Brad- I'm confused- Didn't you and John Gideen from Vote Trust help write the Holt bill- ? That's what I heard earlier. Now you twll us all these groups are bad- Who should we listen to- ? I'm unclear about all these groups ( PFAW, Verified Voting, MoveOn, Accurate, Voter unite etc..) Maybe we should investigate the ourselves as activists. Is their an internal Affairs Division within the movement ? Someone to keep us pure ? Maybe we should take a look at ourselves- The Holt Bill appears to be a major time-waster.. and we are all running out of time _ Mort- NJ

{Ed Note: "Mort" has already been warned once. He is NOT from NJ (he is from the Bay Area in CA) and he knows precisely what both John Gideon and I did in our efforts to improve the Holt Bill. That's two pieces of disinfo you've planted in this one note. Consider this your last warning "Mort". Knock it off, or you will not be welcome back. You will be as much of a pariah here as you are elsewhere in the Election Integrity community. This is your second and final warning. Thank you. - BF}

... Mort Silverman said...

"Brad- I'm confused- Didn't you and John Gideen from Vote Trust help write the Holt bill- ?"

I'm speaking from a second-hand perspective, but apparently Brad and John gave advice and input into the bill... and were ignored if what they said affected the DRE vorporation bailout that this bill actually represents.

Apparently anything these "election integrity nuts" had to say that conflicted with this bill being a gift to the DRE corporations was promptly circular-filed.

Which leaves us with the apparent caveat to any election reform effort in congress: Any proposed laws must insure that the DRE corporations continue raking in profits or the bill will go nowhere.

The highlighted transcript portion in the main post above is the center of the debate.

GROUP 3: PFAW, Common Cause and MoveOn apparently, and bizarrely, in support of touch screen DREs. We are left to speculate as to what effect their lobbying for HAVA in the first place has on this position, if any, especially when sizeable percentages of their own members oppose this position in favor of DREs.

Group 2: ANti-DRE group that nevertheless supports hackable electronic counts on the first count with opscans, on the grounds that paper ballot recounts are (largely in theory) available. This is the position Brad advocates above and he's familiar with the risks of it, like when in CA50 such a recount was asked for, priced at something like $150,000, and almost a year later now in the california court of appeals we are still fighting for it and have yet to see our first paper ballot verification of those electronic counts that (in partial form) were used to swear in Bilbray prematurely.

Group 1: The Hand Counted Paper Ballot People. These are really, IMHO, checks and balances and public oversight people, which just happens to be best accommodated by HCPB and not in meaningful form by any other voting system. Although this allows for a meaningful role by the public in elections, and prevents the government and its vendors from running elections out of the sight of the public when those elections determine all of the governments' money and power, somehow, some way, many have been entranced into thinking that this HCPB checks and balances and oversight is an "unrealistic" or "unachievable" option.

If so, that makes democracy "unrealistic." How can they justify hiding the truth from We the People, the boss of this country? If the People aren't in charge you can call this country a lot of things but you can't call it a representative democracy.

All we need to do is squarely ask each legislator if they REALLY think that continuing to count the votes in THEIR OWN RE-ELECTION in secrecy is the only "achievable" and "realistic" thing. Get the response on video. Since they are voting on their own re-election, they should be jumping to support the most transparent, accountable, public-friendly and publicly-overseeable method possible: hand counted paper ballots.

The needs of some disabled voters can always be provided for as an accommodation, but it interferes in the rest of the public's right to vote INDEPENDENTLY to force the public to vote as if they were disabled --- such as on DREs. By definition, the dis-abled are in a different class than the "abled" but one of the forms of mischief of HAVA (and Bush v Gore) is the tendency to think of them as being in the same class.

We all have to admit that it was awfully brave for this gal to go on the air with brad, there isn't a line of people waiting to do that.

Nonetheless, she didn't, and couldn't knock down any of his arguments, because the Zapkitty is right. This bill is partially designed to funnel more money to these voting machine companies, who have no business getting one more dime, and should instead have their pants sued off.

Bob Ney said they needed 900 million more, and that's the figure that seems to be getting batted around.

Thank you "Mort Silverman" for forcing me to waste my time. If you missed the note above, under your comment, please note I have done you a favor for the second time. It is the last time. Knowing disinformation is NOT allowed on The BRAD BLOG and you will be BANNED and IDENTIFIED if you do so again.

So to waste my time by replying to his disinfo, as I have written (and spoken) many times, and as "Mort" knows well (especially since he was on a conference call with both John Gideon and I last night, also using a fake identity) I was allowed to give input to the Holt bill with each successive draft. Each time, giving feedback, some of which was incorporated into the bill, making it better each time.

You're welcome.

Some of that feedback included improvements in the public disclosure of source code section (which is important to "Mort" in particular) as well as improvements in secure chain of custody of voting equipment, a ban on "sleepovers", better public access/oversight to many of the processes and much more.

I believe (but am not certain) that John Gideon of VotersUnite.org --- a member organization of VoteTrustUSA --- also gave input to Holt's office to try and improve the bill before it was introduced.

VotersUnite does NOT support the Holt Bill and has been assiduously working to see it amended and improved, including calling for an amendment to ban DREs entirely. While once favoring the previous Holt Bill (HR 550), John Gideon and VotersUnite have shown the intellectual honesty to admit that what they learned about DREs during the 2006 election cycle has changed their position to lead them to realize that DREs should not be used.

VoteTrustUSA, on the other hand, while also working to improve the bill has supported both the previous HR550 and the current HR811. They have worked for amendments, but are supporting the bill in its current form anyway and have refused to call for a ban on DREs --- despite knowing that they should be banned.

I hope that clarifies for those who didn't know. Unlike "Mort" who did, but seems to take joy in wasting the time of Election Integrity advocates and otherwise trying to derail the hard efforts of many for his own twisted reasons.

As mentioned, three strikes and you're OUT for good, "Mort". (That means you will be both "outted" here, by name, and banned.) Got it? Great.

It's so discouraging to see the best radio and television personalities on the left being shifted, shuffled, censored, and fired. Now Peter B. Collins, one of the very best, is having trouble. I'm so tired of this!

Guess I'll go watch my recording of Bill Maher now and see if it's the last show for a few months.

Brad,
I think you would be well within your rights to go ahead and ban this person, Mort. Conservative websites don't give anybody the benefit of the doubt. As a test, I posted a bonafide news story on freerepublic.com that raised issues about the Iraq war. I added no personal comments. Not only was it immediately rejected, but shortly afterwards, before I even got around to revisiting the site, I was banned. Says a lot about how much some neocons fear the truth, not to mention genuine debate. This person seems to be deliberately draining precious energy which you need for other purposes. He doesn't merit another "strike". Don't worry about it.

I sent an email to Mr. Foster at the radio station, stating that moving Peter's show to a later time slot was NOT a good idea. Hopefully there will be a lot of people responding and the "Deciders" will change their minds!

Paul Lehto, in comment #3 classified the adherents of each voting philosophy into three groups, and it's really dismaying to see how many mis-guided people fall into group 2, such as the creator of this blog. I'll be emailing each of the organizations that I'm presently a member of that falls into group 2 that I'm bailing because I refuse to be a party to treason.
Unless they open this topic up to the membership for discussion.
Obviously I'm a member of group 1, as is Paul Lehto, Chuck Herrin (of "Hack the Vote"), Nancy Tobi, (of Democracy for New Hampshire),and especially andi novick, author of "A Return to Sanity- Why We Must Eliminate Computerized Control of Our Election System". So far, the people in group 2 refuse to debate the issues raised by group 1. We need to have that debate.

FR - I agree that I'd certainly be "within my rights" to ban him. I'd be "within my rights" to ban ALL comments if I wanted to. But I don't. Unlike Freerepublic, I actually believe in healthy debate on topics, even when folks don't agree with me. But I don't believe I have to provide an outlet for posting disinfo. And I won't. So I am being kind to allow "Mort" a final chance. And then he'll be both outted and gone.

...and speaking of disagreeing with me...

Chuck Garner - While I supposed, by Paul's description, I might most closely fit into his "Group 2", I'd reject your point that I, in any case, "refuse to debate the issues raised by group 1." Quite the contrary, I *support* the issues raised by Group 1! I hope they will continue to fight for HCPB wherever possible. I believe that a federal bill that creates paper ballots that can be hand-counted in all 50 states in one fell swoop will make the fight for such hand-counting possible in the first place! If states or local jurisdictions wish to count that way, it sounds fine to me!

But there is a process towards getting us there in the first place where such a count is possible. I'm working on what I believe to be the quickest and best route that would allow that end.

There is a quicker and better route to HCPB at the precinct level, and that's by petitioning your local County Board of Supervisors to dump the electronic voting machines. Some of those supervisors remember how it was done in the old days, before the HAVA scam suckered everybody in. I'm very leery of giving the federal government any authority over our elections, not after seeing what a FUBAR mess they made in New Orleans- which still isn't fixed, and won't be as long as the Republican mindset is tasked to deal with it. They simply don't see it as the responsibility of government. The one good thing that they are good at is stealing elections, and what you're proposing is letting them keep the tools to do a better job of it in 2008. You can bet that they won't get caught napping again, and the optical scanners will be properly calibrated, and Karl will be one happy dork. It was a great mystery to me why the Republicans thought that the American people would welcome yet another goddamned Republican after eight years of Bush misery, but they know the electronic machines would still be in place, with the help of you group 2 people, and this time, there would be no unpleasant surprises like in '06.