I wanted to write something about Andy.

Although I've never met him face to face, there are some things that Andy Stephenson and I were involved in on the Net that should make every partisan freeper who hated him think twice about having done so, even though it's too damn late now.

Just before he got sick, Andy was in the nation's capital lobbying the Senate to pass a bill -- a bill written by a Republican.

The bill is called the "Voting Integrity and Verification Act of 2005" (VIVA 2005), S330, introduced on February 9, 2005 by Senator John Ensign (R) of Nevada. If you don't believe me, you can look it up: <http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:S.330:>

While Andy was in DC, I and a number of others on this forum and elsewhere helped to organize a letter and phone campaign aimed mostly at Republican Senators, to get them to co-sponsor this bill, which essentially would make unverifiable paperless e-voting a thing of the past for all federal elections.

There were many critics of Andy's work and of the bill itself. Most of them were progressive Democrats who felt this bill didn't go far enough. After all, they thought, it was written by a Republican so how good could it be?

VIVA 2005 did nothing to protect voting rights. It mandated no actual hand counting of the voter-verified paper ballots or records it would have created. It did not attempt to amend the Constitution to explicitly guarantee the right to vote, or make Election Day a national holiday. Nor did it ban the writing of e-voting software by convicted felons who themselves aren't even allowed to vote in many states. It didn't even do anything to help blind or physically disabled voters to vote independently -- none of that bleeding heart stuff. All this bill did was to ensure that there would be no more unverifiable elections in our free republic, by creating "an individual paper version of the voter's ballot before the voter's ballot is cast and counted" -- pure and simple.

Andy and others recognized that this bill with its many deficiencies, was a foundation that if made into law, would remove the scourge, uncertainty and risk of "vapor" ballots from our electoral system forever, or at least until someone else decided to screw things up again with a law to allow some new and improved hackable e-voting technology. Andy also recognized that the bill might actually have a chance of passing in a Republican controlled congress, so he was pragmatic about it. After all, the best piece of legislation is useless if it never becomes law. Andy saw the opportunity to achieve something with this bill that had been blocked in congress since the passage of HAVA -- the so called Help America Vote Act -- in 2002: voter-verified paper ballots. And unlike other pending legislation, Republicans against verifiable elections would have to deny passage of this bill to one of their own -- the Republican Senator from Nevada who had authored it.

As you might expect, Andy took a lot of heat form some Democrats for supporting this legislation, especially here on DU.

There was a conference of the Progressive Democrats of America at around the same time (who did not support this bill), and there were other bills being introduced by such luminaries as Sen. Chris Dodd (D - CT) and Rep. John Conyers (D - MI), and a number of other Democrats after the Jan. 6 congressional challenge to the electoral votes of Ohio. All these bills were laudable in their attempts to make the electoral process fair and accessible to all, but they all had loopholes of various shapes and sizes when it came to their voter-verified paper ballot language. Because of this, Andy could not in good conscience support any of these other bills.

So he went to Washington to lobby the Senate to pass a bill written by a Republican.

Meanwhile, back at the Internet, Andy, myself and some others actually debated with an attorney from John Conyers' office about the merits of the legislation before the House and Senate, and why we felt this Republican bill deserved bi-partisan support. Andy called the lawyer on the phone to continue this discussion in DC while he was there. I'm not sure but they may have even met face to face. I know from the DU postings at the time, that this debate became rather tense. There were no hard feelings in the end (I hope), but the fact is that there were times when we all had to simply agree to disagree.

It was a very worthwhile discussion however and it sent a powerful message to Mr. Conyers that while we supported him wholeheartedly in his efforts to reform our elections, there were a few things that could not be compromised. Conyers did get the message as several days later in an interview, he said that he was aware that there were some who favored voter-verified paper ballots along with ANY other solution to benefit disabled voters. I'm not sure if Senator Dodd has come to this realization yet, but then I'm not aware of any of his staffers ever posting on DU or debating Andy Stephenson either.

It was during this trip to DC that Andy began to experience the first symptoms of the pancreatic cancer that would eventually claim his life. A number of us on the board became amateur physicians trying to suggest treatments and calm him down. We did not yet know how serious this was. And later, as the freepers descended upon him to try and discredit his story and his work, those of us who devote most of our attention to the Election Results and Discussion Forum, myself included, were unaware that events had taken such an ugly turn. You see, this forum was Andy's home and it's home to a number of us who believe in what he was doing. And some of those people may even happen to be Republicans.

Now Andy is gone. But when someone tells you that he was a phony, ask yourself how many of those folks would ever support a bill for the good of the country that happened to have been written by a Democrat, and how many of them would go to Washington to lobby for it, and debate senior members of their own party in support of it, all while experiencing the symptoms of a life threatening disease?

If any of those who still believe Andy was a fraud also happen to believe in free, fair and verifiable elections, you might consider supporting that Republican bill, S330, so even you will someday know that your vote might actually be counted as cast. Andy might just rest a little easier that way.

nt

Thanks for sharing this with us, Bill!

Peace.

it was a start even if it wasn't what one would want.

I am right at the moment about 1000 miles from my home doing something that I believe will make a difference at least in some small way for election reform. Why? Primarily because of Andy's example that he set for the rest of us. He would go anywhere he could, do ANYthing he could, if he thought that it would make the slightest difference for the movement for fair and honest elections. Andy didn't have that big of feet, but he left us big shoes to fill.

Thank you Bill for your kind and thoughtful piece.

Marybeth

I think it was you who first explained the PA Straight Party Voting Option to me, which led to the de-certification of those Unilect machines (which I had nothing to do with)!

Thanks for all you do!

:hug: What a lovely post. Do you mind if I repost it at another forum? Andy knew how precious our votes are and he didn't just talk about protecting our votes, he took action and he took heat for some of his stances. Through it all his concerns were for this nation and our most precious possession, our vote.

Thank you Bill Bored and thanks to all in this forum who fight for our vote.

:patriot: :loveya: Andy :loveya: :patriot:

:patriot:

to *every* *single* *person* who wants to have a say in their governance. (Yeah, even FReepers.) Our sacred right to vote. He fought so hard for it, and parenthetically he fought so hard for each and every one of us ... and our democracy.

... The good dying young. What a rotten deal.

One of my favorite things about Andy was, he allowed himself to think outside the square. And, by God, he might wind up supporting Republican legislation but he'd have the best of reasons for doing it.

He could do that.

:)

Don't worry about those freepers if they bash you. All they have are wild accusations to base their lies on. I should know, because I've spent the past two weeks at Radio News America making them talk like canaries so others could use whatever information spewing out of their mouths.

I even went as far as writing an Op/Ed Friday night challenging the freepers to come up with proof on Andy or to shut up. Of course, when my self-imposed deadline came and went Saturday afternoon, I never saw anything more than name-calling out of those guys.

Bill, the worst they can do is call you a liar. If you have the truth in front of you, you have nothing to worry about. Let them spew their venom. I laugh at whatever comes out of their mouths because they have as much credibility as al-Jazeera.

Thanks again for sharing this! :headbang:

Are you saying that Democrats also gave Andy grief over support for this Bill? I hope not. Democrats need to be better at not attacking each other.

I have a question for you about the Ensign Bill. Excuse my ignorance, but wasn't the great majority of the Ohio election run on machines that would be considered voter-verified paper ballots? In other words, wouldn't punch card machines and op scan machines be in that category?

I don't see how this would have prevented what happened in Ohio very much at all, except for Mahoning County, with all that vote switching from Kerry to Bush on the electronic machines -- and this was a very small part of the problem in Ohio.

If you use punch cards or op scans or any electronic voter-verified paper ballot system to count the votes at the county level, but then the central tabulator changes the counts, it was my impression that the only way to then ensure a fair election is to do a full recount (or if a 3% sample is the initial step, it would need to be random and conducted in a transparent manner.) Would voter-verified paper ballots prevent that from happening?

I may be all wrong about this, so please tell me if I am. But if what I said above is correct, I don't see how a law that doesn't demand a valid recount is going to do much good.

It would at least stop the hemorrhaging -- counties buying more and more paperless DREs with their HAVA money before the January 1, 2006 deadline -- then we could build from there with more requirements such as the manual random audits, etc.

If they buy paperless to comply with the HAVA deadline and grandfather them in until they wear out, we are stuck.

Andy knew this and supported this bill to stop the bleeding of those HAVA dollars to the paperless machines.

That's what this bill provides.

Here's an excerpt from Ensign's website (this was first called to my attention by Hedda Foil, who was also in DC with Andy lobbying for the bill):

"During a recount of his 1998 United States Senate race, the second count was identical to the first. That is because there was nothing to recount—the computer simply spit out the exact same tally."

"Senator Ensign remained concerned that Clark County voters had no assurance that their votes had been accurately counted. Innocent computer malfunctions or intentional tampering could have altered their votes without anyone ever knowing."

"...Unfortunately, the language in HAVA did not resolve this issue, and many states do not believe the paper trail is mandatory."

Amen!

As far as Ohio, I was happy with punch cards until I heard that they don't have the candidates' names printed on them! In that case, I'd argue that you have non-verified paper ballots. The voter punches the paper according to a template but can't really verify that it's counted on the correct machine. Since there's nothing printed on the punch card, the recount may not be any better than the original count, esp. if the ballot orders are rotated as they are in Ohio, leaving open the possibility that votes may be switched between candidates, even if recounted manually!

As far as Dems giving Andy grief, I wouldn't say that generally. although there were a few exceptions. But there were certainly disagreements about supporting Ensign's bill because it didn't go far enough.

Meanwhile, how many paperless DREs have been purchased or contracted for since Feb. 2005? THAT WAS THE POINT.

and your point about needing something to recount.

And maybe this is the best bill we can get for now, I don't know.

But I think that if we don't get any further than that we're going to have a repeat of 2004 in 06 and 08. At least in Ohio and Florida we will.

He can be very persuasive, even in a yahoo chat room ;)

I was skeptical for all the reasons mentioned but he convinced me and I wrote letters of support to my Sens and my Rep and some progressive organizations.

His battle for VVPB and fair elections overall went well beyond partisan haggling. He wanted a real solution to a real problem in order to fix our deMOCKracy.

The Ensign bill is one step in getting beyond the partisanship and actually getting things fixed.

Still can't believe he's gone. He's not - his legacy lives on in all of us.

Thank BillBored!

O8)

Andy was a man of dedication and integrity.

Great line: "Andy and others recognized that this bill with its many deficiencies, was a foundation that if made into law, would remove the scourge, uncertainty and risk of "vapor" ballots from our electoral system forever, or at least until someone else decided to screw things up again with a law to allow some new and improved hackable e-voting technology."

Well, you've got my support!

Thanks for sharing this. It's an eloquent statement about Andy's character and the realities of politics. What's that line: The perfect is the enemy of the good...or something like that.

Waldren would weep at the passage of the Ensign bill.

:kick: