Why we're not going to get a paper trail...

[housewolf]

I posted this over in "Voting Issues" last night but thought I would cross-post it here. It's some valuable information that we all need to be aware of.



Ever heard of The Election Center? Or Doug Lewis? Or the Electronic Technology Council? Or the Election Assistance Commission? Or the IEEE’s voting-equipment-standards working group?

We need to get real familiar with these groups.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=201x7746

[Amaryllis]

1. You should just post the whole thing here so people don't have to go over

there so this thread gets kicked a lot. This is crucial info to get out.
Can you edit this post and put in the same info?

[Stevepol]

2. kickadeekickkick n/t

[housewolf]

3. Here's the complete post, per request above

I can't edit it, per the requst above - the editing time has expired. Here's the remainder of the post


Don’t Count on It

<snip>

This is due, in large part, to a curious nonprofit entity called the Election Center and its versatile executive director, Doug Lewis. The Election Center’s members include approximately 1,000 dues-paying state and local election-administration officials, as well some voting-machine vendors.

But in the eyes of many voting-rights activists, the Election Center (and Lewis in particular) acts as a tireless advocate for the industry’s interests. In March, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the center has received tens of thousands of dollars from the major voting-machine vendors in the United States. Lewis also had a hand in forming the e-voting industry’s trade association. In August of 2003, Lewis and Harris Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), the country’s largest IT trade association, hosted a conference call with the presidents of the major e-voting-machine vendors. (re: paper trails)

<snip>

In the conference call, Lewis, Miller, and the executives banded together to form a coherent public-relations counteroffensive under the auspices of a new trade association, later called the Electronic Technology Council, to be created as a subsidiary of the ITAA; membership was to be around $100,000 per company. On the council’s Web site, an official statement of neutrality on the issue of voter-verified paper ballots is quickly followed by a long list of reasons why such a requirement would, in fact, be onerous.

Considering that Lewis’ organization’s members are election officials who serve a public trust, Lewis’ critics cite his participation in creating the Electronic Technology Council as an apparent conflict of interest. If true, this has only become compounded since June 2004, when Lewis was elected chairman of the Board of Advisors for the Election Assistance Commission, a federal body created by HAVA to oversee the bill’s implementation.
<snip>

the authors of HAVA mandated that the Election Assistance commission pass a new set of guidelines by 2006. <snip> this process has been hijacked by industry representatives who serve on the working group and are manipulating the standards to serve their own profit-expanding ends. <snip> it now appears that the standards the group is proposing are likely to be approved by the Election Assistance Commission in 2006, without the security provisions demanded by independent academics, computer-programming experts, and activists.

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=V...

[Amaryllis]

4. kick

[Amaryllis]

5. This should go to Conyers and as many people as possible. If this thread

doesnt take off I would suggest giving it a different name and reposting but hopefully it will take off. THis is very important!

[MadLinguist]

9. Jesus! what an unholy coalition of greedy idiots

I'm curious as to what happened to David Dill and the Press's interest. Could Eliot Spitzer (Attorney General, NY State big game hunter of corporate cheats) be tempted to go after the Electronic Technology Council?

<snip>
Academics, such as the indefatigable paper-trail advocate David Dill, a computer scientist at Stanford University, had been publicly questioning the security and viability of DRE systems, and the press was beginning to catch on.
<>

[Wilms]

6. Theives never sleep. n/t

[WilliamPitt]

7. *waving arms wildly*

Don't say 'paper trail.' The term is 'paper ballot.'

Andy Stephenson pounded that one into me.

[housewolf]

8. The post isn't about advocating a paper ballot (or trail)

It's about the incestuous industry and interest groups that are determined to keep any such thing at bay.

My point is that we need to know who these people and groups are and what they are involved in, what powers they hold.

[Peace Patriot]

14. What I say is "a first count paper receipt (takes precedence over...

...electronic tally in any recount)."

It's a mouthful, but it helps clear up the confusion of using "ballot" when you mean "receipt."

Here's how I lay it out. We need

a) paper ballots
b) hand counts

or, at least

a) a first count paper receipt (takes precedence over electronic tally in any recount)
b) open source code

and c) honest exit polls to check for fraud (like they do everywhere else in the world).

Maybe I should change this. But it seems to be clear--and distinguishes between a reliable system and an unreliable one.

[berniew1]

10. If we document the widespread fraud and dirty tricks and publicize it; we

will get a paper trail and more. There is already a huge amount of documentation of widespread vote machine fraud, systematic dirty tricks and suppression of minorities that has been documented, and its because there is a big paper trail in this election- even in the touchscreen counties. Because of the fraud that occurred in the stolen 2000 election, 60 non-partisan groups interested in fair elections like verified voting, EEF, Common Cause, etc. banded together to set up a huge hotline for election incident reporting of irregularities in the 2004 election. They got thousands of reports of registration suppression, vote counting suppression, dirty tricks mostly aimed at minority precincts, official malfeasance, and vote machine fraud in touchscreen counties. I've posted summaries of these for the various states by county, but the info is all at the
www.voteprotect.org web site maps/state/county
down to the precinct, machine, and individual level in some cases.
Thousands in each of the major swing states. And large numbers all over the country. This source of flagrant illegal actions and fraud should be followed up on.

[Amaryllis]

11. kick

[nashville_brook]

12. this is great info, but you might re-name and re-post

i almost didn't read it b/c the subject line sounds so negative

[housewolf]

13. Got any suggestions for a new title?

Certainly I could/would do that - it's important info that I think we need to be aware of.

Do you have any good suggestions for a more attention-grabbing title?

[nashville_brook]

15. key players in election fraud share financial ties

just say what the article says.

[housewolf]

19. Thanks.... done n/t

[Peace Patriot]

16. The loot behind "no paper trail."

The corruption behind "no paper trail."

Payola behind "no paper trail."

Electronic voting industry--corruption strikes again!

$$$$$$$$$$$$ = no paper trail.

I object to the current title, too--because it de-emphasizes our power ("we are never going to get..."), and what we need to do right now is USE our power LOCALLY, state by state, to get our voting system out of BushCon hands and back into the public venue, A.S.A.P. before the BushCon Congress makes things worse.

Nothing could be plainer than that the Democrats in Congress have NO POWER to undo this election mess--and some of them apparently have no desire to do so (go figure--electronic voting industry payola? dunno. It's a mystery to me.)

If Congress tomorrow REQUIRED no paper trail voting on BushCon company machines with secret source code throughout the country, overriding state control of elections, WHAT POWER DO THE DEMOCRATS have to stop them, and WOULD they even try?

Are only hope left is local action! And if we fail in local jurisdictions, our democracy is gone.

[housewolf]

18. Thanks!

Thanks for your comments.

I basically copied the title of the source article and understand where you're coming from with your consideration of it. I agree with your commments about getting involved locally with these issues, that's where we can have the most impact.

[joevoter]

17. kick

[Bill Bored]

20. letters you can use to demand the paper ballot thingy:

For the Repukes in Congress who blocked five bills since 5/2003:
<http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x277831>
This one also supports Conyers' actions.

Sample letter for your state officials:
<http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x264034#267401>
A bit less aggressive than the other one.

Most of you people can write pretty well, so you can edit these or use any parts you want. I haven't looked up the addresses of the Reps for the first one yet, and the second one has to be tailored to each state.
But there are some ideas in these that you might want to use.

And write to the media too please! They are willfully ignorant and need to get with the program on this so blast them from here: <http://www.independentmediasource.com/>

[Califooyah Operative]

21. Good Job.

EAC is a crucial one for us to lobby. They go hand and hand with hava and it's fixes/problems created.