A Partial Rebuttal to David Dill’s “Making Democracy Transparent”

[Time for change]

First I want to say that I very much appreciate Professor Dill’s recent article, and I very much hope that it gets widespread exposure, despite my disagreement with part of what he has to say. I couldn’t agree more with his central point, which is:

"Why should we trust the results of elections?" It's not good enough that election results be accurate. We have to know they are accurate—and we don't.

That is indeed an extremely important point to make about the need for election reform in our country today.

However, though I agree that this is a very important point, it is not the ONLY point with regard to the argument for election reform. In particular, I must disagree with his second paragraph, which disparages the efforts to investigate and expose what happened in previous elections, especially the 2004 Presidential election. Dill states:

Theories of widespread election fraud are highly debatable, to say the least. Some people enjoy that debate. I do not. It encourages a sense of hopelessness and consumes energy that could instead be focused on long-term changes that could give us elections we can trust.

Here is why I disagree with that notion:


Why I believe it is important to investigate and expose election fraud

Dill says “Some people enjoy this debate. I do not”. Well, the issue is not how much we do or do not enjoy the debate, but whether we ought to be having it. Here are some important reasons why I believe that election fraud needs to be investigated and debated:

1) Most people are apathetic about potential problems, no matter how important they might be. Tell people that there is a problem with our election system and too many of them will think, “Well, if the problem is so bad why haven’t we seen a major election stolen?” Therefore, in order to generate the maximum political support for election reform it is very important that, to the extent we can, we provide the evidence not only that election fraud is a potential problem, but that it is an actual problem (i.e., it has already occurred). We need all the grass roots support that we can get on this issue, and actual problems attract more support than potential problems.

2) It is important that we investigate suspicious elections so that we understand HOW fraud is perpetrated. Professor Dill’s recommendations, if implemented, will go a long way towards ensuring fairer elections in the future. But he has not necessarily covered all the bases. For example, investigation of the 2004 Presidential election has revealed that voter registration fraud probably had a major effect on the Kerry/Edwards “loss” in Ohio, and may very well have been the most important factor. I don’t believe that Professor Dill’s recommendations would address that issue.

3) Election fraud is a serious crime. Do we say of other crimes, “Well, that’s water under the bridge. Let’s just forget about investigating those who committed the crime, and just pass laws that will prevent those crimes from occurring in the future”? Should we say, for example, of the outing of a CIA agent for apparent political purposes, or the warrantless spying on American citizens, or of the abnegations of the Geneva Convention regarding the humane treatment of prisoners, “Let’s forget about investigating those things, we’ll just pass laws so that they won’t happen again”? I don’t think that any of us would suggest that. Why treat election fraud differently?


Dill Says “Theories of widespread election fraud are highly debatable, to say the least.”

I don’t agree with that. Reading the John Conyers Report on the Ohio election, or Clint Curtis’ testimony (regarding the request to him to write vote-switching computer programs) before Conyers’ committee, or the indictments of two Cuyahoga County election workers for misconduct during the Ohio recount, for example, provides plenty of grounds for suspicion that the 2004 election in Ohio (which decided the Presidency) was awarded to the wrong candidate.

And anyhow, that’s besides the point in some sense. Why should the fact that widespread election fraud is “debatable”, as Dill says, mean that it shouldn’t be investigated and debated?


Dill says that the debate “encourages a sense of hopelessness”

I disagree with that too, and I have never seen evidence of that – but that’s not the point. What about other areas of government malfeasance – for example leading our country into war by lying to the American people and to Congress. Does exposing and debating that issue result in a sense of hopelessness? I doubt that anyone could say with much confidence how many people are caused to feel hopeless as a result of such a debate. But should we let the possibility that some people may feel hopeless as a result of hearing these things cause us not to expose and investigate such issues? I don’t think so. With that kind of reasoning we should also excise from our history books such things as slavery and the Watergate scandal (or we should have never investigated and exposed that scandal to begin with).


Dill says that the debate “consumes energy that could instead be focused on long-term changes that could give us elections we can trust”

That’s almost like saying that we shouldn’t devote time to environmental protection because stopping the war in Iraq is more important, and spending time on the former diverts energy from the latter. They are both important issues, and with nearly 300 million people living in this country, we have enough energy between us to address more than one issue at a time.


Summary

Professor Dill’s article provides several recommendations for election reform which, if implemented, will go a long way towards ensuring fairer elections in our country. It should be widely distributed.

However, I believe that his disparaging of efforts to expose and debate election fraud that has already occurred is wrong – for several reasons.

[Boredtodeath]

1. You might try to get his name RIGHT

It's DILL not GILL.

And, he makes a valid point - attack tactics are never going to help this issue. Only intelligent, sound facts will defeat electronic voting.

[Time for change]

7. Correction made -- I said that he made a valid point

And I certainly didn't argue against intelligent, sound facts.

What I said was that his point isn't the only point. We also need to investigate and expose what happened in 2004.

[Kelvin Mace]

2. I hate to break it to you

but in the world of criminal justice, the evidence so far of "fraud" is pretty anemic. Even in the cases where it is obvious something is wrong, finding sufficient evidence that an individual or individual willfully broke the law is going to be VERY hard.

Dill is a scientist, he deals in facts and speculation, but the law deals only in facts. When I worked on a select committee on e-voting I could rehash all sorts of suspicious circs about voting machines, or I could deal in the facts. The facts were that the damned machines are unreliable, insecure, and easy to tamper with. The OVERWHELMING MAJORITY of computer scientists agree with this view. We have mountains of documents, testimony, news reports and incriminating emails from the likes of Diebold to buttress this view.

Or I could have spent all my time building a case for skulduggery and conspiracy.

I stuck to facts, since anything else would have reduced my credibility to ZERO.

NC passed our law (unanimously in both houses) and it is the toughest in the land.

Dill is giving you excellent advice. Stick to the facts, change the laws. After that if you want to try and build a criminal case, by all means, be my guest.

David Allen
www.blackboxvoting.com

[stevietheman]

5. I concur... the focus should be on fixing provable problems...

too much is at stake to not maintain this focus.

Further, complaining about past results looks too much like whining to many people we need on our side to pass DRE reforms.

I say let investigative historians tell us what happened in the past. For the sake of the country, we need to focus on the future.

[Kelvin Mace]

13. Precisely!

People need to get a realistic understanding of how the crminal justice system works and how election laws are written.

We can spend years trying to prove fraud, while allowing the machines to remain in place. The longer the machines are in place, the greater the danger.

[Time for change]

9. Where did I suggest not sticking to the facts?

I said that we should try to investigate and expose election fraud. Why do you think that can't be done while sticking to the facts?

[Kelvin Mace]

12. If you are using your resources

to chase down prosecutions which are going to be next to impossible to obtain, then you will not be persuing laws to regulate voting machines and require paper ballots.

If fair, accurate and honest election are what is important, then all our energy must be to regulate these machines and establish independent oversight. You can't pursue this while persuing criminal investigations, election officials and prosecutors are NOT going to cooperate.

We have few resources and spreading them to more than one thing at a time will probably mean failure.

[Time for change]

17. Do you believe that people (voters) will be more likely to support

meaningful election reform if they believe that substantial election fraud has occurred?

[Kelvin Mace]

22. Proving fraud is going to be hard if not impossible

Whereas proving the machines are prone to tampering and that they are poorly made is a done deal.

The choice is like the difference between proving the executives Ford Motor Company deliberately designed the Ford Pinto to explode when rear-ended, and proving that the car is poorly designed and will explode if rear-ended.

One is established fact, the other is speculation with little or no hard evidence.

And before anyone says this is not a fair analogy since people aren't dying or getting maimed, I would point out that our soldiers and citizens of Iraq would beg to differ.

David Allen
www.blackboxvoting.com

[papau]

3. See Miami Herald Article below on Election Fraud- it will not get National

attention:Miami Herald - - Election official hammered for telling the truth - BY FRED GRIMM

Ion Sancho may be a hero in California, where grateful election officials have verified the ''serious security vulnerabilities'' in Diebold voting machines that the Leon County election supervisor uncovered last year.

Sancho is regarded a little differently in Florida.

Florida's secretary of state's office disparaged Sancho's finding, demonstrating considerably more interest in propping up vendors than protecting elections.

California, alarmed by Sancho's report, dispatched its independent, expert-laden Voting Systems Technology Assessment Advisory Board to conduct its own investigation.

Florida, meanwhile, threatened to sue Sancho.<snip>

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/14034640.htm

All that DILL is saying is that US MEDIA will not allow a real debate/discussion on the GOP using the new technology to steal elections.

So Dill wants to frame the fix as just a "fix" or "improvement"

Rather wimpish - but it reflects our honest not controlled by the RW GOP US media and its fear of the GOP - and it reflects the commercial exit poll stat review folks and their desire to not pressure the media as they look to find a "bad exit poll design reason" for 2000 and 2002 and 2004, so as to not lose contracts for 2006 - and it reflects the lack of desire in our law folks to pursue a legal case.

So be happy with the NC law change - and note that the GOP/business world is keeping such laws from being passed in other states.

[Time for change]

10. I think it's fine for some people to frame it like that

I just object to the idea that it's a bad thing for other people to investigate, debate, and expose fraud.

[mod mom]

4. I've got to side with TFC here. Give us our day in a fair court.

This issue is NOT over.

[Time for change]

11. Thank you mod mom - it is not over because a lot of people are

working on it.

I don't see why it should be swept under the rug.

[Kelvin Mace]

16. I am not aware of anyone

"sweeping it under the rug".

This is triage. You have just so many resources and you have to set priorities if you expect to succeed. Once we have paper ballots and strong oversight in all 50 states, THEN we can look around to root out crooked bastards who may have tampered.

[Kelvin Mace]

14. No argument

But I'm saying that we need to fix the voting machine problem NOW before they do more damage. There will be time for such things AFTER we secure the voting machines.

[bleever]

6. Why not both? Institute reforms AND investigate the 2004 theft?

I think Tfc makes some good points here. I don't think there's any reason that forensic investigation (including of the machines, the code, the memory cards, the GEMS tabulation system, etc.) can't co-exist synergistically with the activism involved in changing the law.

Rec'd.

[Kelvin Mace]

15. Which is the more important issue?

Our chances of getting the laws changed are very good. Our chances of prosecuting someone for "rigging a voting machine" is very slim.

Each person not involved in pushing for new laws reduces our chance of of succeeding on the former, while not really improving chances for the latter.

[Time for change]

18. The most important person on an airplane is the pilot

That doesn't mean that all of an airline's resources should go into pilots, with nothing for navigators, mechanics, or other personnel.

I'm not just talking about prosecuting someone for rigging voting machines. I'm talking about investigating to find out if and how an election was stolen, and then publicizing the findings so that people (voters) have a better understanding of what is going on.

[Kelvin Mace]

21. To use your analogy

When the aircraft is in flight, the safety of the pilot outweighs ALL other considerations. Navigators, mechanics and ticket taker's safety is secondary until the plane lands. We can throw all our resources to protecting the pilot while the plane is in flight, or we can divert some of our resources to protecting the ground crews, knowing that increases the chance that we'll lose the plane.

Again, until we have laws and oversight of voting machines, code and vendor/election official conduct, things which distract us from this goal increase the chances of another bad election.

That said, the chance of actually prosecuting anyone for rigging a voting machine is just this side of ZERO unless you catch them in the act. The best use of limited resources is to eliminate opportunity to screw around.

In North Carolina it is now a FELONY for a vendor to use code in an election that was not certified. The CEO of the company must sign a SWORN affidavit attesting that the code certified will be the code used. If the vendor pulls a Diebold stunt, the CEO goes to jail.

It is easy as hell to enforce this provision of the law, and easier still to prosecute violations. Help get this kind of law nationwide and you will have a VERY effective tool to combat election fraud.

David Allen
www.blackboxvoting.com

[Time for change]

19. Thank you Bleever - We appear to be outnumbered on this thread

That's surprising to me.

[bleever]

20. Kelvin's point about the use of limited resources is a good one,

and changing the laws ASAP is critical, and at the same time the system can't really be made right without revealing and understanding all the ways it was corrupted.

Fortunately, there are plenty of good people working on both angles, so I'm not sure that we need to worry too much about the division of labor. People are gravitating to working on one or both aspects, according to their talents, so the system is working.

So while pulling our voting system back off the cliff where it's hanging is the priority, I'll never ignore an article or piece about uncovering the truth about 2004.

[glitch]

8. The priority should be 1. fix the future, then 2. prosecute the past.

Not mutually exclusive, just prioritized.

However, I see nothing wrong with different groups tackling the issues simultaneously.

It's not like we can't multi-task.