BBV: I'm not complaining but...

[Bill Bored]

...it has always bugged me that we seem to be so divided on these election reform issues. Even looking at BBV in isolation, without consideration of voting rights issues (which are obviously extremely important and must be championed as well), it seems that we are rather disorganized.

BBV.org has come under fire; Andy Stephenson has left the group. I hope he's going to recover from his illness, but it's a blow to us all to be sure.

I have personally been trying to get a handle on the Diebold hardware and software, thanks to some links I've found, but I'm sure there are those who have already done all this and are acutely aware of the problems.

There are all these bills in Congress and at the state level, yet none of them seem to address the whole e-voting problem.

Professionals such as Rubin and Mercuri have been on top of this for years and nothing seems to have come of it.

Does anyone know if NIST (formerly the National Bureau of Standards) is involved, and what's the consensus on that in the election reform community? It seems that they should be the ones leading the charge for standards for these machines. This is what they do -- Standards and Technology -- right? Have they been infiltrated by wing nuts or what?

If anyone has a better way for me to spend my time other than reading GEMS user manuals and analyzing VV bills and the like, I'd be interested, but please be nice! Like a lot of folks, I'm still new at this game. (But unfortunately, it's not a game.)

I just think we need a bit more centralized organization when it comes to this issue, or is it there and I've just missed it somehow? If DU is going to be it, that's fine too! What do you all think?

[skids]

1. We're getting there...

...but it is slow going. I felt the same back in Nov. See my sig for the early history.

The expression "hearding cats" comes to mind. Fortunately, there are a lot of cat owners here, so some things do manage to get carried off.

My personal decision was to try to concentrate where my skills are of most use, so I put together uscvprogs.sf.net to start to build some software for auditing "next time around". Still a huge amount of work to be done on that, and I'm hoping that a few more coders will come my way.

No matter what bills get passed, there is going to have to be a certain amount of "vigilantiism" in 2006. We need to be boots on the ground catching the sign stealers, push pollers, and disenfranchising canvassers. We should set up some "sting" operations. We need to have our pollworkers trained, and our voters educated, and our observer rosters full. We should even be considering a citizen-run exit poll.

All these objectives still need to be categorized and divvied up between different organizations. Keep your eye out for a national conference announcement coming up sometime in the next month or so.

Not that I've given up on 2004. I am still running numbers on that too.

[Stevepol]

2. The voting machine vendors are entrenched now, and

getting them out will be very difficult. The elections people tend to side with them because they want to defend their own efforts at making the voting process easy and well managed and frankly it's so much easier to let a machine do the counting, just privatize the vote counting process and sit around reading a romance novel and imagine you're doing a civic service. The secy's of state are making money off of the percentage they get from the contracts, etc. etc. etc. And on top of it all, the machine company owners are having a fun time rigging the elections, or ordering the election rigging and enjoying the consequences of their orders, especially Ahmanson and Wally O'Dell and Jeffrey Dean, etc.

I think the key is to try to get local lawyers to join the lawsuits once they start. A recent post from Snohomish County WA indicated that there are going to be a number of lawsuits directed at the elections officials for not providing fair and transparent vote-counting procedures. The right way to frame it is this, according to that post: "Would you want your political opponent to count the votes in secret and be able to deny people the right to recount and audit?" This in essence what you have with the DREs. This shd be so obviously illegal that nobody should even question it, yet it's apparently not. All it will take is one or two successful lawsuits against the elections officials and soon it will be possible to pressure every one of them like this: "You know you might want to think twice about ordering new Diebold touchscreens. Have you seen the lawsuits in WA where citizens were able to sue the elections officials because the votes were counted in secret and no provision was made for recounts? You could be next to be sued you know."

I don't really know if it's possible to have a democracy anymore, but we can just keep hoping and praying that enough people will finally be on board, including fair-minded judges and elections officials everywhere, so that change will eventually just be inevitable. Every little bit helps.

[Amaryllis]

6. Get Mythbreakers to all your officials even remotely connected wtih

elections! SEe post three.

[Amaryllis]

3. I just FINALLY got around to reading Mythbreakers all the way through,

and I am going to see that every single official even remotely connected with elections in my state gets one. If you want something else to do, this is a darn good activity. This is John Gideon's thread.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=292271&mesg_id=292271

[FogerRox]

4. Time to hit the streets--MAy 1 st. All 50 capitals & DC

[garybeck]

5. I think what you're saying is that we need

a better coalition. there are so many groups out there now working for the same thing, with slightly different angles. some focus on legislation/reform, others on investigation, others on mobilization, but we all want basically the same thing.

And if someone like you wants to work with others on a certain project or subject, or find out if it's already been covered, then it should be not only possible, but easy.

It's happening. The major groups are coming together. It's happening slower than I would like. There are more than one new groups forming that are trying to be an "umbrella" group. This is good. It takes time. I believe the teach-ins this weekend are an example of various groups working together on a common project.

Our movement is starting to move beyond infancy into childhood. There will be growing pains, as you mention, with some splintering, and probably some infighting. But overall we are strong because there is a core group of people that are VERY passionate about this and they (we) are gaining momentum.

Plus, we have the truth on our side.

I think you will find in the next few weeks and months that there will be improvements and examples of how the community works together. At least I hope so!

[Wilms]

7. Yeah you are

But it's ok :)