Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Victoria Collier on December 13, 2011 at 11:57pm

My father and uncle would be agreeing with me, not you, thanks very much for speaking as if you know them better than I do. Your chutzpah is impressive.

What I wonder is, what are you doing here, in Occupy, if you can't even see that the  Occupy movement is gearing up to fight the final battle to finally get corporate money out of politics? How is it possible that you've missed that? What do you think this is really all about?

The main demands are gelling around ending corporate personhood and enacting full campaign finance reform. Many of the Occupy people will align with the Move to Amend movement -- and representatives in office will start developing parallel legislation, like what Bernie Sanders just promoted. And in 2012 there will be massive, consistent uprisings in America and around the world, with a growing rallying cry to end the corporate control of government. 

There has never been a time like this, there has never been such focus on how the system itself is corrupted -- beyond partisan politics. EVER. 

It's so weird that the whole power of Occupy, the whole potential of Occupy, is somehow lost on you -- why is that? Why do you keep pointing to pre-Occupy conditions to say how corrupt things have been and how hopeless? We know that -- that's why Occupy happened. Now it's a new day, and we can either grow this movement to end the corporatocracy and claim the government on behalf of the People, or . . . we can do what you advocate, and pretend like representative government will go away if we ignore it. I don't think it will. I think people will ignore Occupy, and it will go away.

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Permalink Reply by Mark E. Smith on December 14, 2011 at 12:18am

I never knew your father and brother, Victoria, but I read and own their book and I treasure their words and appreciate that they shared their experience and the wisdom they gained from it with the public.

It may be a new day, the but neither the electoral system nor our system of government has changed. And while those systems remain in place they cannot be changed by participating in them because they are rigged to benefit the 1%.

I wonder why you can't see that?

And if you believe that Occupy would go away if people just ignored it, why wouldn't the same hold true for representative government?

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Permalink Reply by Victoria Collier on December 14, 2011 at 12:20am

Sorry Mark, I can't keep this up.

I wish you the best. Sorry for all the animosity. We're all human, and these are dark days.

Good luck,

VC

Permalink Reply by Victoria Collier on December 14, 2011 at 1:58am

I just had an epiphany, Mark, while I was working on related topics, so I had to tell you, because at least this is positive.

I'm thinking about why direct democracy won't work, and there are a lot of reasons, but the first one that comes to mind is that we just have too many competing factions who will not even want to achieve consensus. Too many people won't even engage. What do you do about them?

If the direct democracy movement were to really grow, it probably would have to develop teams of facilitators and peace makers and educators who would train people, or guide them, toward the understanding of how and why you attempt consensus.

Some people would have to first understand that other people even have a right to be heard and to live in their own way, and not just have other people's way of life and demands foisted upon them.

Just that understanding would be very difficult for a lot of people. 

So helping to establish the fundamental respect for other people, it seems to me, is a social project that would have to be undertaken alongside growing the movement for direct democracy.

And then the people promoting direct democracy would have to really listen to the concerns of other people who don't WANT direct democracy, and will argue against it. Many of them will have very real and serious concerns, and if the DD folks just call them "fascists" it isn't going to go over too well.

And I stil need to understand what is supposed to happen in the process when people just don't agree but a decision has to be made?

Permalink Reply by Mark E. Smith on December 14, 2011 at 4:21am

The ruling elite, Victoria, or the 1% as many call them, use a "divide and conquer" strategy to get people fighting with each other instead of uniting against the 1% oppressing them. 

This divide and conquer strategy is called holding elections. If you recall Tahrir Square in the early days of the January 25th revolution, people were holding hands with total strangers and changing, "Muslim, Christian, we are all Egyptian!"

They were able to unite and force the dictator Mubarak to step down. But then the US, which had been supporting Mubarak until that very moment, stepped in and congratulated them on their progress toward democracy, suggested that Mubarak's military junta be called a "transitional government" and remain in charge until elections could be held. I tried to warn people, but very few listened. Soon Egyptians were forming political parties and trying to get their candidates elected. No longer were they all Egyptians, once again they were Muslims, Copts, Salafis, and every other sect, the elections were held, and the military junta retained control of the government, still killing protesters with US-supplied weapons, but now able to claim to be a democratically-elected government with the consent of the governed.

That's how it works.

I agree with you that if people can't even understand how something that obviously simple works, it will be difficult for people to understand how direct democracy works. But since direct democracy is something that people themselves can do, rather than something that is done for or to them, people can learn how to do it. Like the old joke when a tourist asked a New Yorker how to get to Carnegie Hall: "Practice, practice, practice!"

The thing is that if something is done for you, you might never learn how it is done, but if you do something yourself, you will.

Most people don't have the time or energy to bake a cake from scratch and wouldn't even want to, as it is quicker and easier to just buy one ready-baked or bake one from a mix. But people who try to bake cakes from scratch usually only have a few flops before they get the hang of it, and they find that they have more options and can have cakes more to their liking than they would otherwise. The only reason we're still around is because we're a very adaptable species and we're capable of learning from our mistakes (even if we often don't) and capable of not just learning new ways to do things, but also of devising new ways to do things.

A lot of people say that human nature is predatory and that struggle is the natural and necessary way of life. I agree with John and Oko Lennon, that if we gave peace a chance, it might work. We'll never know unless we try. Sure it is new, different, and scary. So was electricity. So were airplanes. And a lot of people said that they couldn't possibly work. And as for me talking with you by means of a computer? Anyone who suggested something like that to a caveman would have gotten their head bashed in with a rock. A couple of hundred years ago suggesting something like that could have gotten somebody burned at the stake for witchcraft. And here I sit, chatting away like it was nothing at all.

Permalink Reply by Victoria Collier on December 14, 2011 at 11:08am

Yes, the ruling elite use divide and conquer as a strategy, of course. But we can't claim that people are some kind of aligned and united unit at all times otherwise. Our history shows the opposite. While we might align for short times, for certain purposes, we have always been quite factional and we have always warred with each other. 

That goes for our much romanticized tribal communities as well and post-industrial societies.

A lot of the really intransigent problems seem to come back to religion. And sadly we don't seem one iota closer to really resolving those. Fundamentalism is on the rise everywhere, and as long as those people can home school their kids and indoctrinate them, there's not much hope for a growing rational society.

I don't disagree in theory that we could evolve beyond our historic factionalism if given the right environment, but at the very least religion alone seems to be poisoning those waters.

Of course the extreme right uses abortion as the #1 wedge issue to keep people divided, and that's a perfect example of how insane it's all become. People will vote for representatives solely based on their abortion position, nothing else.

Permalink Reply by Victoria Collier on December 14, 2011 at 11:29am

If you want to talk about division, how about the tech people in the Occupy movement advocating for Internet voting? Bev Harris, a long time election integrity investigator and activist at blackboxvoting.org, just gave a brilliant explanation of why this can never work, for direct democracy or for representative democracy.

Bev Harris

“as for my personal goals… I want an online voting system …”

Okay. Thank you for stating your personal goals. I want an election system that does not violate our human rights, allowing us to retain sovereignty over the instruments of government which we have created. Any system that does not allow us to see what’s going on violates our rights. Focusing on the mechanics without first examining the specifications for what makes a public election actually public is like committing to build a shiny building without an architectural plan or any idea of what the building is to be used for.

By the way, “public election” in my book does not mean throwing away our political privacy. It means making sure the public can authenticate without need for special expertise the four key elements, (who can vote, who did vote, chain of custody and the count). Simply saying this can be done with Internet voting does not make it so; saying we should “study the issue” ignores the very large number of studies that have already demonstrated that Internet voting cannot be made secure. It would be an excellent idea to read those studies first before drawing conclusions about whether Internet voting can ever be appropriate.

As to throwing away political privacy (revealing who voted for whom) – this opens the door for massive coercion, by employers. That’s why privacy of your vote was put in place, following years of brutal machine politics targeting the most vulnerable members of our society, immigrants, the elderly, and the poor. It was not unusual for jobs to be withheld from those who voted against the employer’s interests; they were frequently beaten, and even members of their families had their livelihoods threatened.

That said, privacy of the vote is a lower level right than the inalienable right to be able to see and authenticate the original accounting of our vote. Note that the only authentication that counts is of the original, first-generation information. A second generation report is one that purports to be derived from the original, and that is where the trapdoor is for online voting. At best, the public can only receive second generation reports and must trust the source, an undemocratic principle and a funnel through which the votes of the masses can be stolen at a single critical point.

As for corporations ultimately controlling the process with online voting, that is certainly the case, but it is worse than that. The design of these systems would be developed either by academically trained persons or by the United States intelligence services (both have been involved in creating Internet voting systems in past years). 

If it is academics, that’s a scary thought. I have considerable discourse with guys from M.I.T., Stanford, etc; purported “experts” in the field of computer technology. Note first that computer technology is not the relevant discipline; what we are looking at is methodology through which we can reinstate our ability to exert our own sovereignty over the government we pay for. Here’s a typical quote from one of the ivory tower computer guys regarding human rights and voting: “I am not interested in what some Eighteenth Century statesman had to say about democracy.” They really aren’t on board with the whole self-government thing. They are more interested in getting grants and its just fine with them if the public is required to trust them to tell us it’s okay. And in addition, they still are against Internet voting. While I am concerned that it can’t be made transparent, they know it can’t be made secure.

And now let’s turn to the national security intelligence types. I have been privy to some fascinating discourse between former national security guys and so-called “computer security experts.” To the stupified wonder of the academics, the national security guys scoff at their concept that encryption can make it secure. “You don’t have the security clearance,” they explain. Truth is, the intelligence guys know how to end-run some of the cryptography that even the most elite academics and corporate experts think is unpenetratable. 

And to add another layer of concern: Did you know that it is truly not possible to execute military internet voting securely? The communications structure underlies other foreign nations, who can intercept information flowing through. There, it isn’t just the risk of knowing how people voted. It gives away positions of our military assets — translation, guys with special skills. 

Einstein once said that anyone can make a complicated system. The genius is in making it simple. With each layer of complexification, we remove the public one step from control of their own government, placing actual control into the hands of those who control each complexification level.

Permalink Reply by Mark E. Smith on December 14, 2011 at 1:41pm

Bev Harris banned me from BlackBoxVoting.org for suggesting that people not vote in rigged elections, Victoria. 

You quote Bev saying, "I want an election system that does not violate our human rights, allowing us to retain sovereignty over the instruments of government which we have created."

Bev is fully aware that we do not have such a system. Yet Bev advises that we continue to vote in a system that does violate our human rights and does not allow us to retain sovereignty.

One of the earliest analogies I used in my advocacy was comparing our broken electoral system to a broken vending machine. You put a dollar in the machine, nothing comes out and it doesn't return your money. You put another dollar in and the same thing happens. After the third such attempt, I think an honest person would not only stop putting money in the machine, but put a note over the slot to warn others not to do so, and would call the customer service number on the machine to ask that their money be returned and the machine repaired. If the owner didn't return the money and didn't repair the machine, but just sent somebody out to remove the note, because it was a crook who owned the machine and they made more money if people didn't get anything in return, then I'd urge boycotting all that crook's vending machines. I certainly wouldn't encourage people to keep putting money in them.

If you know a system is broken, you know it hasn't been repaired yet, why urge people to keep using it? Do you really think you can repair a broken vending machine by continuing to put money in it, or repair a broken electoral system by continuing to vote in it?

If something not only doesn't work the way it was intended, but does more harm than good, why not try something else?

Religious strife ravaged the Old World for thousands of years. Then a new nation was founded with freedom of religion and the same people who had been at each others throats for thousands of years, began living side by side in peace. And continued to do so until some fanatics got elected to government and put the words "under God" in the pledge of allegiance in hopes of dividing this country along religious lines, and they succeeded to a great extent. The problem isn't that various religions and various fundamentalists exist, the problem is that in a representative form of government they have the power to shove their beliefs down everyone else's throat. That can't happen in a direct democracy.

I too woke up with an epiphany this morning, Victoria: While it seems that people don't have the time or energy for direct democracy, I realized that if people didn't have to spend three months a year working just to pay taxes for wars and bailouts we don't want, we'd each have three months free to engage in direct democracy.

Small businesses can thrive without capitalism. My local organic food cooperative has been in business for over twenty years and is extremely profitable--they're looking for a second location. They make enough to pay their worker-owners very high salaries with full benefits, donate large sums to community efforts, and invest in green technologies throughout the store to limit environmental pollution. They're not run solely for profit, as capitalist corporations are, but for the public good. Although many Tea Partiers have criticized Occupiers as being dread-locked, pierced, and tattooed dirty hippies nobody would ever hire, many of the sparking and gleaming clean food workers at the co-op have dread-locks, piercings, or tattoos. Those with dreads use hair-nets when handling food, as do all other employees who aren't bald, and those with piercings and tattoos, just like anyone else there, would be fired if they weren't scrupulously clean and used gloves when handling food. Stereotypes are often both false and harmful. Many co-op worker-owners are vegans, and they are not only clean, they seem to have an aura of purity that makes them glow--and I'm not one of those new-agey types who can see auras.

Capitalism, running a business for the benefit and enrichment of its private owners, isn't the only or even the best way to do business. Cooperatives and collectives have often proven to be better ways. The general manager of my co-op and her husband also happen to be election integrity activists, and before I stopped voting I used to go to meetings in their delightful home. They've also been very involved with Occupy. The co-op is a multi-million dollar business and they're as hard-headed business people as you could ever find. But their goal isn't to enrich themselves, as they already have everything they need or want and a lot more--their goal is to provide ethical goods and services to their community. 

Please forgive me for repeating myself, Victoria, but thank you, thank you, thank you, and a hundred more thanks for taking the time and effort to engage in civil discussion. When you and David first came to this discussion at the urging of Jeannie Dean, I'd thought that neither of you would do anything other than attack me and attempt to discredit the idea of not voting through unfounded allegations and accusations, and that you would be as disruptive as possible without engaging in civil discussion of the issue, as indeed you both were at first. However your recent comments have proved me wrong in your case (David stopped posting, but was proud to have been disruptive and off-topic) and I'm happy to have been proven wrong. Thank you. Sometimes even those who have prejudged other people and ideas, and whose intentions are hostile, can engage in civil discussions. You're doing it, so it isn't just some insane fantasy on my part.

Permalink Reply by Victoria Collier on December 14, 2011 at 1:54pm

Mark, I am usually not on the attack, but after reading other posts from you in other places, I did not see you as someone who really wanted to dialog and find common ground, I saw you as a trouble maker muddying the waters on other people's sites. But I'm willing to reconsider that as long as we can continue trying to understand each other.

But when you make comments like your last one, I just have to wonder how many times I have to repeat myself before you can really hear me, and I wonder why you just keep accusing election integrity activists of advocating the continued support of corruption?

Mark, Bev Harris has dedicated her life to exposing the way our votes are stolen. She is doing that, not so people won't vote, but so they will be able to vote in a clean system. Why would she advocate not voting? 

She is advocating that we care about voting enough to pay attention to how our votes are stolen and clean up the system.

Also, she believes that low voter turn out makes it easier to steal elections. If the machines are pre-programmed for Candidate A, but Candidate B has a landslide turn-out, Candidate A will lose, though possibly by a smaller margin.

Thats just one scenario.

For me, the thing is not to tell people -- go, vote, have faith in the system! It's to say, go, vote, and do so knowing exactly what you are dealing with, and work with us to end the corruption.

I just keep hearing the same refrain from you that we are all working to further the corruption, and yet you know that I, and Bev Harris, and Brad Friedman and others, are doing more than anyone else to expose the corruption. So why do you keep attacking us as part of the problem?

You have to realize that we just fundamentally don't believe your system of direct democracy alone can work. And as long as we believe that, we have no choice but to try to clean up the representative system. And we're working hard to do it. So when you show up advocating for your system and calling the rest of us enablers of fascism, it just doesn't go over well.

I think we can find some common ground, but the attacks have to stop from both ends. 

Permalink Reply by Mark E. Smith on December 14, 2011 at 2:31pm

Victoria, if you have prejudged something like direct democracy, and you believe (without trying it) that it won't work, there is no way to argue with prejudice or belief.

Remember when I asked people if they would continue to vote if the only federally approved voting mechanism was a flush toilet? Many election integrity activists would. They'd go to the waste treatment outlet and dredge the ballots out of the effluent, and they'd try to dry them and clean them up so that they could ascertain exactly how the flushed votes had been stolen.

Knowing how your vote was stolen doesn't do anything to remedy the fact that your vote was stolen. Allowing it to be stolen again and again so that you can collect more and more documentation regarding how it was stolen doesn't prevent your vote from being stolen or avert the harm that comes from stolen elections. 

If you want a clean system, how can you get it by continuing to vote in a dirty system? If my floor is dirty, I don't just keep walking around on it with muddy shoes, I take my shoes off, clean them, mop the floor, and then I can walk on a clean floor. I'm not against voting, as I made clear in my brief essay on The Value of Voting. In a democratic system of government, where power is vested in the hands of the people, voting is the way that people exercise their power and is the most precious right of all. I'm only against voting in an undemocratic system where it can cause immense harm, particularly if the votes can't be verified and don't even have to be counted.

To admit that we have faith-based elections, and then to urge people to continue to vote in faith-based elections, is like knowing that the vending machine is broken but urging people to keep putting money in it. It's dishonest because no matter how much money you put into a broken vending machine, it won't repair the machine. No matter how many people vote in elections where the popular vote doesn't have to be counted, it can't force the government to count those votes. Even if every single eligible voter in the US got out and voted, the Supreme Court can still stop the vote count, rule that the votes not be counted, and decide the winner themselves. That's not a fantasy on my part, it actually happened in 2000 and can happen again at any time.

The present government of the United States is based on a Constitution that vested supreme power in a Supreme Court, not in the hands of the people. It is not a democratic form of government. Nine unelected people can intervene on any pretext or even without a pretext, stop the vote count, nullify an election, decide the winner themselves, and, as Al Gore noted, nothing short of armed revolution can appeal their decision. That's what supreme power is, when your decision is the equivalent of the Divine Right of Kings and cannot be appealed.

Documenting how votes are stolen is important and I worked very hard at it for many years. But once you have tons of documentation, what do you do with it? Elections officials frequently admit that there were discrepancies, but always insist that it didn't effect the results of an election. You can't take your evidence to the courts in the case of stolen Congressional elections because Article 1, Section 5 of the Constitution made Congress the sole judge of the elections, returns, and qualifications of its members. If you're a candidate whose election was stolen, you can take your proof to Congress, but they don't have to look at it and Congress alone has the power to remove a sitting Member of Congress. They've never done so in the history of Congress, and with only a 9% approval rating, that's a can of worms they aren't likely to open up now.

If I know a game is rigged, I won't play in it and I won't encourage others to do so. Sure, those who are running the rigged game and profiting from it will call me a troublemaker, but I won't shill for them and encourage people to play in a game that I know is rigged. If you don't know that a game is rigged, you might gamble in it and try to find out if it is rigged or not. But once you know it is rigged, step away from the table, because if you don't, you're going to lose everything you have. Do you know that our elections are rigged, Victoria? Or are you still looking for evidence to document whether or not they're rigged? If you're still looking for evidence that our elections are rigged and wish to document some of the many ways in which our elections are rigged, would it be rude and impertinent of me to direct you to a book called Votescam?

Okay, I admit that I'm angry and exasperated. It's like having the grade school teacher who taught me that two and two make four, telling me sixty-five years later that they're not really sure about that and we should investigate it further.

Permalink Reply by Mark E. Smith on December 14, 2011 at 3:03pm

I think most people here know how our votes are stolen by computer, Victoria.

And most of us also know the many ways that our votes were stolen before computers were discovered.

And most of us know how elections can be stolen by the Supreme Court not allowing the votes to be counted at all, whether by computer, by hand-counted paper ballots, or any other way, or by a candidate conceding early before there's time for the votes to be counted.

I think most of us, like me, agree that our elections are rigged.

The only point of disagreement is whether or not we should continue to vote in rigged elections.

I don't think that voting in rigged elections is a good idea.

Particularly in elections like 2012 when more than 90% of ballots cast will be tallied by computers.

I wonder why anyone who doesn't trust computers to count the votes, would trust an election where votes are tallied by computers enough to not only vote in it, but also encourage others to do so. What am I missing here?

Permalink Reply by Victoria Collier on December 14, 2011 at 2:44pm

Ok. Listen. I'm open to discussion, and I"m trying to find common ground with you. But what happens is that you basically just ignore a lot of what I say. I can't keep repeating myself. And since that seems to be what I have to keep doing -- and to no effect --  I'm going to have to once again bow out of conversation with you. I don't know why you can't hear me, but you clearly just can't or will not hear me. I'm going to start to feel foolish constantly repeating myself. 

This is also where the dialog breaks down with you on other pages, and why I didn't believe you were dialoging in good faith. 

If I say the sky is blue and you come back saying, Victoria, why do you keep saying the sky is green? I just might lose my mind after a while.

The other people on this page might want to continue a dialog and I'm open to that.

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