Yesterday morning, I visited Daily Kos and discovered a diary by "Senior citizen." He and I belong to the Yahoo!
"election integrity and reform" group, so I'm familiar with his writing. I knew from his diaries, comments, and e-mails that he was deeply sympathetic to third parties, though I hadn't realized until I read this diary that he was in fact a registered Green and tended to vote a straight Green Party ticket except where no Green was running, in which case he voted Peace & Freedom, Democrat, or write-in.
But Senior citizen's diary, "How a Green Candidate Lost My Green Vote," told us he'd be voting for Debra Bowen, the Democrat, rather than Forrest Hill, the Green, for Secretary of State of California.
Little did I know that by the end of the day, Senior and I would effectively be trading places. Though I am a registered Democrat, I decided that evening that I would be supporting the Green candidate for Secretary of State in Massachusetts, and that Jill Stein would be the latest addition to my dKosopedia List of candidates promoting election integrity.
Please follow me to find out why.
The Secretary of State (actually Secretary of the Commonwealth) is
Bill Galvin, a Democrat, and a twelve-year incumbent running for reelection. While
Galvin has no Republican opponent, he does have a Green opponent,
Jill Stein (who ran for governor four years ago).
Until this week, I had no particularly passionate feelings about that race. At a party last December, I met John Bonifaz, whose name was familiar to me from the work his National Voting Rights Institute had done in representing Cobb and Badnarik (Kerry's involvement was minimal) in the case for an Ohio 2004 recount. When I found that Bonifaz would be running as a Democrat for Secretary of the Commonwealth, I knew I'd be voting for him in the primary. I toyed with supporting him in a more substantial way, but after he only captured about 20% of the ballots at the state Democratic convention and I subsequently heard almost nothing about him, I decided my time was better spent on candidates in other races. Bonifaz did indeed lose the primary. I felt sorry about that, but after all, I thought, Massachusetts is still in pretty good shape when it comes to election integrity. Up to now, Massachusetts has had only paper ballots. Most of those ballots, it's true, are counted by optical scan machines made by Diebold, but at least they are available for audits or recounts.
But this week, I discovered that, at the last minute, Galvin is bringing the notoriously unsafe Diebold touchscreen machines into this virtually pristine state. I felt utterly betrayed. I was not consoled by the fact that the machines will only be brought into 12 communities (to meet requirements for voting by the disabled), that use of the machines will be optional, or that they will produce a paper trail. A paper trail, unlike a paper ballot of record, is only useful as long as it matches the electronic votes, functions correctly, and is actually checked (audited), regardless of the margin of the vote. And the presence of even a single electronic machine, hacked by even a single programmer (see the Felten team's video or Stokes' excellent article) opens the door to wholesale election fraud.
So, with wisps of steam rising from my ears, I checked my e-mail at lunchtime and discovered that Jill Stein would be speaking that evening. "Damn the traffic," I told myself, "I'll go see her even if I have to arrive late."
Famous last words. I arrived late indeed. But I did have a chance to hear the tail end of her speech and to speak to her afterwards, and I was quite impressed. She is an intelligent, persuasive, charismatic candidate.
According to Stein, Galvin is more concerned with protecting investors than protecting voters.
She told me that Galvin didn't even mention the voting machines to the public until he told an association of county clerks one or two weeks ago. (These clerks will need to train poll workers.) Only then did the news make it into the Metro newspaper. He had already missed the deadline for the primary, and as far back as August, Bonifaz had already been criticizing Galvin's inaction in terms similar to the ones I heard from Stein last night.
Stein also mentioned Question 2 on the upcoming Massachusetts ballot. This would introduce cross-endorsement, in which a candidate may be endorsed by more than one party. She feels torn about the item, since although it would give third parties a voice, it would blunt the effect of that voice and might work against the adoption of instant-runoff voting, which she favors.
I encourage you to read more about Jill Stein, particularly if you live in Massachusetts.
And please educate yourself on election integrity on the dKosopedia Voting Rights pages.