Did anyone watch the house hearing on e-voting on c-span today?

[Daylin Byak]

I watched a little bit of the House Administration committee conduct a hearing on electronic voting, I only watched about 10 minutes of it and I was amazed, but not in a good way. The hearing was conducted by Republican Vernon Ehlers of Michigan and in the beginning he was talking about the possibilties of having people vote with paper saying that people feel safe voting with paper cause it's real and you can feel it. But he showed pictures of people during the 2000 florida recount trying aimless to count the ballots. Afterwards he said this: "Those people voted with peper and look how it turn out."

I was applaued with him and turned the tv off.

Thoughts?

[Viva_La_Revolution]

1. sometimes I hate the fact that I'm no longer unemployed

I missed it. Sounds like there was all kinds of spin and theatre...

[emlev]

2. Here's a link to it, including the Princeton hack

http://cha.house.gov/default.aspx
You'll need RealPlayer to watch it.

[demodonkey]

3. Y'all should have watched the whole thing because lots went OUR way

I was there.

After Elhers and Millender-McDonald spoke, the first speaker up was Ed Felten. He did a live demo of the Diebold hack and it was fabulous -- and scary as hell.

Barbara Simons was absolutely on message and got many many points in for our side.

Cunningham and Smith were babbling jerks who took up too much time announcing how wonderfully they are handling their elections. I believe this backfired, especially when Cunningham blamed the whole loss of voter confidence on John Conyers for investigating Ohio's wonderful 2004 election.

Dickson basically recited his usual speech, complete with what is apparently the one joke he knows; he says he really has two disabilities-- "I'm blind and I'm blunt." Again he told the same stories we've heard before of the mean nasty horrible pollworkers who treated him like dirt because he had to be an assisted voter until HAVA saved the day with its wonderful and completely accessible DREs. Yeah, right Jim. Cue the violins.

And Shamos really came off less credible than usual; at one point calling for a bizarre system of two touchscreens and a digital video camera to allow a voter to verify without paper. All this equipment that could just as easily be hacked or break, just to avoid using a sheet of paper. I have heard him speak many times before and this time it seemed like he had the least to say in terms of real solutions.

After the hearing, there was a press conference with Rush Holt, Ed Felton, Barbara Simons, and folks from the Brennan Center, Common Cause, VoteTrustUSA, Verified Voting and more. And it was overflowing into the hall, with four cameras and several major papers there.

Was the day 100% in our favor? Obviously, no, but there was a lot more going our way than was promised by the first few minutes of the hearing. The whole thing is online at C-SPAN and soon if not already at the House Admin site. I would watch it all if I were you.

[rumpel]

4. and here is the WAPO article

"I equate it to planting several hundred acres of wheat with a state-of-the-art machine and then going out and harvesting it by hand like the Amish do," Cunningham said.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=451243&mesg_id=451263

and herein lies the misconception - my vote and rights I vest to a stranger does NOT equal "wheat".