Election Meddling on Steroids, HAVA and Holt:
As long as the promise of ultimate power seduces, we have not seen the last of partisan meddling in our elections. Partisan corporations are still fully-invested in controlling our elections—fully invested with our tax dollars. You bet'cha. Our elections have been privatized without our consent by the masterminds of HAVA the "Help America Vote Act of 2002. Yes, I harken back to the vendor gaming perpetrated by Jack Abramoff and Bob Ney with the help of two-hundread-seventy-five thousand from Diebold. We the People are however, fed up with paying taxes only to have vendors, lobbyists and politicians steal our money to steal our elections. This is anti-democratic, illogical, insane and will not be tolerated. Or, will it?
Just when you think the game is up, It aint over. Despite the decertification of Diebold, and the outright banning of ES&S in California, the subsequent divestiture of the Diebold Elections Division by it's parent corporation, HR811, the Holt bill is still on the table. Holt, contrary to what most believe, is claimed by some voting rights activists as just another ploy by the federal government to bring centralized federal control over what should be locally administered elections. To many election reform activists, Holt is seen as just more unprecedented federal meddling in the People's elections. The last round of federal meddling, HAVA, the poorly named "Help" America Vote Act of 2002, should be revisited in order to wrest the concentration of federal control away from the People's elections and to clear partisan vendor profiteers and lobbyists from our election process. Electronics should be banned from our elections once and for all. Furthmore, Holt makes the EAC a permanent federal body overseeing our elections. Bad idea. Don't forget James A Baker, Carlisle Group mogul and the man who paved the way for the appointment of Dubya as president using the Supreme Court to do it, sits on the EAC. That cannot be good.
Top-down democracy? No way!
Democracy cannot be privatized. Elections by their very nature need to be concentrated at the precinct level. It is how democracy works. It is fundamental that democracy be grounded at the local level. Real democracies are run from the bottom-up. Running a democracy from the top down just doesn't work and is antithetical to how a democracy should function. The system we have now would allow Homer Simpson to take control of all our foreign and domestic policy merely by sending the wrong information to some server somewhere. Some indeed would argue that Homer Simpson has already taken over and that democracy is over in America. I would prefer not to believe that but cannot argue that we have been had in the worst, most despicable ways. We the People have been most notoriously abused.
Elections officials often take offense to those among us who care enough to keep them honest and our elections transparent. Some have had the nerve to ask who pays us. They call us sore losers and tin foil hat conspiracy theorists, never considering we give up precious time with our families because we care about transparency in our elections, because we care about democracy itself. We only want to make things right. All we ever wanted was a government we could trust.
The hurdles a voting rights activist invariably encounters conducting citizen audits are many. You start out knowing that politicians, vendors, and most despicably, the corporate media will all attempt to demoralize, minimize, marginalize and diminish your efforts. They seemed to gain such joy at labeling us "tin foil hat conspiracy theorists" at first (they still try to get away with it) to which I say conspiracies can be, have been and are being proven. I would rather call myself a coincidence theorist. My personal attempts to see election records have often been stonewalled while the truth remained for them to know and for me to mostly find out. Most officials were tolerant, a few were coldly polite. Some seemed honest. Some did not. Some were suspiciously charming. Some behaved badly. I have learned not to trust anything they tell me. Nevertheless, I was able to take 100's of photographs of punchcard ballots and have had the opportunity to speak with election officials around the state. I have also met a remarkably resilient and courageous new set of friends and compatriots in the voting rights movement. I have been on recounts and investigations with them regarding some races of '04 and '06. I have participated in parallel elections with them—a very enriching experience. I have seen county prosecutors in action, or inaction if you will, and proving completely ineffective enforcing the rule of election law. I have seen the Ohio Supreme Court impose sanctions on a group of attorneys, among them Cliff Arnebeck and Dr. Bob Fitrakis, who had the courage to investigate and pursue justice regarding what happened in Ohio's '04 election. They were sanctioned with the court finding they had filed a frivolous lawsuit. Responding to that case Ohio Chief Justice, Thomas Moyer, whose own election in certain Ohio counties has been brought into question by some investigators, claimed the evidence in the case to be "woefully inadequate." Please, Judge Moyer, election rigging is not "frivolous." Nothing could be further from the truth. Over nine hundred affidavits and mountains of circumstantial evidence of election fraud and voter suppression were filed in court records here. Every day more evidence is uncovered. I have seen this same Supreme Court pass down rulings that only involve half-truths and invariably find the voter, if not in contempt, certainly contemptuous. I have seen case dismissals and whitewashing from our Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice. It has been one outrage after the next, a parade of obfuscations, lies, stonewalling, bad behavior and law breaking on the part of elections officials, politicians and judges who would rather appear clueless, remain stubbornly recalcitrant and willfully ignorant to the facts, than choose to clean up our elections once and for all. Even the democrats in Ohio who were voted in to clean up corruption and dirty elections seem now to be falling down on the job. Voters are furious at democrats who seem to have taken on the role of professional capitulators, catapulting the art of gutless, passive compliance to absurd new heights. Has there been a conspiracy to rig our elections from the top down? I say emphatically, yes.
Et tu, Brunner?
Ohio's elections are a mess. I will admit that election fraud is the elephant in the livingroom and much to deal with. However, We the People are now dealing with the very large elephant scat. It smells and simply must be dealt with. We had hope in our new Democratic leadership but that too is now being quashed. We the People will be forced to live in the stench of rigged elections perhaps for the last time in '08 when the empire finally crumbles. Will deferring to the Secretary of State's office to enforce the letter of election law in Ohio work for Attorney General Marc Dann like it did for Attorney General Petro? Will the protection order Petro granted Blackwell ever be lifted? Will Blackwell ever go to jail? Will the new democratically elected Secretary of State ensure Ohio's election laws are upheld? It does not look likely at present. In revelations recently brought to light by tenacious voting rights activist and Ohio's 12th Congressional district primary candidate, Paddy Shaffer, 56 of Ohio's 88 county BOE's failed to preserve Ohio's Election records per the '06 mandate of Federal Judge Algenon Marbley. Seven turned over no records at all while forty-nine counties turned over only partial records. SoS Brunner says she does not plan to pursue the incompetence and malfeasance regarding the blatant rebuke of the federal court order by these errant BOE's. Now we learn of a directive from Brunner's office which states that provisional ballots may not be audited. Is this really out of concern for the voter's privacy? This week's directive says she will no longer allow access to the names and addresses of provisional voters. Sorry Brunner, we the people have a right to audit our own votes. If Brunner is worried about preserving the secret ballot, she should look into the time stamping on the poll tapes that enable any unscrupulous person to line up votes with voters, revealing how people voted. This is a revelation out of Ohio Delaware County BOE brought to light this week by the bradblog and some election rights activists who discovered this problem with the time stamped RTAL paper trails.
Secretary of State Brunner needs to clean house in Ohio's Boards of Elections, not capitulate to vendors and acquiesce to her party in not pursuing justice in several of these clear violations of the rule of law among our Boards of Elections. Her position requires her to act in a non-partisan manner. Jennifer, we will need a giant dustpan and a lot of bleach and sunlight. We the People are willing to help with the task. We have a stake in this game after all—our kid's future. Up to this point though, all attempts have been made to deny us our right to clean up our own elections. Elephant scat does not sweep well under the carpet. We need your help.
It is most recommended that SoS Brunner save face now by following the courageous example of California Secretary of State Debra Bowen. Brunner needs to decertify touchscreen voting machines in Ohio. She should not dare to spend any more taxpayer's money test e-voting machines. Don't reinvent the wheel Jennifer! Debra Bowen already did the work. Just follow her lead! Spending more money to prove these machines are junk is fruitless and waste of taxpayer money. SoS Brunner would be wise to continue taking counsel from us activists who have been on the ground since 2000 fighting for the preservation of our democracy. If anyone really knows what happened in Ohio it is us citizen investigators, bloggers and freelance journalists. SoS Brunner, you are a lawyer, a judge and I watched you argue Ohio Senate Rules Committee Chair, Bill Harris into a dumb silence. I was impressed. Impress me again. You should take action now, prior to what will prove to be the colossal electronic election failure of '08. Enforcing the election laws of Ohio is what we elected you to do. We want action not talk. That is the People's priority. Cuyahoga County was a great start but we need to keep housecleaning. Jennifer, elephant poop does not sweep well under the carpet. Just because you can't see it, it still stinks to high heaven. Plus, despite the carpet, one still trips over it. Oh, San Diego California, we in Ohio are really sorry that you must now have your elections controlled by former Cuyahoga County BOE Director Michael Vu who was just hired by your Board of Elections. Yes, musical chairs in this con game goes across state lines, starts at the bottom and goes all the way to the top. Passing on our election contagion to other states is just plain wrong and for that we are truly sorry. Someone should tell Debra Bowen. Maybe she'll do something to stop him.
What you learn as an Ohio voting rights activist:
If you want a job done right, or at all, you have to do it yourself. After the DOJ, the FBI, the Ohio State Highway Patrol, the Attorney General's office, former Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell's office and the corporate media in Ohio and elsewhere refused to investigate the '04 election, naturally the job fell to the witnesses and victims of the crime—the voters themselves. If you want to live in a democracy, you have to act as if you own it, so myself and other local activists acted. Of course we ask, now WHY would J. Kenneth Blackwell investigate himself? In '04 it looked as if HE owned it. Of course, at the time we had no idea he was routing our election results though RNC servers owned by Smartech Corporation and housed in the basement of a Chattanooga, Tennessee bank, did we? Hey, not only does he not have to investigate himself but he still enjoys a protection order granted by former Attorney General Jim Petro. Now, election fraud of '04 is a matter only between Blackwell and his God. That is except for what you can read about in the Free Press at freepress.org. How convenient for him. He didn't have to talk about it in '04 and he still doesn't have to talk about it. The way things are, he will take the truth to his grave and NEVER be prosecuted. He still has to come to terms with God however. Why isn't he in jail?
In my few years as an election reform activist, I have concluded that electronic voting, made possible by HAVA, is anti-democratic and will ultimately prove a failed experiment in democracy. At this point electronic voting looks more like an experiment in corporate fascism. I have also learned the myriad forms of voter suppression embodies the definition of election fraud in that it is so amazingly effective in suppressing the vote. The methods of machine shorting, machine malfunctions, purging voter rolls, shredding voter registrations, blaming democratic voters for election fraud, forcing provisional voting on election day, etc., all prove to be highly effective methods of voter disenfranchisement. Create chaos and "paper trails"! Paper trails schmaper trails. Resembling used toilet paper in every way, let's take a hard look at the "paper trail" and "transparency."
The poll tapes involved in the contested '06 election of Squire v Geer in Franklin County Ohio looked mighty suspicious to me. There are several facts that were conveniently overlooked by magistrate Joel Sacco in his findings in Squire v Geer, incidentally. During this audit I was shocked that almost a third of all Franklin County precincts had separated poll tape summary reports. Uh, I'm sorry but the poll tape needs to be in one piece, otherwise, what reason do I have to go along with the "just trust us" argument? Furthermore, it looks really bad when the separated summary reports are shown as having been printed a full month after the election. Wha?? When we recounted the RTAL "paper trails" in the Pryce/Kilroy House race, Franklin County Board of elections staff managed to design a very clever device of wood and screws with a turn handle that spooled the paper trail before our eyes so we could actually conduct an audit where the voter's intention was visible. I have to say that in all my years as a voting rights activist, that is the closest to "transparency" as I ever got. We were able to read the RTAL as it scrolled by with these clever, homemade devices.
Considering that this "paper trail" (quite literally a trail of paper with disappearing ink) is considered a "ballot of record", I wondered why ES&S does not provide such a device for our boards of elections to use when they find themselves in need of conducting an audit. These voting machines, after all, cost taxpayers thousands a pop and should come with all accessories, don't you think? Did this company think we citizens might never want or need to see our ballots or recount our votes? Do they think we don't care about our vote? If so, they assume way too much.
