As I was reading this excellent article by Ed Kemmick from Sunday’s Billings Gazette I was preparing to mention how nice it would be if every state dealt with their election issues in such an adult and responsible manner as Kemmick reports would now seem to be occurring in Montana, where the state mandates a paper ballot for every vote cast.
I was also going to remark how nice it would be if the country’s national media, such as WaPo, NY Times, USA Today, Newsweek, Time, et al. covered election issues with such sober, non-political, attention to detail.
I’ll still strongly recommend Kemmick’s piece for precisely those reasons (and for the superb quotes from the good John Gideon and others)…but then I got to the bottom where two paragraphs stuck out like a sore thumb from the rest of the reasoned discussion of the state’s voting machines and what still needs to be done to assure accuracy and confidence in their system.
The final grafs covered statements from Montana’s Secretary of State Brad Johnson, about the responsible proposals discussed in the rest of the article for dealing with remaining concerns in the state’s electoral process. Without any mention elsewhere in the article regarding any concerns about voter identification issues in the state, Johnson sadly drops these turds into the bucket…
“Protecting the integrity of the process is the highest priority of our office,” he said. That said, Johnson added, he wants to be careful not to add to the burdens on Montana election officials.
I’ve never heard of Johnson before, but after reading the above I decided to look him up. For some reason, I figured he might be a Republican. As it turns out, of course, he is. And apparently one who is still buying into the discredited notion of an American “Voter Fraud Epidemic” as being sold by the despicable Thor Hearne and his phony, discredited GOP front group, the so-called “American Center for Voting Rights“.
Good luck, Montana. You seem to be heading in the right direction. But I’d watch out for that Johnson character whose statements would seem to indicate he’s far more interested in partisan politicking then he is in watching out for what’s in the best interest of the voters.
CORRECTION: This story originally referred to Wyoming instead of Montana in several places. That has now been corrected in the text above.
First, Brad, as covered in Ed Kemmick’s article, it’s Montana that is coming along pretty well, not Wyoming. As the following article, also published in the Billings, MT, Gazette shows, Wyoming is still stuck in the all electronic voting, all electronic recounting mode.
{ED NOTE: Thanks, Steve. I’ve corrected the Wyoming/Montana error in the original article, and concur with your point about the ongoing mess in Wyoming! — BF}
Secondly, as THIS Gazette article shows, Montana Secretary of State Brad Johnson and Montana State Representative Brady Wiseman (D-Bozeman), have been very instrumental in making powerful changes that have helped make Montana one of the states held up as a good example by verified voting activists nationwide.
(Also, a rule change implemented by Brad Johnson on October 15 of this year was brilliant. He required that all counties do an election-day random 5 percent test of the election machines to ensure that there were no election day-activated programming “surprises” cropping up.)
I’d add that I wasn’t too excited by Brad’s comments on election day registration, (and it may be more in response to the overwhelm that many election officials reported with election day lines that were three- and four- hours long at county courthouses), but I want to make sure that all his great work on making Montana’s elections fair is not submerged by one comment.
Why doesn’t anyone do a chart that shows the actual numbers where there’s PROVEN voter fraud ? And one showing LOST votes (Fl. 18K to start) how about all the memory cards that go missing, all the people that get turned away when machines are down ? Maybe the MSM would be interested in numbers, supported by facts. Or not…
Brad Johnson is one of the election officials that actually “get it” as far as voting machines and procedures.
He is a Republican so he is following the party line on VoterID issues.
I’m not excusing him just stating facts.
It does not matter who wins or how much vote fraud. Unfortunately it took segregationist Governor Wallace to reveal the truth that “there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between” Republicans and Democrats. The Democrats willingly went along with the War in Iraq, suspension of Habeas Corpus, detaining protestors, banning books like “America Deceived’ from Amazon, America Deceived (book) stealing private lands (Kelo decision), warrant-less wiretapping and refusing to investigate 9/11 properly. They are both guilty of treason. Look at the bright side, when we have to vote the Democrats out, we’ll have no choice but to vote for a Third Party.
Steve, #1 – walking the party line on Voter ID may be good for Johnson politically, but it’s long past time for Secretaries of State to stop catering to their party masters and start putting the voters first 100% of the time.
Because you and Gideon (#3) vouch for his good intent in other aspects of the voting process, and for his good works so far, I will give him my personal benefit of the doubt (not that I’m anybody, but you get my point, i hope), but I don’t live in Montana and thus will not be subject to his rulings to come. Thanks for sharing more info on Sec. Johnson.
But the insidious, invidious scheme of Voter ID is a poison eating away at the foundation of equal access, and IMHO we gloss over and excuse it from otherwise “good guy” officials to our collective peril. I guess I just want to see somebody, somewhere, take a stand that is truly independent of their party line, esp. when that party is dead wrong to keep selling that bill of goods.
The Voter ID canard is like Whack-A-Mole — it will continue to show it’s butt-ugly face in the Republican Party Machine until it is eradicated for the pest that it is.
Donna #2 — you can find the Election Assistance Commission’s formerly-buried report debunking the lie of voter ID — with real statitics ! — here ,on BRAD BLOG, from October 16th. A chart comparing verified incidents of voter fraud to the thousands of other “mishaps” and “glitches” from electronic voting systems would be very instructive, methinks.