie-breaking vote in favor of scanners for March 2008.

With a central scan system, voters fill in ovals on paper ballots and drop them into a locked box. The boxes are delivered to a central location to be scanned and counted.

After making pleas for urgent change, McNair and Chappell admitted that in a central scan system voters can inadvertently fill in too many or two few ovals, resulting in their votes not being counted. Touch-screen machines currently used in Cuyahoga County alert voters if they've over- or under-voted. "Second chance" voting - allowing voters to correct their mistakes - is required by federal law.

David Kimball, a political science professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, has conducted national studies on how a variety of existing voting systems record voters' intended selections. Kimball found that in the 2004 presidential election, low-income and minority voters were the most negatively impacted without second-chance voting. In counties that use central scanners and have populations more than 30 percent black, and with an average income of less than $25,000, about 4 percent of votes were lost because of an over- or under-vote. In central-scan counties with higher incomes and fewer minorities, the rate of lost votes went down to 1.5 percent.

Another option is to put scanners in every precinct and let voters scan their own ballots. Such scanners provide on-the-spot notification of any errors. For counties with precinct-based scan machines, Kimball's research showed lost votes of about 1 percent, regardless of race or income - a rate similar to that for many touch-screens.

This wasn't reason to keep Cuyahoga County's touch-screens, argued board members Hastings and Frost, but highlighted how "the issue of second-chance voting has not been addressed."

McNair and Chappell's stopgap measure is to ramp up mailings and other promo materials. "We're going to try and do everything," Chappell says, "so that we inform voters, educate them, so that they know there is no second chance [at the polls] and they have to get it right."

This would fulfill federal requirements but would not guarantee anything.

"I don't know if votes will be lost [in March 2008]," McNair said after the meeting. So, he also wants to remain "nimble," leasing instead of buying $3 million worth of equipment for the primary. And McNair wants to operate scanners in a few randomly selected precincts in order to compare real-time second-chance voting with preemptive voter education. But it's unclear who will cast ballots on scanners placed in some precincts, and how this will reveal uniform findings on race and class.

Still, Chappell agrees with McNair's proposed study. If it exposes a large disparity of lost votes among minority voters, she said after the meeting, then perhaps a move towards precinct-based scanners for November 2008 would be warranted.

"We definitely don't want, in the name of efficiency, to disenfranchise anyone," Chappell said. - Charu Gupta

TRADE SECRETS

As usual, the powers that be continue to haggle over what's more important: nurturing our ever-global economy or nursing the wounds it's caused.

Back in 1974, when globalization really kicked into overdrive (translation: when jobs really started to bleed to Asia), the government had the foresight to create trade adjustment assistance (TAA), meant to prolong unemployment benefits and maybe offer some retraining for more-needed professions like x-ray technician and paralegal to the victims of outsourcing.

Joseph Wiecyorek, a 59-year-old from Willowick, was one of hundreds of displaced workers helped by the program in recent years. In two years, he went from being laid off in 2002 from the Cleveland Stamping Plant to being certified as a nurse who now works at a healthier salary for the Slovenian Home for the Aged. The program extended his 26 weeks of unemployment benefits to 104 while he was enrolled in school but, he notes, maybe just 20 to 30 percent of his fellow workers took part.

"It really saved my life, but not everyone is cut out for college," he notes.

Though strengthened in 2002, many supporters of the program rightfully believe it doesn't go nearly far enough to bridge the craters formed nationwide by factories left as giant playgrounds for amateur photographers, the homeless and aimless kids.

This year, the US House passed a bill that would have extended, among other things, TAA certification beyond manufacturing to America's equally globalization-mad service industry. Supporters needed 60 votes in the Senate, but fell five short. And with pro-globalization hawks demanding more lifting of trade restrictions before granting any expansion of TAA, many feel it's an issue that just won't be a priority with a war machine at the helm.

"This is about the forces of globalization and to what degrees we feel the need to give to the victims of it to keep the ball rolling," says Rick McHugh, midwest coordinator for the National Employment Law Project. "And, in my opinion, they're not offering victims of globalization very much."

Besides the pro-globalization forces in Washington still having a slight edge in sheer numbers (Most Dems tend to be wary of loosening trade barriers, but a few are all for it), McHugh says Republicans are always fearful of spending more on domestic issues.

"That would be a more expensive program, and they're not interested in programs like that," he says.

Senator Charles Rangel (D-New York), chairman of Ways and Means, recently expressed how it's important to nurture both sides of the pasture: "Fixing US trade policy means first and foremost retaining existing jobs, and creating new ones by opening foreign markets and establishing a level playing field for US workers, farmers and businesses. But, it also means helping those affected by globalization overcome its challenges and succeed. The Trade Adjustment Assistance program is supposed to provide that assistance; however, the program has not kept pace with globalization."

Maybe if the TAA retrained people to be soldiers of fortune or psychologists. We're going to need a lot more of those. - Dan Harkins