Guest Blogged by Bob Bancroft of VotersUnite
Rep. Rush Holt’s HR 811 Election Reform bill has become an enigma. After years of healthy dialogue with the election integrity community, Congressman Holt’s office now seems unresponsive. Just last week, rumors began to circulate that the Holt bill was adrift, its future uncertain. We later learned that the bill had entered into a series of secret negotiations, involving Majority Leader Hoyer, Speaker Pelosi, and other undisclosed parties.
Despite repeated attempts to contact anyone from the offices of Holt, Hoyer or Pelosi for a simple update, the week went by without a single call returned.
Now, we receive our first glimpse of the newly compromised Holt. We learn of the bill not from its author, nor Leader Hoyer, nor any elected, public official. Instead, it would seem that communications surrounding the bill flow through People For the American Way (PFAW), in the form of a late-Friday press release.
On Saturday, the New York Times confirmed that it was PFAW’s President, Ralph Neas, in fact, who brokered the deal.
At a time when public confidence in our elected officials, and indeed the very process by which they are elected, is badly shaken, this is not helpful. VotersUnite will form an opinion of Hoyer-Holt only after careful reading of the text, which remains unavailable at the time of this writing. However, we are troubled that our Representatives would choose to conduct themselves in this circuitous manner, especially while considering something as fundamental as our right to vote.
Following is the full text of the original press release on the new, compromise version of HR-811, as issued by PFAW on Friday…
WASHINGTON, July 27 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Today, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Rep. Rush Holt of New Jersey announced a compromise that will advance H.R. 811, the “Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2007.” The bill bans paperless voting machines and requires a voter-verified paper record for every vote in the country.
“Today’s announcement gives Americans renewed hope that Congress will soon put an end to unaccountable, unverifiable, and inaccessible voting,” said Ralph G. Neas, president of People For the American Way. “Millions of voters were disenfranchised in recent elections, and millions of others have wondered if their votes were correctly counted. That is intolerable. Given how much is at stake in the coming elections, passing this legislation should be the nation’s top domestic legislative priority.”
The Hoyer-Holt compromise to H.R. 811:
— Ensures that by the 2008 presidential elections there will be a paper record for all votes cast in federal elections, and makes the paper ballot the ballot of record for purposes of a recount;
— Institutes a system of mandatory random audits;
— Prohibits wireless devices in voting machines;
— Makes voting system “source code” — the software that runs the voting machine — subject to examination should discrepancies arise;
— Provides for emergency paper ballots should voting machines break down or fail in any way.
— Mandates upgrades to provide durable paper records and enhanced accessible technology by 2012.
Neas praised the tenacious efforts of Majority Leader Hoyer, Representative Holt, and members of a diverse coalition to reach a compromise that achieves all those essential goals, and noted that the legislation includes requirements to ensure accessibility as well as accuracy and reliability, a provision that has garnered a letter of appreciation from the Consortium of Citizens with Disabilities.
Neas also noted that the compromise addresses some concerns raised by local election officials about having sufficient time and resources to comply with new requirements. The bill authorizes over $1 billion to offset anticipated costs to state and local governments. It also provides a reasonable fix for election officials so they are not forced to purchase all new technology by November 2008, while still providing voters with the ability to verify their votes. Election officials will have the option to upgrade their DREs to include verifiable paper records as in interim step or use optical scan voting systems.
“The status quo is unacceptable, and maintaining the status quo in 2008 with this fair and practical solution before us would be inexcusable,” Neas said. “We urge Members of Congress to recognize the ‘urgency of now’ and call for swift bipartisan approval in the House of Representatives.”
SOURCE People for the American Way
Bob,
So those who make the bills are not as responsive to some in the movement as they are to others in the movement?
Is that what you are saying?
So this is a little preview of how our Congress will be treating us, the people, when the b/c administration passes the baton to the next administration, and the baton includes the unimpeached, unsanctioned lawbreaking of the b/c administration. This is the REAL reason our representatives do not want to impeach b/c. They want the same keys to the kingdom that jingle today in cheney/rove’s pockets.
How truly despicable. Time to clean house.
Looks to me like People For The AIPACian Way want to count our votes for us
Why, I wonder, are any Dems so enamored of the electronic voting systems, especially when they’re shown to be hackable?
SoS Bowen’s report ought to put a permanent quick end to any idea of ever using those machines again.
Why is everyone so uptight?
The Iraqi parliament is facing voting problems too, and they just closed up shop and went on vacation.
They figured there has been enough voting already, time to go chill (Snow Job says it is 130 degrees you know) and talk to the lobbyists at Haliburton’s Headquarters now in Dubai.
The lobbyists are located in the Jack Abramoff memorial building across from the Cheney building just south of Margaritaville.
Chill and celebrate the purple finger of fate for heaven’s sake.
I saw that Dredd, what a downer for our troops over there, who do those Iraqis think they are anyway…our congress?
MarkH-
You’re right that Bowen’s report confirms what we knew: that the machines are absolutely not secure. However, it also gave us a new fact to wrestle with. Not a single machine tested meets the accessibility requirements set in law in 2002.
That raises some questions, doesn’t it?
Why did the E.A.C. certify them, if they are illegal?
Why continue to use them, if they are illegal?
Why is the adoption of DRE voting based on the premise of accessibility, when they are not, in fact, accessible?
If it is true, as reports like Bowen’s suggest, that the disabled community is being used as nothing more than an excuse to force DRE voting machines, that would be reprehensible, indeed.
Dredd-
No, that isn’t at all what I said.
This needs to be blogged far and wide. FAR AND WIDE. Make them suffer the consequences of these reprehensible acts. The democracy of the United States and the wider world depends on it. Double-faced politicians such as Nancy Pelosi and Rush Holt, wolves-in-sheep’s-clothing traitors against democracy, need to be booted out of office for participating in undermining the democracy of the world’s only “democratic” superpower. One truly gets sick of people giving a “liberal” public image, yet turning out to be spineless mealy-mouthed corporate whores in reality.
PFAW called me on Saturday to solicit financial support and I politely told the solicitor how I couldn’t support PFAW because of their recent stand on HR 811. I told her how HR811 enshrines secret electronic vote tallies and enables vote tampering with just shreds of paper for recounts, but only when legally mandated by threshold conditions that can be circumvented with wins that are narrowly decisive by design. This woman, a likable person, did not know who set these policies within the organization. I urged her to get educated on the issue and then to lobby from within the organization. She said she would note my reason for declining to support.
Ralph Neas must take the blame for pushing this disastrous legislation.
Is Ralph Neas a sleeper cell for the entrenched elite? Is Mr. Neas selling out our Democracy for some chump change from the shadows? How do the good people in the PFAW defend this hijacking? The PFAW Board of Directors must be alerted, and if they are in on it, then the membership of PFAW must be alerted and they must yank this non-profit back into the hands of the people.
In the past PFAW has been good on many issues, but Ralph Neas and whoever supports him internally must be reined in and either educated or rebuked.
Bob #8
I guess I must conclude, then, that you do not consider PFAW to be part of the movement? Are they turrists lookin fer nucular yeller stuff in Nigeria like that there Hussein feller from Iraq who did 9/11 was (I mean befer his necktie party)?
Floridiot #7
I know dude. The bushies are now ganging up on any Iraqi’s “in order to save them”.
They are doing military ops with the Turks to kill Iraqi Kurds in the north, offering to sell the Sunni Saudi’s elite weaponry to fight the Shia, who are asking that our commander on the ground leave Iraq because he argues and fights all the time with the Iraqi president.
The Iraqi soccer team captain gives me a clue that the bushies are desperados.
All this cocky ignorance makes me wonder if the 2008 election has already been decided, the unitary EI movement not withstanding?
Dredd-
It’s your prerogative to conclude whatever you like.
Some might conclude that it calls into question the integrity and motives of our elected officials when they operate only in secret, and communicate strictly via a P/R firm. Some might also conclude that it is inappropriate for a group like PFAW to act as said P/R firm.
Did you know that, before Sen. Clinton’s “Count Every Vote Act of 2005” even had a bill number, it’s text was already available for download on PFAW’s website? It was just “file 493” back then, when PFAW was apparently writing it. Perhaps we will find the newly compromised Hoyer/Holt there as well.
This raises the question as to who is actually writing our laws. If the legislators we elect are not the ones legislating, that would seriously undermine the consent of We the People to be governed. And that’s a dangerous thing with which to meddle.
Kindly stop your attempts at misdirection.
This is a bigger issue than simply who has the most airtime.
Folks,
It is time to understand that the fascists who took over in 2000 have no intention of leaving — for one thing that would be too dangerous for them because as long as they are in power they can deflect and otherwise stop investigations of their crimes. While they’ve put in place contingency “executive directives” that give them dictatorial powers if, say, they do another 9/11, they’d rather not go that route. They’d rather keep the sheeple asleep and imagining that they live in a “democracy.” To this end they must maintain the election theft apparatus — which brings us to Rush Holt, Pelosi, and Hoyer, severely compromised politicians all. Whether they’ve been told their families will die in “accidents,” or they themselves will be “suicided,” matters not, their actions tell the story.
There is one simple, amazingly inexpensive (probably free if the public was asked to donate toward it), and 100% secure system of vote counting — and this system is used wherever actual elections, and not “elections,” take place. That system is HAND COUNTED PAPER BALLOTS. There is a tremendous track record with this system showing that it is virtually impossible to steal more than a few votes here and there and absolutely impossible to get away with stealing an election like the Repugs did in 2002, 2004, and 2006. Anyone, in government or out who says we can’t have that here, or that we can’t get it passed in time for the 2008 election is, in my opinion, part of the nascent dictatorship coming to America. Keep this in mind as you listen to “pundits” discussing which of the (only) two options we will get 1) the disasterous Holt bill, or 2) the present vote-stealing machines without “upgrades.” The third option is simply count the F-ing votes — like they do in Canada and other countries where votes are ACTUALLY counted and not compiled by corporate insiders who build, own, or control the vote-stealing machines.
Bob #12
You said:
I don’t know anyone who operates more in secret than The Dick, his lackey preznit blush, or his other lackey Wierd Al g of the Department of
JusticeJust Us. Do you?You also said:
You may think so, but I do not. I know that the
WhiteWhat House has been writing our laws, running the aforesaid DOJ, and in general fucking up everything.But many of us are waking up to that and I would suggest that you do likewise.
Now lets get back to Secrecy In Government and your apparent belief that it is Hoyer and Pelosi who are doing it. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
My God man, have you no decency to include The Dick Cheney, Rove, Bush, Snow Job, Snottie McClelland, Scooter, Dusty Foggo (and the others who are professionals) into this?
PS: have you kidnapped Brad? If so what is the ransom?
Patriot #13
Wow, another faithful, unswerving, simple, fundamental, and wrong supporter of the Stalin mythology (read the whole thread).
Stalin used a paper ballot system (he was BC … before computers). Only the hyper-“faithful” still believe in the perfect election system from “heaven”.
You stopped at the wrong planet … this is earth … but your innocence or naivete is noted.
When we are all free from the toxins that are in power, that stuff that corrupts those exposed to power, we will no longer have to say “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”.
Until then, happy audit trails to you.
By your own example, one apparently achieves this coveted state of awareness through obtuse distractions, attempts to discredit others, and almost-clever catch phrases.
I admit some fascination with watching you emulate those that you claim to oppose.
But I’ll leave you to your trolling, Dredd.
If any blame is to be placed, lay the blame on our adversaries the Voting System Vendors.
The founding members of the Voter Verified Paper Ballot Movement agree that the results of the Holt Hoyer HR 811 compromise is “to little to Late “in Washington.
We the people do not stand a chance with the well funded Vendor controlled Lobby which has Usurped our years of work.
After the California’s SOSs “Top to Bottom” review, the Vendors no longer can lie to the public about DRE Security issues.
Decertification of the Vendor’s DREs is the only legitimate path Election officials can Take, unless they are on the Take.
The Citizens of Florida feel more & more disenfranchised with upcoming Federal HAVA Legislation.
Federal Law is being written by the Corporations, just like the Vendors were allowed to do in Florida under Jeb Bush.
Money does the talking for the Voting System Vendors in Washington. Where’s the People’s Voice?
Why do Corporations and their Vendor Lobbyists have more say than Citizens?
Corporations do not have the right to Vote. Corporations need to get out of the Citizen’s Elections.
If ER Activist want to solve these proprietary issues in our Elections?
Then Banning proprietary source code is a Band aid, not a fix.
To fix Corporate corruption within our political system means the following will take the rest of our lives;
“We must return Elections to the Citizens by stopping privatization of Government, Abramnoff Lobbyists and the abuses of power political parties bring to this volatile mix.”
Citizen Bill
PS. Now Florida’s recent Victories in the State Senate are at stake.
Contact: William F. Faulkner, MBA
Verified Voting of Florida – VerifiedVoting.ORG – Florida’s State Rep.
FalconCam@MSN.com – (850) 458-2497
I’m having a hard time seeing what exactly the area of disagreement between Dredd and the others here. Dredd doesn’t seem to be advocating electronic voting, and has a long history of opposing it. If I understand his meaning — correct me if I’m wrong — he’s saying that when the system is structurally compromised, top to bottom, all elections, paper or not, can be corrupted and, historically, have been, e.g. under Stalin.
Caging and variations of minority repression have certainly affected votes in the US, even with older non-electronic voting systems, such as those in Florida before HAVA (Help Rig American Votes Act)in year 2000, when a vile America-hating fascist was elected president. Does Dredd disagree that electronic voting facilitates the vote-rigging progress? So far, reading his previous posts, it doesn’t look that way. So, what areas does he dispute and what is everybody arguing about.
Presently the entire United States Government needs to be cleansed of the vermin infestation of corporate pimps and their dishonest politician-whores (such as Rush Holt, Dianne Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, and Bill Frist). Only a handful of politicians have integrity, moral fortitude, competence, intelligence, and intellectual honesty, including Debra Bowen and Denis Kucinich.
First, it is imperative to flush the vile infected apparatus of whores and pimps (aka corporate lobbyists) out of the US government, then prosecute the US media with existing anti-trust laws, so that they can’t continue to promote fascism by aiding and abetting anti-American lawbreakers in gov’t.
If you can stand it, you should probably go back and read more carefully, Adam.