The Neighborhood Penny Candy Shop and Why Holt (HR 811) Needs To be Fixed or Discarded

Incrementalism in and of itself works for instituting foundations upon which we can build.

In the case of elections, as many have already pointed out, it also needs to include in the foundation the essential elements that protect our constitutional rights to a free and open democracy.

The accessibility argument, in terms of the ADA and the Voting Rights Act, has never been addressed intelligently in the arena of our elections. Instead, we have been handed a demolition derby of competing voting rights, all crashing into each other in destructive, rather than productive, ways.

"allow the voter to privately and independently verify the individual, durable paper ballot through the conversion of the human-readable printed or marked vote selections into accessible form"

This is in the version of the bill reported out of committee found right here:
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=110_cong_bills&docid=f:h811rh.txt.pdf

And while the authors of the bill have removed the explicit provision to extend the Commission, they reference it no less than 31 times in the 60 page bill, granting it ever increasing authorities and appropriations in perpetuity.

Incrementalism would work if ALL Holt did was put paper back into the system so we could build off of that transparent foundation. It doesn't. If this is all Holt did, it would not affect the X number of states, like NH, which already HAVE paper in their systems.

But Holt will affect EVERY state because it imposes new requirements that are complex and destabilizing.

Imagine you have a neighborhood penny candy shop. You run your shop in a simple straight forward way, so that people enter and buy penny candy, you take their penny, put it in the cash drawer, they take their candy, and all is well. But one year the government decides that you have to change the way you manage that transaction. It decides that you have to provide any disabled person with the opportunity to get the candy off the shelf without reaching for it.

So you redesign your entire shop floor plan. You purchase expensive technology to raise and lower the shelves with the flick of a switch. You change your entire tax reporting system and hire new staff to fulfill the new government reporting requirements. 30% of your time running the shop is now spent fulfilling the governmental reporting requirements, rather than maintaining the quality and security of the product, never mind the accuracy of the transactions.

Then four years later the government provides new mandates. Now, your shop needs to get the candy to people without their having to flick the switch, in case someone enters who has dexterity issues. Now, the receipts you provide need to be converted into every possible language, plus audio, so that the blind and non-English speakers are accommodated. And, by the way, the government tells you this is a civil rights issue so they don't have to pay to help you fulfill all these required changes.

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