NH Chaos Represents Opportunity; Nancy Tobi Pleads For No "Recount" By Dave Berman Friday, January 11, 2008
Speculation represents the preponderance of verbiage about the New Hampshire primary. I can't say for certain what happened on Tuesday, or any other day in New Hampshire for that matter. But given where things stand, I would like to make the case that this chaotic time is an opportunity. Before I get to that, I will again site the BradBlog index of stories and the OpEdNews writer's campaign for detailed reporting. Meanwhile, the controversy has served as the latest shouting point dividing the blogosphere.
There is one voice that I want to offer this space to, and it is not because I necessarily agree with what she is saying. Nancy Tobi of Democracy For New Hampshire is a respected colleague who has been very generous with her time consulting the Voter Confidence Committee about hand-counting paper ballots. Nancy has posted at least two passionate statements urging that a "re-count" not be pursued. Here are excerpts, followed by my suggestions:
"I am telling everyone who asks to beg Paul and others to NOT request a recount. I would beg you to urge everyone to STAND DOWN from this strategy. It is a trap. Use all your influence to inform the Paul and Kucinich campaigns, which are being targeted to carry this out, to please NOT pursue the recount this year. I can not stress enough how important it is they do NOT have a recount.
We have no control over the ballot chain of custody and we have learned the pain from the 2004 Nader recount, in which only 11 districts were counted, chosen by a highly questionable person, and then nothing showed up. Now all we hear is how the Nader recount validated the machines. A candidate asking for a recount may well be a tool used to "prove" everything was okay and then that candidate will be further discredited. This is high stakes, no bullshit."
...
"No. It is time to take control. We want accountability and change. We get this NOT from a recount, but from an investigation. We need questions asked and answered, and changes made so we have a clean election in NH in November."
"Now activists around the nation are calling for a recount. In New Hampshire the manual recount has always been held as justification for holding elections in which more than 80% of our ballots are counted in secret by private corporations.
Does this logic hold up? Will a recount rectify the problem before us?
I say no. The problem before us is that we have outsourced the most precious thing in our democracy: the counting of our votes. And in New Hampshire, we have outsourced more than 80% of our votes to a private corporation counting those votes in secret, and, as it turns out, that private corporation has a convicted drug trafficker on its executive team to boot. A recount does not solve this problem."
...
"New Hampshire already knows how to fix this problem. For the past four years, New Hampshire citizens have been asking the State to fix this problem, but the State has thus far refused. We don't need a recount now. What we need now is for the State to reconsider and implement procedural and legislative solutions to guarantee open and honest elections.
A recount won't provide any significant benefit to the cause of free and fair and open elections. Bringing back full citizen oversight and checks and balances to all New Hampshire elections is the only way to avoid having any more questionable election outcomes in the Granite State."
I wholeheartedly agree, Dave, that we should do what is necessary to object to secret vote counting and expose poor administrative practices that fail to maintain adequate security procedures, chain of custody, or that allow inaccurate hand counting.Some ideas include:
* perform a top-to-bottom audit that includes all consideration of chain of custody and security issues.
Dave writes,
I appreciate Nancy's point that a re-count can be self-affirming as a stamp of approval. But the really important thing to realize is that:
This is the very thing we should seek to take on, and in as many ways as possible.
This idea that some modicum of public acceptance will settle in and endure to future elections is the very thing that we are now poised to prevent.”(emphasis added)
Exactly. The election results have been posted and no one, NO ONE, can assert with certainty the results are accurate. Salon.com’s Manjoo thinks he can, while simultaneously praising activists for being careful not to assert that fraud occurred.
Hey, Manjoo, the same standard applies to you, as well.You cannot assert that fraud DIDN’T happen, since self-erasing malware could have been inserted.That’s the terror behind inserting machines between a voter-prepared ballot and the count of that ballot. Inherent uncertainty prevails.
While technocrats would have the American public believing we should implement all kinds of second-count audit and security protocols to ensure the first count was accurate, they all miss the point.Public elections can and should be transparently counted the first time.
Over the past couple centuries, the best minds understood that it is the FIRST COUNT that must be secured, as Andi Novick recently noted based on her research into election fraud history.
Finally, Dave, I am thrilled to read about how early revolutionaries dealt with a bogus judicial system:
Raphael describes a resistance tactic mirrored throughout the colonies where courts were shut down by citizens who forced judges to rule by locally written charters. The alternative for the judges who wanted to continue under King's Law was often public humiliation such as tar and feathering.
Given how:
·the US Supreme Court decided to shut down the 2000 Florida recount (a later ballot count by NORC revealed that thousands of ballots with clear intent for Gore were not counted in accord with Florida’s voter-suppressive election laws);
·Ohio Secretary of State Blackwell certified the 2004 electors BEFORE the recount occurred; and
·A 15% undervote rate in the Jennings-Buchanan Congressional race in Florida didn’t convince the court to allow a source-code review, further institutionalizing secret vote counting.
we can have little confidence that the judicial system will rule on behalf of democracy.
Meanwhile, let's expose where the uncertainty exists in our election system.
p.s. I love the new VCC logo!
by
Rady Ananda (72 articles, 201 quicklinks, 17 diaries, 535 comments)
on Sunday, January 13, 2008 at 3:09:59 PM
