Return to paper ballots could be on horizon (get ready for bogus arguments against this)

[AikidoSoul]

Note the argument below from one critics of paper ballots is STUPID but you hear it all the time and you need to be ready to argue against it. The argument is, "It takes far less skill to stuff a ballot box than to manipulate the computer software in the electronic voting machines."

Be sure to tell these idiots that stealing votes using computers is MUCH EASIER AND MORE EFFICIENT-- BUT THE MOST IMPORTANT POINT IS THAT THE POTENTIAL NUMBERS OF STOLEN VOTES ARE HUGE COMPARED TO THE PENNY ANTE STEALING OF PAPER BALLOTS by ballot box "stuffing".

With computerized voting it takes only one person to steal enough votes to change the results for an entire state, whereas stealing or manipulating paper ballots is awkward, cumbersome, and limited to the district it's done in. It's also much more risky to steal paper ballots. The danger to the vote thief is that it's a physical act of stealing votes -- instead of manipulating invisible electrons -- so there's the thief's problem of the evidence of the physical paper ballot. The whole point of paper ballots is because we want evidence of how people really voted -- it's also evidence of vote theft if someone is caught stealing.

One final argument -- there will always be vote fraud. With "ballot stuffing" it is probable that both Dems and Repugnicons will steal votes because there will always be people who steal. With computers it's the voting machine and software companies that can control the outcome by invisible electronic means that are impossible to trace. Using paper ballots there is more "equitable" stealing by both parties.

http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/143056.html

Return to paper ballots could be on horizon
By David Whitney - Washington Bureau
Published 12:31 pm PDT Friday, March 23, 2007

WASHINGTON - To deal with widespread concerns about the integrity of elections, a House panel is weighing controversial legislation requiring states to bring back the paper ballot as the official record.

Many, if not most, states are concerned that Congress is moving too fast because the pending legislation would take effect in time for the 2008 national presidential elections, with primary balloting beginning in January.

Only 17 states have voter systems that would be in compliance with the proposed law now.

The legislation has divided advocacy groups. State elections officials are opposed to it. County officials don't like it. Even among those who support the idea, such as California Secretary of State Debra Bowen, the consensus is that it will cost a lot more money than the cash-strapped Congress may be prepared to spend.

"Three hundred million dollars is not enough, especially for states with only touchscreen voting," Bowen said of the bill, introduced by Reps. Rush Holt, D-NJ, and Tom Petri, R-WI.

Florida, which is ground zero in the battle over fair voting because of the 2000 recount and the U.S. Supreme Court's declaring George Bush the winner, is moving ahead without federal legislation.

The state's Republican governor, Charlie Crist, told the House Administration Committee's elections panel Friday that he has proposed replacing the state's electronic voting system with an optical scanner system.

Under that system, voters would mark paper ballots that would then be scanned electronically for tabulation, but the real thing would remain to be counted and recounted if there was a dispute.

Crist said that if the legislature approves the system and funds it as he expects, it will be in force by next year and voters will be able to leave their polling places with full confidence that their ballot has been "counted, recorded, and available, if necessary."

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<SNIP>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

And some on the elections panel said a return to paper ballots is no panacea.

"Paper ballots are notoriously susceptible to fraud," said Don Norris, public policy professor at the University of Maryland. "It takes far less skill to stuff a ballot box" than to manipulate the computer software in the electronic voting machines, he said.

Among the bill's skeptics is Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield, the senior Republican on the panel even though the former California Assembly Republican leader is in his first year in Congress.

<<<<<<<<<SNIP>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

[DCKit]

1. I have heard on the periphery

that the GOP is far too self-assured that 2008 is in the bag. The only possible way they could win any substantial number of seats would be through the manipulation of the electronic voting machines.

Voter fraud has and always will exist, but enabling them by putting the election process entirely under their control is just plain STUPID.

[Peace Patriot]

2. "Voter fraud" is when a handful of Democrats vote twice. "Election fraud" is when one Bushcon tech

in ES&S's private corporate offices in Omaha 'disappears' 18,000 Democratic votes in a Congressional election in Florida (and God knows where else) with "trade secret" proprietary code that ES&S refuses to disclose to the public. "Voter fraud" is a Bushcon phantom, invented by rightwing think tanks, and "stovepiped" into the Department of Justice by that shyster Alberto Gonzales, to force federal prosecutors to pursue cases of "voter fraud" for which there was no evidence. "Election fraud" is how they have perpetrated a war that 56% of the American people opposed from the very beginning, before the invasion (Feb. '03) and 75% of the American people oppose today. It is the fascist coup of electronic voting machines run on "trade secret," proprietary programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations.

Beware of the phrase "voter fraud." It's not the same thing as "election fraud."

But you are absolutely correct that giving rightwing Bushite corporations the ability to change, 'disappear' or manufacture millions of votes, without detection, is just plain stupid.

[AikidoSoul]

4. Is there a group of DUers (besides Brad Friedman) who work on this?

This is the most important work for activists. Without voting integrity there is zero accountability.

I haven't seen much activity on DU about this and it's frankly disturbing. Hope we're not going to wait until 2008 to get these problems solved.

[Peace Patriot]

6. AikidoSoul, check out the Election Reform forum, and you will find many of us.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=203

There is a huge election reform movement in this country, started on Nov. 3, 2004, at DU. Well, that's an exaggeration, but there is a lot of truth in it. DU has been a hotbed of election fraud investigation, spurred by that darkest of days in US history, and and a key networking site for election reform in states all over the country and nationally.

[AikidoSoul]

9. Thanks, I WILL check this out. Look for me there this evening

I'm very relieved to see your post.

Thank you!!:)

[AikidoSoul]

3. I think you're right... and election equipment in 2008 will allow Repugs to steal the election

That is my biggest worry. I think Democrats are guilty of not taking this issue seriously enough and working fast enough to solve this foundationally important problem.

[Peace Patriot]

5. On a transparency scale of 1 to 100, I would give optical scan voting a 3.

The Bushcons want zero transparency. The Democrats are proposing an improvement, but not by much. 3, on a scale of 100, is better than zero transparency, yes, but it is still unacceptable for vote counting.

Why do I rate the Holt bill and similar proposals so low?

1. The optiscan ballot goes into a box and is rarely seen again. With the optiscans, you have a paper ballot which is scanned into a machine, turning your "vote" into manipulable electrons. The ballot is preserved. The trouble is, it is almost never counted. Right now, the best states--the best!--have only a 1% audit (automatic recount of a portion of the votes). Many have zero percent. And our Democratic leaders are proposing only 2%. Venezuela, which has an electronic system, but with open source code (anyone may review the code by which votes are tabulated, handcounts FIFTY-FIVE PERCENT of the ballots, as a check on machine fraud--which is what we should have been doing all along. 2% is just what it looks like. 98% of the ballots are never counted by human eyes. (Be aware that, when public officials talk about having "paper ballots," they are generally talking about optiscans--as opposed to touchscreens (paperless voting)--not a real paper ballot system with a 100% handcount.)

2. The "trade secret" code continues. Both the optiscans and the central tabulators (suspect no. 1 in Bushcon election fraud) will continue to be run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code--code that not even our secretaries of state are permitted to review. This privatization of our voting system is inherently fraudulent, and inherently perilous to a very high degree. There is nothing more important than our vote. It is the fundamental condition of democracy. This is no place for privately owned and controlled secret code of any kind.

3. Recounts are too hard to get. The rules and regs for recounts make it nearly impossible for the public and even for candidates to get a real recount, or any recount. It is hugely expensive and difficult. So, with privately coded optiscans/central tabulators, it will continue to be the case that the public has to prove who didn't win an election, rather than election officials having to prove who did. This is the opposite of the way it should be!

4. Rewarding the bad guys: The Bushite corporations who manufacture all the machines--touchscreens, optiscans, central tabulators--are inherently bad news. Diebold was headed by Wally O'Dell, a major Bush/Cheney fundraiser and campaign chair. Its brethren corporation ES&S was initially funded by far rightwing billionaire Howard Ahmanson, who also gave one million dollars to the extremist 'christian' Chalcedon foundation. A third player, Sequoia, hired former Repug CA Sec of State, Bill Jones, and his chief aide, Alfie Charles, to peddle their machines--an outstanding example of the corrupt practice of "revolving door" employment. They all lobbied hard, and with multi-millions of dollars, for the worst possible election practices--no paper trail, secret industry "testing of the machines, etc. To reward these corporations with yet more billions of taxpayer dollars, to "fix" an election system that they deliberately broke, is obnoxious, if not a formula for more disaster. It does little for transparency, and much for corruption. (The additional billions--right into the pockets of these Bushite corporations--will be used for adding printers, replacing touchscreens, upgrading computers, adding "patches," on-going "maintenance" contracts, and writing more secret code. A further boondoggle for the bad guys who stole the 2004 elections, and probably many Congressional seats in 2006 as well.)

5. Corruption: The reason we have election officials like Connie McCormack in Los Angeles doing sales brochures for Diebold, and lobbying for paperless voting (such outrageous behavior for a public official), is that billions of dollars were infused into our election system--by the "Help America Vote for Bush Act" of 2002--to fast track these election theft machines all over the country before the 2004 election. This electronic voting boondoggle has corrupted the election system. Election officials are now powermongers on a career path into the worldwide corporate information systems mega-business. They aren't the honest librarian types, and accountant types, we used to have overseeing vote counting. They've been subjected to lavish lobbying--one event I know of, a week of fun and sun and high-end shopping at the Beverly Hilton in Hollywood, sponsored by Diebold and ES&S (also Sequoia) in 8/05. This corruption is our chief obstacle in trying to restore transparent vote counting.

So, while I don't oppose improving transparency to a 3, on a scale of 1 to 100--who could oppose it?--I think we need to be fully aware of just how non-transparent the election system has become, how corrupt it has become, and how little real control the public will continue to have. It will be good to have the capability of an audit. That auditing capability was removed, in the first place, is outrageous--and I consider it to be THE fascist coup.

It's also a measure of just how much democracy we currently have in this country, that House members who are representing the interests of the people, have to struggle for--and may not succeed in achieving--even 3% transparency.

I do, however, agree, that one compromise could be keeping these goddamned machines, for the time being--but insisting on a ballot for every vote, and a 100% audit, at least for 2008, and substantial audits thereafter (as long as the "trade secret" code is in the system). They can use their shiny new crapass computers for data storage and reporting--and not have to admit that they misused billions of dollars in pubic money and grossly violated the public trust. It is utterly insane that a 100% audit of this machine vote counting wasn't required in the first place. It is the least we should be demanding now. And if Congress won't do it--and they're into an unacceptable compromise already--we need to get it done at the state/local level (but it will likely take longer). One strategy is to mobilize the very large Absentee Ballot voter constituency (it's up to 50% in some places--a real voter revolt) to demand that they handcount the AB votes and post the results BEFORE any electronics are involved. This is what AB voters want, and there are enough of them to put real pressure on local registrars and state officials. (About 30 states permit AB voting.) It's not the total solution. But it is a movement that could snowball. And it is a strategy that circumvents the corruption. (The e-voting machines will not be thrown into 'Boston Harbor,' as they should be--but will gradually become obsolete.) We need to think long term, as well as short term.

------------------------------

A caveat about the Sacramento Bee. It's as bad as the Washington Post, the WSJ, AP and all the war profiteering corporate news monopolies. It has been aiding and abetting the destruction of our democracy for many decades in California. So, pay attention to their framing of this story. They use a quote by Debra Bowen (an election reform advocate--Calif's new Sec of State) to throw a figure of $300 million out there into the public consciousness, as the "cost" of transparent vote counting, but never mention the $3.9 billion HAVA boondoggle, nor the billions more from the states, into the pockets of rightwing Bushite corporations for electronic voting--nor the $100 billion just larded onto military contractors by a not very Democratic Congress, for a war that 75% of the American people oppose. And that doesn't even begin to chronicle the true costs of Diebold/ES&S-selected Bushites seizing power in this country. The costs of NON-transparent vote counting are almost incalculable. And they don't just involve the theft of billions of dollars. They go to the heart of Constitutional government and our democracy itself.

They had plenty of money for Diebold and ES&S to pull off this coup, and now they don't have enough money to correct it? They don't have enough MONEY to count all our votes in a way that everybody can see and understand? Notice the framing. Read between the lines.

[Kurovski]

7. K&R.(nt)

[tehehehe]

8. In Maryland...

The Republican governor called for use of paper ballots in the 2006 election. The Democratic Party controlled legislature and Election Board turned him down and demanded use of Diebold machines. What are we to make of this???

http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1871&Itemid=806
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/25/1318243

What's the "Democratic Party position" on this issue? Or is it "state by state"?