Congresswoman Juanita Millender-McDonald, the new chair of the U.S. House Administration Committee, has sent a letter to the Florida Court of Appeals currently reviewing the absurd decision made late in the day on the last day the year by circuit court Judge William L. Gary to disallow release of the source code from the paperless ES&S touch-screen voting machines to the plaintiffs who have requested it in the state election contest in the U.S. House race in Florida’s 13th district.
Gary found at the time that release of the material would “result in destroying or at least gutting the protections afforded those who own the trade secrets.” In other words, the private corporate interests of the ES&S voting machine company was more important than allowing Florida voters to try and determine the valid winner of an election.
The election is one of five now being contested in the U.S. House under the Federal Contested Elections Act, and we’d suggest Millender-McDonald’s letter may serve as a precursor warning to the courts that the committee may use their subpeona power to get at the source code if the Florida courts refuse to allow its release.
Electronic Frontier Foundation covers the news here with the short letter itself linked here [PDF].
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[T]he House is well served in its own deliberations by having before it a complete record. Consequently, Florida law will facilitate the evaluation of the election contest pending before the House to the extent that it provides access to relevant and critical evidence. I am confident that this can be done in a way that accommodates the valid interests of the parties, and resolution of these issues may obviate the need for the House to address them.
This is very interesting and significant.
Of course the whole claim of “trade secrets” is bogus. There are all kinds of proprietary code that are subjected to independent evaluation and testing all the time. There is no reason for voting machine code to be exempt, and there is every reason to say it is crucial that election hardware be subject to public scrutiny (if necessary with signed agreements not to publish the source code or supply it to a potential competitor).
The public good should come first in any case–it should pre-empt any protection of corporate “trade secrets.”
The public good should come first in any case–it should pre-empt any protection of corporate “trade secrets.”
As obvious as it is to you and me to have open accountability of software (I’m HCPB, meself), unfortunately the BCF has been installing so-called “Reconstructionist” or “Federalist” judges all across America, at every level, for the past six years.
This is a classic example of Republican “Free Market” (aka no compete) privatization of ALL THINGS, from land rights to Enron frames (if not for enron, the recall would have never happened) and the Military (blackwater, haliburton). The entire “Free Markets are always more efficient and The Market can do it better and cheaper without Federal Relgulation” ideology is a sham, undermining democracy. In practice it is a vehicle for corruption and cronyism (heckofajobbrownie) and a tiny lot of people getting rich on our (taxpayer) expense.
Our voting systems have been sold out to the highest bidder since 2000, pretty much UNREGULATED, and held in PRIVATE PARTISAN HANDS (which btw do NOT have to disclose to shareholders).
Worth repeating:
The public good should come first in any case–it should pre-empt any protection of corporate “trade secrets.”
A congresswoman who gets tough on the right people. What a concept. Her children can be proud.
The still unresigned Judge William L. Gary…helping ruin American democracy.
I someone should start a movement to get this unAmerican, unPatriotic judge off the bench.
Is he getting a kickback from an e-vote machine company, or something?
Could be, but probably he thinks corporations are the real persons (the people who live in the mansions) and American citizens are those who live out back in the shanties and keep the corporations in the condition they are accustomed to.
Will This Provide the Opening To Have Clint Curtis Revisit HIs Deposition Concerning Tom Feeny?
What has been generally ignored is the fact that Feeny approached Clint Curtis to program for the machines. What botched the program for working F O R Buchanan is that the opposition to him was so strong and the number of candidates to spread the numbers around was so minute.
The program went into overload and just erased possibly most of the oppositoin votes and some of Buchanan’s also.
Can Feeny be required to testify in a hearing?
ES&S should be required to produce, for examination, the source code that corrupted the election, (not the source code that they want to present to vindicate themselves).
Contempt of Congress still carries weight, I believe, and should be enough to have ES&S decide whether they want to continue to do business.
Republicans Still Own The Best Judges Money Can Buy
Just another in a LOG list of reasons for the Feds to make “private machiens” illegal during elections. In order to get contracts, the corps aught to have to sign waivers to ownership of the code.
What? they cry about not being able to do that with Bill Gate’s code? that they use as a base? that buggy bullshit OS of his? Here’s a fuckin clue.. USE LINUX maybe? Then it’s all public domain anyway.. and we can see ALL the code with no worries..
Beter yet, get rid the machines all together and use a more autditable and easier system.. PAPER BALLOTS and HAND COUNTING. If the American Public is too stupid to figure out how to use paper ballots, and to count them, then we should just drop a few nukes on ourselves..
Hmm… Found the Ventura County article on Debra Bowen, which has made us all feel good here. Now I’m seeing an article from CBS News on the Jennings race that I think shows what’s BAD about the corporate media and their increasingly more visible right wing agenda. They are publishing the following article from the National Review on this race which is trying to rationalize that a number of recounts have been done that don’t show anomalies, and that the undervotes aren’t a statistical anomaly due to something wrong with the machines but because of ballot design which had the governor’s race on the same screen as this race that caused confusion in Sarasota County’s machines.
Brad, it would be good to see your take on their analysis. Heck, even a Republican responding at the bottom takes issue with their negative characterization of optical scan machines vs. the DRE’s.