Blogged by Brad Friedman from St. Louis…
UPDATE: The BRAD BLOG has heard from sources, though we’ve not been able to get confirmation from Congress, that HR 811 may come up for a vote on the floor as early as tomorrow (Thursday). Please read below and take action!
People for the American Way (PFAW) — previously the “good guys” in many a fight for your democracy — continues their dishonest and misleading campaign to support Rep. Rush Holt’s dangerous Election Reform Bill (HR 811).
The bill, as written — despite our having helped to draft it prior to its introduction — currently fails on a number of levels. Most notably, in its institutionalization of the use of disenfranchising Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) touch-screen voting machines for all of America. Such machines use secret, unverifiable, invisible ballots to count your vote.
As The BRAD BLOG has shown many times previously, PFAW — by their own multiple written and spoken admissions — PFAW actually prefers the use of DRE touch-screen voting systems over paper based systems, and thus has become the number one supporter of the Holt bill. Worse, they are joining (perhaps even leading) Holt’s office in misleading America about what the bill does and doesn’t do.
As HR 811 comes towards the U.S. House floor for a vote, PFAW is ramping up their efforts by sending out emails to members requesting they call Nancy Pelosi’s office at (202) 225-4965.
We suggest you do the same. But demand that Pelosi amend the bill to include a ban on DRE voting systems or otherwise vote against the bill.
Then send this item to everyone you know!
Among the dishonest information propagated by PFAW during their pro-Holt campaign: The claim that a DRE ban could not pass in a Democratic-controlled Congress, despite such a ban passing recently passing in the state of Florida with a Republican House and Senate. PFAW has made the claim repeatedly and convinced other Election Integrity organizations of its validity, but has refused to offer a single name of a single Congress member who now supports Holt’s bill, but who would vote against it if it included a ban on dangerous DRE voting systems.
Among the knowingly dishonest, Frank Luntz-like deceptions that PFAW is now shamefully using in their continuing disinfo campaign (online version here, excerpts posted below from their email sent yesterday) contain the following misleading and/or incorrect claims about provisions in the Holt bill:
- It would avoid the problem that occurred last November in Sarasota when 18,000 votes were lost on touch-screen DRE systems. It wouldn’t. And they know that.
- It would require that “ALL voting machines must produce a paper ballot.” It doesn’t. And they know that.
- It would require that “ALL voting machine vendors MUST make the machines’ software available for inspection.” It does. But only for so-called “experts,” only after a problem is discovered in an election, and only if those “experts” sign non-disclosure agreements. Despite PFAW’s claim that the bill will allow for “No Secret Source Code,” the bill will continue to allow for secret source code in every American election.
PFAW should be ashamed of themselves. You can email PFAW at PFAW@PFAW.org or call them with your complaints at: 202-467-4999 or 800-326-7329.
Excerpts from their deceptive email, sent yesterday, follow below…
Rep. Holt’s bill requires the following for ALL federal elections starting in 2008:
- Paper Ballots — ALL voting machines must produce a paper ballot
- Audits — ALL voting machines must be audit-able
- No Secret Source Code — ALL voting machine vendors MUST make the machines’ software available for inspection
- Ban on Wireless Devices — Prohibits wireless technology in voting machines
Please make the call!
Rep. Nancy Pelosi
Phone: (202) 225-4965
Yes, “please make the call,” but when you call, tell Pelosi to do the right thing for American democracy and require a real paper ballot — one that is actually counted — for every vote cast in America.
The Holt bill should NOT even be considered unless it includes such a provision.
DEMAND A BAN ON DRE/TOUCH-SCREEN VOTING!
– Email Congress!
– Call your members!
See www.BradBlog.com/Holt for more details, coverage, talking points & information on all of the above!
One small tip I will give to those of you, like me, planning to call:
Of course you will most likely not speak to the representative or senator you are calling, especially if you are not a constituent. However, you can often do a little better than simply leaving a message with the first staffer that picks up the line. In my experience they will try to contain your call, but if you politely press, you can get a little further up the ladder. Sometimes you might get a legislative assistant instead.
My approach is to be polite but firm in my desire to speak with someone that is actively engaged in and familiar with the issue I am calling about. Without being presumptuous, I stress the importance of speaking with someone who will understand the specifics of my concern. Expect this process to add another five or ten minutes to your call, but eventually the receptionist will relent.
I have always been able to get at least one step past their frontline defense against our calls this way. (Sad, perhaps, that I must think of it in those terms, but… )
Hope that helps. Thanks for raising this Brad.
It shouldn’t take very much of an amendment to get rid of DRE technology.
Lets hope the amendment happens.
We ended up with touch screens after the 2000 election when it was revealed that Democrats were too stupid to figure out how to punch a hole through a ballot.
X: The problem was not that Democrats were having too much trouble punching a hole through a ballot. It was that SOOOO many Democrats were punching the same hole that there was no space for the chad to go.
And, of course, “hanging chads” was the red herring of the 2000 election, as it was actually stolen with SPOILED OVERVOTES (new voters voting for Gore and then writing in Liberman — gee, I wonder what the “intent of the voter” was on that one); de-registration of non-felons because their names were similar to felons; and spoiled ballots that were kicked back for correction in white/rich (generally Republican) districts but accepted and then voided (without telling the voter) in black/poor (generally Democratic) districts.
And then, if THOSE 100,000 stolen votes weren’t enough (you can never be sure how many votes you’ll have to steal when you’re a Rethuglican), there was the brilliant “butterfly ballot” (designed by a “supposed” Democrat who was actually a life-long Rethuglican and STUPID besides) that had 16,000 Palm Beach Senior Citizenz (now there’s a likely Rethuglican crowd, I’m sure) voting for Buchanan instead of Gore and who even ADMITTED they wanted Gore.
All in all, “Democrats too stupid to punch a hole” wasn’t the problem in 2000 or 2004, it was simply the willingness of the Rethuglicans to cheat, lie, steal and do anything necessary to win, and Democrats who couldn’t imagine that was possible.
The number that is displayed for Pelosi is not correct. I called it and so I am giving you the correct # not 202 225 2965 but it is actually
202 225 4965
Get busy!
{Ed Note: Shoot. Thanks, Faith! Have corrected the original post! –BF}
The number I was given for Pelosi was 202-225-0100… the woman that answered the posted 202-225-2965 was very polite in getting the correct number, but probably won’t be after a couple dozen wrong numbers…
This is what my hero has to say about it.
“Unless this point in the legislation has been changed, the bill [as marked up in committee] now stipulates that the e-voting software be available only to ‘qualified’ individuals, who must sign strict non-disclosure agreements.”
“That’s not what the bill said when introduced. Therefore, you can take up your concerns with Microsoft and others in the proprietary software industry. During Committee proceedings they lobbied very heavily against the language that was in the bill as introduced and none of you lobbied in favor of the language that was in the bill as introduced, and thus, the software industry won. It’s very simple, really.”
-From Holt’s own counsel, Michelle Mulder
“The meeting today (Monday) with Rush Holt went badly. He agreed they did all these wrong bad awful things. But said nothing could be done about it. That it couldn’t be proved, that it was a non-starter. Told us the people needed to be educated. We told him current polls, he did not believe it. Said they were doing hearings to educate. Denied it was Congresses job to do this. Denied that it was a party line. Linda as very calm and praised his leadership. We said not one word about the controversy over the voting – but that was clearly there. He said he got a flood on the blogs after our forum. I was very confrontational and gave back every argument and documented with the latest polls. We all disagreed with his analysis, he even told us to get other friends. He said we were in a bubble, No one he knows thinks the way we do.”
“As for Holt himself, there may well be a second reason for his long refusal to rethink his faith in e-boting machines. As Paul Lehto has informed me, it just so happens that a company called Avante International appears to be headquartered in Holt’s district, and that Avante is positioned to make money if Holt’s bill should pass and the machines should all be fitted out with “paper trails.” Here’s what we find posted on the home page of Avante’s Web site.
http://www.avantetech.com/
Given Holt’s perspective on impeachment: “”The support for Impeachment is not there, the American public is uneducated and do not understand what crimes have been committed. ” -Rush Holt, it’s obvious he has no use for citizen’s, just corporations.
Pulled from:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/2/genera_mark_cri_070711_expose__3b_rush_holt_2 c_.htm
Bruce #8
Impeachment of which one? It would be foolhardy to impeach preznit blush and let Cheney take over and shoot the world in the face.
But the polls show that more than half of voters support impeachment of Cheney. HRes 333, the House Bill for his impeachment, is gaining co-sponsors.
Impeaching Cheney would be enough to make preznit blush mess his jeans and be busy cleaning them for the rest of his time left.
As it is now he uses a mythical concept of executive privilege and other forms of cover up to hide the fact that he has messed his jeans.
X #3
No, the problem is that the neoCons on the Supreme Court felt that they were far wiser than the majority millions of american voters who elected Gore. Those jurists did the neoCon banana republic thingy and voted for president as all five of them saw fit.
Those nefarious five who considered themselves to be the Supreme Voters, all neoCon five of them, gave us Bush.
Five insane people gave us this insane regime and we have not lived thru it yet.
That is why the debate over Holt HR 811 and its Senate compliment S. 559 is so heated.
If you only take the time to do one thing, for the rest of your life, take the time to watch this video:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=497251819335380093
{link to part of Zeitgeist, a good documentary on government liars, killers, 9/11, etc. 45 min.}
And then this brief one:
{video removed due to terms of use violation –99}
After which there can be no doubt in anyones mind about the truth of things.
Share these videos with everyone you know, and insist they do the same.
Here’s my experience with the Speaker’s office. I could not get past the first person picking up the phone. I KNOW there are people on staff, whether at the state or national level, who deal with bills for the representatives and senators.
However, the person answering the phone didn’t know who of the many LA’s, as she called them, was dealing with HR 811 and couldn’t find out.
When I asked for an LA that handled Election issues, she could not find out who that person was, either.
Interesting? Perhaps, if it’s allowed, anyone who actually got through to an LA on HR-811 might let us know who that is, to get past the “I don’t know and can’t find out it’s not indicated on my list,” ‘rationale.’
My email to PFAW:
Dear People,
Please stop shilling for the election theft operation. Your support of the “Holt” bill is stunning in its deviousness.
“Paper Ballots?” please, a paper receipt — which will never be counted and is only a “feel-good” for the sheeple — is NOT a paper ballot. Please, please stop lying in this way.
“Audits” will never happen in time (immediately) to stop stolen elections from remaining stolen. You know this because there are dozens of examples. Please stop lying about this as well.
“Open source software?” Not even vaguely, and you know it. The only people able to look at the software will not be legally able to disclose that it is designed for election theft. Again, you know that and yet you are lying about this too.
What the hell is wrong with you people? Are you being paid so much that you will throw your credibility down the tubes to support the dictatorship legislation (“Holt” bill)?
If you, and the rest of the left-gatekeepers shilling for institutionalized election theft, would get behind PAPER BALLOTS, HAND COUNTED, Dennis Kucinich’s new bill, we could avert the rush to fascism that has taken root since the bush crime family stole their way to power in 2000. Everywhere there is democracy, paper ballots are counted by hand in public; everywhere votes are not counted this way, there is dictatorship. Again, you must know this.
Please, please stop lying and shilling for the election theft operation in this country and start acting like you care about our disappearing democracy.
Thank you,
Patriot
Impeach Cheney then VP Pelosi
Impeach Cheney and Bush then Prez Pelosi
Hello, my name is Davis Fleetwood……………wicked
99 -I’d like to tell you about my heroes…
Lacandones…they are what’s left of the Mayans of Southern Mexico…they speak Mayan, Spanish is a second language to them. They live in a semi-remote jungle, they eat chickens, yucca, oranges off the tree and bananas, and potatoes(?). During the week I was there they ate the same food everyday. They live in huts with dirt floors. Five miles from them is Bonampak, the city of their ancestors(who’s civilization collapsed 800 years ago).
The only thing the shaman(religious leader) wanted to talk about was global warming. He seamed to think that if temperatures got over 50deg. C the jungle would start to die and his people will have no where(on Earth) to live. He’s about 4’6″ tall…a true teacher, educated by the earth.
I hope one day your point of view includes the civilization collapse that has already occurred on this continent. You could learn something from the people who lived through it.
Upon leaving I said I wanted to return, to bring others. The shaman said “no tienes mucho tiempo” without a hint of sarcasm.
“Open source software?” Not even vaguely, and you know it. The only people able to look at the software will not be legally able to disclose that it is designed for election theft. Again, you know that and yet you are lying about this too.
This is technically not correct as the bill contains a weakly-worded phrase saying that if “qualified people”… “qualified people” who have signed the Federally-mandated nondisclosure agreements… if “qualified people” happen to stumble across problems in the escrowed lab version of the code (no one is ever allowed to examine the code actually used in the field) then the “qualified people” are allowed to report such problems… but… (and it’s a big “but”)…
Another real problem with that section of the bill is that in addition to mandating secret software in elections and forcing acceptance of corporate trade secret supremacy into our electoral system and requiring anyone looking at the code to sign corporate nondisclosure agreements for life backed with penalties as heavy as the law allows…
… yet another problem is that the language allows the corporations to shift the burden of proving that any code revelation is needed on the researchers reporting the problem so if (when) the DRE company brings down the legal hammer on the troublesome “qualified people” the “qualified people will have no actual shield from a disgruntled corporation willing to spend millions to shut them down and shut them up.
(The zapkitty wonders how much time HR.811 supporters spend each day telling themselves “Stuff like that wouldn’t happen with our bill!” over and over and over…)
Oh, fer crapsakes! OTG, I’m half indian! Half “first-national”. Where the heck is yer maudlin attitude going? Is it gonna fix anything? Only thingI wanna talk about is revolution, because of global warming and all the wars and fascist fucks counting our ballots. What’s the use in invoking the first nations right now? None that I can see. It doesn’t mean action; it means wallowing around in sentiment.
Oneguy
That would leave President Robert Byrd (150-year-old ex-Klansman and friend of the coal barons), and Vice President Rice… otherwise it’s a fine idea.
Davis Fleetwood for President!
Well, actually, if you impeach Cheney first, then * appoints a new VP… Pelosi would only step up the succession if both * and Cheney were ousted (or incapacitated or killed) at the same time. I like the idea of having them all declared insane and carted off to the bin.
Hoping Dennis Kucinich or anyone else successfully will work a “hand-count” ban on computerized voting equipment through Congress any time in the coming decade is my example of a “good intention gone sour”.
The best way to get a “hand-count” paper-only ballot bill out of the starting gate is to support the passage of HR-811. All of our angst against the make-up of the EAC, secret software, vendor influence, etc. will find relief in the irrefutable evidence HR-811 paper trails will provide that these electronic voting machines are faulty.
With a defeated HR-811, we have absolutely nothing. More black box voting. Isolated incidents, but no systematic, detailed, irrefutable audit trails to prove anything to anyone in the mainstream.
Do you think the legislative influences we all rail against (and some highlight regarding HR-811) will simply wither in shame at the beauty and elegance of Canadian-style paper/hand-count voting and leave such legislation alone?
…And Kucinich’s “hand-count” bill will be a quaint memory of a pipe dream that lacked the public outcry that the industrial quality control auditing evidence behind HR-811 could have given it.
Respectfully, Mark
It’s unfortunate for the cause of quality democracy in America that some think a DRE ban is feasible within the next decade to come without the hard evidence of unreliable and unsecure DREs that HR-811 would provide.
A DRE ban from our influence-drenched US Congress is simply not feasible without widespread, hard auditing evidence that the press couldn’t ignore, and that we would have with a VVPAT. That’s why HR-811 is savvy and effective. Holt would love to see DREs go away, and this is the very best way to get there.
No publicly known authors have credibly suggested that HR-811 auditing will fail to uncover bad tallies. They rail against the fact that the paper trail is not up front the vote of record, and of course, lash out at EAC, vendor protections and technology maturity issues (odd to hear about technology hurdles from purists…), but I haven’t seen a single credible case that the with all the ‘voters glazing over their VVPAT moments’ and everything else, in the end, audits will fail to uncover fraud.
As for it’s ‘flaws’, why would anyone think HR-811 would be a “final word” on American elections? FEC and HAVA legislation were not the final words. Sadly, even the Campaign Financing bill has been half-gutted by the Supreme Court.
Why would anyone think Kucinch’s bill would be any less vulnerable to the onslaught of interests? As I’ll be posting soon, ‘If you can’t stand the sausage-making, Get out of the House (Administration Committee)!’.
Without HR-811’s hard evidence, your many pet peeves about companies, commissions and political operatives are back to Zero – Nowehere.
Without paper evidence (I can’t believe I’m reading that the paper tail is just a “feel good” feature – someone who has no concept of the statistics behind industrial quality control obviously), influential as leading bloggers may seem, voting integrity activists will always seem like the ‘aluminum hat’ crowd, as likely to fight for a ban on DREs as to fend of the silent black helicopters from reading their brain waves.
Open your mind. Pause. Take a break from ‘talking amongst yourselves’ a bit. Think about your neighbors, business associates, folks you meet in town or at the mall.
HR-811, with all it lacks regardinng what grass roots activist might want regarding commissions and corporations, is the very best thing Canadian-style paper-only/hand-count voting could ever, ever hope for.
Journalists and every jurisdiction in the nation will have a paper record of every vote to plow into – whether a precinct is selected for auditing or not – to prove your very points about equipment, vendors and political game-playing. While some citizens may not watch for accuracy, you bet enough will to expose bad tallys nationwide, and bad counts that are highly correlated with particular vendors, software and releases.
Shine a bright light on DRE inaccuracies!
Let the Auditing Begin!