The matter of our democracy is not something to be dropped into the framework of any individual’s reputation, cult of personality, or otherwise. I don't care if Mr. Holt is a nice man, a good Christian, who his wife is, or how many coins he tosses to beggers on the DC sidewalks.
It is unacceptable to consider legislation of this import within the prism of how anyone “feels” about its sponsor. And frankly, I am tired of being told by congressional staffers that “they have heard from Holt’s office that the bill does x,y,z” as though they have not bothered to read the text before their eyes in black and white, just as I, an ordinary citizen, have taken the time to do.
Our democracy deserves better than these kinds of lazy and irrelevant rationalizations for supporting HR 811.
It is the opinion of many reputable citizens and public officials alike that HR 811 is completely unworkable, if enacted will destabilize our state election systems, and contains many elements that are antithetical to the basic foundations of our democracy.
If Congressman Holt is indeed the only leader on the Hill then I respectfully submit his leadership in this area is sorely lacking in the area most important for building good legislation: consensus building.
His office has consistently engaged in the practice of misdirection and disinformation rather than meaningful dialogue, and has intentionally shut out all dissenting voices.
Politicians in Washington may well be used to these kinds of strategies running their political campaigns. But this is not a political campaign, and those of us ordinary citizens engaged in this struggle deserve better thatn the disinformation campaigns and swiftboating of American citizens simply because they hold dissenting opinions about this legislation.
As a result of the stonewalling and closed circuit deliberations, Holt's office has released a bill that is extraordinarily controversial in nature and opposed by a wide swath of the American citizenry, including all major representational organizations of election officials and state legislatures.
At this point in time, I am no longer conducting clause by clause analysis. I will point out the fundamental problems with the bill, which may be used as benchmarks for anyone wishing to continue to attempt to point out the flaws of the bill. I simply do not believe that this bill can be the vehicle for effective and meaningful election reform.
If the bill fails these fundamental benchmarks for democratic elections as defined below, then the bill should not pass. Period.
There is no negotiation and no compromise on defending our democracy.
So here are the most important problems with this bill, which are the benchmarks for improvement and change in order for HR 811 to be considered as a serious contender for our support.
1) It is designed to protect technological e-voting industry interests rather than our democracy.
2) It is overly complex, overly prescriptive, relies on “experts” and “qualified” persons, rather than ordinary citizens. Our elections must be straightforward, able to be run by ordinary citizens, 100% observable, and publicly owned.
3) It replaces the constitutional, historical, and irreplaceable democratic requirement for OBSERVABLE elections with VERIFIABLE elections. These are not equivalent. Providing voters with opportunities to allegedly “verify” computer vote counting--which is inherently impossible anyway because nobody other than the programmer knows what is going on in the trade secret software—is not equivalent to protecting our RIGHT to conduct observable elections.
4) It replaces our right to secure, observable FIRST COUNTS of the votes on election night, with the opportunity to conduct post-election AUDITS. Auditing machine results is not equivalent with our right to hold free, fair, open and democratic elections with observable vote counting of the first count before any winners are announced and peremptorily sworn in (a la Bilbray, San Diego, 2006), or any chain of custody or other issues may arise.
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