On today’s BradCast, we expose a dangerous, deceptive new scheme to hoax California voters into allowing Internet Voting across the entire state. Plus, we discuss Obama’s final State of the Union and take calls on all of the above.
First (after an official welcome to our newest affiliate — the great am950 KTNF in Minnesota!), I explain the newly proposed California ballot initiative describing itself as the “Election Data Security & Military Ballot Access Act”. The initiative is nothing of the sort. It is little more than a very well-financed and completely deceptive scam to force Internet Voting into the Golden State by describing it as something other than it is.
Rather than use the words “Internet Voting” or even “Internet” in any way, the 46-page initiative describes the proposed, dishonest new scheme as “electronically delivered vote-by-mail”!
Who’s behind it? We still don’t know. But it was submitted recently to the state Attorney General by the high-priced Sacramento law firm of Olson Hagel & Fishburn LLP and needs to be, at the very least, retitled before it ends up on the state ballot.
This is important even if you don’t live in California! When it comes to voting systems, what happens here (where we have the most electoral votes in the nation) is often adopted by states across the country!
Election Integrity expert and advocate Jim Soper of CountedAsCast.org and the CA Voting Rights Task Force, joins us from the state capitol building in Sacramento to discuss the deceptive initiative and a similar (if somewhat less deceptive) legislative initiative sponsored by Democratic Assemblyman Phil Ting (San Francisco). The latter, happily, was killed in committee today, Soper reports.
He explains why the ballot initiative is so misleading, why Internet Voting is a horrific idea — as virtually every computer scientist and security expert has demonstrated over and again — and asks listeners to contact the CA Attorney General by Thursday, when the comment period on the initiative is supposed to end.
Please ask AG Kamala Harris to change the title of this scammy initiative before allowing it to be circulated for signatures! Comments on the “Election Data Security & Military Ballot Access Act — Version 2”, Initiative No. 15-0118, may be left here. Alternately, you may email your comment to the AG’s office here or snail mail to: CA Attorney General, ATTN: Initiative Coordinator, 1300 I Street, Sacramento, CA 95814.
In the second part of today’s show, we go on to cover last night’s State of the Union Address, President Obama’s last, including his call, once again, to correct our woeful electoral system.
Finally, we turn to listener calls — and a lot of folks who want to talk about e-voting concerns — before being joined by Desi Doyen with the latest Green News Report, including disturbing news on the new regulatory scheme that has now forced solar companies out of sunny Nevada.
Wow. A modest proposal to completely gut California’s electoral protections. Subtle! It will be very interesting to learn who’s behind it.
Excellent analysis of the history of electronic voting, Brad, as usual. Great work, Jim Soper. Mimi Kennedy is absolutely correct: some things take a bit of time, effort, resolve–things like exercising one’s right to vote. Can we please remember that it takes time to be a citizen in a democracy? And that the effort is worth it? The pressure to make everything electoral happen FAST fits right in with our culture. It can feel like there’s no time to focus on civic matters. It can appear that technology can solve all problems.
Not.
Someone suggested that ballots can’t be hand counted. They can. We do in Columbia County, New York. It’s not that hard. It doesn’t take that long. It doesn’t cost that much. The effort can be scaled up for a larger county, scaled down for a smaller one. I just think the notion that you can’t hand-count ballots is the most ridiculous thing on the face of the earth.
Well, maybe not more ridiculous than driving solar companies out of sunny Nevada.
Intelligent human beings are incapable of counting marks on pieces of paper? Really?