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Senators Clinton and Kerry Submit Open Voting Bill
An anonymous reader writes "DailyKos is reporting that a group of senators and representatives including Hillary Clinton, John Kerrry, and Tubbs Jones, have proposed an 'open-source' voting bill. This bill (The Count Every Vote Act of 2005) corrects many of the problems in the last election. Notably, it requires paper receipts, and that the source and object code of all electronic voting machines to be open and readable by the public. " Commentary on the bill available at the Miami Herald.
...scarily like a good idea. It'll be interesting to see how far this can get, and how long before the inevitable corportate opposition to this begins to mount. I can already see Diebold rallying their forces...
And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race
Why should the manual count paper of paper ballots be the official recount. Why would there be a recount of a machine tabulated vote? Does someone think the machine miscounted? And why why why do people keep thinking that a hand count done by humans would be more accurate than a machine count?
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
"Paper records of electronic voting:" Good, as long as voters can't prove to somebody else who they voted for. That would facilitate vote buying.
"Election-day registration": Need to read the bill. If volounteer (partisan) groups get to haphazardly register people at the polls, that's a bad thing. Registrations should be in order some weeks before the elections.
"Election Day as a national holiday.": Good. Productivity could go down, but it could increase turn-out and the importance of the election in people's minds.
"Restoration of voting rights for former felons": Not sure. Is a felon that has served its sentence entitled to the same rights as others?
"the source and object code of all electronic voting machines to be open and readable by the public." Definately good. The many-eyeballs approach to security validation is perfect for this case, since it's an application with such a huge number of interested parties.
Now, how about non-citizens voting and proof of identification? Anything on that?
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
As for paper ballots, the idea is good, but will it really work well in practice? The machines will have to be able to void individual paper ballots if the voter, looking through the viewplate, realizes he didn't vote the right way. All this paper handling adds a lot of mechanical complexity to the machine, making breakdowns more likely.
Here's the text of the bill calling for programmers to have background checks (p. 10):
The public interest is for a hand-counted vote, observed by all the candidates and other independent members of the public, which in other countries is typically completed well within 24 hours of the polls closing.
Any kind of mechanised vote counting whatsoever serves to hide the vote counting process from the electorate. Receipts are a red herring; they are the only way to verify the electronic count and, as a result, render the electronic count completely redundant.
I'll agree with you, that Bush won the war. But he has lost the peace. If you take a look at the world at present:
Please don't forget that the attacks on the US was motivated by hate to the US. How can one claim to create a more secure world, if one is only stirring up more and more hatred ??
And to all the military-centric folks: No, a great big military doesn't help, because you are not fighting an organized army.
So no, I'm not in the opinion, that Bush has done a very good job while in office.
If you were a paid agent of Rove, you could not be more effective at pissing off the undecided voter and making sure the Democrats lose again and again.
It is said that one should never interrupt an enemy when they are making a mistake, but I am sure that you will pay absolutely no attentention to what I am saying:
Attitudes like your are what got my ass to the voting booth at 6:30 AM, to vote for the very first time in any election.
I am going to be there again at the next election, and I hope I can vote for Condi Rice.
Please, continue to call W voters inbred rednecks who cannot drool out of both sides of their mouths at the same time.
Please, continue to call W the new Hitler.
Please, contine to make personal attacks on people whose politics you disagree with.
You are far more effective at pushing people away from the Democratic party then I could ever be in pulling them toward the Republican one.
And for the record:
I am a
Pro-Abortion
Pro-gay-marriage
Anti-racist-preferences
Pro-gun
Pro-low-taxes
Pro-war
Pro-drug-legalization-with-regulation-and-taxati on
Destroy-the-**AA
Republican.
Where was the UN the last 2 US Elections ?
America: "1 Rule for Us, Our Rule for the rest of the world"
Type unto others as you would have them type unto you.
Or how about the right to vote? If groups inherit the rights of their members, then they can cast a vote, right? Dems and republicans can each make millions of paper corporations, and the votes of actual people will be irrelevant. It always started out simple, and needs to be returned to that way.... Here's roughly what it should be, though perhaps I defined citizen a little too narrowly...
1) "People" in the constitution refers only to citizens. The constitution shall not be construed as to confer any rights upon fictional or artificial entities or groups (nations, corporations, unions, etc...), nor upon non-citizens. Non-citizens (this might be unwise), corporations, nations, and groups would get their rights through treaties or laws, such as the Geneva Convention.
2) Citizenship cannot be stripped or given up except by mutual consent of the United States, and the citzen in question, in writing, witnessed by a court of competent jurisdiction, and only contingent upon the receipt of foreign citizenship. Nothing of value, other than another citizenship, may be offered in exchange for relinquishing US citizenship.
3) Citizens cannot be denied the right to vote for any reason whatsoever.
4) Those who are born in the US are automatically made citizens. (this is how it is now).
Something like that. Would clean up all sorts of little loopholes. For instance, a Deleware court's decision so many years ago that (in a blatant act of Judicial Activism) gave corporations the rights of "people". In addition to the "Lock up as many black and poor people as possible, and then we can prevent them from voting us out of power after they get out..." and "declare them terrorists so we can strip their citizenship and we don't have to treat them like humans or let them vote..." angles.
Might only require a single amendment.