By Brad Friedman from Richfield, UT…
As we reported from a source late last night, today’s scheduled hearing in the House Rules Committee for Rush Holt’s Election Reform Bill (HR 811) has been canceled. The same source had also said that if the hearing was canceled, it could mean an “indefinite hold” for the controversial legislation.
Today, Republicans are predictably enjoying what has been termed as a Democratic “split,” by The Hill, and a Democratic “revolt,” by Politico, in the majority-led Rules Committee, once known as “The Speakers Committee” since it’s generally the last stop before legislation hits the House Floor. It’s also the place where the leadership determines whether amendments will be allowed to be brought for such legislation.
Of course, what Republicans seem to find most amusing is that Democrats in Congress don’t necessarily march in lock-step, as they do. Instead, the Democrats seem to have this crazy idea that in a democracy, there should be actual, responsible debate, care, and attention to details for an Election Reform bill which would have enormous national consequences to every local, state, and federal race in the union for decades to come. Go figure.
“Democrats believe in democracy, unlike that monolith we had before,” committee chairwoman Louise Slaughter (D-NY) told The Hill.
Nonetheless, the Republicans are attempting to make partisan hay from the situation. Minority Leader John Boehner’s website described the situation as a “House Committee Meltdown” yesterday. A spokesperson for David Drier (R-CA), the ranking member on the House Committee described the situation as “chaos.”
They’re all right. Democracy is chaos. Though the Holt bill has been largely dysfunctional from the get-go as its lead author, Rush Holt (D-NJ) began with a very open process, inviting many voices (including our own) into the bill’s drafting process, but then shut down the process in favor of both fear and agenda-driven interests…
People for the American Way (PFAW), for example, was allowed to keep a ban on Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, usually touch-screen) voting machines off the table, under the unevidenced notion that there was no support in Congress for such a ban. That, despite virtually every computer scientist and voting system expert in the world arguing that DREs cannot be used safely — with or without a so-called “paper trail” — in American democracy. Recent calls for a DRE ban from members of Congress and even the New York Times would counter that notion. But, of course, PFAW actually prefers DREs to paper-ballot systems, as we’ve tried to alert folks in the past.
Corporate behemoth Microsoft did the dirty work on behalf of the the voting machine vendors, leveraging its considerable lobbying power to shut down one of the best provisions in the originally introduced bill, which would have required full disclosure, to any member of the pubic, of the currently-secret source code which runs the machinery of our democracy. Microsoft’s lobbying forced a change to keep the source code a trade secret, available only to so-called “experts” and only in the event of a post-Election challenge. Republicans watching out for corporate interests, rather than government of the people, by the people, and for the people, were undoubtedly pleased.
The overhaul to the source-code provisions led even Holt to decry the effect of Microsoft on the bill as it was amended months ago in the House Administration Committee. “Unfortunately, the committee that made this change heard from Microsoft. They heard that voice…It wasn’t just Microsoft…it was software — the software industry.”
Previously, Holt’s legislative aide on the bill, Michelle Mulder, wrote to a large group of Election Integrity advocates, including NYU’s Media Professor and author, Mark Crispin Miller, declaring, “you can take up your concerns with Microsoft and others in the proprietary software industry.”
Mulder, however, went on to blame Election Integrity advocates — presumably including The BRAD BLOG — who had opposed the bill as written on a number of grounds. She said it was our fault that one of the original bill’s best provisions was watered down. “During Committee proceedings they [Microsoft] lobbied very heavily against the language that was in the bill as introduced,” Mulder wrote, “and none of you lobbied in favor of the language that was in the bill as introduced, and thus, the software industry won. It’s very simple, really.”
Mulder failed to note that many in the Election Integrity community — the largest and most powerful groups, in fact — had been in favor of the bill and had lobbied strongly for it. Others in the community had worked hard to amend it to include a number of “Essential Revisions” deemed imperative for such a monumentally important piece of legislation.
Ultimately, some EI advocates would go on to describe the bill as “Microsoft 811” and Democratic members of the Rules Committee this week had concerns that the bill either went too far, or didn’t go far enough.
But it was the powerful state elections officials who may have ruled the day. As usual, they want no Federal interference in “their” elections, and — more notably — don’t wish to have any mandates placed on them for either the type of voting machinery they choose to use or the way in which they use it.
Most such officials around the country continue to buy into the voting machine company propaganda that their voting systems are safe for use any way they decide to use them. That, despite their having been found vulnerable to hacking time and again, prone to failure time and again, and completely lacking in transparency to the public, for whom confidence in elections and the right to vote — and have that vote counted accurately — is the very bedrock of democracy.
The Democrats then, for the most part, ever fearful of taking bold measures even when in their hearts they know it’s the right thing to do, buckled to all of the above. And so we find ourselves where we are today.
Where will it all go from here? Stay tuned. Your guess is as good as ours at the moment. But there’s one thing we believe to be the case no matter what happens with this particular bill. Advocates of the Holt bill have long argued in its favor by admitting that it’s flawed, but stating (as fact) that either the Holt bill gets passed, or nothing will get passed. That false dichotomy, as we reported many moons ago, is and was little more than a desperate, divisive fear-tactic and a canard.
If HR 811 dies in committee, or even on the floor of the House, should it ever get there, the alternative is not “nothing,” as the nearly-universal belief that our system of democracy is dysfunctional and crumbling is more present now than ever. Both state legislation — as well as new, so-far un-introduced federal legislation — will likely fill the vacuum should the Holt bill find its way into the dust bin of history.
As we’ve said, stay tuned…
Can anyone tell me where I can find a fairly comprehensive and up-to-date list of organizations, individuals, states, officials, other jurisdictions that have released position statements in opposition to HR 811?
Linda
There is a list of organizations and voters who have endorsed the need for essential revisions that must be made to the bill here:
http://www.votersunite.org/info...lRevisions.htm
whatcha doin in Utah, Bradley?
After staying up all night and faxing each Rules Committee member with a variation of Teresa Hommel’s excellent letter, (and having previously called each one of them), I’m close to tears reading Brad today. At 61 years old, I’ve almost given up on this reactionary country, but then Brad always ends on an optimistic note and just keeps on going. To maintain my sanity, I sent him some money… where do we go from here?
{Ed Note: Sorry, Henry, since I cannot tell if your comment is for or against violence and criminality, it has to go. Only some of our readers can speak Spanish, but all can at least read English. –99}
what?
This Columbian rant has nothing to do with our stolen elections…
where’s my SPAM button?
You know what? I f*cking hate politicians. F*cking hate them. Always have, always will, Ron Paul excepted.
Take a look at what the http://www.TBRnews.org said in a recent post to their website:
Please do send the TBR dudes e-mails asking them to go ahead and DO post those Repug names SOON!
Those politician bastards are so f*cking dirty that they really, really deserve to be muddied, feathered, arrested and tortured by being locked in cells dominated by a break-proof tv loudly repeating over and over the entire Declaration of Independence, the Organic Constitution, as Lawfully Amended, the Magna Carta and Founding Father quotes–all done in young boy’s voices.
Yes,.. but,.. but,.. but,..
if everyone votes in lock step, it is far neater,.. and more orderly,.. then you can quick move on to the next issue at hand,.. without debate,.. or dissension,.. or opposition,.. time consuming discussions inherent of a DEMOCRACY,..
Click link,…
Richfield, I got a couple wives over there.
Fascism is Fun!
It’s interesting that Boehner characterizes this cancellation of the bill’s being brought before the Rules Committee as being a committee meltdown, and Drier characterizes it as chaos, while I consider it to be a success. Apparently, enough people got through to the right people with the right influence and convinced them that this bill is simply not ready for a hearing, and it may never be.
You did a good job summarizing this, Brad. I appreciate this.
If we would just get over that hump of a dilemma, the hump about the fixation some of us seem to have with electronic voting machines, despite their undeniable myriad problems, then we could all get down to the business of writing a truly good piece of election reform legislation, one that we could all be proud of, not one that we have to make excuses for its being “less than perfect” and “our only hope.” A good piece of election reform legislation would deal with the actual problems that occurred in 2000 and in 2004, such as poor quality ballot paper, secretaries of states with party allegiances that supercede their oaths to uphold the laws and run honest elections, illegal voter list purges, that sort of thing.
I can’t say this enough times: Look at how elections are run in Sonoma County, CA. We use paper ballots, no one is denied their right to vote, and I have complete confidence, along with everyone else that I am aware of, that our election results reflect the will of the voters. The vote-counting is done quickly and accurately, and ballots are stored securely in the event that a recount is asked for. Our local elections officials have established simple procedures that work and ensure security. And any kind of a billion dollar overhaul of our county’s elections processes would be a complete waste of the taxpayer’s money.
The only problems I can see with keeping the tried and true procedures we have in place, is that no special interest group stands to benefit financially. In our elections process, there is no problem for the electronic voting machine industry to step in and solve. There is no problem for the software industry to step in and solve. There is no problem that would require the services of a federal, politically-appointed group of overseers to step in and solve, or even step in to make the determination FOR US if there is any problem worth solving. Nobody is going to make any windfall profits from federal streams of money off of looking at and adopting an elections system that works, and works well.
Namaste.
Can anyone tell me if Holt reform act still gives (or ever did) the EAC and thus whitehouse officials control over election admin?
… Sally said…
“Can anyone tell me if Holt reform act still gives (or ever did) the EAC and thus whitehouse officials control over election admin?”
It did and it does hand over control of elections to Executive Branch presidential appointees. Thus the supposedly temporary EAC lumbers on like something out of a horror movie… always growing in reach and power despite the fact that this “temporary advisory agency” was supposed to be safely in its grave long ago.
But, instead, HR 811 overtly converts the EAC into a permanently funded federal-level regulatory agency with de facto control of all vital election processes under the guise of “regulating e-voting”.
To paraphrase from something I wrote over at BlackBoxVoting.org… Y’see, while the actual text that originally said “EXTENSION OF AUTHORIZATION OF ELECTION ASSISTANCE COMMISSION” in H.R. 811 has indeed been dropped… the committee version just amends HAVA to fund the EAC in perpetuity in a variety of ways without touching the sunset clause.
Here is just one example of permanent EAC funding from the bill… there are several others…
… obviously this is permanent, one of the several permanent prerogatives of the EAC, so skip to…
So “Holt’s Fiasco” still funds the EAC… and funds it forever… and there’s much more money than that involved.
The committee version simply funds the EAC en passant instead of directly (and honestly) overriding the sunset clause.
And this is known to be so messed up and wrong that Holt and company lie nonstop about that simple fact… but everyone in power wants control of the means to power so the demonstrably corrupt, demonstrably incompetent and demonstrably partisan EAC keeps on keeping on.
Let me repeat that:
Holt and company lie nonstop about this simple and easily verified fact.
http://holt.house.gov/pdf/hr_81...al_changes.pdf
Got the message?
Holt and company lie nonstop about this bill.
(… of course “lying nonstop” is endemic to this bill in a lot of other areas as well…)
Thankyou ZapKittty 🙂
I found it surprising that Kucinich who is the only real antiwar candidate co-sponsered this bill for so long. I know he has now withdrawn support for it but I really don’t see how anyone can support it untill the EAC is replaced by an independant (of the whitehouse etc ) body. I’m relieved that this bill has stalled. No progress is better than falling off the cliff in my opinion. Something does need to happen soon. Not this Bill though.
Re the EAC and its powers as described in HR 811, or any other piece of legislation, for that matter.
I don’t see how the problems that we’ve all been talking about concerning powers given to the EAC would be solved at all simply by making the EAC an independent body, with its members not appointed by the WH. If there’s going to be an EAC, and maybe there should be, its “powers” should be very clearly defined as being based on its responsibilities to make sure that certain broad/general standards should be maintained in elections systems throughout the states. In my opinion, its role should be merely to prevent individuals/organizations/officials/agencies that may have powerful political connections from setting elections protocols and procedures that violate certain fundamental areas generally agreed upon as being reasonable parameters within which all states must operate and run elections.
The EAC should not have the jurisdiction to decide whether or not a state or a county or a precinct may conduct a recount, if it decides to do so. However, if it’s determined that a state did not perform its elections duties within certain parameters, as in making sure that every voter was allowed to vote and to vote without having to wait in line for an unreasonable length of time, then a particular state official should not have the authority to NOT order a recount. This would be an instance when the EAC might step in and say waitaminute, your citizens want a recount and there’s reason to believe that some political shenanigans are going on here and so you state officials can’t deny a recount because that would go against the general parameters outlined for states in their elections by the EAC.
I would rather have no EAC at all, than to have one with the power to tell the states when they can conduct recounts, and when they cannot.
Why is this blog so full of hatred? Why is this blog so full of people who, despite the elected nature of elections officials, continue to despise them?
I honestly want to know. Were you all so “curious” when a ballot was on “paper?” – there have been paper ballots (and corruption with them) since there inception.
What makes ANY of you think that electronic ballots that are audited by their paper-trails…..any less than corrupt??
I’m tired of the nonsense that “electronic ballots are bad.” – for heavens’ sake, how many ‘op-scan’ or ‘punch-card’ ballots over the last 50 years have been “accurate?”
hypocrisy only runs as deep as YOU.
#16
moving boxes and pallets of reams of paper although illegal, is a lot more difficult than flipping an invisible electronic 0 (low) to a 1 (high).
the public can not SEE PHYSICALLY electronic signals.
I find the issue of supporting HR-811 a shoe-in when you understand what the bill actually does target and successfully accomplish, rather than focusing on what we wish it did.
Many activists, and apparently some congressfolk such as Rules Committee Chair Louise Slaughter, are hung up on “solving” the problem of faulty voting machines, or eliminating them. Consider this:
* “Solving” faulty voting machine results would take the equivalent of a very expensive state gaming/gambling commission’s worth of electronic monitoring and regulatory oversight.
* Eliminating “DREs” isn’t remotely politically feasible right now, because the public isn’t behind it. (You can just imaging Florida 2000 ‘hanging chad’ video being played over & over…)
HR-811, however, isn’t about “fixing” for now. It’s about simple, relatively inexpensive “auditing”. Whether voters sleep through their VVPAT moment or not, the audit will prove a voting machine’s (and typially the software release, equipment model and vendor’s) erroneous counts.
With auditing, if these voting machines are as faulty (and perhaps as subject to fraud) as they surely seem to be, 2008 will be a watershed year in widespread public awareness of this horrific corruption of our democracy.
Then more comprehensive reforms such as a DRE ban and re-structuring/eliliminating the EAC will become politically viable.
OneWhoDoesn\’tHate said,
“What makes ANY of you think that electronic ballots that are audited by their paper-trails…..any less than corrupt??
I’m tired of the nonsense that “electronic ballots are bad.” – for heavens’ sake, how many ‘op-scan’ or ‘punch-card’ ballots over the last 50 years have been “accurate?” ”
We DON’t think ‘paper trails’ are the answer. They can be as phony as the DRE numbers. That’s why we often refer to it as toilet paper.
Electronic ballots ARE bad. You don’t “see” the computer program taking your selection and ‘writing’ it to the DRE, so you have no idea if it’s being done right and there’s no visible ballot to review later. The audit trail isn’t a legal ballot and is so much irrelevant trash.
Sure, other paper ballot systems have been rigged. There’s no doubt in that.
But, consider this, if it takes a lot of work and many many people to steal a national election using paper ballots, then that has to be completely superior to having only ONE person flips a switch to steal the entire national election.
Let’s make it HARDER to steal an election, not easier.
Let’s make it require MORE people to steal an election, not fewer.
Let’s make it much MORE expensive to steal an election, not less expensive.
Let’s make our elections MORE provably accurate, not less so.
Let’s get rid of electronic voting systems which operate inside computer chips where humans can’t see.
No more DREs !
* Eliminating “DREs” isn’t remotely politically feasible right now
DRE’s are not the only problem.
Counting electronically is.
If eliminating DRE’s isn’t feasible, then take the time to make the public feasic about the un-validatable nature of counting electronically.
Force the issue. I do it all the time. Just yesterday, I seen someone carrying a sign saying, “Vote Democrat.” I got into a conversation with them and in less than sixty seconds he understood exactly what I mean about the danger of counting electronically and that it really doesn’t matter Democrat or Republican, we need leadership that isn’t corrupt. Did I sway him to stop carrying that fuckin sign around? No, and I didn’t expect it to. But he KNEW that restoring the constitution is going to hinge on removing the corruption, by replacing the corrupt with folks that actually take action based on their OATH OF OFFICE, and that removing the corruption is going to hinge on accurately counting votes, which can’t be done until the votes are no longer counted electronically.
If we want the public to be informed, the money for candidates needs to be removed from the equation. That way the Corporated Owned Alphabet Channels can’t dominate the Air Waves with this same old crap–Zero Useful Information, Moderated, Censored, Formated, Town Hall Meeting’ed, Canned Time Wasting Questions, Third Parties Excluded from the Debate, all under a corporate time limit before the next stupid ass McDonnalds, Chevron, Ford and Kia commercials. Candidates can not even get their point (if they have a valid one) across in this stupid game.
Our country is at war. This is insane, that anyone puts up with this shit.
“You can just imaging Florida 2000 ‘hanging chad’ video being played over & over…”
The chads hung because the paper wasn’t meeting the technical specs asked for. Because some entity screwed with the paper supply. And note I am NOT defending this method of voting, if it counts those cards electronically.
What I am saying is PRINT a ballot to be hand counted with public oversight.
You want to use electronics, use them to PRINT, not to COUNT.
That’s pretty simple.
To Phil,
Thanks for your comment. We are in agreement about the right ultimate solution for our country – hand-counted paper ballots.
As has been described a number of times here before, they use this system nationwide in Canada (typically completed in 4-5 hours!), and Rep. Kucinich has a bill offering such as solution. I did use the short-hand “ban DREs” for the sake of brevity, but I agree, even opti-scan can be corrupted on a mass scale, and pen-to-paper voting with a hand-count is best. Along the lines of what One Who Doesn’t Hate said, hand-counts can only be corrupted one precinct at a time, rather than through mass software distribuition to thousands of precincts.
We differ in our estimation of whether there could be public and/or political will for such a drastic change without the shocking, hard data that HR-811 style audits (which are hand-counted, by the way) would present to the public.
You make a very relevant point about the gaping need for effective issue leadership among aware citizens, those with public cache, and within Democratic ranks, where most of the Congressional support for genuine electoral reform can be found. I heartily agree with you there as well, though I consider mass media to reign these days, and I also consider it hard for anyone who is not an established public figure to break through the media bubble. As for the Demoratic Party, I’ve been losing heart that they’ll figure out either the political or – how else to put it? – patriotic calculus of genuine, coordinated issue leadership for some time to come, if ever. (Cf. Will Rogers…)
Hand-count paper ballots are the the best ultimate solution. (As has been noted here before, tactile ballots address motor and sight-impared voting without computers, cf. http://www.vote-pad.com.) The question of the day is: How do we get there?
Regards,
Mark
I apologize to those who are reading my posts at the other EI site I post at, but it seems like the same issues keep coming up at both sites, and rather than join in each time with a different response that says the same thing, I’m posting a lot of the same comment.
In my opinion, saying that “eliminating DREs isn’t remotely politically feasible right now” is like saying that “pulling our troops out of Iraq isn’t remotely politically feasible right now.” That is just a self-defeating attitude.
And Phil is right. DREs are not the only problem. There are so many problems with 811, that why is it that we are trying to hang onto it. Here is the reason: For some states and voting jurisdictions, their elections protocols and procedures are so bad, that people in those areas feel that 811 would improve things for them. For other states and voting jurisdictions, their elections protocols and procedures cannot be characterized as “so bad,” so people in those jurisdictions who are following this issue feel that 811 would introduce problems that currently do not exist for them. All of these people are probably correct, and this is why it is so … annoying to keep reading posts in which the pro-811ers ridicule and/or insult the intelligence and knowledge of the non-supporters of 811.
So if you want 811 to get passed, then you should direct all/most of your efforts toward those states with the worst problems. But conversely, if you want 811 to get dumped, then you should direct all/most of your efforts toward those states without egregious problems.
But there’s another, more sensible way to go …
In order for the EI community to come together in support of a piece of legislation, then that piece of legislation must be a step forward for all states and jurisdictions, and not just the ones with the most and worst problems. At the least, it can’t be a step backward for anyone. This is why, as a Californian, I could never support 811, and I could never ask my legislator to do so.
In talking to my friends who are interested in this issue, the question that continuously comes up in discussions about election reform legislation is “What do electronic voting machines have to do with election reform?” This is a legitimate question in an area of the country with elections that are not problematic, and with a better-than-average informed electorate.
Yesterday morning, I had a conversation with a neighbor in which he said (paraphrased, of course) “On the surface, it seemed like a good idea to modernize our election process with modern technology. But now that
we’ve seen what that can be like, and experienced all the problems that arose from it, and no longer have any level of trust in the industry that wants to cash in on this modernization of elections, it’s pretty clear that, at least for now, elections must be run with paper ballots.”
No one I know in my area that I have spoken with and who’s interested in this issue at all wants electronic voting machines to factor into their voting processes.
And the fact that BOTH machines available to voters at my polling place were not used AT ALL, NOT ONE TIME, during either the June 2006 or November 2006 elections bears this out. Every voter who happened to comment at all about the machines expressed distrust and/or disgust with the taxpayer money being wasted in this way.
What would be required of a piece of election reform legislation to improve the situation for states with problems, and at least not worsen the situation for those without? That’s the question that needs to be answered by the EI community. And on further thought, if we want states without problems to support legislation for states with problems, that legislation will need to have SOMETHING to give to the non-problematic states.
To Linda,
Thanks for your informed post. I’m not sure if you were referring to my comment in particular, but in any case, sorry if my comment appeared to you to insult certain people’s intelligence.
I whole heartedly agree that much reform is needed besides auditing computerized voting machines. Just scratching the surface, areas include quality polling logistics notification and hot-lines, safeguards against mis-information and intimidation, voting booth access, standards for ballot oversight and security, etc. Legislation should include the teeth of strong personal legal liability for gross negligence and obstruction of the meeting of standards by officials charged with oversight.
I reviewed Federal election reform bills a couple years back, and they’re appallingly incoherent. They’re all over the map, with overlap, gaps, missing companion bills and wide ranges in the quality of issue treatment. A party could do themselves a real favor by introducing a clean, best-of-breed comprehensive set of bills. Similarly, prominent promotion of a set of ‘template state legislation’ that is widely recognized for quality could be a huge help locally.
As I think you’ve seen me say, my personal goal is to have hand-count paper ballots. I simply see what I’m predicting will be HR-811’s shocking audit reports as a necessary step in jarring this out-of-touch congress into supporting such a sweeping measure.
Regarding HR-811, I still see you saying that it doesn’t do enough (cf. thinking auditing is all HR-811 can achieve right now is “a self-defeating attitude”).
I say, HR-811 has a fairly narrow focus, that of adding crucial auditing to the reality of black box voting that is a maddening joke in a great society such as ours, and it does so in a reliable way (leveraging 90 years of quality control practices). What’s so bad about that?
Yes, there may be effort to expend in getting printers to work, and putting audit logistics together, but no corner drug store in Main Street America would dare have a cash register with out an end-of-day record – why should our polling places?
I don’t understand your concerns about undershooting what “bad jurisdictions need”, overshooting what “not so bad jurisdictions need”, or having people’s expectations in such jurisdictions be under/over set. We have black box voting, and need auditing. HR-811 provides a powerful hand-counted audit, in the most economical fashion available. In one National Council of State Legislators meeting, I heard as many local officials who are gravely concerned about black box voting, and happy to do what it takes to end it, as speak against the inconvenience and possible funding gaps in VVPAT.
Why penalize this bill for targeting an important area, covering it well, and having spent the years to gather the support to pass? (I have chided Holt in other posts that he might have left out some of the preventative provisions such as source code review just so we activists didn’t mis-understand the bill’s intent, which is clearly not to be an airtight fix for electronic tabulation…)
HR-811’s potentially shocking audit reports will make many more sweeping reforms that are urgently promoted by its detractors politically possible. I believe it must pass this fall.
Mark
Mark, I wasn’t thinking of your comments in particular.
We already have these elections procedures where I live: “… quality polling logistics notification and hot-lines, safeguards against mis-information and intimidation, voting booth access, standards for ballot oversight and security, etc.”
I can’t support the other stuff that HR 811 would foist on my voting area, so that another voting area might benefit from getting those procedures that my local voting area already provides us with. We should all be working together to get ONLY THOSE elections procedures and protocols that we need, w/o all the other stuff that’s thrown in to benefit the electronic voting machine industry or the software industry or create another federal agency that would become nothing more than another political obstacle to honest elections.
We don’t need HR 811 to get audit reports.
And as far as our legislators’ role in all this, this is what I have to say: Like it or not, our legislators do stuff that will keep them in office. Period. One legislator will add something to a bill that he’s being bribed by some interest in his district/state to add, and then he’ll go around and ask other legislators to approve it, and in return he’ll owe them a favor. We can’t have legislation with all these strings attached to it having anything to do with our elections. This is why you keep reading posts from people who say they want STATES to deal with this issue or this type of legislation, not the federal legislators. We will all have less control of this kind of backroom dealing if we let our federal government legislate election reform on the specific level that HR 811 is attempting to do.
I can support GENERAL guidelines, minimum standards that could be set by an agency such as the EAC, in a national piece of legislation. But when somebody with a crummy state elections system in one state is trying to establish specific elections protocols that would affect MY state, well, I think that’s a HUGE mistake.
Mark, one more thing.
Somebody like Karl Rove would like NOTHING MORE than for our national elections to be controlled to a greater degree by national legislation, with an oversight body made up of national-level people. More national control over elections makes it easier to conduct election shenanigans. You wouldn’t need to have a Katherine Harris or a Ken Blackwell positioned in key states, in order to make an election go a certain way.
This is one of the reasons I think 811 is a potentially dangerous piece of legislation IN THE LONG RUN, and does not head our elections in the right direction. It might save a few states in 2008, but that’s not worth what this bill, if it becomes law, could end up accomplishing in the area of national election reform IN THE LONG RUN.
Linda,
Thanks again for your feedback.
From your first couple paragraphs, you’re saying that you’re happy with your state’s election system, and you don’t see any value in having additional regulations foisted on it, even if it would be part of eliminating black box voting nationwide.
That’s certainly the heart of where we differ.
To me, that topic – whether or not everyone benefits if we eliminate black box voting nationwide – makes the rest of the HR-811 conversation academic. E.g. I could point out that Holt’s HR-811 is very accomodating to a local/state-focused reform agenda. It narrowly requires auditing for black box equipment in a way that maintains privacy for those with disability, leaving voter experience, protection and procedures up to local jurisdictions and/or the states. But that’s not germain to your opposition – you simply don’t see the value in the audit. As another example, two years ago, activists complained that the EAC was too weak. Now we’re worried it could become too influential… But the EAC’s role and funding is simply not the most powerful effect of the legislation – the audit is. You don’t see the value in it. I happen to see value, and hope dearly for it to come to pass.
Mark
Mark,
re “From your first couple paragraphs, you’re saying that you’re happy with your state’s election system, and you don’t see any value in having additional regulations foisted on it, even if it would be part of eliminating black box voting nationwide.”
Correction: My state is doing an OK job. Had we allowed McPherson to remain in the SoS position, we would now be heading in the direction of doing an increasingly crummy job. We have Debra Bowen now, who is cleaning house, baby! If she continues to do what she is doing, our systems and protocols will become better.
I have a much better chance, as a citizen, of communicating effectively with my own SoS, than I do with someone appointed to the EAC.
Mark, when you refer to “Black Box Voting” as being the evildoer, well what exactly are you referring to? That term conjures up Darth Vader-like badness. I, for one, am sooo burned out on fear-mongering for legislation, that I really can’t keep my lid on anymore whenever somebody uses any kind of emotional imagery or loaded language or anything like that.
Sorry, but I can’t address your concerns with BBV. I just know my state has a system that’s working well in most ways, and is now under the direction of a very reputable person of high character, while other states cannot say this about their systems.
I’m unable to wrap myself around your imagery of the evil BBV-Darth Vader character, in order to support 811.
Replying to “Mark-MyWords” initial comment here, with the same reply I gave him over at HuffPo where he posted the same comment in reply to an item I posted over there.
Mark –
As I tried to mention in reply to your next response at HuffPo (where there seems to be probs with the comments at the moment)…