Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Mark E. Smith on December 14, 2011 at 2:56pm

That's funny, because I have to keep repeating myself and I feel exactly the same way.

Permalink Reply by Victoria Collier on December 14, 2011 at 2:52pm

If anyone else on this page actually does want to see the evidence on how our votes are stolen via computer, I am cataloging all the evidence from multiple investigators right now. http://www.votescam.org/the_evidence.

If you want to get involved with other activists fighting against the machines, you can find links on the front page of my website.

Best

VC

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Permalink Reply by Victoria Collier on December 14, 2011 at 3:08pm

Well, I guess what you're missing is me saying about 50 times in the past 48 hours that that's not what I'm doing. I'm not going to say it again. You can read.

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Permalink Reply by Lindsay Newland Bowker on December 14, 2011 at 12:55am

wise and well said, Victoria.

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Permalink Reply by Lindsay Newland Bowker on December 14, 2011 at 2:41pm

Victoria,

 

I understand your strong conviction that paper ballots areth eonly safe and secure method of voting note.  But we can re engineer electronic voting so that it is tamper proof. It needs a secure id (i manage all my financial affairs on line with secure id's we can surely work outa system that involves a unique voter id); we can have voter reciots..a uniquely generated number that includes a record of the vote...which goes to an indpendent "blind" auditor system (ege. the confirmation number goes only to the   "blind audutor system" to which there is no extrenal access.  auditor system robo emails a random sample of voters to reverify the confirmation nnumber ( which re verifies the votes).  degree of discrepancy indicates dgree of posisble error.  Tge sytem that issue s the confirmation # ( the master vote system) would be completely indpendent of the auditor system..both systems would have a complete record of the vote and the reconciliation of the two ( electronically by the auditor system) would reveal any irregularities.

 I haven't done any sophisticated system programming for  a very long time but I truly think a fool proof tamper proof electronic system is doable.  We have to have such a system to have any hope of dynamic ongoing citizen engagement in the legislative process.  It has to be dynamic and immediate if "we the people' are going to eb able to influence what is brougt to and acted on in the legsulature and recall bad performers.

 

It is not insurmountable or unimaginable that we can safely engineer electronic voting.  Of course its not much good without the other changes we also need to re engineer to keep "we the people' in the loop and in ultimate control.

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Permalink Reply by Victoria Collier on December 14, 2011 at 5:53pm

Lindsay,

I certainly know you are arguing this in good faith. However, you are coming to the party a little late. This topic is not new and many top programmers and election integrity activists have been hashing this out literally for decades. There really is a consensus now, and even the computer experts have had to concede the field to the hand-counted paper ballot team (who they once dismissed with great arrogance and derision).

There really is no hack-proof system, and no way to attempt one and maintain the privacy of the voter, and no way to have a "black box" system that also allows for a publicly observable count of the ballots, which, as voters, should be our right. 

We've been through every possible iteration of electronic systems, and there are fundamental, intractable problems with each one. In the end, democracy is rather an organic process that requires hands-on involvement. Kind of like growing food. I like to keep my food simple, and also my ballot counting.

Those of us in the Election Integrity field have gone over this ad nauseum but still, with so many new people waking up to the problem, and lots of them with the same immediate reaction you have (surely we can figure this e-voting thing out, right?), we have to keep explaining.

If you want to get more involved in the conversation I recommend joining the Election Integrity Facebook page, and also the Black Box Voting Facebook page. There are a lot of people coming up to speed on the technology there, and Bev Harris is a great resource if you want to talk code and security. You should read her book, Black Box Voting.

It took Bev years to come around to the hand-counting, same thing with Brad Friedman at BradBlog. There just ain't no other way.

There are ways to use technology to back-up and confirm a hand-count process, however.

 

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Permalink Reply by Mark E. Smith on December 14, 2011 at 6:16pm

Victoria and Lindsay, I've explained in a comment farther down this thread, a response to Lindsay, that computer systems cannot be secured from insiders, so in order to be able to trust computer systems, the insiders have to have an incentive not to rig their systems. In elections the incentive is to rig the system, not to secure it, so computers can't be trusted in elections.

Victoria, what happens if technology, rather than confirming a hand count, conflicts with it and gives a different result? And when you repeat the hand count, once again the technology, instead of confirming it, again gives a different result? And every time you repeat it the same thing happens?

I too like organic food and keeping things simple. I would certainly insist on hand-counted paper ballots if I were to ever vote again, but I won't vote in a system where my votes, according to the Supreme Court, don't have to be counted at all. What's the point of ensuring that my vote is counted correctly if the Supreme Court can then stop the election, order that the votes not be counted, nullify all the votes previously counted, and decide the results of the election themselves, as they did in 2000 and can do again any time they wish?

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Permalink Reply by Victoria Collier on December 14, 2011 at 6:47pm

Move to Amend is doing an Occupy the Courts event in the next few days around the country.

None of us disagree with you that the Supreme Court is corrupt and helped to steal the 2000 election. Antonin Scalia is a criminal. 

But again, there is more of an awakening now than ever before about ALL of these issues. So I don't think this is the time to be despondent. I think 2012 is a year to put everything we have into organizing and educating and creating miracles. We should see what might happen, and I think that the act of doing that will lead either to great victories, or to a massive abandonment of the system -- the kind that you promote, Mark.

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Permalink Reply by Mark E. Smith on December 14, 2011 at 7:21pm

While I'm not despondent, Victoria, I don't believe that more debacles like 2000 would cause people to stop voting. Even if they fail in 2012, they'll have accomplished something. Perhaps not getting a Constitutional amendment, perhaps not getting corporate money out of politics, perhaps not ending corporate personhood, perhaps not getting honest elections, but at least electing an Elizabeth Warren or a Norman Soloman, perhaps a few other good people, enough to say that progress is being made, so that when 2016 rolls around, it will again be, as every election before it has been, the most important election of our lives, and no matter how much worse things have gotten, people will still vote.

Just because you don't get a miracle every time you want one, doesn't mean you have to stop believing in miracles. 

And sometimes miracles do happen. Look at the miracle of the 2008 election when people turned out in droves to vote for hope and change and their candidate, a man who would never previously have been considered a serious presidential contender due to the color of his skin, actually won the election. Remember the tears of joy and amazement that the election wasn't stolen? Of course it wasn't stolen--the big money had picked him, given him more money than his opponent, and since people were happy to vote for the candidate big money preferred, there was no need to steal the election. I've heard rumors that a few million votes seem to have disappeared anyway, but since it didn't effect the results of the election, nobody much cared. At least it was a miracle, right?

Okay, so nothing changed and things continued to get worse, but maybe the next miracle will be a real one. Why not?

In fact in 2016 I expect the leading candidate to be a woman. Maybe even Hillary. Wouldn't it be a real miracle if the US got a woman President for the first time ever? Of course the system doesn't change, but the players do, and since we don't have elections about issues, just personality contests between candidates, it will be a miracle and a historic event when the US gets its first female President. And in return for helping Obama run unopposed in the primaries this time, I'm sure the Democratic Party has already promised Hillary the 2016 nomination. Netanyahu will probably start stumping for her the moment Obama starts his second term. 

Oh shoot--I apologize for not putting a spoiler warning at the top of this comment. No matter, nobody listens to me anyway, so it will still all come as a big surprise. Some will even call it a miracle.

I'll bet Obama can even get reelected without the NDAA. He doesn't need to arrest or assassinate people who don't vote for him--he's still less evil than Newt. And who cares who gets to be President as along as an Elizabeth Warren or a Norman Solomon can get elected to Congress? Like one Buddhist woman on Twitter told me, it doesn't matter what kind of government we have, just be wise+compassionate and vote. 

Permalink Reply by Victoria Collier on December 14, 2011 at 7:50pm

The difference I see -- and I'm pretty sure I've said this already -- is that because so many people believed Obama and turned out for him, without being cognizant of the systemic corruption -- that is why there is such a backlash now, and really the only reason I'm interested in activism right now. This is a unique opportunity. Things actually are different.

This is the first time much of the "left" has finally taken its blinders off about the Democrats and is looking at the Corporatocracy for what it is. Sure, people will still be stumping for Obama, but the word on the street is that its time to change the system. I hear that everywhere. That's what Occupy is about. That's what Move to Amend is about. That's what all the new local and state legislation against corporate personhood is about. And I believe it's just beginning. I think the tide is turning.

What I hear from you is a cynical refrain of hopeless despair that I think you have to continue as long as you are advocating for destroying the system permanently, and no matter how many people rally valiantly now to make real structural change, you will not support us -- in fact, you will apparently not even cognitively understand what we're doing --  because it doesn't feed your narrative. You will continue telling us that we can't make change, it's impossible, and therefore we are by default supporting the evil empire, and soon you will be snarling at us that we're fascists. That's the loop here. 

I guess I'd end with the old Chinese adage, "Man who say it can't be done should not interrupt man doing it."

Permalink Reply by Mark E. Smith on December 14, 2011 at 9:07pm

So "things actually are different," Victoria? What things?

Since I've said this many times before, Victoria, and linked to this many times before, and I'm 100% certain that you never bothered to read it, I'll just cut and paste the relevant paragraph:

"This time it might be different," they say.

Really? Did we get a new Constitution that guaranteed us the right to have our votes counted and counted accurately? Did we abolish the Electoral College? Did we amend the Constitution to say that all votes must be counted before candidates are sworn into office and that the Supreme Court cannot deny anyone's right to have their vote counted? Did we outlaw the optical scanners, electronic voting machines, and central tabulators the way that Germany's Supreme Court did because they conceal electoral processes from the public and are therefore incompatible with democracy? Did we establish publicly funded elections, equal ballot access, and restore the Fairness Doctrine to get corporate money out of politics so that third party candidates have a level playing field? Did we gain proportional representation? What's different this time?

But that was written many years ago. And I've posted it to BradBlog and many other sites, and linked to it many times on BradBlog and many other sites, and also posted it here and linked to it here, back at the beginning of this topic, which I know you don't have time to read, Victoria.

I know you have important work to do telling people that things are different when absolutely nothing has changed, and urging people to vote in elections that you have always known are rigged.

But this time, like every time, things are really different. Well, this time things could have been different because the Occupy Movement mobilized people to see how corrupt the system has become, the harm it has done to us, and to work to create a better system.

And things still can be different if Occupiers aren't co-opted into the old system. You can't bring about change by doing things in the same old ways that caused the problems you want to change. 

Elections aren't something new and different that Victoria Collier invented to solve all our problems. They're the way that the wealthy elite have always controlled the government. The Framers inserted many things into the Constitution to ensure that the wealthy elite, the 1%, those like themselves who owned the country, would always rule the country. Things like not bothering to guarantee us the right to have our votes counted. Things like not allowing us to vote directly for President & Vice President. Things like making Congress the sole judge of its own elections. Things like giving the Supreme Court the power to do anything it wants without giving us any right to appeal. Things like staggering Congressional terms so that we could never throw all the bums out at once even if our votes were actually counted. And many, many more. There weren't leaving anything to chance or to the will of the people. 

No, I don't expect you to apologize in 2013, or to admit that I was right, Victoria. If we're all not imprisoned indefinitely without charge by then, I expect you to be telling me why things will be different in the 2016 election and why you're working so hard to get out the vote.

Permalink Reply by Gisele Theriault on December 14, 2011 at 9:13pm

Mark Mark Mark. Will you never learn? That is a very rude and disrespectful post. How has that worked out for you in the past?

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