Syndicated California columnist, Thomas D. Elias, has written the single best MSM article we’ve ever read on the problems with the current state of our electoral system. Period.
In covering changes planned by incoming CA Secretary of State Debra Bowen, Elias — for the first time, at least that I’ve ever seen anywhere in the MSM — squarely places the blame for the entire fine mess we’re in exactly where it belongs: On the voting machine companies and the elections officials who have been their enablers and apologists…
Those two groups: The makers of electronic voting machines of various types, many of whose devices have been shown to be both hackable and problematic in other ways. And county voter registrars who bought those machines largely with many millions of dollars derived from the federal Help America Vote Act, which was more concerned about speed of conversion to new technologies than whether they were trustworthy.
BOOM! Outta the park!
Those two grafs alone are enough for us to nominate Elias for a Pulitzer. Yes, the reporting on this matter in the MSM has been so indescribably horrible from the get-go that we’re willing to give it all up just for those two grafs which finally tell the story correctly.
But Elias doesn’t stop there. While we recommend you read his entire piece in full we’ll highlight a few of the most notable grafs just to make sure as many eyeballs as possible actually get to see them — for the good news they offer about a possibly brighter future for elections in California (and thus, the rest of the country) and for the fact that they have actually been printed in a fairly major metropolitan newspaper.
On Bowen’s plans for full ‘top to bottom review’ of outgoing SoS McPherson’s rubber-stamp certification of all electronic voting machines…
On the truth (finally!) about the feckless and incompetent McPherson…
On the infamous voting machine “sleepovers” (as first revealed by The BRAD BLOG)…
In short, the voting machine status quo will not be lasting long in the nascent Bowen era.
On the worthlessness of so-called “paper trails” and the difficulty candidates face in paying exorbitant costs for recounts as capriciously and arbitrarily priced by Registrars…
NOTE: The BRAD BLOG covered the cost quoted for a recount in last summer’s Special U.S. House Election in CA-50’s Francine Busby/Brian Bilbray race. The cost, capriciously and arbitrarily quoted for that recount in order to make it impossible by the horrendous San Diego County Registar of Voters Mikel Haas: $150,000!
Elias also speaks of Sequoia’s yellow button “feature” (also first revealed on these pages, but who’s counting?) and more. All of which, apparently, forces the Ventura County Star to label the piece, regretablly, as “opinion.” But so be it. We’ll take what we can get.
If you’d like to send a thank you note to Elias and the VCS Editors, please click here!
YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYES!!
*bfg*
Pardon me, but just now I’m thinking our right to vote pales in comparison to other people’s right to live. I just can’t be happy about this at this moment.
27 January is the scheduled demonstration in DC. Can we even wait? Can’t we all just get there somehow and not stop screaming until they bring our troops home, and we frogmarch the warmongering fiends out of the White House?
Please?
Bowen says:
The method used now is to never tell the truth about how insecure a machine is to increase voter confidence and participation.
Statements like this from public officials will refresh our democracy!
Agent 99 #2
That woman better be a Republican, or I’m going to blow my brains out. Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.
Shouldn’t you have to be smarter then Britteny Spears.
Congrats to California voters for electing Debra Bowen. She is a servant of the people who knows what she is talking about.
I think if we give her time she will come up with something the rest of the states can benefit from.
And congrats to journalists who are breaking free from the chains of accusing everyone who wants competent machines as being “conspiracy theorists”.
I am sick of the MSM which seems to think that reality is a conspiracy theory.
Hope sure feels good doesn’t it!
We should organize a Welcome Wagon for the Winter Conference of the National Association of Secretaries of State being held at the Hyatt Regency in DC Feb 9-12, 2007 for Debra Bowen, Ohio’s Jennifer Brunner and the rest!
Ah, to be a fly on the wall for some of these meetings!
See you all in DC in February?
And what a great article! Maybe this will open the flood gates in the CMSM about the true nature of our shoddy, unreliable voting systems. LTTE on its way to the Ventura County Star and Tom Elias!
Tom Elias has been sneaking up on this article for a long time. I’d just about given up ever seeing it. (He came close a couple of times but just didn’t quite get there.)
Very happy to see it and looking forward to good things happening.
It has made all of the blood, sweat, tears, loss of jobs, (yes as a whistle blower sometimes you do pay the price), time, money etc. worthwhile to have a Secretary of State who will do something for Democracy. Debra Bowen listened to us in Bakersfield at the hearings and now she is continuing the investigation. She said that she wanted to bring integrity back to elections and she is doing that very thing. We are on the right track, it has been some time coming, but well worth the effort.
Nice to see CONSISTENT comments & action by politicians on the e-vote front. That’s great!