Voting Systems Lawsuit Reaches U.S. Supreme Court

[Demeter]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_lynn_lan_060201_voting_systems_lawsu.htm


February 1, 2006

Voting Systems Lawsuit Reaches U.S. Supreme Court
by Lynn Landes


Landes is representing herself in this action.

"I tried to get civil rights organizations interested in this case, but had no luck. Their disregard for this issue is incredible. It's clear to me that without direct access to a physical ballot and meaningful transparency in the process, our elections have no integrity whatsoever," says Landes.

The defendants in the Landes lawsuit are Margaret Tartaglione, Chair of the City Commissioners of Philadelphia; Pedro A. Cortes, Secretary of the
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania; and Alberto Gonzales, Attorney General of the United States.

Attorneys for the defendants have successfully fought Landes, claiming that she did not prove an injury and therefore does not have standing. Landes counters that she has the right to challenge the constitutionality of acts of the legislative branch under federal statute and case law, most
significantly under Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803).

Early American history seems to favor the Landes position. Prior to the Civil War, voting was a public and transparent process. It was only after
the war, as the elective franchise expanded to minorities and women, three changes to state and federal election laws were adopted that eventually made the voting process a private and ontransparent enterprise: absentee voting was allowed (1870's), the Australian secret ballot method was adopted
(1880's), and voting machines were permitted by Congress (1899).

Today, 94.6% of all votes are processed by machines and approximately 30% of all voting is conducted early or by absentee.

The defendants' response is due at the Supreme Court no later than February 24, 2006. The Landes lawsuit can be found at the following url:
www.EcoTalk.org/lawsuit.doc
Docket no: http://search.access.gpo.gov/supreme-court/searchright.asp?ct=supreme-court-dockets&q1=05-930&x=18&y=17

Source:

EcoTalk.org
Lynn Landes, publisher
215-629-3553
[e-mail]

[mirrera]

1. Go Lynn Go!!!! n/t

[jsamuel]

2. ooooooo

[ellenfl]

3. i doubt that landes will prevail with scalito now on the court. eom

[VegasWolf]

4. Well, that's the end of it then.

:sarcasm:

[Patsy Stone]

5. Here it is...

QUESTIONS


Does the right to vote and to have votes counted properly apply to all citizens?

Does the use of voting machines and absentee ballots in elections for public office violate appellant’s right to vote and to have votes counted properly?

Does appellant have the right to a physical (i.e., paper) ballot?

Is voting by machine and absentee an inherently nontransparent process that unlawfully denies meaningful oversight by appellant as a journalist?

Must appellant prove fraud or discrimination in order to gain standing?

Does appellant’s right to vote and have votes counted properly supersede the privacy and convenience considerations of election officials, absentee voters, and disabled voters?

Did the Third Circuit Court of Appeals abuse their discretion by taxing defendants’ costs against plaintiff and despite the fact that the District Court had not done so?


K&R!

[electropop]

13. Under the "Equal Protection" clause cited in Bush v Gore, no.

According to the Court in that case, the Equal Protection Clause forbids equal protection.

[Lochloosa]

35. But, according to the SC, their ruling in that case cannot be used

as precedent

Al Gore publicly conceded the election after the December 12, 2000 Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Gore. The Court voted 7-2 to end the recount on the grounds that differing standards in different counties constituted an equal protection violation, and 5-4 that no new recount with uniform standards could be conducted. The decision was extremely controversial due to the partisan split in the court's 5-4 decision and the majority's extremely irregular instruction that its judgment in Bush v. Gore should not set precedent but should be "limited to the present circumstances".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._presidential_election,_2000

[0rganism]

6. Too bad, so sorry, you're two days late

Next case!

[DELUSIONAL]

7. She also don't want absentee ballots -- and this is where

I disagree with her.

Absentee ballots are PAPER ballots.

[ladjf]

8. Perhaps it would be a good idea if about 100,000 Americans

launched similar suits. That might get some action.

[bleever]

9. The right to vote has no meaning without the right to know it counted!

That's what I'd say.

Go, Lynn!

[VegasWolf]

11. Yes, "black box" voting. You pick a name and your "vote" disappears

into the vastness of cyber-space and who knows what happens to it. Imagine if bank ATMs worked this way. Wait, don't give BofA any ideas.

[samhsarah]

10. Good for her!

[peabody71]

12. Huge kick!

[Laelth]

14. Kick

:kick:

Wonder how Alito will come down on this one. :shrug:

-Laelth

[Wilms]

15. kick

[Mnemosyne]

16. .

:kick:

[Rex]

17. Bush vs Gore

Claimed 'grevious harm' if the overvotes were counted against Baker's client (Bush). This caused a countdown with the SCOTUS stopping the recount by making time run out. They violated Florida state law and made a mockery out of a federal election. I bet Landes wins the case.

[fasttense]

19. I'll take that bet.

There is no way the dancing supremes will rule against a system that has brought their masters to power. Not only will they declare the current system of invisible counting and magical voting constitutional, they'll praise it as efficient and cost effective. It isn't who votes that counts, it's who counts the votes.

[Toots]

20. did not prove an injury and therefore does not have standing.

How could Bush* have suffered any more 'grevious harm than Gore since the votes had not been counted or certified. The only ones really harmed were the voters themselves....How could Bush* possibly have had "legal standing"? Not a single attorney I have talked with has understood that....

[Wilms]

18. .

[Vidar]

21. Normally this would be a great thing, but the Supremes suck.

[WhiteTara]

32. this will be an early radar warning system

to know just how long we have until we must flee.

edited to include all the words

[WhiteTara]

33. Thank you Lynn Landers

You are a true American Hero :patriot:

[American liberal]

22. K&R n/t

[Wordie]

23. Even if this is not successful, it should draw public attention to the

problem.

[Stevepol]

24. (Calling Land Shark) Lynn needs some "friend of the court" filings.

I just heard her on the Ed Schultz show. She has done this almost solely on her own, has lost in two previous courts and has appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. If she can get some very good amicus briefs from some other interested parties (Land Shark where are you?) The only way this case stands a chance is if it can get some good support from others. The DNC, et al. won't lift a finger to help of course.

Ed asked Lynn about this (why the Dems aren't helping her) and she said that it is either (1) incompetence or (2) complicity, and she's leaning toward the latter at the moment since the Dems get about 40% of the corporations' political contributions.

It seems to me that Avi Rubin or some politically savvy computer scientist could add weight to the suit as well.

My instinct tells me this is doomed to fail. The courts just will not rule against corporations unless the other side presents very cogent and powerful (and well-financed) arguments. And people aren't able to support her that much either. In some cases they are too interested in debating the niceties of some current issue that wouldn't even exist as an issue if we had a democracy; that is, the people causing the problem would never have been given their present positions (I started to say "elected" instead of "given their present positions," but of course they weren't elected. The voting machines gave them their seats).

[FogerRox]

26. stevepol-- what does her suit claim

Is she claiming irreparable harm?

[Stevepol]

28. Some of her legalese seemed a little fuzzy to me in listening, but...

She mentioned her site, which I checked out, a really good one <www.ecotalk.org> and said it went into the various suits.

Here's a link that probably tells everything.

http://www.ecotalk.org/Lawsuits.htm

[FogerRox]

29. Fuzzy yeah-- I want to read the Judges rulling I didnt see a link for that

[NewYorkerfromMass]

31. She needs some serious help

Just read the reasons for dismissal:

While Plaintiff attacks Pennsylvania law permitting the use of
absentee ballots in elections, she does not allege that her right to
vote has been adversely affected by absentee voting. Plaintiff
asserts only a generalized, theoretical concern that absentee ballots
may result in fraud and other problems. See Compl. Paragraph 18.
This is the sort of hypothetical harm that federal courts
consistently refuse to address... (pg 30)

Now, I realize this was filed BEFORE the election of 2004, on October 28 to be exact, but she has got to present evidence that errors in fact HAVE happened, such as the machine glitches in Ohio and North Carolina, and the "hack" recently demonstrated in Florida. We are definitely beyond hypothetical harm at this point!!!

There are also many expert witnesses she can have file as you suggest, such as Douglas W. Jones of the University of Iowa, who makes the excellent point about what constitutes a legal voting instrument (Landes uses the term 'ballot' in her arguements).

http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/voting/lwv.html and I quote the following from Jones:

From a legal perspective, a ballot is an instrument, just like a deed or a check. When the ballot is deposited in the ballot box, it becomes anonymous, but just prior to the moment when the ballot is deposited, it ought to be possible to hand the ballot to the voter and ask "does this ballot properly represent your intent?". Punched card ballots fail this simple test! While the ballot is in the Votomatic machine, the voter can punch holes in it but is unable to see the ballot itself. Once removed from the machine, the voter can see the holes, but without help, the voter is unable to tell what those holes mean....

...Unlike any system resting on paper ballots, none of the information stored inside a direct recording electronic voting machine can be said to have the status of a legal instrument. Instead, the record is created by the software within the voting machine in response to the voter's actions, and the record is only as trustworthy as the software itself. It is far from easy to test and inspect software to assure that it functions as advertised, and it is far from easy to assure that the software resident in a machine today is the same software that was authorized for use in that machine months or years ago.

Landes alludes to this problem in her contention that a "physical ballot" is a necessary requirement for voting:

The use of DREs, Internet voting, and lever machines constitutes "refusal to permit casting" or "put a ballot in a box" as these machines do not allow the voters access to physical ballot, to directly mark a ballot, or to cast a ballot. The voters can make inputs to the machine, but it is the machine - not the voter - that produces the results... (pg 13)

I am not a lawyer and so I have only a cursory understanding of what she needs to to do to win her case, but it seems she must prove there was indeed harm, and she must present the facts in a clear and idiot-proof way. I have been following the electronic voting issue the past 3 1/2 years and have a bit of knowledge of the salient issues, and I believe strongly that Landes needs to reinforce her case with just a few of the very best scientists and researchers available.

We cannot afford to "blow" this.

[President Kerry]

25. Couldn't prove injury and didn't have standing...

I think we've all been suffering from a crippling "injury" since 2000. No standing - what a bogus argument.

[stepnw1f]

27. HISTORICAL (nt)

[Wilms]

30. kick

[wysiwyg]

34. How do you prove injury if the process is hidden?

If no one can prove your vote was counted and the software and vote processing is not auditable then how can injury to an individual voter ever be proven?

[depakid]

37. That's the beauty of the scam

and the basis for lower court decisions in other cases.

They've held that despite statistical anomalies, even challengers directly affected (losing candidates) cannot review the proprietary code.

[young_at_heart]

36. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could trust that our vote was "real"?

Our country seems to be behind so many others in regard to such an important aspect of democracy!