November 19, 2006
by John De Herrera

The Fat Lady sang today. She didn't complete the song, but she did do a little singing. They had Representative Rush Holt on C-Span with Susan Swain this morning. Rush is the go-to guy for voting issues. Even though some Kossacks appear complacent about the issue of voting--even with its history of the last three years--this is the first intelligence We The People have gotten since the election.

There was a big diary posted the other day that made the recommend list on Daily Kos. It was about how members of Congress are not your friends. But it's not that, it's that the branch itself is a machine, and you can't be friends with a machine. That's what actually gives each member of Congress cover, they're not individually responsible for the whole.

We can debate that, but let's not, let's talk about what happened on C-Span this morning.
 
There is more than one way to make quick work of the mess HAVA created. Rush Holt and Barack Obama are proposing legislation in the house and senate where, among other things, a paper trail is mandated, and voter suppression becomes a federal crime. Rush told Susan there's a "dark area between the time polls close and the final tallying of votes." He said there should be transparency there, open to anyone who wishes to scrutinize. That's good news, unless Rush and Barak are politicians, then it may not be so easy to rest just yet. Based on all the information so far, it appears the Congress will do what needs to be done, but only if a close watch is continued. It will not give back the vote if it can get away with not having to. We also received intelligence it is unlikely either the house or senate will pass the legislation this session, but sometime during the 110th Congress.

So what were the interesting moments between Rush and Susan and the callers this morning?

For me an important moment was when Susan asked Rush about the proposed changes--the new equipment/machines needed to create that paper trail--mentioning it will likely be expensive--and Rush, without a moment of hesitation said there would be some provisions for funds. What is so interesting is that those upgrades should be paid for by the corporations who failed to deliver goods they were required to. Not to debate it here, because you can go to the top 501c3 groups concerned with e-voting and find reams of information about how crooked the voting machine companies are and how a few of them have basically thumbed their nose at the states in terms of recompense. But the reason it's so interesting is because here you have a member of Congress who apparently is not shrewd enough to say, "Hey, we gave these companies over four billion dollars to deliver us a safe, secure, verifiable election; it's a mess; these companies better start talking quick."

Now I don't know Rush Holt, so I don't know how shrewd he is. To be honest, I was not impressed. I'd heard his name before, but had never seen him in person. He seemed nice enough, but I don't know. Maybe Obama could put some teeth and urgency on this issue. Note to Obama and his political strategists: secure the vote from special interests and you will be sitting in the White House 1/09. Whether or not voting machine companies pay for all the gaps that need to be filled, maybe we should nick the salary of each member whose signature appears on the original Help America Vote Act. It still embarrasses me to no end that my senators signed HAVA.

Then Susan started taking calls. I don't always catch it, but the morning calls into Washington Journal are some of the finest moments American cable TV has to offer. Sometimes very smart Americans get on there and say exactly what most people are thinking, and sometimes a conservative or liberal will get on and perfectly articulate the prevailing position, and sometimes the ignorant get on and say something dumb. Maybe I should do a diary entry on Susan and her colleagues who host. They're very interesting people to handle the wide variety of calls the way they do.

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The first guy who called in said that voting should be left to the states, that the federal government should have nothing to do with elections, that "Congress should get our of the voting business...." That is the wrong answer for a few reasons. One is that some states are more shrewd than others, and they should not be affected by lesser states bungling elections in federal elections. Secondly, much of the problem stems from the arbitrariness of it. It is the hodge-podge of electioneering that thwarts a swift, accurate, expression of the collective will. The less discrepancies or places the vote can be compromised, the better. The electoral process is one that should obviously be federalized. We want a single point of failure, we don't want a point of failure for every type of voting machine or way of voting.

Another caller mentioned how using our Social Security Number and a pin number on a government server would take care of the problem. There are a lot of arguments that voting over the internet is not a good idea, but they are all invalid. Just a bunch of hogwash. Of course voting over the internet should be an option, and for those who do not want to, they can mail-in. The great state of Oregon is all mail-in and news from this last election was more efficiency and a better turn-out than they've ever had. I was surprised when Rush cautioned the caller, saying that secrecy is compromised if voting over the internet occurs. I mean Rush, in his own way, really went out of the way to shoot down the idea of voting over the internet.

The intelligence seems to indicate internet voting is a real problem for the special interests which control Congress. I've done things like register a trade mark with the government over the internet, and I know Americans from all walks of life have had private transactions with the government likewise, so it's really very silly to suggest that internet voting cannot be done in a safe, secure fashion. And too, the caller added, using a SSN and pin number all but eliminates the chances of fraud and voter suppression both. I have to be honest with you Diary, I really kind of despise people who attempt to make arguments against common sense solutions.

But here's the really disturbing part, Diary. We now have a member of Congress basically saying that the next Congress, with new legislation, is going to buy more equipment for the inadequate equipment we already bought; so what we're looking at is a bunch more arbitrariness, a bunch more uncertainty and effort for a bunch more question marks. This is an issue that clearly needs a profile in courage, and by that I mean, some member of Congress needs to wake up and propose a 28th Amendment. An amendment which standardizes and makes uniform the vote will be ratified in a matter of months because it's what everyone wants; and more importantly it's what the special interests will have to go along with lest they risk exposing themselves.

We can walk up and down the halls of conspiracy theory forever, but the facts are that electioneering is not rocket science. Of the 100+ countries which utilize an election to determine governance, the USA ranks low. The facts are that our electoral system was compromised by HAVA, and based on the most recent intelligence from this morning, the special interests which control Congress are planning on resisting the collective desire for a safe, simple, secure vote. If this whole mess began back in 2000, and here we are in 2006, aimed toward bungling things further, then really how much longer must this go on before we all finally get it through our head that we can't make friends with a machine, and if we allow it to be run by special interests, it will enslave us.

We've often heard the phrase, "Keep Your Eye On The Prize." And although many are unaware, the prize for the special interests is.... the vote. It's tiresome to read diaries and comments by Kossacks (Kos himself an offender) who do not seem cognizant of this. That the Congress is controlled by special interests and those interests have a goal. If they can't outright steal the vote, those interests are apparently seeking to mess it up so bad that people will be less and less likely to bother. Just because Brian Williams and Katie Couric are not paid to run in-depth stories about voting, and how other countries do it more efficiently for next to nothing, doesn't mean it's not the single most important issue to the special interests.

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John De Herrera [send him email] is an activist, writer, and proponent of an Article V Constitutional Convention.  Find more of John's work at http://www.article5.org/ and http://www.cc2.org/