Voting reform – more than machines
It's an article of faith among many Progressive activists that electronic voting machines are a thing of evil, that these machines are somehow programmed to steal votes from Democrats, and that any and all Democratic election losses are directly attributable to this electronic menace. And who knows, this contention may very well be accurate.
The problem with this perception is the same as that afflicting the arguments of so-called "Intelligent Design" advocates, namely that faith-based assumptions rest on thin evidentiary reeds. Despite what is alleged to be a massive, nationwide and ongoing fraud that would constitute a federal crime, no successful court case has yet been brought, let alone litigated successfully, that would support the assertions of the Dieboldistas. Now, this may be because everyone is in on the conspiracy; but the more natural conclusion, and one more in line with Occam's Razor, is that this vast conspiracy does not exist. The test may very well be the litigation underway over the contested results in Fl-13. But as things stand today, the verified-voting crowd is setting up an argument which is essentially not falsifiable – "votes are being stolen in ways we can't see or verify", and that should, in my mind, offend the reality-based community.
My personal argument with the Dieboldistas is this: there is, as noted, a bit of a disparity between the fervor with which they advance their claims, and the underlying evidentiary record; and more importantly, by engaging in a small-bore faith-based conspiracy theory, they're discrediting and hindering a realization that should be manifest to everyone, namely that our system of elections is deeply and perhaps irredeemably flawed. I'd go further and say that the Diebold crowd, by positing fraud as the proximate cause of every problem with the electoral process, weakens the case that must be made for fixing the system itself. Ironically, they argue for fraud in exactly the same way that, as noted, advocates of "Intelligent Design" argue for their designer, as the root default cause that explains everything. Tin foil hats are fashionable across the political spectrum, it seems.
All of that said, there should be little doubt that, in the interest of government transparency and to further confidence in the vote, private systems not open to public inspection, and lacking means of verification, should not be acceptable to the electorate. Those who believe that partisans insidiously manipulate every perceived means to skew results can point to examples of just that. But there is far more that is wrong with our democratic process.
Partisan election administrators: As we saw in Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004, election administration by partisans is inherently detrimental to the confidence of the public in the results. Elections need to be administered by non-partisan bodies that can engender trust in voters.
Non-partisan redistricting: In the same vein, the districts created in a majority of states over the last decade have taken the partisan protection of incumbents to new heights. The re-election rate in most jurisdictions across the country is in excess of 90%, and not, one could argue, because we are blessed with such a stellar cast of legislators, but because they have rigged their districts to their own advantage.
Reliable technology: No matter how one feels about the claims of the Dieboldistas, it is entirely clear that the technology underlying the voting process is fragile. In this recent election, problems were reported, just off the top of my head, in Ohio, Virginia, Georgia, Florida, Texas, and Colorado. By comparison, Microsoft strives for a 99.999% on rate for its computer servers; it should be possible to have a system in place that achieves the same rate of reliability or better, no matter what the underlying technology is. By the way, just to irk the PB/OS crowd, there's video on YouTube showing the problems Jean Schmidt of Ohio encountered with an optical scanner, a stark reminder that no technology is foolproof.
Poll workers: God bless them, every single one of them. But please, train them. If that costs money, and it does, it should be considered an investment on the par with new highways, schools, and so on – because these poll workers are responsible for the integrity of our most important small-D democratic process.
No right to vote: Arguably underlying the problems with voter confidence in election results is the stark fact that you do not have a federal right to vote. That right is granted to you by the state in which you live, and is exercised through thousands of local bodies that all have their own standards of eligibility and execution. It's worth considering whether that right, and the resulting process, should be federalized, to at least ensure uniform standards and methods; however, that would require a constitutional amendment, and create a new federal administrative bureaucracy, not necessarily palatable options.
Campaign finance: An ongoing scandal, and the proximate root cause of public corruption, lobbying scandals, and so on. In New York state elections, for example, the "limits" are $50,100 for statewide races, there are no limits to giving to family members (Mark Green's brother wound up spending, I seem to recall, $600,000 on that campaign). Federally, the $2,100 primary/general limits seem reasonable; but PACs, for example, can give $5,000 to candidates, and the limits for so-called "independent expenditures" are a mockery. At the least, we should be striving for transparency in reporting requirements.
Voter intimidation: It happens all the time and everywhere. Nor, frankly, is it only a republican problem, as primary voters in, say, Brooklyn can attest. There need to be effective criminal, not just civil, penalties for this; and these penalties should be applied not just to whatever hired thugs do the work, but to the candidates for which they do it.
Outright fraud: Again, something that happens in every cycle. This year, we saw deceptive robocalls depressing the Democratic vote; we saw equally deceptive flyers that falsely called Michael Steele a Democrat; and every two years, regularly as clockwork, printed materials show up in minority neighborhoods advertising false election dates, threatening criminal penalties for voters, and the like. In 2004, republicans shut down the New Hampshire Democratic phone lines. Again, these activities, broadly defined as electoral fraud, need to be prosecuted as felonies.
So yes, there's a lot of work to be done to fix our broken system of elections. But focusing on the theoretical dangers of one small aspect thereof, and doing so with conspiracy rants, isn't really helpful. We have the challenge of restoring voter trust in the voting system. Verified voting is an important part of tthat; but we shouldn't be neglecting the systemic problems inherent in the process as it currently plays out.
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2006 Elections | Accountability | Civil Rights | Closed-Source Technology | Crime | Election Monitoring | Law | Open-Source | Software | Verified Voting | Progressive Movement
Good, but...
Submitted by Bouldin on 21 November 2006 - 4:48pm.
...you're ignoring one of my main assertions, which is that a good part of the Diebold activists do not argue from specific weaknesses in the technology, but from a belief that all-powerful, shadowy interests can manipulate the vote at will. This is why I call them faith-based, and why I believe that this non-falsifiable argument must be countered.
As to the form of evidence, again, being able to stand up in court is not a bad yardstick. You don't present any criteria that are equivalent, so really, I fail to see the point of denigrating the court process. Saying that there are excuses for this does not invalidate the criterion I choose, and the burden of proof for people who claim this vast conspiracy exists remains unmet. If the evidence of fraud via machines is as widesprad as some maintain it is, it should be able to meet the simple test of a jury trial. Perhaps it will, in FL-13; but until then, what I'm missing from the people who make this argument is hard proof.
What is clear, however, is that there is widespread unease with and lack of confidence in the voting system. That needs to be addressed, and I'd like to see the verified-voting crowd devote their considerable energies to that goal.
Being able to stand up in court
Submitted by sidnora on 22 November 2006 - 8:41pm.
would be a fine standard, if the court itself weren't partisan. There's also the problem that bringing court cases costs money.
If you look at what we currently know about FL-13, you may be able to see why taking these cases to court is so problematic: first of all, there's no paper trail, so a recount is a meaningless ritual; it will always show the same result as the original report because there's no alternative record. So there's no evidence for a court to examine, you're right. But this reminds me of the old Alfred Hitchcock TV show, in which a woman beats her husband to death with a frozen leg of lamb and then cooks and serves the murder weapon for dinner. Just because the evidence has been destroyed doesn't mean she didn't do the crime.
Second, while there are circumstances that could lead a person to be suspicious of the outcome (undervote way outside of statistical norms for this type of election, but only in the loser's stronghold districts), there's probably no way to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this outcome is the result of deliberate hacking; it could be a purely mechanical failure. However, even you ascribe it to technical breakdown, it is difficult to look at these results and assert that there was no problem with this election. Yet, that is exactly what the Florida election supervisory board (composed of Jeb and two other Republicans) has decided in certifying the results. I don't know what court will be hearing this case, but, sorry to say, if the persons on the bench are Republican-appointed or elected, I doubt that their ruling will be any fairer than the one before it. If they turn out to be non-partisan, they should order a re-vote no matter what the cause for the problem; they merely need to recognize that there was a problem.
That's why I believe you misunderstand the concern of those of us who care a lot about this issue; it's not that there's a vast hidden conspiracy; it's that this is just one more tool, and a damned subtle one at that, for those in power to perpetuate their hold. It's not that hackable voting machines are the be-all and end-all of election fraud; every other point you brought up is very valid, and all need to be addressed. But so does this one.
Here in New York we still have the opportunity to install a more reliable, easier-to-use, and much less expensive system; shouldn't we be doing our utmost to get the best possible outcome while we still can?
Here are the two points I always use when trying to make this case: 1) if the political will existed to make it so, voting machines would be as reliable as ATM's; the fact that they are enormously less so serves those who control the machines.
2) PB/OS machines are just as hackable as DREs; the reason they are preferable is that they are only vote readers, not vote producers. Where there are PB/OS machines, there are ballots marked by voters. Not that they can't be tampered with too, but at least in theory there is an accurate baseline vote.
abuse vs. system
Submitted by Tony Whitson (not verified) on 21 November 2006 - 9:25pm.
You raise a good point, and I think an instance of a more general tendency.
This instance reminds me of a professor I had in law school who was explaining how some conspiracy theory involving corruption and bribery was an example of Marxist thinking. I had to correct him: Marxists tend not to diagnose problems as being due to particular abuses of free market capitalism, they look to the system itself--when it operates on its own principles--as the systematic source of problems.
All you have to do to see
Submitted by rwallnerny on 27 November 2006 - 4:48pm.
All you have to do to see the validity of the arguments for paper ballots, and the disservice people like Bouldin do by belittling those efforts, is look at what is happening in the Florida 13th CD:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/11/22/florida_13/index_np.html
Thanks to problems with the electronic voting machines, over 18,000 votes for this congressional race apparently went missing and virtually all of them in the area known as the district's democratic stronghold. So the republican candidate wins by 369 votes. The assumption that the votes went missing is because the only other explanation, that somehow 18,000 people in one partisan area of the district simply chose not to vote at all in the Congressional race defies belief. Here you have a disputed election and there may not be any way to prove what went wrong, certainly not unless the manufacturers will part with the source code which they won't do.
So why belittle the need for PBOS? Why say "oh its simply part of a much larger problem and not that important in and of itself" I would suggest Bouldin get on the PBOS bandwagon wholeheartedly and stop downplaying the importance of this specific issue.
Or what?
Submitted by Bouldin on 27 November 2006 - 8:41pm.
What, you going to call the thought police on me, Wallner?
I would note, though, in trhe interest of a concept known as 'accuracy', that my beef is with people who wear tin foil hats, of which there are some in the PBOS crowd - note that 'some' is not equivalent to 'all' - and that they focus too narrowly on one of several problems. One might add that Voters Unite!, another advocacy group, disdains the OS part in favor of hand counting, so perhaps commenter Wallner might use his no doubt considerable powers of reason instead of just parroting whatever it is that he is told to parrot on a given day.
But you need focus
Submitted by rwallnerny on 28 November 2006 - 3:43pm.
But you need such narrow focus at certain times, particularly when decisions are being made about buying new voting machines. These are crucially important decisions, and nothing is wrong with having that narrow focus and keeping it until these decisions are made. This doesn't mean you can't also keep your mind on the larger picture and the other issues. It just means that if you have a whole list of problems, logically you need to solve them one at a time. If the system is corrupt, you are not going to wave a magic wand and fix everything at once right? So I think your "beef" with those who wear "tin foil hats" on the PBOS issue is off the mark.
You sound just like some of John F. Kennedy's people in this book I'm reading, who in 1961 were continually telling Martin Luther King that he was too narrowly focusing on civil rights, and not looking at the big picture. They told King that segregation in parts of the country was just part of a systematic corruption on a large scale, which included communism, and that instead of demanding dramatic changes in that one area, it was more practical to work on gradual changes in many areas. "Don't rock the boat" they said essentially, "think big picture." King responded that how was he supposed to think big picture, fixing the economy, fighting communism .etc when his people's heads were getting bashed in? Well, to those who feel strongly that their candidate lost a presidential election, or maybe two, or other elections because of voter machine fraud, that to them is like their heads were getting bashed in. It becomes personal, and you want that narrow focus, practicality be damned. You have the need to solve one problem before you can solve others.
Blah blah blah
Submitted by Bouldin on 28 November 2006 - 8:03pm.
The problem that the tinfoil hatters contend exists, namely a systematic R attempt to steal votes, is unproven. That doesn't mean these machines are a good idea, but it does mean that the focus on the tinfoil hattery discredits real problems and distracts from real solutions. As to the MLK comparison, please, give me a break. That's like calling the 9/11 Truth folks latter-day Jeffersons.
Agree except...
I was getting ready to write a similar diary, but you beat me to it.
First off, I do want to disagree with you on the thin evidence regrading how bad DRE machines are. You cite only one form of evidence: court cases. Well, there are still court cases from 2004 that never were completely resolved, so, pun intended, the jury is still out on whether there will be court cases backing the accusations of fraud. Plus, unless there is a push against the use of these machines there never would have been any court cases in the first place, so I question the value of your arguement. But valid or not, it is also incomplete. You are mostly addressing only one part of the complaints about DRE machines. There is also the cost (way higher than PB/OS and more expensive to maintain and shorter lifespan), the transparency issue (how can we know if there is fraud if we can't independently check for fraud...or even mistakes!), the lack of security, etc. You touch on some of these later in your diary, but they really are fundamental. It is pertty much essential to make sure there is a verifiable paper trail for each and every district, otherwise some of your other suggestions remain meaningless.
Having gotten that minor disagreement out of the way, I 100% agree with you that machines are only one part of the picture. Salon.com has a good rundown of the biggest dirty tricks by the Greedy Oil Party this year, mostly traditional intimidation, lies and the sort. These should be criminal offences that are investigate both as criminal offences and as civil rights violations. Putting some people in jail and fining some Greedy Oil Party ogranizations for this kind of dirty tricks would go a long way to improving our elections.
Partisan election boards are another thing I have been advocating against for some time. In 2004, the Carter Center, which has been respected the world over for election monitoring, refused to monitor Florida because Florida was found to not meet the Center's minimum standards for a fair election. Partisan election boards was the main issue. Election boards should, at a minimum, be bipartisan...I'd even accept multipartisan. Non-partisan is often a sham, so I'd be wary of that unless I could be really sure it was non-partisan. But having a single party, any single party, decide the validity of elections is un-democratic in the extreme.
As a bare minimum, I have been pushing for people who battle DRE machines to also focus on Secretaries of State. This doesn't solve problems per se, but it puts our people in a position to do something about problems that arise. One organization I HIGHLY recommend we all get behind the Secretary of State Project. They helped in several Sec. of State races around the nation in 2006 and I just talked with them and they plan on forging ahead for future elections.
We have argued on this issue before, but I think it is clear we are mostly on the same page. Personally, I never meant fighting DRE machines to be the only reform we fight for. But it is one of several critical pieces to the fight.