Federal efforts at election reform have turned voting integrity advocates into one big collective Wonder Woman. As the Feds lob one complexity-laden bill after another, we hold our fists high, fearlessly deflecting each assault with our magic bracelets. But we can't beat this thing through deflection. It's time to tighten up our Wonder Bra, grab a hold of our golden lasso of truth, and let loose a hearty reckoning of reality.

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Federal efforts at election reform have turned voting integrity advocates into one big collective Wonder Woman. As the Feds lob one complexity-laden bill after another, we hold our fists high, fearlessly deflecting each assault with our magic bracelets.

More computerized, paperless voting machines? Ping!

More federally certified secret vote counting technologies? Ping! Ping!

More vote counting control by the White House? Ping! Ping! Ping!

How about a little new expensive, privatized, opaque technology to further obscure the vote count? Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping!

But we can't beat this thing through deflection. It's time to tighten up our Wonder Bra, grab a hold of our golden lasso of truth, and let loose a hearty reckoning of reality. Time to drop a big old nuclear bomb of American idealism and values, Constitutionalism, and historical democratic Republicanism on the Washington superfiends of legislative perversion.

The truth behind the movement afoot in Washington, D.C. is that they aim to completely transform American elections. Congress and the White House - in quiet collusion with private interests - seek to turn our time honored Constitutional design for voting- a simple, straightforward mechanism that allows our citizenry to control our government - on its head.

They seek to transform it into a mechanism by which the government controls the citizenry.

Voting integrity advocates need to lock our lasso around this truth, smack it to the ground, and understand this profound power shift and all of its ramifications. Only then will we find our way to victory.

The "turn our Constitutional Republic on its head" movement in Washington began with the false flag "hanging chad" crisis in Florida Election 2000, which was used to convince Americans that our elections were in such crisis that it warranted federal intervention.

The US Constitution wisely endowed States with the power of election administration. Wisely, because only a fool would design a system of government in which the elected governing bodies control the mechanism that keeps them in power or tosses them out on their behinds. And our Constitutional Framers were no fools.

The hanging chad false flag, allowed Congress to invoke the "elections clause", using the constitutional waiver to intervene in our elections. They used Florida 2000 to enact the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), spinning the story into gold for the computerized voting industry, sending billions of American taxpayer dollars into the privatized coffers of secret vote counting barons. HAVA framed this as the need to make our voting systems more "accessible" to the disability and minority language communities.

(Yes, we have figured out by now that Florida 2000 had nothing to do with accessibility in voting, but tell that to the folks in Washington who passed this thing.)

HAVA spun a new paradigm like fine golden wool pulled right over our eyes: the paradigm of "verifiable voting."

This paradigm transforms our Constitutional right to vote to an opportunity to "verify" our vote. Verifiable voting enables computerized voting. We can “verify” that our vote, when cast and counted by a computer, is as we intended it to be. Computerized voting, we are told, allows the disabled and minority language populations greater voting "access." And even though privatized computers with secret vote counting technology violates our Constitutional rights to free, fair, and open elections, it's okay, because, heck, we all have the opportunity to verify what the computer is doing!

Having established the new paradigm of opportunity to verify instead of right to vote, shifting power from the voter to the voting system, Congress and the White House now seek to expand upon their delicious new power structure.

HAVA specifically provides for accessible verification before the ballot is cast. Now accessible verification at the time of casting - proposed in HR811 (the Holt Bill) and many other bills (Ehlers, Clinton, Tubbs-Jones) - introduces an entirely new step in the voting process. And, not surprisingly, it is a step that mandates technology.

Not all activists seem to grasp the significance of this change.

The spin from Holt's office on this entirely new step, so unceremoniously slipped into our elections, has been "no problem, the Automark, an available product can do this."

Wrong! Problem! The Automark can't actually do this, and even if it could, that’s not the issue. This new step, is a federally mandated complex, expensive, and opaque technology, eminently hostile to paper ballots, for every jurisdiction in the nation.

The implications of this paradigm shift - this redefinition of our elections – is profound. To fight back properly we need the right ammunition: the U.S. Constitution.

US CONSTITUTION: Section 4 - Republican government

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.

Republic: n 1 : a government having a chief of state who is not a monarch and is usually a president; also : a nation or other political unit having such a government 2 : a government in which supreme power is held by the citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives governing according to law; also : a nation or other political unit having such a form of government.

By expanding HAVA’s definition of “accessible voting system” the paradigm shift by Holt, the Commission, Holt's corporate constituent Avante, and others misdirects our elections to "fully accessible voting systems".

It is a stated goal in the Commission's voting system design requirements. Another goal to achieve full accessibility is to create a completely paperless voting system. That’s right, no accountability beyond what the Commission-designed computerized voting machine is programmed to tell you.

EAC language permeates the Holt Bill and others like it on the Hill. Congress and the White House agency seem to be colluding in the hijacking of our elections by introducing seemingly benign goals that any good left wing liberal can love: "fully accessible voting systems. Top to bottom. End to end."

What does this redefinition of our elections mean?

It means we will have highly complex, computerized equipment run by experts, not ordinary citizens,, the inner workings of which no voter will be able to understand, at a cost of at minimum $20-30K per voting machine.

This is a complete transformation of our citizen run, publicly observable elections, into NASA-style missions.

This is not hyperbole. Read the EAC's documents. Ask the Commission's Technical Guidelines Advisory Committee if they've given any thought to the cost of their marvelous and magnificent designs, or if their wonderful machines resemble democratic elections in any sense of the word. Or maybe they're just having a whole lotta fun dreaming up technoelection wizardy because, well, because they can. It's so much fun to sit there at the NIST office building in Gaithersburg feeling so important and "expert-like".

If we, the people, the advocacy community, can get our arms around the full implications of this paradigm shift, then maybe we can stop it.

How about a whole new way to reach out to disabled voters? We can all do what New Hampshire did. They asked the disability advocacy groups (those not taking money from the computerized voting industry) what they need. Guess what they said are their top two items?

1. Sensitivity training
2. Physical accessibility

Think how many sensitivity training videos you can create for pollworkers, how many polling place parking lots can be paved, how many ramps you can install, how many wheelchair-sized polling booths you can construct, for the cost of one computerized voting machine any given jurisdiction may buy for the one or two sight impaired voters who may or may not choose to come to the polls.

Learn more about the NH solution here.

Is the name of the game REALLY to make voting more accessible to as many people as possible? If so, see #1 & 2 above.

Is the name of the game to enrich the technoelection private interests? To disenfranchise voters with voting systems using secret vote counting? If so, let's be honest about it.

If we let our lasso of truth reveal what is really going on with election reform, then maybe we can inject some common sense. Like what New Hampshire did to improve accessibility for as many voters as possible. I don't bring you these New Hampshire parables in order to show how wonderful we are in the Granite State. I do it to let loose the lasso of truth.

To help us understand that it is possible and desirable to remember that our elections exist for the sole purpose of allowing the populace to express its collective political will. They do not exist to be a playground for technocrats gone wild.

We need to collectively understand this fully and completely. We need to stop accepting the rationalizations, and we need to stop being apologists for the technoelection accessibility lie.

We can improve voting accessibility for the disabled and the minority language populations. We can do this sensibly, to standards of real democratic elections, by creating and sustaining observable, publicly owned voting systems.

We can create and pass real election reform that makes sense, works, is cost effective, and supports democracy and the American Republic.

For a look at what this new step in accessible and verifiable voting means in practical terms, please see the section on Safe Harbor and the new added step in my piece "Crippling Cost of HR 811 Leaves States Exposed and Defenseless".

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