HomeHot NewsEconomic CrisisBarack ObamaImpeachmentElection IntegrityLGBT GayMediaBusiness - EconomicsEdgesGovernmentReligions
Life Arts ScienceSecurity WMDs TerrorRights Justice DemocracyObama transitionVeterans MilitaryTorture GuantanamoBarack Obama Family, etIraq Afghanistan PakistaMiddleEast

 

Tags for This Article:

USA United States Of America (7181) Voting Integrity (2739) Voting Technology (1948) Voter Disenfranchisement (1921) Voting Machines (1510) Voting Laws Federal HAVA (1256) Election Reform (1114) Lobbyists- K- Street (397) Strategy - Strategies (328) Disenfranchisement (139) Federal Agency EAC (60) Lobbyists K-Street Caveats (8)


Populum
Tag Cloud
Control Panel

Fine tune your search to access content
Articles Links
Diaries Products
Events All
All time
Last 6 mos
Last month
Last week
Last 24 hrs 		From:
Month  Day   Year

To:
Month  Day   Year
Alphabet
Popularity 		Count ON
Count OFF
This Level
 Sub-levels

 

 

 

 Tag(s): ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; (more...) ;  (less...)
Add to My Group
April 24, 2007 at 16:11:23

View Ratings | Rate It

The road to Boondoggle was paved with good intentions

by Bev Harris     Page 1 of 4 page(s)

www.opednews.com
 

Tell A Friend

HELP AMERICA VOTE ACT (HAVA) LOBBYIST LIST

Question: What happens if you lobby a lawmaker for $4 billion in expenditures for touch-screen (DRE) voting machines and go back to that same lawmaker two years later asking to dump DREs?



Answer: You lose credibility. It might be hard to lobby for other things. It's politically embarrassing. And your members, or funders, might have a few questions to ask about the prudence of your lobbying expenditures.

BUT HOW COULD ANYONE HAVE KNOWN?

The road to voting computers was paved with good intentions. No one knew that some of the programmers for voting computers would turn out to be convicted embezzlers.
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/2197/14318.html

No one realized that the main sponsor of the HAVA bill -- Rep. Bob Ney -- would end up going to jail on corruption charges.
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/8/46466.html

Few realized that the federal testing labs, Ciber and Wyle, weren't doing their jobs and their overseers -- NASED and now the EAC -- failed to check their work.
Wyle failures (Bowen Hearing): http://www.blackboxvoting.org/itahearing.pdf
Ciber failures: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/8/46428.html

HAVA bought a lemon.

WHO BIT INTO IT?

Progressive public interest groups. Labor unions. Civil rights groups.

While many election reform activists are under the impression that touch-screen (DRE) voting machines were some sort of Republican plot to take over America, the truth is that lobbying for the DRE-seeking "Help America Vote Act" came primarily from the foundation of the Democratic Party itself.

Activists throughout America have expressed surprise at the Democratic Party's unwillingness to pull DREs off the shelf. One reason is simply this: To do so would damage the credibility of those who lobbied for HAVA. And those who lobbied for HAVA just happen to be the biggest funders and activist workhorses for the Democratic Party itself.

WHO INVESTED THEIR CREDIBILITY (AND MEMBERSHIP FUNDS) TO LOBBY FOR HAVA?

1. Public interest groups - mostly progressive
2. Labor unions
3. Minority rights groups
4. Disability rights groups
5. Industry

Of these, the first four tend to favor Democrats but the fifth group -- industry, the group charged with writing the computer code that counts America's votes -- is made of of vendors that are more often close to the Republican Party.

Democrats lobbied HAVA in but to a large extent, Republican-affiliated vendors executed the mechanics of the plan. Some would call this comical; others, tragic.

 1  |  2  |  3  |  4

 

http://www.blackboxvoting.org

Bev Harris is executive director of Black Box Voting, Inc. an advocacy group committed to restoring citizen oversight to elections.

 

Bookmark this page: (what's this?)

NETSCAPE      DIGG THIS      Add This Page to Mr Wong!           NEWSVINE      DEl.ICIO.US      Looksmart Furl      My Web      Tag!RawSugar      Blink List     (More...)
Comments: Expand   Shrink   Hide  
No comments

 

Blog Ads

 

 

 

 

Most Popular Articles
in the Last 2 Days
(by Recommend Emails)

Breaking The Real "Last Taboo" - The Things No One Dares To Say by Frank Schaeffer

Bill Richardson - Kissinger-American by Greg Palast

Who is Black America's Moral Emissary to the World? by Glen Ford

Unlawful Assembly by David Swanson

Americans Have Learned the Wrong Lesson from the Holocaust by George Washington

Inmates Forced to Drink Poison Water - No Place to Go for Help by Dr. B. Cayenne Bird

Where Lies Truth in the Land of Lies? by Rowan Wolf

FAKE HORMONES DISRUPT ENDOCRINE SYSTEMS by Linda Schreiber

Orangutans Hate Changes in Their Cages by Stephen Pizzo

The End of Capitalism? Not quite, but nearly.... by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed

Go To Top 50 Most Popular

 

 

Copyright © OpEdNews, 2002-2009