Our friend Jacob Soboroff, from the election reform site Why Tuesday, is asking folks to vote up his video question for Barack Obama, so that the question might be one of 10 asked of the presidential candidate during an MTV appearance scheduled for Monday (10/29) at 1:30pm ET.
To help ensure Obama gets asked the direct question on Election Reform, please click the green “thumbs up” icon just above Jacob’s short video question here.
It’d be nice if the media began asking the candidates such questions about the one issue that underscores all others: What the hell do they plan to do about our crumbling electoral system?
More specifically, we’d love them to answer one question directly — and hope that those of you out there attending their live events might bring a video camera and ask them directly!: “Do you support a paper ballot — not a ‘paper trail’ or a ‘paper record,’ but a paper ballot, and one that is actually counted — for every vote cast in America?”
But in the meantime, the question to Obama on MTV would be a step in the right direction. Please take 40 seconds to click the video link above and then click that green thumbs up button!
Well done 40 second video. Good lead up to the key questions. Take the time to click on the link and vote for thumbs up. Just scroll down a little and you will see him and the green thumbs up.
Brad, you are always asking for a ballot that is actually counted, yet you advocate for optical-scan equipment? I always hear your mantra ” get it right on election night”, yet you advocate for optical-scan equipment. You’re quoted as saying optical-scan equipment is ” notoriously inaccurate” yet you advocate for optical-scan equipment, because there is a paper ballot that can be counted in a recount? What happened to “Get it Right on Election Night”? When the ballots are scanned they are no longer the vote of record as the opti-scan proprietary software is now the tabulator and vote record, unless there is reason to recount. I do not understand your reasoning? Lets say we move to all paper ballots counted by opti-scan, what are your recommendations for policing the opti-scan operation, making sure that the votes are tabulated correctly so it is “right on election night”? Are we to ask for a recount for every election to make sure the vote was “tabulated” correctly?
I think the so-called voting integrity community has come to a crossroad and it is time to come up with some solutions! Neither you, voter unite, black box or the myriad of the other VI groups will ever stick your necks out and come up with a solution. I guess if we solved the problems you/they would be out of a job? I listen to your criticism time after time of HCPB and most recently on KRXA of your lackluster support of the group in Monterey, CA. that wants to move to Hand Counted Paper Ballots, using the same BS that we can not go directly to HCPB. So what is it, HCPB or an eternal fight for recounts after the fact? After the fact the votes have been counted, after the fact that the election has been called, so we can get a resolution to the fight 2-3-4 years later??? WTF!
If you’re going to even suggest the use of optical-scan equipment in the voting process then you damn well better have a way of sampling the Ballots in order to verify the accuracy of the tabulation, yes?
Chris, Pissed off in Monterey Ca.
Chris asks good questions. Here’s some quick-ish answers to a few of them. (Can hit the others soon, as needed, but these are the main answers)
Actually, have never done so. I’ve advocated for a paper ballot for every vote cast, and left the best way of counting those ballots for folks to fight for, for the moment, in local jurisdictions.
With the reminder, that without a paper ballot you will have nothing that we know reflects the voter’s intent to actually count! However, it is to be counted.
Nope. Because there is an actual record of the voters intent to be counted. Whether it’s election night, the day after, the day after that and so on. They can be counted as many times as necessary, by anybody who wishes to count them, and they will always reflect the voter intent.
That’s EI, not VI. The voters are doing fine. Leave ’em alone. As to putting me “out of a job”, I’m begging you, please do!!! While I can’t and won’t speak for the other folks you mention, if you think I’m better off now than I was in my previous careers, please think again. And again: Yes, please put me out of a job!
As to solutions, I’ll be happy to speak to you about them. But they all start with ensuring that there is actually a paper ballot, for every vote cast in America.
That’s the beginning of the solution. What you guys are doing in Monterey is the next step (though not last, unfortunately).
Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever “criticized” HCPB. Ever. And if you listen again to what I said last night on KRXA to the caller, Valerie, who called in about an upcoming meeting to encourage HCPB at the County Dem Party, you’ll note that I made a suggestion to her about what she could do in case they didn’t wish to adopt an 100% HCPB plan, as I suspect they won’t.
I offered a way that you could move forward with HCPB, and hopefully — if you pay attention to my suggestion — in a way that Officials will eventually have no choice but to use HCPB (if the tests I suggest are as positive as I’m sure you’d believe they will be.)
It’s a chess game, unfortunately. Not checkers. And as a path is built one stone at a time, I’d suggest you look at the path, instead of seeking a silver bullet which may not come, and could well leave us worse off, certainly in ’08 at this rate, and perhaps ruin the notion of hand-counting entirely. Forever.
If you’re able to get your county to go along with HCPB tomorrow, then HCPB it’ll be! And that sounds great to me!
On the outside chance that they are unwilling to go that route for the moment, I’d suggest your question above offers a false dichotomy, and that it’d be good to have a smarter plan in place. There are smarter ways to get where we’d all like to be eventually. And neither “0% HCPB” or “hostile handcounts”, easily jammed, and risking discrediting handcounting forever, are the way to go as I see it. I suspect you’d probably agree if you looked at the full picture here.
Yes. And how!
Go to OpEd news and search for Nancy Tobi, and you will get all the nitty gritty on HCPB in New Hampshire. Even if you paid counters $10 an hour, it would be cheap. Optical Scanners with good audits are the fall back position because mainstream Democrats are, as yet, too stupid to realize that if people don’t hand count their votes in public right after the polls close, the elections will be stolen by the losers.
How many times do we have to get screwed before we notice?
For the record, Chris Brudy (versus “pissed off in Monterey” Chris) even Nancy understands the problems related to moving immediately to all hand-counted paper ballots in one fell swoop.
For the record, it’s been a VERY long time since CA counted by hand. Since long before the initiative process made our ballots so much longer. While I’d be delighted to move to HCPB tomorrow out here, as it’s *likely* the most accurate and secure way to go, it would be *really* useful to have a test bed of data to point the doubters towards!