{"id":4210,"date":"2007-03-01T15:38:33","date_gmt":"2007-03-01T23:38:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bradblog.com\/?p=4210"},"modified":"2007-03-02T02:05:30","modified_gmt":"2007-03-02T10:05:30","slug":"brad-common-cause-debate-rush-holt-election-reform-bill-on-peter-b-collin-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=4210","title":{"rendered":"Brad, Common Cause Debate Rush Holt Election Reform Bill on ‘Peter B. Collins Show’"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>Last Friday, during my regular weekly appearance on The Peter B. Collins Show<\/a>, Susannah Goodman of Common Cause was invited to join us for a discussion of the Holt Election Reform Bill (HR811<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Common Cause is one of the groups which currently supports the bill as is, and doesn’t believe it’s necessary to amend it<\/a> to require a full ban on DRE (Direct Recording Electronic, usually touch-screen) voting systems. As we’ve discussed here in some detail<\/a>, a number of these large public advocacy groups, such as Common Cause, People for the American Way (PFAW), MoveOn, and VoteTrustUSA have been not only supporting the Holt bill, but using disingenuous and\/or very weak and\/or very naive talking points to back up their support for the bill.<\/p>\n

Susannah used most of those talking points in our discussion\/debate from last Friday. I take no particular joy in pointing this out, or the similar behavior of the other groups, or Holt’s office themselves, in regard to all of this. I believe them to essentially be “good guys” on these matters, but on this point, they are dangerously<\/i> and irresponsibly wrong, in my opinion. Heading into another Presidential Election, still using disenfranchising DRE systems is a recipe for potential disaster that America simply cannot afford after two previously questionable (putting it kindly) elections.<\/p>\n

The entire text transcript may be read online, along with the full audio, posted here…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Here’s a quick sampling of our discussion…<\/p>\n

BRAD:<\/B> Susannah suggested that someone here is calling for a hand count [of paper ballots]. I’m not. I know that there’s a lot of folks who are and that’s fine by me. There are some places that do do hand counting “\u201c up in New Hampshire, I believe, they do some hand counting. But the point is, she had mentioned going back and counting 3% of the ballots in an audit later on. My question is why Susannah, or anyone else, wouldn’t be in favor of counting 100% of the ballots in the first place, using those optical scan machines or a hand count, either one. “\u00a6 Why wouldn’t we just count these ballots, these paper ballots, in the first place on Election Day? That’s what we need. That’s what Americans need”\u00a6
\n“\u00a6
\nPBC:<\/B> And Susannah, in an ideal world I imagine you’d support elimination of the DREs. But do you think that’s an achievable goal in the near term, either by ’08 or 2010?<\/p>\n

GOODMAN:<\/b> Well, I actually think it’s a bit of a red herring. I mean, I think that, as Brad was saying, you know, you could take 100% of those ballots and you still scan them through an optical scanner. That’s still electronic.<\/p>\n

BRAD:<\/B> No problem. That’s great.<\/p>\n

GOODMAN:<\/b> It’s – the counting piece of this is electronic and it’s, it will absolutely, 100%, there will be a time when it absolutely fails, because it’s a machine and machines break.<\/p>\n

BRAD:<\/B> Well, that’s right, but we’ll have a paper ballot that’s been marked by the voter that they’ll be able to then go back and check, by any means necessary. We will not have that with the touch-screen system. And I’d be interested in – Peter said that you assumed that she’d be, Susannah would be in favor of banning those DREs. I’d like to actually know where Common Cause and Susannah is “\u201c would you guys be in favor of a ban on touch-screen voting machines?<\/p>\n

GOODMAN:<\/b> I, that’s not where we are, and the reason is that, I really see this bill as, I mean, what you have in, for example in New Mexico, is there are people that can mark a ballot by hand, but there are people that cannot mark a ballot by hand, because they have a vision impairment, or they’re blind, or they don’t have use of their hands, and”\u00a6<\/div>\n

Full transcript here…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last Friday, during my regular weekly appearance on The Peter B. Collins Show, Susannah Goodman of Common Cause was invited to join us for a discussion of the Holt Election Reform Bill (HR811). Common Cause is one of the groups which currently supports the bill as is, and doesn’t believe it’s necessary to amend it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,218],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-4210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election-reform","category-rush-holt"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4210\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4210"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=4210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}