What does it mean to the American Republic when the White House is the Designer-in-Chief of America's voting systems?

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A republic is a form of government maintained by a state or country whose sovereignty is based on consent of the governed and whose governance is based on popular representation. Rule of law is an essential feature of a republic.

-Wikipedia

The American Republic lives or dies on the ability of the people to control the government. The Framers of the Constitution gave control of our elections (the lockbox of the Republic) to the individual States and not to the United States, to ensure that the dispersed power of citizens as represented by their state governments could check and balance the centralized power of the federal government.

The general public, and most particularly many in the election integrity movement, are blissfully unaware of the dangers posed to our American Republic by a little known entity called the Election Assistance Commission.

This White House Agency was slipped into the 2002 Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in a late night, behind closed doors meeting, by the architects of that law: Congressman Bob Ney (now a convicted criminal), Congressman Steny Hoyer, Senator Mitch McConnell, and Senator Chris Dodd (now a presidential candidate).

We can only guess at their motivations for creating an Executive agency composed of four White House appointees with the power to control the nation’s elections.

Whatever prompted the HAVA architects to do this – against their own legal counsel’s advice – they certainly didn’t consult the wisdom of the Founders.

Founding father Alexander Hamilton:

"Suppose an article had been introduced into the Constitution, empowering the United States to regulate the elections for the particular States, would any man have hesitated to condemn it, both as an unwarrantable transposition of power, and as a premeditated engine for the destruction of the State governments?" --- Federalist No. 59, 1788

The architects of HAVA are not alone in their disdain for the wisdom of the founders. Several contemporary Congressional and Senatorial leaders are furiously trying to pass legislation to expand the powers of the Election Assistance Commission. The most infamous of the proposed bills are HR811 (the "Holt Bill") in the House, and SB1487 (the "Feinstein Bill") in the Senate.

Congressman Rush Holt, in a July 2007 "town meeting" with constituents:

There should be -- and there has not been -- a federal commission that oversees elections. The Help America Vote Act created one, it has not worked well -- so we, could say, well, that each state could do what they want... You know, you know, a lot of people get nervous at the mention of name [Ken] Blackwell -- in Ohio. He was the Secretary of State... he was also a candidate for office at the same time. He was also the chair of the re-election committee for a Presidential candidate. Even while he was supposed to be the impartial overseer of the elections.

So if we leave it to the states, it's not so good. So what I prefer to do is strengthen the EAC... but it remains to be seen whether we can do that.

The historical imperative to resist granting control over our elections to the federal government might convince subscribers to Mr. Holt's articulated goal of the error of their ways. Common sense alone belies the utter absurdity of handing control of the electoral mechanism itself to those who will subsequently be elected by it. And handing control to the White House is beyond absurdity.

Unfortunately, most American citizens don't even know this coups d'etat has occurred, and is being irrevocably cemented into place. They are unaware that the very foundation of the American Republic is being ripped out and replaced with an entirely new system of governance. Free, fair, and open public elections controlled by The People are being replaced with costly, high tech, complex, opaque, computerized, corporately-owned electoral theatre controlled by the White House, the Legislature, and the Judiciary.

Even many election integrity activists fail to understand the fundamental problem with the EAC. They say, if only the "right" people were appointed to the Commission, all would be well.

They point to people like Buster Soaries. They love him. Great guy. They forget that the first thing he wanted when appointed Chair of the EAC was the power to cancel U.S. elections in case of "terrorist threats". They point to ex-Commissioner Ray Martinez. Another great guy. Recently purportedly caught on video in an interview attesting to the fact that he doesn't think paper ballots are all that necessary.

Ray's comments are not surprising to those of us who have studied the EAC beast, attended its meetings, delved into its evil belly.

The EAC's self-declared goal as of its Standards Board meeting of February 2007 is to create "completely paperless verifiable voting systems."

The common meme among mainstream journalists and many election activists is that the EAC is a bumbling government agency, controlled by partisan cronies, which, if only the right people were in charge, could really do some good.

It can't.

Ever.

The real power of the EAC is in their "Voluntary Voting Systems Guidelines" (VVSG) program.

This is a nice benign name for a program which in fact has the White House agency designing the nation's voting systems.

With the VVSG, the EAC designs the software and hardware specifications, hands them off to the industry, and then the industry builds these products to the EAC specifications.

The EAC also hands their voting system designs to Congress and the Senate, who then try to encode them into Federal law, effectively removing the "voluntary" nature of their "guidelines". Even if, by some miracle, we manage to effectively kill HR811 and SB1487 this year, these will not be the last attempts to buoy the power of the EAC this way. It's so easy to do, after all.

Because nobody knows what is really going on.

The outcome of the little arrangement described above is this: the voting systems available for use in the nation will soon all be EAC-designed. Or, put another way, designed by the White House.

The pure market reality is that this takes the "voluntary" out of the guidelines. It's kind of like if a bunch of bureaucrats on the FDA sat around designing aspirin and said, this is the only FDA-approved aspirin now. What would American drug stores stock and sell? Federally-designed drugs. Nothing more, nothing less.

This is the same thing, only we are talking about the machinery of our elections.

Think about that for a moment.

When that has settled in, consider this last little caveat: The EAC is now in the business of designing all voting systems, not just computerized. Paper ballots too. They want all paper ballot systems to be "machine-readable" and they've put the specifications for this into their latest round of "voluntary" guidelines. You can read about that here:

White House Agency Takes Aim at Paper Ballots

My own NH Congressman Paul Hodes recently responded to citizen concerns about the EAC by saying "its existence can not undermine the constitutional power of the states to control elections."

Hodes doesn't get it. Neither do most people, from what I can see.

The White House is designing the voting systems that the states have to use.

It doesn't matter who serves on this Commission. It doesn't matter if they are Congressionally appointed either, as some would like to amend things. Their very existence, and the power of their programs, creates a fundamental power shift in our form of governance: from dispersed power of the states to centralized power of the federal government.

This poses a clear and present danger to the American Republic, by its very definition.

The implications of an American reality wherein the White House designs our voting systems are staggering.

I could spell out some of these, but will leave that for you to ponder right now.

Over the past couple of years, I have written ad nauseum on the EAC. Probably too much information for too many people, but most of these writings can be found here:

http://www.opednews.com/author/author2302.html

Two concise articles are here: http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_nancy_to_070629_congress_about_to__22j.htm http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_nancy_to_070526_voter_intent_trumps_.htm

And another, slightly longer, is here: http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_nancy_to_070621_the_commission_3a_alie.htm

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