Exclusive Interview with David Earnhardt, producer/director of “Uncounted” – Chicago premiere Tuesday, April 29th
I’m really disappointed. For months, I’ve been looking forward to David Earnhardt coming to Chicago with his documentary “Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections”. Since its Nashville premiere last November, Earnhardt has been on the road, with screenings before appreciative audiences taking place in theatres across the country.
It’s official: “Uncounted” will be shown downtown next Tuesday, April 29th, at Landmark's Century Theatre, 2828 N. Clark St. at 7:00 p.m. There will be a Q & A afterwards with Earnhardt and Bob Koehler, syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services.
The film is professionally done and quite compelling, as befits the work of an award-winning producer and director. I know; I’ve seen it several times and wrote a review for OpEdNews which you are welcome to peruse. The bad news is that, because of a minor but inconveniently scheduled surgery, I will neither be able to put Earnhardt up nor attend the event.
So, in order not to feel totally out of the loop, I’ve done an extensive interview with filmmaker Earnhardt and offer snippets of it here for your reading pleasure. I’m hoping that it will get you thinking. If you live in the Chicago area or have friends who do, please spread the word. I guarantee that you will not walk out of the theatre unmoved.
Q. Let’s start at the beginning. What is this movie about?
A. We show that our election system doesn’t work very well. Millions of people’s votes go uncounted in major election after major election, either through voter suppression - where people who go to the election polls on to vote on Election Day are prevented from exercising their right to vote - or through the many problems with the electronic voting that has pretty much taken over our election system these days. And we show in our film that the vast majority of these uncounted votes, particularly in elections of the last decade, would have gone for Democratic candidates had they been properly counted. For example, most of us know that President Bush wasn’t fairly elected in 2000, but we also show in our movie that he would not have been elected in 2004 had that election been run fairly.
We further show how millions of votes also went uncounted in the 2006 mid-term election, blunting what would have been an even bigger Democratic victory in that mid-term election. So, recent history tells us that the lack of integrity in our election process is huge and will probably play the single biggest role in who’s going to get elected in 2008.
Q. You’ve pointed out these election irregularities that have gone against Democrats and favored Republicans. It would sound like that this film is taking a partisan slant. So talk to me about that.
A. In recent years, virtually all the manipulation has been at the expense of Democratic candidates, and that is a reflection of what’s gone on in recent history. But this is a reflection more of who’s in power. The party that’s in power is in a better position to manipulate election results. But you don’t have to go very far back in history to see that it can swing the other way. Throughout history, you can find example after example of the Democratic Party running huge political machines that stuffed ballot boxes and stole elections. Political machines like Tammany Hall or the Daley machine in Chicago.
The bottom line is that when people go to the polls, they ought to be able to vote and their vote ought to be counted. We all have an interest in this. It shouldn’t be a matter of who’s in power; it should be a matter of the power of the public citizen to hold our leaders accountable by the power of the vote. That’s the core of our democracy, and this is the kind of issue – making sure each and every vote is properly counted – that can pull together everybody. I am sure that 95%, if not more, of citizens in this country believe that the vote ought to be counted as intended. It’s important to us as Americans, and it’s something we have grown up with – this belief in democracy. And I find when I show this film, when it’s audiences that have Democrats, Republicans, Independents, Greens, Libertarians – it makes everybody mad when they see the evidence that votes are not getting properly counted.
Everybody has a stake in this, and it’s in everybody’s interest to get behind this issue. We ought to have fair and honest elections.
Q. Boil it all down for our readers. What’s so bad about electronic voting?
A. The biggest problem with electronic voting is it breaks a big, a basic tenet of democracy – is that we’re supposed to be voting in secret and counting in public. You can’t see how the counting happens on these electronic voting machines. You just put your vote in a black box, and then it just disappears. It’s not a good way to run our democracy.
And the biggest opponents of all to these electronic voting machines are computer scientists themselves. They will tell you as a group that computers are not a good way to count our votes; it’s just too difficult to keep them secure. And it doesn’t even really take a conspiracy to change vote totals, and that’s the scariest part of all. One person can get inside these machines, and can introduce a virus that can be passed from machine to machine. Or a rogue programmer can manipulate results at the tabulation level where literally millions of votes can be shifted. It’s a scary situation for something as precious as the core of our democracy – the vote.
Q. You spend a good chunk of the film telling the stories of Steve Heller, Bruce Funk, Athan Gibbs, and Clint Curtis. Why?
Joan Brunwasser is a co-founder of Citizens for Election Reform (CER) which exists for the sole purpose of raising the public awareness of the critical need for election reform. We aim to restore fair, accurate, transparent, secure elections where votes are cast in private and counted in public. Electronic (computerized) voting systems are simply antithetical to democratic principles.
CER set up a lending library to achieve the widespread distribution of the DVD Invisible Ballots: A temptation for electronic vote fraud. Within eighteen months, the project had distributed over 3200 copies across the country and beyond. CER now concentrates on group showings, OpEd pieces, articles, reviews, interviews, discussion sessions, networking, conferences, anything that promotes awareness of this critical problem. Joan has been Election Integrity Editor for OpEdNews since December, 2005.
Sorry to ruin the party, but here's a slight critique of Uncounted, or as I call it- Unmentioned- The Open Source Story-
Though the movie does a good job of pointing out the systems are broken and many are disenfranchised- It poses no solution. My hope is we see some cinematic efforts from Earnhardt and Co on point towards solution-
The real tragedy here is the sin of omission. By not mentioning that the essence of the issue is the source code being secret - it follows that the film did not mention open source code as a solution movement- When it did reference open source systems- It did so with reference to a faux open source Microsoft based company- This film could have been great- but to leave the audience in a state of despair and them directing them to a blog site for donations was not appropriate. Activists like Earnhardt should realize their arena- With a little bit of research- Earnhardt could have been a hero-
This movie appears to have been cast by the Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights show biz division- We need to get Microsoft out of the equation in all facets of the movement- From Lobbyists and legislation to software- Microsoft is controlling the conversation- I hope Earnhardt has the courage to tell the real story next film-
Brent Turner
by
Brent Turner (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 94 comments)
on Friday, April 25, 2008 at 8:09:10 PM
Having the source code open to inspection does not solve the problem with allowing ballots to be counted in secret. Yes, it would be a step in the right direction, but it does not make secret vote counting reliable or constitutional.
That’s right. Not only is secret vote counting dangerous, it’s UNCONSTITUTIONAL! When it was put in place, it is impossible to imagine that no one bothered to look at the constitutionality of it.
We no longer get to elect our leaders or throw bad ones out of office. Our votes are "counted" in secret on computers, and these official secret vote "counts" have been proven wrong repeatedly.
My article, "Virginia’s Elections Are UNCONSTITUTIONAL?!?!" includes a link in my comment to a video of my conversation with election officials in Virginia who pretend not to understand that computers count in secret. They say no one ever even thought of that. Yeah, right!?! It also includes a link to my letters to each candidate asking them to take action to require that our elections be conducted in a constitutional manner. Naturally, not a single one took action.
My discussion with the election official in South Carolina was as laughable, but he did not want to be recorded. Any way, in my articles on Virginia and South Carolina, I point out that not only do the constitutions of both of those states specifically prohibit secret vote counting, but also, so do some U.S. Supreme Court decisions which I quote and cite for your convenient reference.
by
Mark Adams (16 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 183 comments)
on Saturday, April 26, 2008 at 4:43:09 PM
Mr Adams acknowledges open source is a "step in the right direction" but then, as is epidemic, shimmies off the point by stating open source is not a panacea curing constitutuional issues- Mentioning open source does not cure all security or constitutional issues is obvious and counter productive- Yes, Mr. Adams, there are constitutional issues attached to our right to observe the elections- and yes, we must patch the other holes in the ship, but that is not to say we should not tend to the source code issue immediately. Since we use computers, and do not want to be barred from public oversight of the code- opening up the systems to non governmental oversight should be an obvious choice for the thickest of activists. The only opposition to the open source movement has come from Microsoft and the vendors themselves. All election integrity activists should recognize the " no panacea" argument as a page from Microsoft's playbook- Right along with " yeah but you still have to make sure the open source you are talking about is the same as what's in the machines " as if that would be lost on anyone- Again, open source isd merely one security measure, but when utilizing technology, a necessary one. -- Slow down or " foot drag" on the open source issue is unacceptable- We all want hand countable paper ballots, auditable systems, and a dagger to the heart of corruption- the fact we would single mindedly, or ego- centrically, put all our energy towards wishing the technology to " go away" , with no back -up plan towards cleaning out the guts of the systems we actually use, is short sighted at best, and something far worse at worst. Brent Turner
by
Brent Turner (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 94 comments)
on Saturday, April 26, 2008 at 9:09:04 PM
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