This diary is not about efforts to suppress the vote, nor does it address the question of whether any election held in the past was stolen.
Jeeni Criscenzo (CA-49) is urging Democrats in her district not just to vote for her but to mail in their ballots. A vote for Criscenzo is a vote against the use of corruptible machines that decide elections all over the country.
(See her diary:
http://www.dailykos.com/...)
Paper ballots can always be destroyed or thrown out, but who among us would prefer a system in which our vote was always unverifiable? That is what many of us have now.
Here's a thought experiment: imagine that the major corporate vendors of our electoral infrastructure had ties to the Democratic party, and that Democrats had done wonderfully in recent elections, controlling both houses of Congress and the White House. Imagine that the machines in use were easily hackable by a single computer.
Even in the absence of discrepancies between election results and exit polls, overvotes in the thousands, or affidavits asserting the subversion of recounts through software alteration (see 44-5 of Miller's book), do you think Republicans would accept these conditions?
They would not.
Rove's minions would be fanning out all over the country raising the alarm against the threat to our democracy; Rush would be screaming that Democrats were engaged in a silent coup.
We would admit that, wild accusations aside, the Republicans were right. We would not make an overhaul of our electoral infrastructure depend on evidence that "the vote was rigged." The fact that the vote was "riggable" would be adequate. We would admit that it was unreasonable to expect accurate and auditable elections from companies determined to protect their source code.
We would accept that unverifiable elections are not acceptable in a democracy.
The situation is reversed, and what have we done?
Too many of us have a plan that is expressed in the following mantra: "If the vote is rigged, there's no reason to go to the polls, and I would never stay home on voting day. Erego, the vote's not rigged." Another version of this I've come across just as often on this site: "If the vote is rigged, the only option is armed insurrection, and I'm going to need more evidence before I take up arms against my government."
The childish reasoning is absurd on its face. The plan is to close our eyes and vote with all our might. It is do-nothingism, pure and simple. Yet it presents itself as the sane alternative to a paranoid hysterical insistence that "it's all rigged."
David Van Os doesn't find it persuasive, but, as he said in a recent thread, "I'm just a dumb Texan who thinks there's a difference between winners' attitudes and losers' attitudes." He has filed a lawsuit seeking to block the use of voting machines that don't produce a paper receipt.
(See http://www.dailykos.com/...)
This community should be united on this issue. If the appeal to democratic principles isn't good enough, then try this: a partisan Democratic site has a duty to protect the Democratic vote.
I believe we can raise voter turnout by making clear that we care about protecting Democratic votes. When I registered voters in Detroit, I heard the same complaint over and over: our votes won't count anyway. People in these communities didn't feel like the party gave a shit about protecting their votes. They were right. Every single one of us can volunteer to be a poll worker in every election from now until doomsdady, but as long as votes are cast electronically and nobody has access to the source code, there is no way for us to keep an eye on the vote.
I am convinced that if Dems pushed hard on this issue, more suspicious voters would be motivated to get to the polls, knowing that their party had their back and would fight for their votes to count.
We are all tired of what k9disc has called the corporate-sponsored Congress. We want our representatives to stand up to the energy lobby, the insurance lobby, the tobacco lobby: we should also demand that they stand up to the corporate vendors of our electoral machinery.
I don't think "a paper trail" is enough. It is easy as pie to program a computer to produce the right receipt and record a different vote. I think we need to push for paper all the way, but I can understand the feeling of many activists that replacing proprietary commerical software with open source software is the way to go. I think questions like this should be the focus of our discussions here.
Other things I'd like feedback on:
While I support state-wide efforts to protect the vote, I think it's an effort that needs to happen at the federal level.
I think that some of the money we're giving to the DNC through Democracy Bonds should go to efforts to protect the integrity of the vote.
I'd like to hear what you guys think.
I'm sure that we can all at least agree that we should support the candidates who are active on this issue, candidates like
Debra Bowen, candidate for SoS (CA)
John Bonifaz, candidate for Sec. of the Commonwealth (MA)
Jennifer Brunner, candidate for SoS (OH)
David Van Os, candidate for AG (TX)