Here, in a nutshell, is everything that's wrong with "election reform" as understood by Democrats in Washington. As you'll see from this piece in the National Journal, those would-be reformers are all flying blind, with eyes wide shut to what has actually been happening to the voters in this country.
In their universe, for example, those millions who couldn't register to vote last year were the victims of mere administrative cluelessness and antiquated practices-- not the victims of a DoJ that had been purging voter rolls of Democats from coast to coast, or of party operatives who had dumped names of Democrats from voter rolls, or of operatives who had disfranchised countless other Democrats through voter caging. (All of this has been precisely documented.) In short, the reformers fail to note, or won't allow themselves to see, the flagrant partisan dimension to the problem; and so they cannot even start to solve it. Unable, or refusing, to perceive that it's the Bush Republicans who have subverted our elections, the "reformers" also can't or won't acknowledge that the voting systems now in place are there to help keep Democrats (and Independents) out of power. So they believe that there is nothing wrong with the computerized voting systems that are, by now, used nearly everywhere--systems that are manufactured and maintained (at vast expense) by private companies owned and run by highly partisan Republicans; and that, necessarily, conduct their vote-counts secretly; and that are highly insecure and eminently hackable. (It's notable--and cause for celebration--that the highest court in Germany has lately ruled against the use of computerized systems in elections.) That those machines--both DRE's and op-scans--are in general use today (processing roughly 92% of US ballots) is a predicament deliberately created by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which was drafted by Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH), a close confederate of Jack Abramoff (whose money-laundering appears to have been dedicated mainly to providing funds to help the party steal elections). It was a dreadful piece of legislation, and ought to be repealed ASAP; but its grave flaws are quite invisible to the "reformers," who see it merely as a half-step forward: "Despite some improvements since Congress approved the <http://www.fec.gov/hava/hava.htm>Help America Vote Act in 2002, last year's election pointed up the chronic problems that <http://www.nationaljournal.com/njonline/rg_20081110_1139.php>continue to plague American voting." What are those "improvements"? The article doesn't say. And what of HAVA's ill effects? The article does not acknowledge them, but moves on quickly to those "chronic problems" that HAVA was presumably devised to solve, when it was HAVA that either caused them or made them worse than ever. Seeing nothing wrong with HAVA, these "reformers" also have no problems with e-voting--and so are now promoting on-line registration as a way to help those disenfranchised millions to reclaim their voting rights. But that idea is just as dangerous as the notion, also lately floated, of having military personnel (and others) vote on-line: a(nother) terrible idea, because the Internet is far too insecure a medium for such a vital civic institution as elections. However, there is one point the "reformers" do get right, and that's the need for solid data to help guide all efforts to protect our voting rights and make American elections accurate, secure and fair (efforts, certainly, that must also entail campaign finance reform--and media reform). In the article below, Doug Chapin of the Pew Center for the States, and Yale law professor Heather Gerken, both stress the need to base our rerform efforts on a sound empirical basis. And yet, as far as they're concerned, the stream of valid "data" is extremely thin, since "data" means, in their eyes, only certain numbers. So they do take note of all those millions who had trouble registering to vote last year--but not the fact that nearly all of them were Democrats, or that the DoJ had been conducting voter purges nationwide in Democratic precincts only, or that voter caging, by Republicans, had been conducted openly for years; or (to move away from registration woes per se) that, nationwide, there were crippling shortages of e-voting machines in Democratic precincts only, leading to long, long lines; or that both DRE's and op-scans were malfunctioning primarily in Democratic areas. Apparently, the evidence of such irregularities (and others)--news articles, and updates from election monitors, and tens of thousands of firsthand reports from citizens themselves--somehow don't count as "data" relevant to what we must now do to make the system function as it ought to in a democractic country. The fact is that the Democrats, and those presumed reformers working with them, cannot really be expected to arrive at real reform--because they all have earnestly supported the Republicans' "reforms" since BushCo first proposed them in 2001. Although drafted by Republicans, and massively advantaging the GOP, HAVA got a lot of Democratic votes in Congress, and was also loudly championed by the same big liberal groups (Common Cause, PFAW, et al.) that now are lining up to back still more "reforms" that either won't change anything, or that will make things even worse. So what's up with the Democratic Party, and its liberal allies? Do they want the people in command? How much of their blindness comes from mere denial of the obvious (this being America, where such things as election fraud don't happen)? No doubt quite a lot. But how much of that blindness also stems from mere corruption, as Democratic politicians also have their pockets stuffed by players like Premier/Diebold and ES&S? No doubt quite a lot. But is not that stubborn blindness also based, in part, on a reluctance to offend that party's corporate donors? There's no doubt about it; for the Democratic Party, like the GOP, is largely owned by interests that do not want any democratic interference with their plans. The last thing that they want, in other words, is any of the change that most Americans--and by majorities far larger than we think--voted for just months ago. (It is to keep those interests happy that the Democrats have also rigged elections--not to beat Republicans, however, but to thwart Independents, and those Democrats who threaten real reform: i.e., those running from the party's left.) What the Democratic Party, and its liberal allies, seem to want, then, is a system managed from the top. Although the article below does not name any one of HAVA's putative "improvements," it's likely that one such "improvement" would, in the eyes of the "reformers," be the act's establishment of the Election Assistance Commission (EAC): a federal body, its members appointed by the president, and empowered to have the final say on election matters overall. (The EAC's authority has been increasing quietly since HAVA's passage.) And the "reformers" have been hinting at the need for greater federal control--a move that would do far less to enhance the power of We the People than to tighten up the stranglehold of both the parties and their biggest funders. And that is a "reform" that we don't need. What we do need is an honest look at what's been going on these last eight years: a vast coup run by an extremist GOP, which variously stole its power both in the White House and in Congress--while the Democrats, with very few exceptions, sat there whistling (some of them no doubt aware, and others just refusing to perceive, that they were really whistling "Dixie"). We need to look deep into who did what for the Republicans, and how they did it; and we need to ask those Democrats to tell us why they have refused even to talk about it, much less deal with it. (Obama has consistently been one of them.) Only then will we be able to start talking realistically about the real reforms that must be put in place; and if we don't start talking now, the next Election Day may hold some nasty shocks for most of us, and bring on even harder times for all of us. MCM RULES OF THE GAME Voting Reform Gets New Life Schumer's Letter To Holder Shows Congress Is Serious, Advocates Say by <mailto:ecar...@nationaljournal.com>Eliza Newlin Carney Monday, April 13, 2009 <http://www.nationaljournal.com/njonline/rulesofthegame.php>National Journal Online - Voting Reform Gets New Life In the wake of a landmark survey showing that registration problems blocked as many as 3 million eligible voters from casting ballots last November, lawmakers on Capitol Hill are hunting once again for ways to fix the broken election system. The most likely targets for legislative action this year are voter registration and the obstacles that snarl the absentee ballot process for millions of <http://www.pewtrusts.org/uploadedFiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/Reports/Election_reform/NTTV_Report_Web.pdf>military and overseas voters. There's also growing interest in collecting better data to measure how well states run their elections, using yardsticks and performance rankings. Voter registration, which emerged as the No. 1 problem hampering voters last year, will top the list. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who took over in January as chair of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, plans to introduce a bill to revamp the voter registration system later this year. "Democrats believe it is too hard for people to register and vote; Republicans believe it is too easy to register and vote fraudulently," Schumer told National Journal. "There may be a way to solve both problems simultaneously through new technology and forge a better bipartisan solution." Schumer signaled his interest in voter registration last week, when he called on the Justice Department to sue states that fail to comply with a federal law governing how voter registration materials are disseminated. The 1993 <http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/voting/42usc/subch_ih.php#anchor_1973gg>National Voter Registration Act requires agencies that administer food stamps and unemployment benefits to also hand out voter registration materials, Schumer <http://schumer.senate.gov/new_website/record.cfm?id=311271>wrote in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, but many fail to do so. "That alone shows that voter registration is high on his agenda," noted J. Gerald Hebert, executive director of the Campaign Legal Center. A hearing on voter registration last month before Schumer's Rules Committee was the first in what will be a series of hearings on election issues, including the ballot problems facing military and overseas voters. Two House panels also have held hearings recently on lessons learned from the 2008 election, and Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., on March 26 <http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:h.r.01719:>introduced a bill that would allow eligible citizens to register and to update their voter registrations online. Despite some improvements since Congress approved the <http://www.fec.gov/hava/hava.htm>Help America Vote Act in 2002, last year's election pointed up the chronic problems that <http://www.nationaljournal.com/njonline/rg_20081110_1139.php>continue to plague American voting. These turn out to have been even worse than many commentators concluded at the time, according to the landmark 2008 <http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/uploadedFiles/Final%20report20090218.pdf>Survey of the Performance of American Elections. Conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the survey found that in addition to as many as 3 million voters turned away due to registration problems, roughly 2.2 million registered voters were excluded for lack of proper identification; 1.9 million could not find their polling place; and 2.6 million left because of long lines. "It's the first really good, empirical read we've had on these questions," said Yale Law School professor Heather Gerken, whose recent book, The Democracy Index, calls for a ranking system to measure how well elections are run state by state. "And it turns out that everything that was said about the 2008 election was wrong." Gerken's argument that states should methodically collect election administration data, and should be subject to performance rankings, attracted attention on Capitol Hill in the previous Congress. Then-Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton both called for performance rankings in separate bills, and Congress set aside $10 million in a fiscal 2008 supplemental appropriations bill for pilot projects to improve data collection in five states. "Election administration is a world without data," Gerken said at a <http://www.brookings.edu/%7E/media/Files/events/2009/0407_us_election_system/20090407_us_election_system.pdf>Brookings Institution forum last week on her Democracy Index proposal. "One out of five states can't even tell you how many people showed up on Election Day." State data collection methods are so spotty and inconsistent, said Doug Chapin, director of election initiatives at the Pew Center on the States, that it can be hard to even assess which election problems most need fixing. "Until we have the data, in many ways we're flying blind on the solutions," he noted. The Pew Center called for improving measurements of election performance in a conference titled "Data for Democracy" in December. More recently, Pew has been working with a handful of state and local election officials on finding ways to apply the Democracy Index in their own jurisdictions. "We're trying to help states think through not only what they'd like to do, but what they're able to do in the field of database or evidence-based reform," said Chapin. Pew has already produced its own mini-rankings of states in areas such as military and overseas voting. A January <http://www.pewtrusts.org/uploadedFiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/Reports/Election_reform/NTTV_Report_Web.pdf>Pew report on the challenges facing overseas military voters detailed problems state by state, prompting some lower-performing states to contact Pew for help. Ranking states nationally on such things as their success registering voters and counting ballots would similarly shame election administrators into seeking fixes, Gerken maintains. Congress has a full plate, of course, and the absence of a full-blown crisis in the last election threatens to push voting system changes to the back burner. But as the MIT report illustrates, the more lawmakers learn about the problems plaguing the nation's voting system, the harder those problems become to ignore. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to Mark Crispin Miller's "News From Underground" newsgroup. To unsubscribe, send a blank email to newsfromunderground-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com OR go to http://groups.google.com/group/newsfromunderground and click on the "Unsubscribe or change membership" link in the yellow bar at the top of the page, then click the "Unsubscribe" button on the next page. 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