Senators Clinton and Kerry Submit Open Voting Bill 1037
An anonymous reader writes "DailyKos is reporting that a group of senators and representatives including Hillary Clinton, John Kerrry, and Tubbs Jones, have proposed an 'open-source' voting bill. This bill (The Count Every Vote Act of 2005) corrects many of the problems in the last election. Notably, it requires paper receipts, and that the source and object code of all electronic voting machines to be open and readable by the public. " Commentary on the bill available at the Miami Herald.
Clinton and Boxer, you mean... (Score:5, Informative)
Funny (Score:5, Informative)
Also, Diebold already has the capability to add paper receipts, WHICH WERE NOT REQUIRED UNDER HAVA, to all of its e-voting deployments. They're just a contractor. They'll build and deploy whatever local governments will buy. But if you're one of those people who thinks that Diebold, a multi-thousand person corporation that prides itself on reliable customer interface systems, is literally conspiring to rig US elections on the basis of offhanded campaign quotes in the context of GOP fundraising by Diebold's CEO, however inappropriate they were, then I suppose none of what I just said will matter to you.
Re:They just can't let it die, can they? (Score:2, Informative)
they just won't roll over and play dead (Score:5, Informative)
That's because HAVA initially didn't require it (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I agree with Kerry & Clinton? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Corporate Lobbies vs. Public Interest (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Corporate Lobbies vs. Public Interest (Score:5, Informative)
Re:the problems with last years election (Score:3, Informative)
Re:they just won't roll over and play dead (Score:3, Informative)
Your implication being that this is what the Republicans do, can you offer any actual proof that this occured in the last election?
Democrats were signing up dead people to vote, and there was actual proof of it. I'm tired of the vague, unproven claims being thrown around. And while it comes from both sides, I sure see it a lot more from conspiracy-laden mindsets on the left side of the fence.
Re:Why are voting machines complicated? (Score:3, Informative)
Lots of programs would be trivial to implement if everyone in the world just behaved themselves at all times. Almost all of the parties involved have an incredibly strong incentive to mess with the hashtable. And it has to be completely auditable, so you can see exactly what changes were made to the hashtable and when, by whom, and for what reason. It has to provide a way to guarantee that a vote for one candidate did not get stored as a vote for another. But you also have to avoid a system that will allow the winners of the election to punish anyone who voted "incorrectly", since it's only a matter of time before someone decides to crumple our beloved Constitution into a ball.
The standards that Diebold had to meet seem to come straight from the 19th century. The Diebold machines had to survive being dropped from three feet, for example. Nobody has ever updated the standards to account for the more complicated and potentially devious behavior of software-based systems as opposed to mechanical devices. This looks like an attempt to do so. Let's see how far it goes.
Re:Corporate Lobbies vs. Public Interest (Score:1, Informative)
All you need to do is repeal those pesky First and Fourteenth Amendments. McConnell v FEC (findlaw.com) held that the government could not ban kids from making campaign contributions. Corporations are already prohibited from making federal contributions.
Re:They just can't let it die, can they? (Score:5, Informative)
I read you post and checked the status of the previous bills. They both died in committee two years ago.
It looks like someone did let it die, and Clinton and Boxer are now trying resurrect the protections in the bills.
I guess that renders almost your entire post as both FUD and moot.
Re:Corporate Lobbies vs. Public Interest (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Corporate Lobbies vs. Public Interest (Score:3, Informative)
Does Salvador Allende count? He was a Marxist.
I've never heard of anyone contesting the validity of the ballot in his election.
Re:Corporate Lobbies vs. Public Interest (Score:5, Informative)
Bush & Co. outspent Kerry by more than $40 million dollars [opensecrets.org]. It took me 60 seconds to verify this.
Re:Corporate Lobbies vs. Public Interest (Score:5, Informative)
Partisin Dibble (Score:1, Informative)
The rest is partisan stuff, and most of the liberals on these boards know it.
The first one is the holiday for voting day, sure it sounds good in concept but if you peel the layers away you will find it is nothing but a partisan attempt to try to get more votes for democrats. Who are the only people who are guaranteed to get such a holiday off? Most people who are non-union or non-government workers work most of the minor holidays, so the only group that is guaranteed to benefit from this holiday are the democrats two largest voting blocks. Companies who actually have to make money, cannot afford to pay their people for yet another day off.
Second is the convicted felon issue, which is, and should remain a state issue. Some states even allow convicted felons to vote once they have served their time. However if you peel the layers away again, you will notice that pretty much every poll that has been taken has shown that convicted felons overwhelmingly vote for democrat.
This bill has nothing to due with counting every vote, or anything of the sorts. Its an attempt by the democrats, who have been unable to win with the current rules, to change the election system so it is rigged in their favor.
Re:Corporate Lobbies vs. Public Interest (Score:5, Informative)
Bush has been right in the war on terror? Is this a troll? He blocked the formation of the 9/11 commission, then stalled for months, refusing to create the national intelligence chief position until after the election. His administration rounded up over 3000 Muslims and denied them access to lawyers. He took the advice of Israeli hardliners and refused to negotiate with the Palestinian authority. (Palestinian oppression was one of Bin Laden's main stated reasons he declared war on America, if you remember. Letting the situation over there fester doesn't help, and waiting for Arafat to die could have taken forever.) He invaded Iraq on the faulty premise of WMDs, making our allies turn away from us. His administration (who he has promoted since), ignored international treaties and conventions, legalized torture and created Camp X-Ray and Camp Delta, which has not-so-secretly tortured detainees. The Abu Ghraib scandal really ruined the "War on Terror" as now no Muslim country supports America. What are Bush's plans to fix the situation? He claims there is no problem, as he was re-elected, and is threatening Syria and Iran. NATO isn't going to contribute any troops to stabilize Iraq, and neither will any country in the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, casualties mount in Iraq but the administration isn't saying what it will do, and recently pushed through a cut of veteran's benefits.
Re:Corporate Lobbies vs. Public Interest (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Corporate Lobbies vs. Public Interest (Score:5, Informative)
Parent has a very good example (Score:5, Informative)
Note, also, the times that communists have been cheated out of elections; in the Weimar Republic in germany, near the end, both the Nazis and the Communists were making significant gains in the elections. The Nazis spread fear about the Communists, burned down the Reichtag building and blamed it on communists, and just generally used underhanded methods to manipulate people into handing power over to them.
And sometimes communists (or movements that started out as communist, but later became just power hungry regimes, a common story with revolutions in general, the French Revolution being a shining example of good intentions gone bad) had no option of democratic elections, because there were none in the country in question. So the fact that few communists have been elected worldwide is not that much of a strike against them; the number of examples when fundamentally different systems were elected to power are few as is, it's hardly a show of superiority when the status quo is re-asserted.
Although, to go to the literal wording of the grandparent: name a communist that was elected in a real election. Well, that isn't very hard at all, there are even communists elected at this very moment around the world, maybe not as the ruling governments, but if you're looking just at communists that have been elected in real elections you don't have to look very far. I searched for about half a second and already came up with some evidence [dw-world.de] of communist activity and success in the democratic process.
Methinks the grandparent is perhaps a tad irrationally biased, to make such blanket statements.
Re:Corporate Lobbies vs. Public Interest (Score:1, Informative)
Moldova, 2001 [bbc.co.uk]
Important errata (Score:3, Informative)
Why not support these bills?
Re:Corporate Lobbies vs. Public Interest (Score:3, Informative)
Similarly, the 14th Ammendment (intended to guarantee the right to vote for blacks (freed slaves) and poor whites) does not say that corporations are citizens. If corps are citizens then they should be allowed a vote (under section 1), and be counted in the census for the purposes of assigning representatives (section 2). They aren't. Corporations are not citizens, and do not have rights.
Or at least that's the way it should be. With Thomas, Scalia, and Rehnquist on the Supreme Court there's a very low chance that reality will come into sync with what should be.
Personally, I'd love to see the ACLU start a suit pushing for corporate voting rights, or counting corporations for representative apportioning as a backhanded way to get the SCotUS to toss the whole corporate citizenship thing out the airlock.
Re:Corporate Lobbies vs. Public Interest (Score:1, Informative)
Mm-hmm, and what was the percentage of Venezuelans living under the poverty line before Chavez came into power?
The oil company executives freaked out because Chavez wanted to distribute some of that oil wealth back to those poor, starving masses you have such concern for.
Re:Corporate Lobbies vs. Public Interest (Score:3, Informative)
Nice try. You have a right to political speech. Your wife has a right to political speech. However, when you start to collectively exert that influence, special restriction may have to come into force so that the collective power of your combined speech, along with the individual speech you can still both engage in, does not overwhelm that of other, opposed, individuals who do not collectively pool their resources.
I agree, the construct 'group' doesn't exist in the Constitution as far as I know. But then again, the Supreme Court has been able to find non-existing language in the Constitution before, so it may very well be introduced by judicial fiat.
In fact, it already has--the 1882 ruling that made corporations equivalent to individuals under the law. An entity with potentially hundreds of employees and immense concentrations of wealth and access is given the same recognition under the law as each individual employee of that corporation. All else being equal, the corporation can outspend that employee in promoting the preferred policies of the corporation's controllers.
Re:I agree with Kerry & Clinton? (Score:2, Informative)
I would submit that if the state invests in the common welfare of all citizens, then the resultant increases in public
health, education, and environmental enrichment pay back many times over for _all_ citizens, rich and poor alike.
Your comments suggest that you view tax payments as a bottomless pit into which your money simply disappears; likewise
welfare spending. I would submit that, for the relatively small amount of your wealth that goes to taxes, you reap
an enormously disproportionate reward in terms of the reduced crime, reduced risk of exposure to infectious diseases,
cleaner air, cleaner water, society-wide scientific progress, public art, access to education, national defense...
the list goes on and on. The wealth that every individual in the U.S. achieves could not exist without investments in the
general welfare. At the simplest level, most Americans depend on publically funded roads. Those who make their
livings as business owners and employers depend on having a work force that is well educated, healthy, secure and
reasonably expectant of and motivated by opportunities to better themselves. NONE of this would exist without
investments in infrastructure, education, defense, etc.
I submit that your world view of a few virtuous rich being leached upon by a mass of greedy poor is flawed. What you
perceive as laziness and greediness is in reality hopelessness and desperation; the reductions in crime, teen
pregnancy, and the welfare rolls when liberal tax policy is applied supports my assertion. If you invest in
the most needy in society, the payback is rich.
Re:Corporate Lobbies vs. Public Interest (Score:3, Informative)
Re:the problems with last years election (Score:3, Informative)
No. Punch-style ballots aren't superior to electronic equipment, in general. But they're most assuredly superior to Diebold voting machines, which, to be blunt, have no security.
2) Are you suggesting that since the machines haven't failed or malfunctioned to date, that this is no safeguard that they won't?
Just because a machine has worked in the past doesn't mean it will work in the future. I'm a professional programmer, trust me on this one =] I've reviewed the abstract designs of the Diebold voting machines. They were not designed with security in mind. A sophomore computer science major could make a better design in a few hours. I don't object to electronic voting, but I haven't seen a secure machine yet. It's certainly possible, but the companies that have put out machines so far are thoroughly clueless.
Re:Good and bad (Score:3, Informative)
Those citizens who are felons serving a sentence generally don't have the right to vote. The prison guards have a right to vote though. You're only making sense if you were referring to them. (The guards are in the jail, but they aren't felons.)
Now the military on the otherhand, they are government property (G.I.) so it would make more sense for them not to be able to vote while serving.
"Government Issue" is a NICKNAME for soldiers. It's not a legal term, and it certainly isn't an establishment of slavery.
Re:Not so fast (Score:3, Informative)
2. I think if the bill is presented by two democrats and it can be demonstrated resonably that the bill will give a significant advantage to democratic voters then it is an important thing to consider and is not ad hominem.
3. You seem to be saying ex-con voting rights should be handled nationally and that is more important than whether the way it is handled is they get to vote or not. I think it should be decided first whether it should be handled nationally and then decided whether they get to vote or not.
4. There are a ton of federal holidays which are not observed by any but federal employees. I work at a company which observes *some* of the federal holidays but not all of them. Because it is only a mandated holiday for federal employees they are the only ones *guaranteed* to get the day off to go vote.
5. You really didn't respond to the original poster's core statement which was this is not a bill intended to fix flaws in the electronic voting process but actually will have the effect of getting more democrats to the polls.
Re:Corporate Lobbies vs. Public Interest (Score:1, Informative)
The reason for the amendment.
the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
The amendment.
the right of the people to keep and bear arm in an organized militia being
Not in the amendment
Re:Corporate Lobbies vs. Public Interest (Score:3, Informative)
You'd better tell that to my attorney. My father, before he died, established a subchapter S corporation with himself as the sole shareholder. In his will he bequeathed his entire estate to the corporation, and left me (his only surviving descendent) his shares. It's a standard technique for avoiding my father's state's absurd death taxes.
So now I am the sole shareholder of a corporation. Meaning you're wrong.
Read some Jefferson
Anybody can read Jefferson. The challenge -- evidently -- is to understand him.
Re:Corporate Lobbies vs. Public Interest (Score:4, Informative)
Not wrong. Read the Federalist Papers. The specific wording was a compromise between two specific enumerations. When they decided to come up with the Bill of Rights, everyone had a laundry list of their specific concerns that they wanted addressed. Hamilton et al were concerned with keeping it simple. They tried to make each amendment as terse as possible. On the issue of militias, certain convention reps were concerned that the feds would claim the sole right to run the military, while others were concerned with the individual right to keep and bear arms. The 2nd is worded to address the concerns of both. The first part (re: the militia) was to guarantee that local militias would be permitted, and the second part to guarantee that the power of revolution remained in the hands of the people. The US Code clearly defines the militia, and it's basically everyone who's not in the regular military, the reserves, or the national guard; so don't bother arguing along that tack.
And of course that was written back when you had a war your soldiers brought their own guns.
In a civil war, the combatants still do bring their own guns. The purpose of an armed citizenry is to guarantee that the government rules only at the sufferance of the populus. Self defense against invasion and lawlessness is another purpose, but really the lesser of them. Remember, the founding fathers had just won a war of independence, throwing off the yoke of a tyrranical government. They wanted their posterity to be able to do the same.
In any event, the fact that we are having this argument means it is anything but "unequivocal".
Actually, it doesn't. All it means is that one side is unwilling to accept the inarguable definition of "militia" according to the US Code and the unambiguous purpose of the wording as explained by Alexander Hamilton himself in the Federalist papers. Arguing against unequivocal points doesn't make the points equivocal-- it just makes you wrong.
Re:Money != Speech; Paper != Speech? (Score:3, Informative)
Churches, like corporations, are not people - should it be legal to prohibit churches from making statements on political issues?...
Interestingly enough, it IS illegal for churches to make statements endorsing one candidate over another under current laws [religioustolerance.org].
Why? The tax-exempt status granted by the government prevents them from endorsing one candidate over another.
-Grym
Re:they just won't roll over and play dead (Score:3, Informative)
Oh man... there was so MUCH of it I can't even begin to list it all, much less give links for every single one.
A flyer on fraudulent Allegheny County government stationary stating that due to high turnout voting is extended to November 2nd AND November 3rd, and that to avoid conflict and disruption for Republicans to please vote on the 2nd and Democrats to please vote on the 3rd. [pittsburghlive.com] The county government itself put up this page [allegheny.pa.us] because of it.
Take a look at this flyer [scdp.org] fraudulently claiming to be from the NAACP: "The following persons may not register or vote and will be subject to arrest,
Persons with outstanding traffic violations, including moving violations and parking citations above $50.00; Persons who have not submitted credit reports dated one week prior to election day; Persons adjudged to be negligent in paying child support." It also states fradulent requirement of two forms of photo ID. Who the hell has two photo IDs?
The most head Republican in Pennsylvania said quote: "the Kerry campaign needs to come out with humongous numbers here in Philadelphia. It's important for me to keep that number down" [philly.com]. Wow, an honest politician! Too bad he was honestly admitting to voter suppression. The same link also notes Republicans sought a last-minute relocation of 63 polling places, nearly all of them in black neighborhoods. Specifically 53 of the 63 were in overwhelmingly black neighborhoods, and I beleive the other 10 were also in urban democratic areas. Last minute relocations to confuse and disrupt voters.
A doctored news story spread on Pennsylvania college campus that students will lose financial aid if they vote. [dailypennsylvanian.com]
In Berkeley County, W. Va., Democratic voters in the Eastern Panhandle received calls telling them they were not registered to vote. The County Clerk's office traced the calls back to the headquarters of the Eastern Pandhandle Republican Party, local NBC News affiliate Channel 25 reported on Oct. 8;
In Painesville, Ohio, newly registered voters signed up by the Kerry campaign and the NAACP received a letter telling them their registrations were illegal and they would not be able to vote, NBC affiliate WKYC Channel 3 reported on Oct. 28;
Twenty GOP-dominated Ohio counties have given false information to former felons that they could not vote when in fact they had legally had their voting rights restored. One, Franklin County, had a roughly thriteen hundred percent increase this year in supposedly "felony" voter registration cancelations, many of whom were in fact never felons. Oh, and speaking of Franklin county... you remember the notorious "Butterfly Ballot" from the 2000 Florida elections? The missleading form where votes for the candidate in one certain spot tend to accidently be given to the candidate in another certain spot? Well Franklin county used this butterfly ballot for absentee votes, and supprise of supprises, Kerry was placed in the slot that "loses" votes and Bush was placed in the slot that erroneously picks up extra votes. Way to go Franklin county!
In Madison, Wisc., the College Republicans and a Republican congressional candidate Dave Magnum took responsibility for distributing a flier erroneously stating that students at the University of Wisconsin could vote at any of five polling locations, according to a Nov. 1 report in The Capital Times;
Across pretty much all the swing states there are countless cases of fradulent Board Of Elections notices
Re:Corporate Lobbies vs. Public Interest (Score:3, Informative)
What he said was that an organization that is not accountable to the same standards as an individual should not be allowed to have the same influence as an individual.
For a simple example, take a 100 vote pool. Put 50 voters into a "corporation" and 50 voters in as indviduals. Now figure a 50% turnout to the vote. Again, for simplicity purposes let's say that the vote is exactly split between the incorporated voters and the individual voters.
Now the 25% of voters who are incorporated get 50% of the votes. The 25% of voters who are not incorporated get 25% of the vote.
If everyone was counted as an individual, we would have a tie. If corporations are allowed to vote it can only tie if there is 100% turnout and will otherwise always go the incorporated voters way.
Now to apply that in closer to real-life terms we have to switch to money instead of votes. But now we also have to accept that some of that money comes from overseas. Now we're not only giving corporations the "win or tie" deal, we're including influence from parties who aren't even citizens.
Take into account the distribution of wealth at home and abroad and it becomes pretty obvious that corporations are taking small investor dollars and applying them to big investor agendas.
Now why do you think you should get 2 votes anytime your wife doesn't care to leave the house?
Re:Clinton and Boxer, you mean... (Score:3, Informative)
IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES
Mrs. CLINTON (for herself, Mrs. BOXER, Mr. KERRY, Mr. LAUTENBERG, and Ms. MIKULSKI) introduced the following bill; which was read twice and referred to the Committee on