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But when they see that the real issue is the public right to see and authenticate, they find a whole new set of strategies for applying public pressure. When you use the RIGHTS argumentation -- the right to see and authenticate every essential step of the election without need for special expertise -- it forces the election official to jump on one side of the fence or the other: They either support public elections or they are fighting for concealment.
Not many public officials want to be seen publicly fighting for concealment of election processes. Once American citizens understand what their rights really are, and learn to argue effectively, we will discover more leverage to open up elections to the public.
We have to learn to use very specific words. You may notice that I have used the term "public right to see and authenticate every essential step of the election, without need for special expertise" many times. THAT is what we want, not some nebulous term like "transparency". The term "transparency" is actually just a metaphor anyway -- it doesn't even mean anything specific. We need to learn to specify what we want!
And when people say "what system do you recommend?" the answer is "any system that meets the test of public right to see and authenticate every essential step of the election, without need for special expertise."
How can people who want to understand what's so bad about electronic voting be brought up to speed?
It's much simpler than we thought. If you can't see it, it is concealed from you. And if a process is concealed from the public, it is not public. You can't see electrons.
Our immediate task starts with public awareness -- the public isn't even aware that they HAVE these crucial rights, and therefore there is no public pressure for rights protection to underpin political, legal, or administrative decision making. So we get legislation and administrative decisions that consistently violate our rights. The first step is to get people to understand what the rights are and learn to articulate them.
When I spoke with the plaintiff in the German case, he told me that a lot of public awareness efforts were done BEFORE the court decision in Germany, which was key. We should note that the USA is much bigger and more diverse, so our challenge is greater in the public awareness area.
Proponents of the Holt Bill say that it is unrealistic nowadays to have truly public elections. Really? Democracy is "unrealistic"?
Let me tell you how we can go about making sure democracy is realistic: Learn and practice the argumentation for the human rights aspect of elections. Feel free to cut and paste and roll these arguments and issues around on your own tongue. Or word processor. Get out there and develop public awareness of how these rights are obstructed when you conceal the counting of the vote. This builds the foundation for real, meaningful, lasting change.
Get off that frigging treadmill, always worrying about the next election, and hunker down on this. (It's only freedom.)
Document what's going on, for posterity if that's what it takes. Hats off to patriots like Nancy Tobi, and Pokey Anderson, and Susan Pynchon, for pinning down which organizations and people have been doing what to strip the public out of our own public elections.
One of the most brilliant minds for democracy today is election law scholar Paul Lehto, whose concept "Roll Call for Democracy" really does involve getting people to commit to a position on the rights issue in elections. Who will state for the record that they do NOT believe we have the right to see and authenticate every step of our own elections? What is your position?
At some point, every leader, every election reform advocate, every citizen should and will need to decide which side of the fence they want to land on. In the end, there will be two lines.
Educate. Cut the herd. Take roll.
This one is simpler than you think.
