 |
Add to My Group
Democracy is Not A Spectator Sport and What "WeThePatriots" Are Doing About That
By Joan Brunwasser (about the author) Page 1 of 3 page(s)
For OpEdNews: Joan Brunwasser - Writer
By Joan Brunwasser, Voting Integrity Editor January 18, 2007
All of the House co-sponsors of the bill formerly known as "HR 550" (the "Holt Bill") received a surprise package this week. This jumbo mailing contained almost two hundred copies of HACKED! High Tech Election Theft in America, a collection of chapters about electronic vote fraud authored by experts from around the country such as Bev Harris, Lynn Landes, Bob Fitrakis, Harvey Wasserman, Victoria Collier, and others. Included with the book was a letter, a "Request By Voters", outlining why HR 550 needs to be amended in order to ensure that our elections provide transparency, accountability and citizen oversight. The petition has been signed thus far by more than 1,500 individuals and groups. The link to sign this letter can be found at http://www.wethepatriots.org
The original collaborators behind this effort are Nancy Tobi, Chair of Democracy for New Hampshire, Bev Harris, founder of Black Box Voting, who was featured in the recent HBO documentary "Hacking Democracy," Vickie Karp, a board member for Black Box Voting, Chair of the Coalition for Visible Ballots, co-editor of the book HACKED! High Tech Election Theft in America; and Abbe Waldman DeLozier, Political and Media Strategist for the Coalition for Visible Ballots and co-editor of HACKED!, and Paul Lehto, Election Law Attorney. The purpose of their website, WeThePatriots.org, is to "help citizens sign on to communicate formal, unified citizen requests to public officials."
After last November, it became clear that there was a public will to reform a voting system that is sadly out of whack. News of one election debacle after another seeped out and joined the reports already released about the many serious failings of the present system of electronic voting the GAO Report of September 2005, the BlackBoxVoting/Harri Hursti authorized hack in Leon County, Florida (seen in the recent HBO documentary "Hacking Democracy"), the Carter-Baker Commission, the Brennan Center Report, the SAIC Report, the Princeton Center Report and the recent NIST recommendations. What happened in Florida's 13th congressional district, and the ongoing controversy surrounding it, is a prime example of high tech voting at its worst. (Read Paul Krugman's article "When Votes Disappear", New York Times, November 24, 2006:
http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/66/24064 )
While there is strong sentiment across all political lines that something needs to be done to shore up the understandably drooping confidence of voters across the country, there is no unanimity on what exactly that might be. The Holt Bill, once viewed as the 'gold standard' of election reform, was written prior to November 2004 and the many reports issued since then and listed above. The Holt Bill is presently under review and we are not privy to the specific changes and whether they will suffice for meaningful reform. Prior to the opening of the new session of Congress, the bill had over 220 co-sponsors and it has become clear that momentum and the Democratic agenda demand that the bill (in whatever form) will be introduced soon, coming up for a vote in the next several months. There is no time to waste.
The Holt Bill is alternately called "The Voter Confidence Bill". Yet, it is hard to reconcile this title with the bill itself which "enables the continued use of high risk voting equipment and further entrenches private corporate ownership of our elections" WeThePatriots contend that a commitment to democracy should trump "confidence" in the e-voting industry, which has fallen short by every conceivable measure. Their "Request By Voters" (RBV) letter prefers to use citizen oversight and freedom of access to election information as the standards for democratic elections. RBV focuses on four ways to amend the Holt Bill:
RBV supports democratic standards over technology standards.
RBV requires voter-marked paper ballots, not voter-verifiable paper ballots.
RBV will insure that the counts are right on election night. It does not depend on post election audits.
RBV requires citizen oversight and not industry oversight of the nation's elections.
This citizen action of supplying both information (HACKED!) and recommendations (the "Request By Voters") is based on the premise that many members of Congress are not aware of the intricacies of voting, and especially electronic voting. WeThePatriots have worked with the nation's elections officials to make common sense recommendations that support the practical realities of election administration and management. They believe that the high tech, high cost recommendations of legislation like the Holt Bill do not reflect the realities faced by the nation's election officials who are trying to run clean elections. As a result, WeThePatriots contend that legislation such as the Holt Bill as written, will cause chaos and confusion in the nation's election systems, at a very high cost to American taxpayers.
The Holt Bill allows for electronic voting machines with "paper trails", but it has been proven that, through malicious viruses or malfunctioning, machines can record something totally at variance with the voters' wishes. A paper trail can, therefore, seemingly verify outright vote fraud, and there would be no evidence to contradict it. WeThePatriots.org consists of dedicated voting activists who have been studying these issues for years. They want our elected officials in Congress to have the information at hand when it is time to make some decisions.
They highly recommend a GAO report accounting for the more than three billion tax dollars spent on HAVA, how the money was spent and what it achieved. Only with a greater understanding of the entire picture can wise decisions be made. HAVA was supposed to be a cure for Florida 2000. Sadly, it is a cure that is much worse than the original disease.
Vickie Karp says: "Members of Congress, even those who co-sponsored HR 550 or some of the other proposed HAVA amendments, have not been able to study election problems 24/7 the way many of us in the election reform community do. We want to give these Congressional leaders some detailed information, information they likely have never seen before, which will give them the justification and the political will to turn the "paper trial" and "2% audit" ship around; to bring about paper ballot elections, hand-counted in public view with totals posted at precinct level".
Another purpose for this action is to put these members of Congress on notice: they now have the hard facts and if they proceed with bad decisions with further disastrous ramifications for our elections, they will be held accountable by the voting public. Too often lately, political leadership has shrugged off responsibility for its actions. This deep-seated lack of accountability is part of the problem facing us today. WeThePatriots feel that Congress is lagging behind the public in its desire and will for meaningful election reform to restore integrity and democracy to our elections.
Nancy Tobi contends: "The integrity of our elections does not depend on the next exciting technological possibility. It does not depend on a computer programmed to inform the voter whether or not he has voted right or wrong according to technological standards. The integrity of our elections does not depend on outrageous expenditures into a profit-driven high tech industry that to this point has failed abysmally in delivering any kind of product or process that meets the standards of democracy.
We offer our Remedies and Recommendations in our RBV to Congress to amend the Holt Bill as a practical, feasible, affordable, and democratic means for achieving this worthy goal. Our solutions are not high tech, high cost, or profit-driven. Our Remedies and Recommendations, if incorporated into the Holt Bill and passed by Congress, will have a profound influence in restoring democratic elections to every jurisdiction in the nation."
It is hard to go back to 2000 and realize that simply cleaning out the troughs of the voting machines would have taken care of those infamous hanging chads. Instead we have been sold one of the biggest boondoggles in our history. Private corporations grabbed at the opportunity to sell a concept they weren't in a position to successfuly implement. HAVA enabled a great marketing strategy by the voting industry which combined the carrot and the stick: offering millions of tax dollars for high tech machinery that was neither reliable, affordable, secure nor open to voter scrutiny. We are still reeling from the aftershocks of that misstep.
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
 Contact Author |
Contact Editor |
 View Authors' Articles |
by Milton C. Cummings
$161.95
Lowest New Price $70.80
Number of pages: 792
Publisher: Wadsworth Publishing
by Milton C. Cummings
$49.95
Lowest New Price $48.10
Number of pages: 240
Publisher: Wadsworth Publishing
by Abramson P
$46.95
Lowest New Price $19.42
Number of pages: 324
Publisher: CQ Press
by Karen O'Connor
$102.60
Lowest New Price $10.60
Number of pages: 704
Publisher: Longman
| 12 comments |
Want to post your own comment on this Article? 
|
||||
|
||||||||||||||
Must Read (0) 
Well Said (0) 
News (0) 
Touching (0) 
Funny (0) 
Supported (0) 
Interesting (0) 
Inspiring (0) 
Valuable (0) Tell a Friend:
|
Copyright © 2002-2009, OpEdNews |
