AMENDMENT XVIII: The Random Voting Machine Lottery Amendment

[tom_paine]

What do you all think? Here is a copy of a post I made on another thread talking about Kerry pulling ahead vs the AP Poll with Bunnypants* ahead. The Amendment is at the bottom in bold/italics.

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tom_paine (1000+ posts) Sat Jul-10-04 05:37 PM
Response to Original message

13. Nice analysis, but it doesn't count Manual & Electronic Disenfranhcisement


Tens of thousands of Bushevik vacation home double-voters, perhaps more. The soft fraud of stacking minority precincts with old machines. Diebold & ES&S (goodbye Georgia and Florida). Using taxpayer money to put out partisan Bushevik absentee ballot solicitations (wasn't that illegal in the Old Republic?) as Prince Jeb did in Florida. Many others, and I'll bet a few we don't know about.

I estimate we are going to start 10% behind with all of it. Thus the usual Bush AP Counter-Pravda smokescreen to inoculate everybody with the idea that Bunnypants* could "upset".

Fuck AP. Parts of it are still doing some honest journalism, but it has a big nest of Mockingbirds and Loyalists, IMHO And it contains the Phony Exit Poll Division that replaced VNS.

How do we fix it?

The Random Voting Machine Lottery Amendment

Amendment XXVIII: There will be a completely random and statewide lottery, witnessed,transparent and inspectable, for the distribution of voting machines for the next year.

A start, perhaps...

What do you think?

DU Lawyers, can this be done? Would it need to be done at the State Level (given that the Rule of Law is, shall we say, quite fluid under Imperial Rule) instead of a Constitutional Amendment? What would the legal language of such a law actually look like?

DU Professors & Intelligentsia, anything I've missed, any thoughts?

Is it a good idea or a dumb unworkable one?

I am very interested in hearing some good discussion of this.

[lazarus]

1. I'd prefer

to just ban voting machines altogether. Canada is able to have a quick count using nothing but paper ballots. They already project winners with .0067% reporting, from exit polls, so it's not like we need official results any quicker.

[ISUGRADIA]

6. Their quick count took 3 or 4 hours to get up to close to 100%

of the vote I noticed while watching the returns. And this was only for ONE RACE, member of parliament. Hand counting President, US Senate, US House, and the many other offices and issues on the ballot would slow down the process considerably.

Make precinct count, electronic tabulator of paper ballots mandatory.

[Slit Skirt]

2. FYI

The national "Computer Ate My Vote" day of action is really taking off - in
just the three days since we invited you to next Tuesday's big event, more
than 20,000 TrueMajority members have added their names to the call for
voter-verified paper ballots. Along with others who signed on earlier, and
signatures from MoveOn, Democracy For America and VerifiedVoting.org, it
adds up to a list of more than a quarter-million names. Come on down
Tuesday, July 13th to join the crowd of Colorado citizens who will deliver
those petitions and call on your election officials to support voter-
verified paper ballots.

The rally and press conference is at 12 noon on Tuesday, July 13th,
on the West Steps of the Capitol Building, 200 E. Colfax, Denver.

For more details and any last-minute changes, check out the webpage
VerifiedVoting.org has put together:

http://action.truemajority.org/ctt.asp?u=588643&l=697

These events are happening in 17 more states besides Colorado, and there's
also a national telephone press conference that same day where Gov. Howard
Dean will join our own Ben in promoting what you're doing. This will be the
biggest day of grassroots action for secure elections yet - come be a part
of it!


About this campaign:
The paperless computerized voting terminals being adopted by many states are
vulnerable to software flaws, hardware failures, and security holes. The
machines have already lost votes in a number of elections around the
country, and without a paper printout there is no way to do a meaningful
audit or recount. Every voter should be able to see a paper version of their
ballot to verify their choices are recorded correctly, before leaving it
with pollworkers as a permanent record. For more on the issue, see
http://action.truemajority.org/ctt.asp?u=588643&l=698


Matt Holland and Mark Floegel,
Computer Ate My Vote campaign coordinators


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[Solon]

3. Amendment not needed, if done state by state...

The Constitution makes no provision about HOW elections are carried out, only when, and who has authority. States can institute IRV ballots if neccessary as long as the Electorial College is untouched, HOW precisely they do that is up to them. Hell they could do it without winner take all, like Maine does. BTW: This includes House races too, you could have PR representation in your state (NO DISTRICTS) as long as it is State law not Federal.

Districts are not mentioned in the Constitution, the only provision is one rep for ever 20,000 people, I think, correct me if I'm wrong. How Congress was able to limit total Congresspeople in the Legislature is beyond me, as far as I know, the limit is arbitrary and technically Unconstitutional, but the USSC has never touched it (separation of powers).

Amendments are only required for Federal level change, many states had Woman's Sufferage DECADES before the 19th Amendment was passed. Same for Black men before the Civil War as well as age limits etc. Even Senators could be chosen by the People in certain states before the 17th amendment, but all of these are limited to certain states based on their statutes on voting requirements and system.

[tom_paine]

4. Interesting points. So it would have to be state by state

That's ok, this needs to GET DONE!

[tom_paine]

5. kick

[tom_paine]

7. KICK for the Weekday Bunch!

:kick: