In a posted comment here at The BRAD BLOG, Congressman Rush Holt (D-NJ) has responded to an article we filed earlier this week in which we expressed concern about a recently quoted comment of his. Our original piece discussed his statement at an Election Reform symposium at Rutgers University, as quoted on Tuesday in by New Jersey’s Herald News, about the financial cost of moving away from Electronic Voting Machines in light of recent purchases made by jurisdictions across the country.
The Congressman’s comments are, indeed, quite notable as we read them, and they deserve to be highlighted here — as the piece from last Tuesday has now scrolled far down the main page and his reply posted today would otherwise likely go unnoticed by many…
As we reported originally, an audience member at the Rutgers panel discussion was quoted as saying in regard to electronic voting, “We ought to look at doing away with the machines and have paper-only balloting.”
Holt, the author and lead sponsor of HR550 [PDF] — an Election Reform bill in the U.S. House, which enjoys a great deal of bipartisan support and mandates a number of much-needed reforms — was on the panel and was quoted as follows by the NJ paper:
We responded in turn that we found Holt’s argument, as characterized by the paper — essentially, that since millions had already been wasted on unreliable DRE (Direct Recording Election, usually touch-screen) systems, which undermine democracy whether they include a so-called “Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail” or not — was a less than compelling reason to allow States and Counties to continue using such flawed, non-transparent systems.
In Holt’s reply posted today, he responds to say that “cost is not the issue.” He further states that his legislation will require “a voter-verified paper ballot.”
The version of Holt’s legislation, now pending in Congress, requires only “paper records” and/or “voter-verified paper audit trails.” Both of which are a far cry from a paper ballot mandate.
Holt’s complete response, posted today, is as follows…
I am proud of the fact that I have been trying for years to require voter-verified paper ballots, and I will continue to work to make them a federal requirement. The fact that my legislation does not outlaw the use of electronic machines does not mean that I am against paper-ballot-based voting or that I am in favor of touch-screen machines. In fact, my legislation intentionally avoids dictating technology except for requiring a voter-verified paper ballot. If states and localities choose paper-ballot-based voting, and they do so while still protecting accessibility and privacy for disabled voters, then they have my support.
As HR550 is currently being re-written for re-introduction in the new Congress — and in fact, we’ve been in touch with Holt’s office on a number of occasions to discuss our concerns, the paper “ballot” language being among the most important — we’d be delighted that Holt’s comments, as posted above, seem to be a clear signal that he plans to reintroduce his bill as requiring paper ballots instead of “records” or “trails” in its new iteration.
Wow, you’ve got to give the guy credit. He’s concerned enough about this issue that he’s reading your site and even feels compelled to post a comment. And you have to give yourself credit, too, Brad. People are paying attention to you. I’m sure this work is exhausting; my only fear is that you’ll run out of steam and/or money before the job is done. I’d say that if this was a 26 mile marathon, you should consider yourself halfway there. Maybe it’s time for us readers to hand you some Gatorade (i.e. donations!).
Andy would be proud.
July 13, 2004, I interviewed Andy Stephenson next to the Rotunda of the State Capitol in Austin, Texas.
Andy Stephenson said:
“Now we have a way forward” Didn’t Bush say that about a hundred times today…blech
And Mr Holt, I’m impressed !, I even might take back all the snide things I said earlier 😉
Lisa –
I’ll take ’em. I could use it, as I haven’t done a very good job of fundraising of late around here. Just too busy with things that seem far more important. So thank you for mentioning it and giving me a fresh excuse to grovel.
Pokey –
Thanks for posting that from Andy. It was he who first explained the difference to me as well.
Nice bit of work Brad.
Death to electronic voting machines because as Patriot Andy Stephenson said,”It’s our vote (we the people) not theirs!!! There will always be a way to to hack into the Evote vote flipping chain..always:)
Thank you Congressman Holt for responding on this site and clarifying your remarks. Politics is a game of posturing, concessions, and dirt. However, i will not advocate an amendment that falls short because of a perceived fear of offending electronic voting machine companies and their political sellout advocates who have made millions in the business of stealing the U.S. vote.
An Electronic voting machine represents the iceberg in the path of the Titanic. Make no mistake..we must eliminate this link of private companies with their private propriatory software counting OUR VOTE. There will always be a George W. Bush/Dick Cheney Election campaign machine’s insatiatable hunger for the theft. Money is not an object.
As good as this news seems to be, it can’t be given “Andy’s Approval” just yet.
There is the core issue of “what is counted.”
The “count” and the “audit” are very different things. The “ballot of record” (paper) NEEDS to be designated as the source of any and all “official counts.”
The Euphemedia and Pol Contestants can believe and report anything the machines spit out in a hurry. That is their right. But the “election result” — the thing which is “owned” only by the electorate — MUST be taken from paper that The People “touched/verified.”
There can be no cost or time limit placed on this SURVEY RESULT (which is what an election is, not a competition). They cannot be allowed to say that the same machine that recorded/created the “ballot” also “counted it.” It must be independantly, and observably, “counted” (after touching/verifying) to create a cross-check with the creation machine.
If not, the “ballot of record” can simply languish in a sealed box. Never to be seen again. The machine still wins its shell game.
BRAD — Please get this across to anyone you’re talking to. If we can be helpful by visiting someone here in NJ just let us know. P+D
—
All kinds of credit to Rep. Holt for his efforts.
But hand counted paper ballots is the better way.
Please consider, first, HR 6200….”To amend the Help America Vote Act of 2002 to require States to conduct Presidential elections using paper ballots and to count those ballots by hand,…”
Introduced by Rep. Kucinich, with 19 co-sponsors including Conyers, Lee, McDermott, Waters, Woolsey .
Here’s a link to the full text.
http://www.electiondefenseallia...ot_act_of_2006
Some of us are prepared to argue for doing away with the machines altogether – but not in this thread [smile].
Btw, another frequenter of BradBlog has pointed out that HR 6200 will die when Congress adjourns. Hopefully it will reappear in 2007.
I was present at the forum at Rutgers, and was struck by Congressman Holt’s comments that 1) we need to have verifiable paper ballots in order to assure the integrity of our elections, and 2) there is no way that the current electronic machines (without paper trails) are going to be replaced, due to the cost.
I approached him after the meeting and asked about that contradiction. He said that the Fed Government could not mandate that the machines be replaced, but that he anticipated that some money would be included in his legislations to help states correct the problem. I felt his answer hardly resolved the contradiction in his public statement.
Btw, I had never heard or met him before, and I was generally impressed. The answer to the dilemma of all the sunk costs in machines over the last few years is not easily found.
As a Brit living in Canada for the past 40 years, I’d like to post my 2 cents worth regarding electronic voting, no matter what kind of machine is used.
It’s the pits…!!
Way too expensive and more importantly, is vulnerable to fraud.
PAPER BALLOTS, HAND COUNTED …. is the only way to go.
It’s cheap, quick to count, impossible to rig, AND every vote gets counted for the candidate it was intended for. None of this vote switching, or vote disappearing acts that have plagued your elections for years.
These useless pieces of electronic rubbish should be returned from whence they came, together with a refund request.
Why keep throwing good money after bad..!!
These machines will continue to steal elections. You need a new, open, transparent system….it’s the only way to a true democracy and to rid the system of corruption.
PAPER BALLOTS, HAND COUNTED
I have been a big fan of congressman Holt because he is the only one in congress that has called for ANY type of criticism of HAVA, but I find a contradiction in the last part of the statement:
How can Holt’s bill require a paper ballot at the same time it gives states and localities the right to choose paper ballots?
The Federal Supreme Court ignored “states rights” rights when it appointed Bush into office, but it seems “states rights” are cast in concrete whenever we want to know the peoples individual votes are being counted. The HAVA act ignored both the Florida Supreme Court and the Federal Supreme Court which both called for “uniform standards”.
Hand marked and hand counted ballots seems like a doable uniform standard for 2008. Otherwise, the spokesholes are going to get their way again.
Mar #9
You describe yourself as a “Brit living in Canada”.
Boy, you really ARE a foreigner, aren’t you? 🙂
As long as you keep making more sense then most Americans do, you’re welcome as far as I’m concerned!
Kudos on being noticed. And a good suggestion from Lisa Comment #1. We should make our kudos green backs.
This actually brought tears to the ol’ Neoconvict’s eyes.
-sniff-
Could this mean the end of our long nightmare may be at hand?
Hmm. Wouldn’t The Decider have to sign any such bill into law? That is a bit of a problem. We’ll just has to make sure he’s in prison by the time the bill lands on the President’s desk.
Reliable and fair voting must be Number #1 on the agenda. Without it we have nothing.
This is not an issue of money. It is an issue of democracy, and whether we care enough to maintain it.
Not all jurisdictions have DREs (Diebold Rigs Elections) yet, so the door is open for still more waste of taxpayer dollars and privatized election profits. Great. Let’s spend some more millions on machines that do what could be done with a copier and a felt tip pen. And while we’re throwing good money after bad, why don’t we find a way to split atoms at two million degrees so we can boil water at two hundred degrees…oh, wait….
I don’t know but, as long as the ruddy machines are in place now, as they have been since the
The less than sign must have cut me off, oh well
Brad,
This REALLY brings you to the top of the heap. For Congressman Holt to take the time to blog on the Bradblog means you are being heard in the halls of congress! My heartiest congratulations on great work and establishment of credibility within the political system.
As far as sunk costs are concerned, they are SUNK. That means the money has already gone down the rathole. To pour more down the hole would be insane.
I use the example of having bought $500 in prime meat at Costco and loading in the trunk of the car in the middle of a very hot summer day. Arriving home, you immediately become distracted and forget to unload the meat. The sun continues to beat down at 110 degrees. The next day you discover your “sunk cost” – the meat you were going to use (eat) smelling up the trunk (and the rest) of your car. Do you eat the rotten meat because you have paid a lot for it, or do you toss it out? What do you do, what DO you do!
The answer to the stupid argument of keeping and using the e-voting equipment because we have sunk so much $$$ into it is as obvious as the answer to eating the rotting meat. I hope we can wake up the American public to the rotting meat in our electoral system and convince them to throw out the rotten machines and all the toxicity they represent.
… Rush Holt said…
“The other day, Brad commented that money already spent is not an adequate reason to keep unverifiable electronic voting machines in use. Of course, unverifiable systems should not be kept in place simply because they are already bought and paid for.”
Then what else is a good reason for keeping unverifiable systems in place? Because the election officials will be fighting to keep them in place whether the money’s a good reason or not. They dare not admit to the magnitude of the screwup and ask their voters to eat the cost of faulty machines that shouldn’t have been forced on them in the first place.
And many jurisdictions are already talking about the “need” to buy more of the damn things because they “see no better option.”
“The point of my legislation is not to certify or decertify specific designs of voting systems, but to require that voters use systems that are verifiable, or as I prefer to say, auditable. (In New Jersey, all voting machines will be rendered independently auditable by 2008 in accordance with state law modeled on H.R. 550.)”
Whoa… that’s a nice buzzword. What does “auditable” actually mean when you say it? And does the voter have any say in the auditing process… like, say, before they cast their vote? Or is any “auditing” to be done later… Sarasota-style?
Auditability should be mandated, period. Cost is not the issue.
That is… if “auditability” actually has any meaning in this context.
Look at the Sarasota mess: the machines are being “audited” so they must be “auditable”, right? And if the machines had had cash register rolls bolted to the side, why they would be even more “auditable”, right? Even though the rolls of paper would have said the exact same thing the machines said… or not, depending on how the machines felt. Of course the bolted on cash register rolls could be “voter verified”… with a magnifying glass and a speed reading rate of about 20000 words per minute… “Evelyn Woods can enfranchise you!” That’s assuming, of course, that the “voter verification” isn’t slightly hindered by the high-speed cash register roll being hid behind a shutter and election workers being instructed to not tell people about it.
(Note for the uninitiated: these are indeed horror stories… but they all actually happened during the midterm elections, and worse happened. Much, much worse happened.)
“I am proud of the fact that I have been trying for years to require voter-verified paper ballots, and I will continue to work to make them a federal requirement.”
That’s nice… when? Some indefinite time after “auditable”?
“The fact that my legislation does not outlaw the use of electronic machines does not mean that I am against paper-ballot-based voting or that I am in favor of touch-screen machines.”
No… it means that you have no viable exit strategy that doesn’t include leaving the machines in place. But could you try harder?
In fact, my legislation intentionally avoids dictating technology except for requiring a voter-verified paper ballot.
Ahah! That statement would seem to cover it all… except… which legislation? Do you actually mean paper ballots when you speak of “auditable”? Or is “paper ballot” just a feel-good phrase that might be implemented at some indefinite time in the future… something said, essentially, to get the voters off your back now?
If states and localities choose paper-ballot-based voting, and they do so while still protecting accessibility and privacy for disabled voters, then they have my support.
“still protecting”… that statement assumes that the e-voting machines granted either in the first place AND THEY DID NOT. And I am somewhat perturbed about the disabled being constantly abused in order to provide justification for the gravy train that e-voting has been for the corporations. Just because I literally cannot see beyond the end of my nose is no damn reason to have any electronics that might enable me to vote anywhere NEAR the actual ballot counting… much less being PART of the ballot counting.
As a blind man I’ll have to have faith in the electronics, but that is no reason to put everyone else’s ballots at risk.
And in case you haven’t really been paying attention: risk is indeed the operative word when dealing with electrionics and voting.
So… in the end what do we have? No guarantee of paper ballots unless Holt actually links them with “auditable” and excludes the trash being pushed by the e-voting corporations. (The trash, btw, that even NIST said should not be used by voting machines.)
And e-voting will still be in place for 2008.
… I’ve been polite, as he is an elected official and old habits die hard, but can I disembowel him now and save us all the trouble later? 🙂
Yup, #2,
The late, great Andy also hipped me to the difference between paper trails and paper ballots when he stayed with us for the Nashional Election Reform Conference in April of ’05 here in Nashville. I got to proof the speech he’d come here (despite failing health) to deliver. What a man! He thought it was so important to tell this story – and specifically to talk about paper BALLOTS – that he came when he should have been in the hospital. Hanging with Andy made me feel like, for the first time, I was in the presence of a new American patriotism. He was a patriot.
Here’s to ya, Andy.
shw
… not to mention gerrymandering … once we have paper ballots and very open elections …
Paper trails are an acid trip man.
There’s no way any honest, caring person who wants true democracy and who is in possession of even half a brain could be an advocate for ANY kind of electonic voting system.
Those machines are nothing but pieces of rubbish and should be scrapped immediately.
Or, better still, donate them to high schools so that the students can learn from them while having fun hacking them and conducting mock elections.
At least that way the students, who are your future voters, will realize that the only way to go for honest transparent elections is………
PAPER BALLOTS, HAND COUNTED…!!
Larry # 12
Thanks for the welcome, and yes, I guess I am considered a foreigner here north of the border and one that tends to poke her nose into other countries business but, only with the best of intentions at heart…. 🙂
I have a huge dislike of corruption, lies and deceit no matter where it occurs but especially with you guys as I fell in love with your country many years ago on my first trip out west.
I even pitched my tent in a canyon outside of Moab one night back in the ’90s…….awesome, spectacular….one of the best nights I ever spent… 🙂
PAPER BALLOTS, HAND COUNTED…!!
The Zap_Kitty has some excellent points. The legislation may be cautious to the point of not adequately addressing the real problems. If money is not the problem, then what is the point of not addressing the issue of technology – which is a real problem?
This is such an important issue. I hope we don’t take our eyes off the ball on this. The right to have your vote counted is at the heart of democracy. If we can’t ensure this fundamental right, our democracy is doomed.
Of course, paper ballots do no good without the other trappings of free and fair elections – which at first would be transparent observation by any member of the public of all parts of the election process. I understand that in France they actually have big clear plastic boxes in which to place each ballot after it is filled in by hand. The paper ballots must have a workable process to do random recounts if they are counted by machine, and if even one vote is off, the whole county’s votes should be counted by hand. After that, we need to be sure to tackle all the other thorny issues of voter intimidation and yes, even voter fraud, should anyone ever come across it.
DREDD #22
I couldn’t agree more! I mentioned a few posts back that someone, I think Marybeth Kuznic (A good friend of Andy’s and a great election reformer herself) told me about a software program that you input all pertinent information in the district and it configures the fairest district based on the info, not what’s best for the incumbent! Of coarse the inputting would have to be publicly transparent (citizen supervised possibly.) Anyway, details could be worked out, but wouldn’t it be nice to not only be assured of having your vote counted but also having our Congresscritters know they will now be held accountable by the people who voted them in and not korporate amerika? Oh, its on my Christmas wish list!
I want to thank Congressman Holt for being one of the few to seriously put time and energy into this votng reform movement. I went down to the House Administration hearing on voting security and was proud to see through Holt’s hard work the issue was being discussed, even though some there were trying to compare apples to oranges. And I’m delighted to see him responding HERE! Wouldn’t it be nice if other Congresscritters had as much integrity to TALK to US DIRECTLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks again Congressman Holt!
… Shannon Williford…
I understand that in France they actually have big clear plastic boxes in which to place each ballot after it is filled in by hand.
Unfortunately, being French, they are experimenting with electronic voting. The problem there were trying to solve was real, out-of-country voters, but the solution was so sad… and so chilling.
To get by the French law that the observers must watch the ballot box and contents at all times, video cameras were set up in the room holding the tabulators with the resulting view of the machines then piped to the observers many miles away.
Election observers ensuring free and fair elections by closely watching the opaquely expressionless faceplates of a bank of servers.
Something was very transparent about that scene… but it wasn’t the electoral process.
It seems evident that there are a lot of democrats who want to go with the status quo. I’m thinkin’ the Clinton wing of the democratic party….that if things get so screwed up …repub lite will pass for a progressive movement. I appreciate Rep. Holt’s even being interested in restoring democracy, but the fact that it stops way short of democracy, doesn’t seem like something to crow about.
Scrapping a $4 billion dollar electronic voting machine boondoggle might save us from another illegal $350 BILLION war (to date), not counting the lives lost.
Something else to remember is that electionic vote machines will continue to cost money every few years. It will be throwing good money after bad and won’t ever end. Junk the machines NOW before any more money is dumped into them.
Brad, did you ever imagine when you started this little joint you’d be making such a HUGE difference in saving our country??? You’re my shinin’ pride, man!
Clickin’ over now to shower some LOVE on ya!
What is the price of a honest election? I don’t get Holt. This adm is spending billions on a war we should be in but we’re stuck with electronic voting machines because it’s too expensive to go back to paper ballots??? Let’s see, what is the cost of paper and pencils?? Send the machines back to Diebold. They created the problem. If I buy something and it is substandard, I will return it and get a refund.
Jen asked –
We’ll see how huge of a difference I’ve ultimately helped make. Someday. But in responding to the thrust of your question, I can answer unequivocally: I would never have had a clue. I never intended to be doing what I’m doing, and look forward to retiring just as soon as possible! 🙂
But until then, the one thing I’ve learned throughout this process, is the difference one person can make. Not by way of learning what difference I may or may not have made, but by way of watching patriotic citizens all over the country stand up, realize their work does make a difference, and then seeing the world change because of it.
I think it’s because so many of us counted on someone else to do things in the past (for example, the media, who then utterly failed) that we all find ourselves in this whole fine mess in the first place.
Lesson learned.
Franklin supposedly said after the Constitutional Convention when asked what kind of government they’d settled on (paraphrasing out of laziness) — “A [republic], [if] you can keep it.” {He meant a democratic one, for sure. 😛 –99}
Good point. Wish we all had realized that much longer ago.
I think we’ve probably scared congressman Holt from EVER making another post on a blog, but if you’re reading this Mr. Holt, just have some sympathy for what we’ve been through for the last 6, actually 7 years if you count the outrage we felt during the Clinton impeachment.
I, personally have sent hundreds of E-mails, signed thousands of form letters, made hundreds of blog posts, made dozens of phone calls, gone to dozens of meetings, attended every protest I can, garnered hundreds of signatures, written dozens of letters to publications, and walked over 400 miles by myself with a “impeach Bush” sign”, (now I stand at corners with it because it seems to work better (over 200 hours)), in the place I’ve lived all my life. A place they say voted 71% for Bush in 2004, (Utah).
All this and much more to end up with a “paper trail” that the election judges where I poll watched went out of their way to cover with a black door because that’s what their supervisor told them to do.
This quest of mine has cost me thousands of dollars and many thousands of hours out of my life for no reward. I don’t feel that a single dollar of my tax money has been spent to benefit me or anyone I know since Bush TOOK office. In fact, I KNOW they’re using my tax dollars against me.
Whenever I start to feel sorry for myself, I think of the soldiers. I feel an obligation to them.
Jen’s soooo correct. A big thing that seems to get missed in this discussion is the constant costs of the electronic machines- for upgrades, data entry, testing. I’m lucky to be living in one of the states that held out buying them, NY, but we’ll see what they do with it. I keep on hearing the bureaucrats screaming about saving work and time(we know better here thanks to Brad), but our present machines are over 20 years old and still chugging and near impossible to rig- unless one were to rig every one- SEPARATELY.
Mar #25:
That was probably Arches National Monument you camped at! They are talking about oil drilling there. I have been off work for a year, living off my IRA retirement savings and haven’t been on one camping trip because of the Republicans and their fraud. I actually think they want to destroy the most beautiful places, just because they can, and like to see us sad. I really do!
There is another unbelievably wonderful treasure in Utah called Zion National Park. This is the view me and a friend had when we camped there one night. We had this all to ourselves.
Click on the top picture for a larger view! Not too shabby, huh!
Obviously, my website is not a serious endeavor. Just having fun! It’s free.
I’m a recovering techno-phobe….first time visiting this site. All voting machines , optical scan or any thing else should be destroyed. All this because of a few hanging chads? Hanging chads compared to invisible ghosts? Compared to exit polls of 6, 7, 8 percent “off” for the first time ever more than 1.5 ???(2004)
18, 000 undervotes? How stupid r we. Chuckie Hagel will be our next prez if we dont get back to paper….he is former head of ES whatever/Sequoia…..he knows where the bodies are buried…….9/11 WAS an inside job, Mckinney rocks
Holt must be considering the money that voting machine companies want to donate to his campaign. He seems very wishy washy with his statement. Paper only, nationwide. I’m with Andy, he is right on.
TALK ABOUT TENTATIVE: “The fact that my legislation does not outlaw the use of electronic machines does not mean that I am against paper-ballot-based voting or that I am in favor of touch-screen machines. ”
What a load of B.S.
He’s not opposed to paper ballots but he’s doing the one thing standing in the way of real paper ballots – continuing the outrageous intellectual dishonesty that perpetuates DRE’s – the dishonesty that implies that they can ever be reliable.
He’s just another politician who lacks the courage to tell the truth and act in the people’s interests on this most fundamental issue.
I like his other two bills on voter intimidation and assurance of free registration identification but this position leaves him very far behind well informed activists and, equally far behind the public.
Ancient #29
Gerrymandering implements a legal fiction. There are no natural state boundaries, such as a county, which the gerrymandered realms subscribe to. They are partisan constructs which ignore counties.
These fictious realms place a burden on election officials and everyone else.
As I have pointed out here ad nauseum and to no avail generally, some congressional gerrymandered realms snake their way thru as many as 29 counties in some states.
I suggest that the law require congressional districts to follow county boundaries and be made up of a number of counties instead of the jigsaw confusion and corruption of the current configuration.
But lets place the blame on the state legislatures for constructing them, and on the federal congress and the courts for allowing these contorted fictions to continue to exist.
Larry Bergan #36
Good for you.
After all, the voting issues all link back to what the voters, the public, the people want elected officialdom to do: represent them.
The degree of absence of the nexus between our votes and good government is the degree to which we have no say in our own government, and therefore, the degree to which we are dictated to instead of listened to.
We always have some decree of a mix of dictatorial energies and representative energies. Our tradition is to hold those who do not listen, and instead dictate, to account by voting against them. That tradition is the enemy of the dictators.
We now see the disintegration of the degree of the dictatorial energies following the faith-based election, and it is manifesting as a disintegration of the neoCon dictators.
The sane republicans see that the neoCon madness could destroy their party in the eyes of the people, and they could fade into minority party obscurity for decades.
The traditional leader of the presidential party in power is preznit blush.
He is being urged to go even further to the right and continue to dictate instead of to listen.
That is our struggle against the defective voting machines, and against the defective neoCons who want to use them to supremely dictate.
And so our struggle is quite clear, and it is clear you are part of the solution.
Paper Trails For. . . . . Election End Trails . . .
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Keep it up. We’re heading in the right direction. However, I think Holt’s bill is still the wrong one. I prefer Dennis Kucinich’s HR 6200. Is he planning to reintroduce that?
I would say, COST should never be an issue for Democracy!
Dredd #43
Thanks!
If this Neocon takeover was at all legitimate, I probably wouldn’t be saying anything, but I know this isn’t the will of the people. Al Gore WAS elected by the people and that proves we’re smarter then the power mongers in Washington. If there is any bright side in this, it is that they have been exposed as being pretty darn good at lying, but stupid beyond belief.
The fact that they forced these voting machines on us, thinking we would be too dumb to know what was going on may well result in the fairest elections this country has ever seen.
The Democrats can do this if they try. Some of them are even rocket scientists, from what I hear!
I got an interesting form letter from Orrin Hatch. I’m certainly not a fan of Orrin’s, but I have to admit, he does have the ability to see the train coming down the track.
It states that he shares my concerns regarding the integrity of our electoral system, but remarks that “elections are administered almost entirely at the state level” and that I should contact the Lt. governors office. Sorry Orrin, Been there, done that.
However the last part of the letter ends saying (emphasis added):
By “reasonable federal measures”, I hope he doesn’t mean they’re going to keep making it APPEAR like they’re giving us a transparent system AGAIN.
it’s not “voter fraud”, it’s electronic fraud.
Electronic election fraud.
Why? Because you can not validate electronics.
Why? Because PAPER BALLOTS will never be compared to electronic results via a 1 to 1 100% comparison.
/dev/null/NEVER >_
… Larry Bergan said…
“I am continually supportive of reasonable federal measures to prevent instances of voter fraud.”
Bergan, you ignorant slut… “Voter Fraud” is the political code phrase for “let’s take away peoples voting rights with police state ID laws.”
“Defrauding Voters” is the actual name of the process.
{Ed Note: Larry Bergan DIDN’T say that. It was a quote. I really hope you meant “ignorant slut” in a joking/friendly manner, because if you didn’t, that kind of abuse is not tolerated for long around here. Please clarify. –99}
I was just hoping Orrin was thinking about cooperating.
You didn’t need to cough up a fir ball Mr. Kitty!
Larry # 38
UN-believable..! How can anyone even THINK of drilling for oil in such a magnificent, unspoiled area…..it’s downright criminal and the pea brains responsible should be hung, drawn and quartered..!
Thanks for sharing your site, awesome canyon pic, and just loved the ‘George comparisons’ in the May archives.
How true that is… 🙂 🙂 🙂
Thanks Mar. I forgot about the two George’s being on there. I made that up myself!
They reported on the news here, that if they did drill in Arches, it would only produce enough oil to supply Americas needs for TWO WEEKS! That’s why I say they want to do it just to make the enviornmentalists sad.
Mission accomplished!
{Ed Note: Larry Bergan DIDN’T say that. It was a quote.
Hah! The conspiracy deepens…
I really hope you meant “ignorant slut” in a joking/friendly manner, because if you didn’t, that kind of abuse is not tolerated for long around here. Please clarify. –99}
Would you believe… a quote from Saturday Night Live?
The intent was humourous, although apparently the effect was not. I do apologize for any squished feelings.
I don’t know about the voice from the shoe, though…
… Larry Bergan said…
I was just hoping Orrin was thinking about cooperating.
After he’s sufficiently deprogrammed… perhaps. But if he’s still upchucking “Voter Fraud! Voter Fraud!” whenever his button is pushed then he’s too out of touch with reality to do anyone any good.
You didn’t need to cough up a fir ball Mr. Kitty!
It’s because it’s the Holiday Season, y’know.
How about South Park?
Survivor?
Thanks for clarifying. Don’t knock the shoe phone. It works much better than the cone of silence.
the_zapkitty #54
No harm done! Always hard to get the intended inflection from a typewriter.
Of course you’re right! I must be crazy to think Hatch would go to our side, however, I actually think this is his last term. His wife didn’t want him to run this time and it is getting harder to ignore the issue of voting machines, (thanks Brad!)
He hasn’t made one public comment about them that I’m aware of, although I did get one letter at least a year and a half ago saying he was considering supporting a paper trail so I know he’s been kind of queazy about not addressing the problem at all, and he knows there is a potential citizen backlash in Utah.
I’m also going to have to get used to looking for that that “voter fraud” phrase. I missed it when I looked at that letter. And to be frank, I just have to believe that we’re going to have a better election in 2008 and am susceptible to any kind of hope I can get.
Agent 99:
Nice to know you’re there if any REAL troll tries to knock me around! Come on trolls, BRING IT ON, I’M READY FOR YA!! 🙂
Larry # 53
You said: I made that up myself
Neat-O…!! Hope you sent it to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.. 🙂
You must know of Jacob’s Ladder. Do you live near there..?
Mar:
Sounds like it might be a rock formation around here, but I don’t remember it I’ve seen it or not.
Larry
Yes, it is a rock formation and well known by mountain bikers, my brother included.
I would like to talk privately with you about this, so if you are agreeable, ask Brad to provide you with my e-mail address.