{"id":6943,"date":"2009-02-25T13:12:01","date_gmt":"2009-02-25T21:12:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bradblog.com\/?p=6943"},"modified":"2009-02-25T13:16:25","modified_gmt":"2009-02-25T21:16:25","slug":"bbv-new-holt-election-reform-bill-would-allow-surreptitious-dismantling-of-self-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=6943","title":{"rendered":"BBV: New Holt Election Reform Bill Would Allow ‘Surreptitious Dismantling of Self-Government’"},"content":{"rendered":"

From BlackBoxVoting.org’s Bev Harris<\/a>, on the section of the new Election Reform bill being proposed in the U.S. House by Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ), which would federally institutionalize secret software for vote counting, and the requirement of non-disclosure agreements for those who are lucky enough to be allowed permission to examine it…<\/p>\n

I’ve been engaged in debate in private listservs on the so-called “new” Holt Bill, which is basically exactly the same as the old Holt Bill, and every bit as much a danger to our liberty as the other Holt Bill.<\/p>\n

In fact, clause for clause, it’s pretty much the same. Now, one wonders, in a new administration and with new political realities, why would one put forth a bill that supports secret vote counting?<\/p>\n

The Holt Bill, like the persistent reappearance of Internet Voting proposals, reminds me very much of the process corporations followed in the late 1800s while grabbing “corporate personhood.” They kept coming back to the well, year after year, defeat after defeat, until one year, someone fell asleep at the wheel and corporations grabbed the “right” to personhood.<\/p>\n

What we are seeing in elections today is the surreptitious dismantling of self-government. Heck, if corporations can be persons, why not just choose our decisionmakers and in fact, just vote for us?<\/p>\n

Well, we wouldn’t allow that, because we’d know that is actually just slavery, giving up our inalienable right to self-government. So it must be done surreptitiously.<\/p><\/div>\n

Last week, we analyzed<\/a> the latest draft version [PDF]<\/a> of Holt’s soon-to-be-introduced “Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act” bill in depth. We detailed the dangers of its provisions allowing for secret software — which even he and his office admit have been included in the bill because Capitol Hill lobbyists from “the proprietary software industry…won” the battle over full software and hardware disclosure — along with Holt’s continued insistence on allowing for the use of unreliable, unverifiable touch-screen voting devices.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The BRAD BLOG<\/a> covers your electoral system, fiercely and independently, like no other media outlet in the nation. Please support our work with a donation<\/a> to help us keep going.<\/span>Please CLICK HERE to help support our work today!<\/a><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From BlackBoxVoting.org’s Bev Harris, on the section of the new Election Reform bill being proposed in the U.S. House by Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ), which would federally institutionalize secret software for vote counting, and the requirement of non-disclosure agreements for those who are lucky enough to be allowed permission to examine it… I’ve been engaged […]<\/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":[133,28,218],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-6943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-black-box-voting","category-election-reform","category-rush-holt"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6943","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=6943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6943\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6943"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=6943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}