John, you said "There isn’t much to pass on that is real news."

I think there would be real news if the excellent computer software departments at Princeton, Carnegie Mellon University, or MIT, just to name a few, got their hands and eyes on Diebold's voting machine source code.

That is why the republicans on the House committee handling HR 811 fought the provision to make that happen.

They do not want anyone looking at the public election machine source code that is now secret ... except the partisan republican owners of the Diebolds of the world.

They know that "it is not those who vote that are the deciders, it is instead those who count the votes who are the deciders". And that would be those partisan republican owners of the electronic voting machine companies.

The said committee republicans are so soft on Stalinism, so bushie. If open source code is in the bill sent to preznit blush he will veto it.

You also asked "Why, for instance, has the MSM totally ignored the ES&S source code escrow issue and their arrogant letter to the California Secretary of State’s office?"

It is not because they support the notion of open source code of electronic voting machines for the benefit of the public is it? Right leaning MSM?

Brad--

Greg Palast is an ace reporter who has a good sense of corporate fraud and corruption. On the one hand, he has consistently held the thesis most election fraud isn't bound up with source code and paper trails, but rather caging and so forth. He hasn't exactly rejected the impact of black-box voting machine problems, just subordinated it to his broader thesis.

That said, maybe he has some insight into the big picture of corporations producing these machines and the way the press is ignoring the issue. Have you asked him to think about it, especially in light of the current struggle in your homestate with ES&S?

Maybe the arrogance of these companies is related to something we are missing.

John,

Something is on the horizon that may affect the profits of the republican owned electronic voting machine companies:

The national median home price is poised for its first annual decline since the Great Depression, and the supply of unsold homes is at a record 4.2 million, the National Association of Realtors reported.

``It's a blood bath,'' said Mark Kiesel, executive vice president of Newport Beach, California-based Pacific Investment Management Co., the manager of $668 billion in bond funds. ``We're talking about a two- to three-year downturn that will take a whole host of characters with it, from job creation to consumer confidence. Eventually it will take the stock market and corporate profit.''

(Bloomberg, emphasis added). We saw how these republican owned companies resist exposing their source code.

And now will more expense to them to meet improvement requirements cause their resistance to grow into arrogant stonewalling as their profits dwindle?

John,

I read the article by Bev Harris you linked to.

I must say she us usually more factual than she is in that article. She says:

A mutation of what has been known as “The Holt Bill” called HR 811 – 62 pages long – is the first bill, with the second bill – S1487 (submitted by Diane Feinstein) the companion bill that must be reconciled with whatever the Holt Bill turns out to be in order to enact reform.

(Bev Harris, emphasis added). This is not the case.

She mentions HR 811 but her link points out that there are "There are 2 versions of Bill Number H.R.811 for the 110th Congress".

For anyone who has been paying attention, one big difference in the two versions of HR 811 is that the original requires electronic voting machine source code to be made public for any interested citizen to see.

The amended version, however, changes that to allow only "qualified persons", not all citizens who want to, to peruse the source code.

She makes an error in confusing which Senate bill is the compliment to HR 811, if the congressional record is correct, because the record says:

H.R.811

Title: To amend the Help America Vote Act of 2002 to require a voter-verified permanent paper ballot under title III of such Act, and for other purposes.

Sponsor: Rep Holt, Rush D. [NJ-12] (introduced 2/5/2007)
Cosponsors (216)

Related Bills: S.559

Latest Major Action: 5/16/2007 Placed on the Union Calendar, Calendar No. 91.
House Reports: 110-154

(Link here, emphasis added). It shows that the Senate bill associated with HR 811 is S. 559 but not S. 1487 as she stated.

If you read S. 559 it is almost identical to the original HR 811 (except it adds the anti Ken Blackwell and Karen Harris section), and S. 559 says it is related to HR 811.

I do not understand why movement folk are so prone to distort the reality of the HR 811 / S 559 factors.

The Feinstein bill S. 1487, a disaster, is not related to HR 811, but S. 559 is, according to the congressional records. Where "related bills" are referred to S. 1487 says "NONE".

Dredd,

Thanks for pointing that out. S 559, Nelson's bill, which has no co-sponsors but does indeed reference the Holt Bill. It is similar but not nearly the same.

So Feinstein's bill is just a rabbit to get us all chasing after a bad guy while Nelson's bill quietly awaits Holt bill passage. It's different enough that reconciliation still needs to be done.

The difference in the trade secrets provisions is MUCH greater than you indicate. It not only restricts who can see the source code, which is really just a laboratory specimen of the code and never the code that is actually deployed in any field situation, but it requires NDAs and provides, for the first time ever, federal authority for trade secrecy in elections.

The mutated Holt Bill --- and I say that because so many people carry with them the general positive feelings associated with his very simple bills from previous years, which were just a few pages long, yet this is a 62-page monstrosity which everyone has hung an ornament on, making it a Christmas Tree that has become completely unwieldy --- at any rate, this mutation has another massive difference from both the original and the Nelson bill: The so-called audits.

The new bill has about 20 pages of materials on audits. It also empowers the EAC on every page and basically quintuples its budget, as well as sticking the EAC in between the states ability to certify their own elections.

Bev #5

I don't know about you, but I do not like S. 1487 ... and it really puzzles me that the major democratic candidates for president are co-sponsors.

I have not prepared a statement about that, but I am reading the bill (S. 1487) with careful scrutiny, and then will have some words for those candidates.

Thank you for all the good work you have done for election integrity. I will never forget that.

Bev #5

You said "Thanks for pointing that out. S 559, Nelson's bill, which has no co-sponsors but does indeed reference the Holt Bill. It is similar but not nearly the same."

Please point that out to your minion "zap_kitty".

Zappy Puss argued here, incessantly, that the two were virtually identical ... even as I tried to point out that they are different.

I hope the morph to zap_pussie from zap_kitty does not happen, but I am not hopeful that it will be helpful. But I will keep an open mind since the puss is from your org.

Errrrrr... Dddrrreeeddd... she's talking about the post-committee version of 811...

The original version of hr.811 was indeed near-identical in text to s.559 except for a couple of good ideas s.559 had that hr.811 didn't. And I informed Dredd of this... repeatedly... because he kept singing the praises of text in 559 that was identical to text in 811... so strange...

But I've not made that particular comparision since the mutated marked-up version of 811 came out of committee since it obviously no longer applies.

Greetings, text-based blood sport fans! Just woke up and found Dredd running rampant sans any visible means of support ... give me a couple of hours to catch up on the blogs and then I'll try to figure out what Dredd's on about now... Ahah! I see 99 is waving her "Show Us Your Ears!" sign again...

Hmmm...
... as for "minion"...
... actually I've been telling everyone that I'm a minion of Dredd ...

Actually, from my initial quick listen it seems that the argument has come round full circle again to an implicit faith in e-voting... as espoused by Dredd?...

... but let me verify that before continuing...

zap

What in the heck are you talking about with this show-us-your-ears thing? Huh?

My advice to you re squabbling with Dredd is that he is a particularly obtuse interlocutor when you disagree with him. It's not that he's a blockhead. He appears to trust mostly what's generated in his own head, and to like wearing one out with the strength of his conviction. Once in a while he really and truly groks an alternative position but not, as far as I can remember, when it's put out expressly to correct him. He's uncorrectable!

I'm not sure, because frequently I find carefully reading your back-and-forth with him too much like punishment... Go sit in the corner and breathe paint fumes while you watch it dry, 99... but he seems to have taken into his head that our legislators are the servants of the EVM manufacturers instead of the other way around.

Plus, I have found in decades of entirely too much experience with men who have an amount of regard for their own intelligence that the male ego will very often start splitting hairs to slip around cogent points it doesn't like. It also will raise its voice tactically. It also will begin using increasingly expensive words to cover weaknesses. In short, somewhere in there the ego takes over for the brain and kryptonite was modeled after precisely this.

So, knowing in advance that drilling poor old 99's nerves with this stuff is going to be futile, maybe you could talk Dredd into getting creative about it with you. Maybe you guys could figure out ways to make your picked nits and tits for tats more relaxedly entertaining. Make a pact that each parry must be accompanied by a link to a wonderful song, or you have to tell a really good --- CLEAN --- joke before you set in... something! Also, remember that I really think you two should be engaging the time of the legislative assistants with this stuff. I mean, honestly, they deserve it!

I am aware that my whining only seems to energize you two, but, well, I'm a damn optimist at bottom, I guess.

"zap
What in the heck are you talking about with this show-us-your-ears thing? Huh?"

Sorry, too much free association... "this dialogue has gotten too strange" --> "text-based blood sport" --> "racing as blood sport" --> "racing spectators" --> "not all spectators are amused" --> "Agent 99" --> "racing spectators waving signs exhorting displays of upper body" --> "eternal cat ears meme" --> "Agent 99 demanding the ears of participants in irritating exchanges..."

Did that explanation help?... I was afraid it wouldn't... sorry...

But since I did invoke your name for no particularly good reason I'll announce an end to the prolonged exchanges with Dredd.

And in return for your long-suffering patience in this regard I'll try to post something substantial, and maybe useful, on the whole "Holt II" dialogue problem later today.

Oddly, I think I get it!

And that is a grand idea. I look forward to it.