Never support a sweeping set of changes just because someone you admire does.
Groupthink, whether it is led by an admired organization or by an unlawful regime, is not how to exercise our duty of citizenship. We serve our country by sharing our independently derived perspectives with others.
You write: "The 'foundation' of the United States' 'governmental structure' is defined in its Consitution. Is this bill a constitutional amendment? Oh right, it isn't."
You hit the nail on the head. This bill is unconstitutional. Whereas this bill's predecessor, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), danced right up to the edge of unconstitutionality, the Holt Bill crosses the line and alters constitutional checks and balances. There IS a way to do this, as you pointed out, and it's called "Constitutional Amendment." Holt skipped that step and is attempting to enact a change in the balance of power without constitutional due process.
The Constitution clearly assigns the administration of elections to the states, and only when the Bill of Rights is involved has it usurped states rights. That began to change with HAVA, which was somewhat prescriptive about voting methodology. HAVA skated to the line but didn't cross it, for two reasons:
1) HAVA enacted some of its prescriptive langugage using the context of rights for persons with disabilities, which traces back to Bill of Rights interpretations, and
2) HAVA left the actual implementation up to each state by requiring a state planning process.
Not so with the Holt Bill. It marches right in and prescribes how states will administer elections. Skip the Bill of Rights. Skip the state plans. The feds will just take control.
Your contention that this nation was founded not through a structure but through a war and people is incorrect. It took a war to throw off an oppressor, so that we could erect a structure to secure and protect our rights.
The Declaration of Independence is the core document. It lays out the principles upon which we built the Constitution. Three documents: The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights (the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution) have formed the structure that has guided the government that we created in its duty to secure and protect our rights.
Much of our history has involved The People forcing The Government to live up to the principles set out in the structural documents.
The optical scan voting system is computerized voting, just like the touch-screens, or Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) systems are computerized. Add to this, both optical scan and DRE systems get fed into yet a third computerized system, the central tally system used to combine all precinct results, add them up, and spit out overall results.
Before you say "yes, but with optical scan at least you CAN count the ballots," no, you can't. Not in many states. Not without a statistical test that allows a recount. And not without huge fees, except in New Hampshire, where any candidate can get a hand recount of anything, inexpensively. In my state (Washington) it is illegal for an elections administer to hand count ballots if they think there is something wrong. That's called an "unauthorized recount." And in San Diego, citizens would have had to pay over $600,000 to take advantage of California's law allowing citizens to purchase a recount.
Computers count just about all votes now, just about everywhere.
This nation does not function without independence of thought. We hear "Holt is a very good man" and "I defer to Dr. Dill" and just above, "EFF is behind it, that's good enough for me."
This bill changes the very foundation of our governmental structure. It is the structures that have to protect us, not the people. Focus on structure: Does the bill protect your inalienable rights or put them in danger.
Black Box Voting is opposed to counting votes in secret. Computers count votes in secret, with a debatable conversation point as to whether, IF they were open source, they would still be counting votes in secret. Return to that in a minute -- I think there is no viable debate as to whether computers with proprietary trade secret software count your votes in secret. They do.
If the government counts your votes in secret, using trade secret proprietary software held in the sole custody of governmental officials, have they not just removed The People's sovereignty? If a government insider or his private contractors control the counting of your vote, in secret, you can only alter your governance if those with custody and/or programming skills happen to be honest. What this means is, quite simply, your system of government will become progressively more corrupt.
Open Source: There are three issues with open source as it pertains to counting votes in secret.
1) It is difficult to enforce open source requirements for subcomponents, like motherboard chips and hardware drivers, since so many are manufactured by foreign corporations
2) It presents challenges to confirm that the software/hardware configuration running on any given day is precisely the same one as people have been examining with the open source software.
3) Even if 1) and 2) were not issues, the concept of citizens being sovereign over their government has generally been interpreted to mean average citizens of average skills. Freedom of Information laws, for example, don't say "expert citizens can review documents" they say "any person." The use of complex configurations of hardware and software for elections imposes worse than a literacy test on citizen oversight.
Forty-five percent of New Hampshire jurisdictions hand count ballots, in public, at the polling place, and even with complex ballots containing many questions and precincts as large as 3,000 votes (triple the U.S. average), they get results completed on Election night.
When viewed not in terms of mechanics, but in terms of the ability of The People to exert sovereign control over their government, a properly administered hand count system provides benefits of public inspection (i.e. freedom of information and contemporaneous 100% audit) and participation by citizens of average skill and experience which cannot be matched by computer voting systems. And, even when all poll workers and counters are paid, properly administered hand count systems cost approximately one-fifth as much to run as computerized voting.
Before you say "you can cheat with a hand count system" -- that statement, repeated often by computer voting advocates, makes assumptions about the procedures. When done correctly, at the polling place, it's difficult to game the system even if the government insiders happen to be crooks.
Whatever we do about elections, it needs to be framed in terms of citizens ability to control the instruments of government that we have created, and citizens right to know.
That's the litmus test, not what mechanics are used to achieve it.
The term "audit" is overly vague, a buzz word. You can audit a building to see if it meets code, or you can audit a class, meaning sit in and watch. Election "audits" are being talked about as though there is some kind of accepted set of procedures, based on tradition or science -- the fact is, people are literally making up these "election audit" protocols as they go and don't even agree on the purpose. Some say audits are for the purpose of detecting fraud, others, to build confidence and some say it's to catch random error. Holt's office actually told us that his audits are not to ensure that the right candidate is installed in office, but rather to instill "confidence." I call that a schmaudit, not an audit.
Perhaps problems with the audit protocols could be solved, but there's a difference between "problems" and "unpatriotic heresy." The Holt Bill audits are joined at the hip with unpatriotic heresy. According to Holt:
If you want audits, you must put control over elections under four White House appointees.
If you want audits, you must capitulate to Microsoft and various voting industry vendors and give up the public right to examine the software that controls the vote counting.
- These audits have the EAC, the four presidential appointees, getting in between voters and certification of elections. The bill calls the EAC "The Commission," like something out of a John Grisham novel. It's in there at least 32 times. These audits force the states to go to "The Commission" for approval of their audits. The states have to submit their report to "The Commission" before they can certify their elections!
These so-called "audits" produce false confidence -- no intelligent selection, no attention to red flags, no surprise factor, and no forensic investigations when audits do not match.
Destabilization - The rocket scientists that came up with this audit plan decided to make an untested and complex procedure into federal law. Yes, folks, they want to implement an untested procedure simultaneously in 10,000 jurisdictions at once on a single mission-critical day. You wouldn't open a chain of pizza parlors with this kind of a rollout schedule, yet it's okay for an event that controls the future of the free world.
And hey, GANTT chart, anyone? Next these rocket scientists constructed an audit protocol with a killer dependency in the first step and a fixed, immovable deadline at the end. No precincts can be selected for audit until ALL precincts in the state have committed and published their results. So if one blue-haired lady in any of California's 11,000 or so precincts loses her memory cards, the whole election comes to a grinding halt while she tries to find them.
It typically takes up to two weeks for every precinct and absentee batch to be committed. And that's just when they decide WHICH PRECINCTS to audit. No one knows how long the audits actually take, because these audit protocols have never been used anywhere at all. And there is no mention of what to do when the audit uncovers discrepancies.
The Constitution requires that by a time certain -- a specific day in mid-December -- the presidential election MUST be called. Audit, meet brick wall. Hello constitutional crisis.
There is a difference between something that's got problems and something that is dangerous. This bill is dangerous.
Thank you, but there is no need to translate my own words. The core of the controversy is exactly as stated in the original post:
1. The Holt Bill provides for a paper trail (toilet paper roll-style records affixed to DRE voting machines) in 2008
2. The Holt Bill requires more durable ballots in 2010
3. The Holt Bill requires a complex set of audits.
BUT
1. The Holt Bill also cements and further empowers a concentration of power over elections under the White House
2. The Holt Bill gives explicit federal sanction to trade secrets in vote counting
3. The Holt Bill mandates an expensive 'text conversion' device that does not yet exist which is not fully funded
4. The Holt Bill removes 'safe harbor' for states in a way that opens them up to unlimited, expensive, and destabilizing litigation.
Bev Harris
Founder - Black Box Voting
(Have abandoned old "BevHarris" account here because I forgot the password and have deactivated the e-mails associated with the account. This is me, same person as the other, minus the karma I'd built up under my original screen name).
Slashdot Mirror
The real risk is insiders: the programmers, the maintenance people, the random IT person, the technicians.
Bev Harris - founder, Black Box Voting
Groupthink, whether it is led by an admired organization or by an unlawful regime, is not how to exercise our duty of citizenship. We serve our country by sharing our independently derived perspectives with others.
You write: "The 'foundation' of the United States' 'governmental structure' is defined in its Consitution. Is this bill a constitutional amendment? Oh right, it isn't."
You hit the nail on the head. This bill is unconstitutional. Whereas this bill's predecessor, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), danced right up to the edge of unconstitutionality, the Holt Bill crosses the line and alters constitutional checks and balances. There IS a way to do this, as you pointed out, and it's called "Constitutional Amendment." Holt skipped that step and is attempting to enact a change in the balance of power without constitutional due process.
The Constitution clearly assigns the administration of elections to the states, and only when the Bill of Rights is involved has it usurped states rights. That began to change with HAVA, which was somewhat prescriptive about voting methodology. HAVA skated to the line but didn't cross it, for two reasons:
1) HAVA enacted some of its prescriptive langugage using the context of rights for persons with disabilities, which traces back to Bill of Rights interpretations, and
2) HAVA left the actual implementation up to each state by requiring a state planning process.
Not so with the Holt Bill. It marches right in and prescribes how states will administer elections. Skip the Bill of Rights. Skip the state plans. The feds will just take control.
Your contention that this nation was founded not through a structure but through a war and people is incorrect. It took a war to throw off an oppressor, so that we could erect a structure to secure and protect our rights.
The Declaration of Independence is the core document. It lays out the principles upon which we built the Constitution. Three documents: The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights (the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution) have formed the structure that has guided the government that we created in its duty to secure and protect our rights.
Much of our history has involved The People forcing The Government to live up to the principles set out in the structural documents.
Bev Harris
Founder - Black Box Voting
blackboxvoting.org
Before you say "yes, but with optical scan at least you CAN count the ballots," no, you can't. Not in many states. Not without a statistical test that allows a recount. And not without huge fees, except in New Hampshire, where any candidate can get a hand recount of anything, inexpensively. In my state (Washington) it is illegal for an elections administer to hand count ballots if they think there is something wrong. That's called an "unauthorized recount." And in San Diego, citizens would have had to pay over $600,000 to take advantage of California's law allowing citizens to purchase a recount.
Computers count just about all votes now, just about everywhere.
Bev Harris
Founder - Black Box Voting
blackboxvoting.org
This bill changes the very foundation of our governmental structure. It is the structures that have to protect us, not the people. Focus on structure: Does the bill protect your inalienable rights or put them in danger.
Bev Harris
Founder - Black Box Voting
blackboxvoting.org
Black Box Voting is opposed to counting votes in secret. Computers count votes in secret, with a debatable conversation point as to whether, IF they were open source, they would still be counting votes in secret. Return to that in a minute -- I think there is no viable debate as to whether computers with proprietary trade secret software count your votes in secret. They do.
If the government counts your votes in secret, using trade secret proprietary software held in the sole custody of governmental officials, have they not just removed The People's sovereignty? If a government insider or his private contractors control the counting of your vote, in secret, you can only alter your governance if those with custody and/or programming skills happen to be honest. What this means is, quite simply, your system of government will become progressively more corrupt.
Open Source: There are three issues with open source as it pertains to counting votes in secret.
1) It is difficult to enforce open source requirements for subcomponents, like motherboard chips and hardware drivers, since so many are manufactured by foreign corporations
2) It presents challenges to confirm that the software/hardware configuration running on any given day is precisely the same one as people have been examining with the open source software.
3) Even if 1) and 2) were not issues, the concept of citizens being sovereign over their government has generally been interpreted to mean average citizens of average skills. Freedom of Information laws, for example, don't say "expert citizens can review documents" they say "any person." The use of complex configurations of hardware and software for elections imposes worse than a literacy test on citizen oversight.
Forty-five percent of New Hampshire jurisdictions hand count ballots, in public, at the polling place, and even with complex ballots containing many questions and precincts as large as 3,000 votes (triple the U.S. average), they get results completed on Election night.
When viewed not in terms of mechanics, but in terms of the ability of The People to exert sovereign control over their government, a properly administered hand count system provides benefits of public inspection (i.e. freedom of information and contemporaneous 100% audit) and participation by citizens of average skill and experience which cannot be matched by computer voting systems. And, even when all poll workers and counters are paid, properly administered hand count systems cost approximately one-fifth as much to run as computerized voting.
Before you say "you can cheat with a hand count system" -- that statement, repeated often by computer voting advocates, makes assumptions about the procedures. When done correctly, at the polling place, it's difficult to game the system even if the government insiders happen to be crooks.
Whatever we do about elections, it needs to be framed in terms of citizens ability to control the instruments of government that we have created, and citizens right to know.
That's the litmus test, not what mechanics are used to achieve it.
Bev Harris
Founder - Black Box Voting
http://www.blackboxvoting.org
Perhaps problems with the audit protocols could be solved, but there's a difference between "problems" and "unpatriotic heresy." The Holt Bill audits are joined at the hip with unpatriotic heresy. According to Holt:
If you want audits, you must put control over elections under four White House appointees.
If you want audits, you must capitulate to Microsoft and various voting industry vendors and give up the public right to examine the software that controls the vote counting.
- These audits have the EAC, the four presidential appointees, getting in between voters and certification of elections. The bill calls the EAC "The Commission," like something out of a John Grisham novel. It's in there at least 32 times. These audits force the states to go to "The Commission" for approval of their audits. The states have to submit their report to "The Commission" before they can certify their elections!
These so-called "audits" produce false confidence -- no intelligent selection, no attention to red flags, no surprise factor, and no forensic investigations when audits do not match.
Destabilization - The rocket scientists that came up with this audit plan decided to make an untested and complex procedure into federal law. Yes, folks, they want to implement an untested procedure simultaneously in 10,000 jurisdictions at once on a single mission-critical day. You wouldn't open a chain of pizza parlors with this kind of a rollout schedule, yet it's okay for an event that controls the future of the free world.
And hey, GANTT chart, anyone? Next these rocket scientists constructed an audit protocol with a killer dependency in the first step and a fixed, immovable deadline at the end. No precincts can be selected for audit until ALL precincts in the state have committed and published their results. So if one blue-haired lady in any of California's 11,000 or so precincts loses her memory cards, the whole election comes to a grinding halt while she tries to find them.
It typically takes up to two weeks for every precinct and absentee batch to be committed. And that's just when they decide WHICH PRECINCTS to audit. No one knows how long the audits actually take, because these audit protocols have never been used anywhere at all. And there is no mention of what to do when the audit uncovers discrepancies.
The Constitution requires that by a time certain -- a specific day in mid-December -- the presidential election MUST be called. Audit, meet brick wall. Hello constitutional crisis.
There is a difference between something that's got problems and something that is dangerous. This bill is dangerous.
Bev Harris
Founder - Black Box Voting
http://www.blackboxvoting.org
1. The Holt Bill provides for a paper trail (toilet paper roll-style records affixed to DRE voting machines) in 2008
2. The Holt Bill requires more durable ballots in 2010
3. The Holt Bill requires a complex set of audits.
BUT
1. The Holt Bill also cements and further empowers a concentration of power over elections under the White House
2. The Holt Bill gives explicit federal sanction to trade secrets in vote counting
3. The Holt Bill mandates an expensive 'text conversion' device that does not yet exist which is not fully funded
4. The Holt Bill removes 'safe harbor' for states in a way that opens them up to unlimited, expensive, and destabilizing litigation.
Bev Harris
Founder - Black Box Voting
(Have abandoned old "BevHarris" account here because I forgot the password and have deactivated the e-mails associated with the account. This is me, same person as the other, minus the karma I'd built up under my original screen name).