The controversial election bill that would turn volunteers who return early ballots into felons almost died in committee, but at the last moment a Republican changed her vote, causing several audience members to gasp.

The vote on SB 1003 was split 4-4 in the House Judiciary Committee when the chair, Rep. Eddie Farnsworth, asked Rep. Doris Goodale, R-Kingman, to change her vote.

While Goodale did change her vote, she said Farnsworth didn’t bully her.

“I listened to Mr. Farnsworth, but the truth is it was a Secretary of State bill, it was a Republican bill so I thought rather than kill the bill we needed to move forward,” Goodale said.

She said she still is concerned about the bill. Anything that adds an obstacle to being able to vote is worrisome, she said. Being from a district with a lot of remote areas, Goodale said she understands that getting to a mailbox isn’t something that is easy for everyone.

Goodale said she received a note from Secretary of State Ken Bennett after changing her vote saying that he would work with her to help alleviate some of her concerns.

The bill has loosened up a bit since being heard in the Senate Elections Committee; now a voter can designate someone to drop off their ballot who isn’t a family member— just not someone who is a volunteer for an organization. The punishment has also gone from being a class 5 felony to a class 6.

Sami Hamed of Tucson testified against the bill, arguing that it would hurt people with disabilities.

Hamed is legally blind, doesn’t drive and votes early. Hamed said he doesn’t like to mail his ballot back because he worries it won’t get there in time. He said he can’t usually drop the ballot at the polls himself because he doesn’t have a car and transit in Tucson is “hit or miss.”

“Don’t hurt people with disabilities like me who want to vote and want to give it to a person who wants to do the right thing whether it’s a third party or not,” Hamed said. “Don’t criminalize them and don’t suppress me as a voter.”
Farnsworth said he appreciated Hamed’s testimony and then used it in his argument against the bill.

“He came from Tucson up to Phoenix but he can’t get on the bus to put a ballot in the mail?” Farnsworth said.
House Democrats argue that the bill is part of an extremist agenda that will suppress the Latino vote since volunteer groups have been a large factor in the increased participation of Latino voters.

Farnsworth said this is a red herring that comes up so often he doesn’t believe anybody pays attention to it anymore.

The bill is trying to solve two issues, according to Jim Drake, assistant secretary of state. The first is to reduce ballot tally time.

Arizona’s slow ballot count drew national attention in the 2012 election. After election day, around 54,000 of Pima County’s remaining ballots were early ballots that were dropped at the polls or arrived in the mail too late for processing.

“Everybody seems to want the results now,” said Karen Osborne, director of Maricopa County Elections, “and in order to do that now we have to have faster turn in of the envelopes.”

The second goal is to prevent potential fraud.

Osborne said two of her staff reported that people came to their doors masquerading as elections officials and trying to pick up ballots.

Martin Quezada, D-Phoenix, suggested prosecuting the imposters under the existing statute, which prohibits impersonating elections officials.

Osborne said that this bill would add a deterrent and that the current law hasn’t been meaningful enough to stop the situation.

“I did not hear that the impersonation and fraud that were alluded to in one testimony is so pervasive that we need to do something so drastic that is proposed in the criminalization part of the bill,” said Rep. Albert Hale, D-St. Michaels. “It should be our job to enhance and make it easier for people to exercise their right to vote and I think this is not the way to do it."

• Courtesy of Calorie Lab

As Mississippians continue the cry of, “Give me my super-sized soda, or give me death!”, they seem to be missing the point that those two things may go hand-in-hand.

For the seventh year in a row, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention named Mississippi the fattest state in the nation, finding nearly 35 percent of their adult population obese as of 2011, and, by association, seeing higher rates of diabetes, heart disease and climbing health care costs.

According to Stateline, Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant attempted to take a stand against the state’s poor health record last January in his State of the State Address: “As citizens, we must do a better job with our individual health care. Every Mississippian should realize that a sound diet and exercise program will save lives and reduce healthcare costs...We should not be the most obese state in the nation, leading the worst statistics of heart attacks and strokes.”

Almost a year after it earned a Best Narrative Feature Nod at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival, director David Riker’s The Girl is set for an exclusive Tucson run at the AMC Loews Foothills 15, 7401 N La Cholla Blvd, this Friday.

The film, tinged with the timeliness of immigration issues and starring Abbie Cornish, was produced by the same team behind the Academy Awards Best Picture nominee Beasts of the Southern Wild. While The Girl lacks any Quvenzhane Wallis facetime, another precocious young actress, Maritza Santiago Hernandez, was discovered and cast to play the title role of Rosa, the girl Cornish’s character feels inclined to protect.

Now, arguably, the most famous Critter Disrupting a Sporting Event in these parts is when Arizona Diamondbacks legend Randy Johnson obliterated a bird with a pitch during spring training in 2001. But this instance, from a soccer match in Switzerland, takes the cake.

From msnNOW:

A run-of-the-mill soccer match turned into a round of "catch the critter" on Sunday when a wild pine marten (a ferret-like little creature) invaded a Swiss soccer match. The wild animal streaked on to the pitch midway through the game between FC Thun and Zurich. Zurich player Loris Benito tackled and almost captured the marten, but it bit him on the finger and escaped again. It then shot up into the stands past spectators' feet and back on to the field, before it was finally removed from the stadium. But it turns out a marten bite is good luck: Zurich won the match 4-0.

Well, best wishes to you, Loris Benito. Just remember though, when you need to catch a furry critter, consider doing in a way as seen on Parks and Recreation: with a war cry and a bit of terror.

The Vatican enclave to elect the new leader of the Roman Catholic Church began today—and the coverage has been pretty interesting.

Take, for instance, Guardian News' istherewhitesmoke.com, a play off of similar one-note sites, such as DidDukeWin (which, as some folks will note, is so much sweeter after a Blue Devils loss).

• istherewhitesmoke.com

But this is all just part of the fun of the new papal election — especially as this is the first time that social media dorks (like me!) have had an opportunity to poke fun at the process with such a wide audience. No hiding our blaspheming behind closed doors now!

Spring is the consummate “out with the old, in with the new” season in the movie world, as film festivals screen both highly-anticipated blockbusters and low-profile indies that may hold equal weight next award season.

The 66th Cannes Film Festival looks like no exception to that rule: festival organizers announced yesterday that Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of The Great Gatsby will kick off Cannes on May 15, five days after it opens in U.S. theaters.

I’ve been a bit shaky on the film since its release date was pushed back from Christmas Day 2012 to May, supposedly to avoid Leonardo DiCaprio overload (could there ever be such a thing?) when Django Unchained premiered that same day. That, and the fact that Luhrmann hired Jay-Z to score the film in January - the month after it was originally slated to debut - and you’ve got what seems like a very messy film on your hands. I like the rapper more than the next person, but somewhere F. Scott Fitzgerald is rolling in his grave.

Man, nothing makes me happier than when someone in power thinks that speeding cameras are terrible.

From cnet.com:

Judge Robert Ruehlman this week declared that speed cameras were "a scam."

He vehemently criticized the authorities of Elmwood Place, Ohio, a village that installed speed cameras and then began to bathe in revenue as divas bathe in champagne.

The Columbus Dispatch reported that the judge also described the cameras as "nothing more than a high-tech game of 3-card Monty."

Zing!

In the first month of the cameras' activity, Elmwood Place sprinkled 6,600 speeding tickets, each of which generated $105.

Oddly, there are only 2,000 residents in the whole of Elmwood Place.

Locals decided this resembled backstreet robbery and so went to court, also offering the legal defense that the cameras were installed without displaying the appropriate public notices to warn people this was coming.

The judge ordered the village to just stop it with the speeding tickets.

The village, perhaps concerned that its pockets might cease to bulge, is to appeal his verdict.

Laws to declare radar enforcement cameras illegal are forthcoming. Take, for instance, HB 2477, which we mentioned in our "25 Bills to Watch" cover feature last month: as Skinny scribe Jim Nintzel notes, "HB2477 forbids cities and towns from putting photo radar on state highways unless they jump through various hoops to justify it. The bill passed the House Transportation Committee with bipartisan support last month and awaits a hearing in the Rules Committee."

Well today (according to Capitol Media Services via the local daily), HB 2477 passed the House. Not long yet, folks.

Executive Chef Ryan Clark from Lodge on the Desert is in the running for Food and Wine's The People's Choice Best New Chef's Award.

Currently there are 100 chefs on the list for ten geographical areas in America.

Starting today through March 18, you can vote for Ryan. Logically, he's eligible for the Southwest region.

Being named as one of ‘Food and Wine's People's Best New Chefs’ would not only be a feather in the cap for Clark, but would also shine a light on the culinary scene in Tucson.

Vote for Ryan Clark here: foodandwine.com/the-peoples-bnc

More often than not as of late, it seems like there are stories published regarding the terrifying nature of life on the Internet. In this case, Ars Technica looks into the phenomenon of people "hacking" other computers using remote administration tools to gain access to files, photos and webcams.

From Ars Technica:

The woman is visible from thousands of miles away on a hacker's computer. The hacker has infected her machine with a remote administration tool (RAT) that gives him access to the woman's screen, to her webcam, to her files, to her microphone. He watches her and the baby through a small control window open on his Windows PC, then he decides to have a little fun. He enters a series of shock and pornographic websites and watches them appear on the woman's computer.

The woman is startled. "Did it scare you?" she asks someone off camera. A young man steps into the webcam frame. "Yes," he says. Both stare at the computer in horrified fascination. A picture of old naked men appears in their Web browser, then vanishes as a McAfee security product blocks a "dangerous site."

"I think someone hacked into our computer," says the young man.

Far away, the hacker opens his "Fun Manager" control panel, which provides a host of tools for messing with his RAT victims. He can hide their Windows "Start" button or the taskbar or the clock or the desktop, badly confusing many casual Windows users. He can have their computer speak to them. Instead, he settles for popping open the remote computer's optical drive.

Even over the webcam, the sound of shock is clear. "Stay right here," says the woman.

"Whoa!... the DVD thing just opened," says the young man.

The hacker sends the pair a message that reads "achoo!" and the young man laughs in astonishment. "Disconnect from the Internet," he says. "Your laptop's going to go kaboom next."

As a side note, this is the second story regarding webcam "hacking" (for lack of a better shorthand) I've seen in the last year from a fairly major news outlet — in GQ's January 2012 issue, they told the story of Luis Mijangos, who spent a significant amount of his time hacking and building RATs for other people to use.

Today in Awesome Hacks of Classic Video Games, programmer/cool father Mike Mika reprogrammed Nintendo's classic Donkey Kong, switching the roles of the game's protagonist, Mario (then known as "Jumpman" for all you gaming history nerds), with his damsel-in-distress, Pauline. Above is gameplay from the first four levels of the revised DK, culminating in Pauline besting the big ape.

From Polygon:

"My three year old daughter and I play a lot of old games together," Mika wrote in the video's description. "Her favorite is Donkey Kong. Two days ago, she asked me if she could play as the girl and save Mario. She's played as Peach in Super Mario Bros. 2 and naturally just assumed she could do the same in Donkey Kong. I told her we couldn't in that particular Mario game, she seemed really bummed out by that."

So Mika put in the time to draw and insert new frames and swap the characters out. The result: a kick-ass, gender-equality statement—or, his daughter's new favorite heroine.

That's Gaming Dad of the Month material right there.