Here's why we may never see any meaningful election integrity legislation passed:

[Bill Bored]

The winners, who hold the reigns of power, will always be convinced that the system worked well enough because it elected them.

The losers, by definition, will always be the ones out of power at any given time.

So, unless you can get a bill passed by the minority, it ain't gonna happen!

HAVA was the exception, probably engineered by voting system vendors who caused the meltdown in FL 2000 (Sequoia punch cards, etc.). That was enough of a debacle to scare the winners and the losers!

The other exception is the Voting Rights Act. We should learn how they did that if we want to succeed.

[xchrom]

1. no. -- the democratic party is the status quo -- of that there is NO doubt.

but the there is no equivalency with their crimanal behavior re: elections and republicans.

i have all kinds of bitch fests about democrats -- but this isn't one of them.

please provide links of equivalency.

[Bill Bored]

4. How about this?:

Only one "paper ballot" bill in each House of Congress in the current session. And the Senate bill is from a Republican:
http://verifiedvoting.org/article.php?list=type&type=13

Compare this to the 110th Congress:
http://www.verifiedvoting.org/article.php?id=5870

The 109th Congress:
http://www.verifiedvoting.org/article.php?id=5841

The 108th Congress:
http://www.verifiedvoting.org/article.php?id=5564

It looks to me like as soon the Dems got control of both houses and the White House, they forgot all about that vote counting stuff -- because THEIRS finally got counted. As for the other guys, most of their bills were phony baloney, window dressing and placebos. But that's because THEY were the winners!

There are only 80 co-sponsors of the Holt bill so far this time around. No companion Dem bill in the Senate, and no co-sponsors of Ensign's Repub bill.

[demodonkey]

13. As of July 9 there IS now a companion bill to HR 2894 in the Senate...

...S 1431, introduced by Bill Nelson of FL.


http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s111-1431

[MarjorieG]

2. Yes, Sequoia did cause it by intentionally bad paper, causing HAVA, which didn't ban levers,

already owned, in order for the vendors to fraudulently sell secret, crappy electronics, always mutable and vulnerable under the best circumstances.

Electronics has been a long planned business opportunity, completely damaging vote delivery in the US.

Our supposed champion, Rep. Rush Holt, keeps writing bad legislation, overreaching, and never solving the problem, always providing the next vendor selling opportunity. (ie current bill) He likes electronics, which isn't helpful.

[diva77]

3. Or maybe the winners are afraid to speak out - look at what happened to

Kevin Shelley, Ion Sancho, Bruce Funk for example.

[Wilms]

5. I'd even add Bowen and Brunner.

-on edit-

Insofar as they also seem afraid to really speak out.

Interestingly, Bowen has authority that Sancho and Funk lacked, ran the tests, but only decertified some equipment. Diebold ADMITS that ALL of their equipment has an audit log problem. And it's not clear the audits are being done or even designed to provide a high degree of confidence.

Yet CA still gets election results via computer.

[diva77]

6. I agree. I've heard that Bowen has been under tremendous pressure from the vendors.

Wish I could find something in the media about that.

[Wilms]

7. You may need only consider the source.

What's a vendor going to do?? Did the source describe the pressure?

I think the county officials are the most likely source. And it's a no win situation as she's got only so much authority despite the title.

[truedelphi]

8. The County officials here in California are so often scum.

But they have smiling faces, and carefully understand the imoportance of insisting that in terms of elections they are registered independents, etc.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

9. CA SOS Bowen slammed by IRV activist for security measures over San Francisco voting machines

IRV more important than secure or accurate elections. That is why San Francisco has to make IRV capability their first priority, not accuracy or security. And that is why SF has to get conditional
approval for their craptastic machines for each election.

S.F. supervisors blamed for blocking new voting system
John Wildermuth, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, September 21, 2007

… The tough restrictions put on the use of the company's voting system in San Francisco are borderline ridiculous given how few people are likely to run into the problems with the ink, said Steven Hill, director of the political reform program of the New America Foundation.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/09/21/MN8ASA8T4.DTL

With the ES&S Optech Eagle system ballots marked with lighter ink can be mis-read by the scanner. Mr. Hill should consider that people who want to cause problems with other voters' ballots can and will switch the pens on purpose, even leaving behind pens that look exactly like the "official" Eagle compatible pens? Should we assume that Mr. Hill is as unaware and foolish as the voters he laughs off, or is he purposely trying to disguise the real and relevant bad marker security threat that comes from cutting corners by using obsolete optical scanner heads?

[Wilms]

11. Oh, there's plenty to be upset about.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x512634

[bvar22]

10. !

The System "worked" for them.
Why change it?

[Bill Bored]

12. .

[kster]

14. It's ignorance on our part especially since the internet

has become part of our life. When we debate on the net about how to make corporate vote counting machines safe. By using audits, risk base audits (and Ive done it), we stay right in the palm of their hands.

I have come to terms with myself that there is no way to make corporate owned secret vote counting machines safe. DREs, Optical scan or levers it just cant happen.

The machines put to few people in control of counting the ballots. That's a recipe for disaster, that's the only reason the machines were placed between us and our ballots in the first place.


1)"The winners, who hold the reigns of power, will always be convinced that the system worked well enough because it elected them".

If they are in power they wont need to be convinced the system worked well they know it worked well, and the losers Harlem globe trotters and the Washington Generals comes to mind.


2)HAVA was the exception, probably engineered by voting system vendors who caused the meltdown in FL 2000 (Sequoia punch cards, etc.). That was enough of a debacle to scare the winners and the losers"!

HAVA is no exception, winners and the losers where scared but only that the secret "job security" machines would be found out. So the politicians created HAVA so they could get the ultimate control of the elections. By trojan horsing the e-voting machines across the country at a faster pace.

3)The other exception is the Voting Rights Act. We should learn how they did that if we want to succeed.

Yes we should Bill, they all knew what needed to be done and they stayed on message.

If we think anyone of the politicians, the people that benefit from these machines can be called on to fix the secret vote counting machines, well, its like asking a car thief to make laws that will prevent people from stealing cars, it's laughable.

With the internet we can change this, but we need to get more people to see the light.

Ballot counting must be done before the ballots leave the neighborhood! Not a day/week after the election, but at the close of election at the polling place, by the people in the neighborhood. No two ways about it period.

:)

[kster]

15. kick.nt

[Name removed]

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