I was first interviewed by Anastasia Churkina of RT America, the English language Russian-sponsored cable and satellite news outlet in the U.S., about the failed e-voting systems in this country (and the failed U.S. corporate media as well) back before the 2008 election.
Here we are, four years later, and Churkina has put together another report or RT, for which I was interviewed again, on the same e-voting and e-tabulation concerns. Four years later and things are arguably no better in the U.S. than they were then, except that now we all know even more about the dangers of the oft-failed, easily-manipulated systems which tally votes in all 50 states — while still having done almost nothing about it. Her new report ran Friday on RT, and afterwards I was interviewed live, via Skype, about it on their Evening News program.
As I noted earlier this week, when running CBS4 Miami’s excellent first-in-a-series investigative report on the issue, focus on the serious concerns about computer tabulation failure and malfeasance have been largely lost this year, once again, amidst the continuing (and necessary) focus on rampant GOP voter suppression efforts. So it’s nice to see at least a few outlets keeping their eye on this particular ball, even if it always comes way too late — just weeks before the election — to do much about it, other than to raise a bit of needed awareness.
Here’s Churkina’s very good pre-taped RT special report…
And here’s my subsequent live interview following it, on the RT Evening News with anchor Kristine Frazao. Appropriately, a few computer issues, at a key moment, made the interview a bit more difficult, if instructive…
P.S. For those who may have noticed, yes, I was also interviewed by (gasp!) Fox “News” this week on the latest in the GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal. The interview, by their “voter fraud” reporter Eric Shawn, was pre-taped and then parts of it were used first on Special Report with Bret Baier Thursday night, and then a longer portion on one of their afternoon shows on Friday in a separate package. I hope to share both of those videos with you, and, knowing me, a few thoughts on them as well — as soon as I can get to ’em…
Brad: I was glad you debunked this notion of Scantrons (essentially optical scanners) are the solution as opposed to the problem. {Wiki has a rather intriguing article entitled How to Cheat on a Scantron Test).
One thing I noted was that, despite your having explained the essence of Democracy’s Gold Standard, Kristine Frazao — whether by way of “Scantrons” or optical identifiers her computer expert proposed apparently to prevent non-existent voter fraud — kept coming up with many of the fallacious reasoning behind reliance upon computers, when, in fact, the only way to achieve transparency is via a public hand-count of the hand-marked paper ballots at each precinct on Election night.
It would seem that one of the central obstacles to election integrity in the age of the computer and instantaneous Internet communications is the built-in bias from those who have mistakenly bought into the faulty notion that there is a technological solution to every problem.
Voting provides the paradigm of an instance in which the most reliable and economic solution is to be found in the low tech method that existed not only before this age of the computer, but before the age of the IBM punch card — pencil (or pen) and paper!
“LA Prosecutor Allegedly Defamed Woman to Shield ACORN Saboteur”
http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/10/04/50960.htm