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From: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0604/S00233.htm SIMPLE QUESTIONS -- TROUBLING ANSWERS
Q&A Session with a Commissioner of the Elections Assistance Commission Reveals Massive Violations of Citizen Rights
Secret Vote Counting Crammed Down the Throat of Democracy
Special Report for “Scoop” Independent Media
First in a Series on HAVA and the EAC
By Michael Collins
Washington, DC CONTENTS:
APPENDICES:
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INTRODUCTION:
The Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) was passed on the heels of the Florida 2000 presidential election and its “hanging chad” problem. These ambiguous ballot chads riveted and frustrated the nation for a couple of months in late 2000. However, few thought the solution to the ambiguity of hanging chad evidence of a voter’s intent would be to completely eliminate that evidence.
HAVA (with the help of nearly $4 billion in federal grant money to fund purchases of voting machines) eliminates the evidence of voter intent by eliminating the paper, instead votes are registered and tabulated on computer-controlled direct recording electronic (DRE) voting machines, most commonly touch screen voting machines. Invisible electronic ballots are the result of these DRE touch screens; electronic vote tabulation software does the vital vote counting in secret. For citizens and public officials, these electronic vote-counting software processes are strictly off limits. There is literally nothing to see; there are no public records of vote counting. To preserve this secrecy, DRE purchase contracts often pledge the government to cooperate with the vendors to fight the very citizens the government is pledged to serve.
What is this secrecy in vote counting, really? To have the votes counted in secret by your political enemy is the picture of tyranny. To have the votes counted in secret by your political friend is the picture of corruption. To even desire such an unaccountable power is itself corrupt. So how is HAVA cramming this down the throat of American democracy?
HAVA, it turns out, provides a $3.8 billion carrot of federal money to assist election jurisdictions with purchases that comply with HAVA’s “standards”. This federal carrot is combined with a big lawsuit stick for noncompliance. The date for required compliance with HAVA is the first federal election in 2006 (the primary), and violations of HAVA are routinely guaranteed by the U.S. Department of Justice to be cause for a lawsuit. New York was the first major example made of a big state, when DOJ filed suit to force compliance with HAVA’s “standards” in March 2006.
HAVA standards require voting accessibility for people with all “disabilities”. They also require at least one “accessible” voting device per polling location. Adding considerably to the stress of some local jurisdictions is the fact that there is no single voting system that allows accessibility for all disabilities, whether of sight, motor abilities up to quadriplegia, or other disabilities as defined by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
However, HAVA “helpfully” states an example of compliance with this accessibility requirement in a single machine: DRE voting systems, such as touch screen voting systems. While other technologies are at best problematic and fraught with risks of noncompliance and lawsuits by both disabled groups and the DOJ, there exists a relatively safe harbor with DRE touch screens. HAVA names them as an example of a voting system that is compliant by law, though obviously not in fact, because touch screens serve less than half of the total disabled population. Clearly, the HAVA safe harbor, misrepresentations about other technologies, and the hype about DREs all combine to clear the way for touch screen DREs, and all the threatened lawsuits make perfect the “HAVA Cramdown” of DRE touch screen voting technology into our elections.
At $3,000 to $5,000 a piece, and with regular breakdowns and vote switching behaviors reported, with touch screen DREs crammed down the throat of democracy, we can look forward to bottlenecked long lines for these expensive machines, together with many years of elections that nobody can verify because of the secret vote counting.
Because of the trade secrecy claims and the nature of electronic vote counting on hard drives, with touch screen DREs, the voters never see the final form of their ballots, and the ballots are all counted in complete corporate trade secrecy. Making any reasonable connection between the intent of the voters and the invisible electronic ballot requires an elections theory that borders on magical thinking.
The wildly unaccountable features of invisible ballots and secret vote counting, and the fact that DREs do not accommodate more than half of all disabilities yet get a free pass under HAVA, should give us reason to pause to reevaluate the law and its outcomes. Yet at this very moment, the Department of Justice is proceeding, suing and threatening to sue any and all jurisdictions that do not comply with HAVA, scaring them into the only seemingly safe route to go under HAVA: touch screen DREs, even though some brave jurisdictions have still rejected that route.
Local and state activists have taken a variety of approaches. Some have filed complaints under HAVA, others are lobbying Congress, and some are litigating, in states including Washington, California, New Mexico, New Jersey, Tennessee, and Ohio.
On Saturday, April 8, a group of nearly 100 election integrity activists gathered in Washington DC for a conference. They heard a speech Commissioner Ray Martinez, one of the four commissioners on the federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC), who is an attorney. The EAC, it turns out, administers HAVA and, with the help of the DOJ, administers what they will not want to call the HAVA Cramdown, sweetened by the $3.8 billion in federal money that can be used for the purchase of voting systems, including DREs for all voters, not just disabled voters.
Nevertheless, Martinez spoke of EAC’s commitment to fair elections and provided some background on HAVA. He is a Democratic appointee and lawyer who had recently in a speech at Princeton made constructive comments on election reform, and is probably the most sympathetic voice for citizens on the EAC in an area where the public has few friends these days.
At the beginning of the question-and-answer period for Commissioner Martinez, business law and consumer fraud attorney Paul Lehto, of Everett, Washington, pointed to the secret vote counting that always takes place on touch screen voting machines, and asked a simple but powerful question:
Paul Lehto: My question is: By what right or authority did my right to watch the counting of the vote get taken away?
Along with Lehto’s two follow-up questions, the responses by Commissioner Martinez point out more detail in the massive civil rights violation of the HAVA Cramdown. The tip of this iceberg is in clear view; the size and impact will grow enormously as the federal elections approach in late summer and fall.
Another large portion of the iceberg is revealed by John Gideon’s recent article on the coming train wreck of electronic voting in 2006, showing how the corporate feeding frenzy at the government HAVA trough of billions is leading to widespread equipment failures and inability of vendors to deliver and maintain the equipment through rapid deployment phases this year.
These and related dynamics occurring right now in American democracy will impact elections all over the United States this year and for generations to come. It should be noted that it was Lehto that initiated major litigation against Sequoia Voting Systems in Washington State regarding DREs, after coauthoring a scientific study of election results produced by them. He is credited by many with initiating a process that was one of several factors causing Sequoia to have to leave his county of Snohomish when the county council voted to abandon use of the touch screens.
This foregoing is the context for the question-and-answer session below, which took place in Washington DC on April 8, 2006.
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THE QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS: Citizen Paul Lehto, Questions Ray Martinez, Attorney-at-Law and Commissioner, Election Assistance Commission.
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