Mark Crispin Miller: Holt bill was revised by Microsoft, Diebold and ES&S

http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_mark_cri_070711_expose__3b_rush_holt_2c_.htm

July 11, 2007 at 12:08:06

by Mark Crispin Miller
http://www.opednews.com

Friends, because HR 811 may come up for a vote within the next two weeks, it's most important that you read the following, right through to the shocker at the end.

On Monday some good friends of mine--Rush Holt's constituents--met with him primarily to talk about impeachment. As they make clear below, he doesn't get it, and doesn't seem to want to get it; and he also seems to think that We the People are too dim to understand what's going on. Moreover, he doesn't seem to think that it's his civic obligation as a congressman to help the people get it. All he seems inclined to do is sit there and shrug off whatever evidenceor arguments might move him to some useful public statement(s).

This is how he has responded not just to impeachment but, as we all know by now, to his defective "election reform" bill, HR 811, which (thank God) more and more of his colleagues are now abandoning, and yet he is impervious to every argument against it.

Now, Rush Holt is certainly a savvy guy, and not. of course, by any means right-wing. Why, then, has he stubbornly refused to fix his bill so that the Busheviks can't any longer rig the vote by fiddling with the DRE machines?...

Continued...
http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_mark_cri_070711_expose__3b_rush_holt_2c_.htm

like a f*cking CANCER !!!!

and, just like a cancer, they are eating us alive from the inside out. :-(

and I sure don't like it after it's been tweaked by the corporations involved in election equipment and software.

Tell your reps NOT to support this bill!

:thumbsdown::

I was pimping this Bill here and at the Smirking Chimp for too long.

Oops.

desperately wants effective legislation, especially after suffering from the disastrous HAVA (Help America Vote Act) which promoted Diebold, ES&S etc.

That's why so many got behind the Holt bill as promising big improvements. But we cannot compromise on election integrity. It's an all or nothing situation--we can't be in bed with systems purveyors whatsoever. I am not surprised that Holt is now increasingly disparaged by election reformers. Paper "trails" --or VVPATS--are just NOT good enough. We need paper BALLOTS. BIG difference.

Thanks for admitting to your change of heart so that others can also admit they rushed to embrace a flawed bill out of desperation. You're not alone. Flexibility and willingness to change is just as admirable as being 'correct' in the first place. Help us get the word out about this bill & what it really implies.

:thumbsdown: Reject Holt :thumbsdown:

For those who want to know WHY the Holt bill is NOT acceptable, go here for an excellent explanation:

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4676

good some people believe would come from the holt bill. Using language straight from the voting machine vendors' mouths makes it very clear how bad this bill is.

Come on folks, let's do it right.

Grasping like a strung-out crack-head, I needed something, anything, that would lend legitimacy back to the electoral system in this country.

Sometimes, haste ain't such a good thing. I think Miller and others criticizing this Bill are correct.

This country needs paper ballots.

will be the only salvation of this democracy.

k&r

We don't need corporate masters delivering elections for the 2 parties.

AND for any of you lurkers who say the machines can be trusted:

Nearly half of voting machines tested fail

Montgomery officials tested the 5% of machines that drew complaints; 56 of those 125 machines failed.


By Lynn Hulsey
Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 21, 2007

DAYTON — After two days of tests, the results are in: About 2,500 people cast ballots in November on 56 malfunctioning electronic touch-screen voting machines in Montgomery County, said Steve Harsman, county board of elections director.

He said it is impossible to know how many people finalized their electronic ballots without realizing that the Diebold Elections Systems machines were inaccurately registering their votes. But people had three chances to review their votes before finalizing them, and all the machines accurately tallied the votes that were finalized by voters, Harsman said.



On Tuesday, county election officials completed testing of 125 machines identified in voter complaints collected by Advocates for Basic Legal Equality, which called for the investigation. Some 2,530 voting machines were used in the county on Election Day.

Harsman said several malfunctioning machines were clustered at certain precincts, indicating they may have been damaged during delivery by a trucking company that hauls the machines to the polls.

-snip

http://www.daytondailynews.com/n/content/oh/story/news/local/2007/03/21/ddn032107elex.html

FRAUDULENT ELECTIONS HAVE SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES!

Another ray of hope snuffed out. And it is becoming clearer as accounts of conversations with Pelosi and now Holt that our Democratic Leadership, lock, stock and barrel, has bought into the Fox News Lies, which ultimately are only the jumped-up mirror images of the "so-called" liberal media lies.

Amazing. We were worried about the effect of high-powered, extremely sophisticated Rovian perception management on the American People, but perception management it seems may have been intended as much or more for the Ruling Class as anyone else.

It is as close-up a view of the Fall of a Great Nation (what an amazing thing the internets are) as I ever expected to have. Literally, we are all close-up witness to history.

As if we had microphones hooked up to Antony and Caeser, Cicero and Brutus and coul know their minds as well as their actions.

Rush Holt is inside the Bush Fantasy Bubble, and him and his cadre of Elites, both Republic and Democratic, cannot see reality anymore for the Televised "Iron Curtain" that surrounds him.

Wow.

Americans who get their faces shoved in it every day.

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4650

Ellen Theisen of Voters Unite.org says:

After more than three years of supporting election reform bills introduced by Representative Rush Holt, I am saddened to see the many severe flaws in the version of HR 811 as it was passed out of committee last month. This year’s bill had serious flaws when it was introduced in January. Primarily, it failed to accommodate a nearly unanimous agreement among citizen activists and computer scientists who have watched election disasters over the past three years — the agreement that electronic voting machines (DREs) should not be used in U.S. elections. I worked with many people to try to get an amendment requiring a paper ballot, one that was actually to be counted, for every vote cast. To my mind, that one significant improvement would have been worth tolerating the other flaws.

But the bill that was passed out of committee still allows for invisible, unverifiable, electronic ballots on DRE touch-screens as the official ballot for the all-important initial count where electronic voting systems are used. Adding a "paper trail" to those machines makes no real difference. Voters still can’t verify the electrical charges that make up the ballots that are counted on Election Night by the DRE.

In addition to other flaws that remained in the bill as it came out of committee, some changes removed valuable safeguards from the bill, and other changes introduced new problems. (Both versions of the bill can be viewed by inputting "HR 811" at the government's legislation search engine, Thomas.gov. The complete text of the current version is here. )

In my opinion, HR 811 will cause more problems than it will solve.

My primary objection is the extreme shift in the concept of “democracy” that the bill institutes legally. Specifically, it gives a federal stamp of approval to “ballots” that will never be counted, and it endorses secret vote-counting.

Let me explain seven of the bill's severe failures....(go to link)
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4650

mandates Paper Ballots, publicly Hand Counted (w/Inet Video) AT the precinct with the results posted on the door?

Why is Kunich a lonely voice in the Democratic Party wilderness?

Kucinich Withdraws HR811 Vote Reform Bill Support
Monday, 11 June 2007, 9:49 am
Article: Paul R Lehto
Kucinich To Tell Rep. Holt He Will NOT Support HR 811 False "Reform"

By Paul Lehto
Democratic Underground - Sunday Jun-10 2007

At the www.democracyfest.com national conference being held in New Hampshire and sponsored by Democracy for New Hampshire, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, speaking via telephone to the entire audience, announced today that although he is a co-sponsor of the Holt bill HR 811, he will inform Rep. Holt that he will NOT be supporting HR 811. In the opinion of this writer, though not a direct statement of Kucinich, HR 811 is false reform.

The announcement was greeted with applause from several hundred attendees present for this session.

:dem: