When I was working on s.223 in NC, I had QUITE a few people telling me that the bill HAD to get rid of voting machines, nothing else would be acceptable. I was told that unless I fought for hand counts only, I was betraying the movement.
Had I followed their advice, I would have failed in NC.
Reality check folks:
OpScan.is.here.to.stay!
We might be able to get rid of touchscreen, but OpScan is NOT going to disappear from mainstream American elections. I have talked to dozens of election officials SYMPATHETIC to our views, and they are happy to send TS systems packing, but mention mandatory hand-counted paper ballots and they go get damned hostile and explain the facts of life to you.
Since this is the reality, then we must take what measures we can to keep the game as honest as possible, set as many traps and safeguards as possible to catch/protect against tampering.
I listened to long diatribes from people in excruciating detail about how the GOP was rigging the game and that this was all part of their plan to rig elections nationwide. I was admonished for failing to bring this up again and again.
When I was on Fox's John Gibson show in 2003 I was attacked by some here for my failure to state outright that voting machines were rigged. Gibson himself tried to lead me down that path, and asked me if this was so. I answered that I did not know if that were the case, but as a computer systems engineer what I did know, and what was established fact was that the machines were insecure and easy to tamper with. Gibson had been prepared to deride me for taking a "whacko" viewpoint, instead I wound up getting to talk quite a bit about what was wrong with electronic voting machines. Had I followed people's advice and said the machines were rigged, I would have been savaged by Gibson, and discredited with the media and politicians.
Yet, when I was on the NC Select Committee on E-voting, I still had folks demanding I "blow the lid off the story" and use my position on the committee to "tell people the truth".
I'll ask you the same thing I asked them: Do you want a statement, or do you want a law? You can have one or the other, but not both. I have talked to a lot of reporters and politicians over the last four years, and on many occasions I saw people broach this subject with them. The person made polite noises to the advocate of this view, and after they had left, rolled their eyes and looked at me. I then had to do damage control to remind the politician/reporter of the hard evidence we had found and that these failures were resulting in people's loss of confidence on the electoral process.
Fortunately, this tactic worked.
NO MATTER WHAT *I* believe about elections, as soon as I start down that road with legislators and reporters my credibility is shot and I am effectively neutered. You can deal in fact, or you can deal in conjecture. Getting people to listen to fact is hard enough without wasting time on conjecture.
Let me explain it again for folks who are NOT getting the message: THE MAJORITY OF THE PEOPLE IN THE REAL WORLD OF POLITICS AND THE MEDIA DO NOT SUBSCRIBE TO THE VIEW THAT THERE IS A CONSPIRACY BETWEEN THE GOP AND VOTING MACHINE COMPANIES TO RIG ELECTIONS!
People who wander into their office espousing such view are politely thanked and relegated to the same category as people who believe that Alien Autopsy was real. If you are to have ANY chance for change, then you have to have the people in power's attention. If you don't, you will accomplish NOTHING!
There were things in our bill I wanted that I didn't get, but when it came down to the final wire, I could get a decent bill that had a few flaws, but lots of teeth, or a bill that was a complete sham. I chose the former, and goddamn if we didn't have to fight tooth and nail to get it passed.
And we did get it passed, UNANIMOUSLY, which some people then said was evidence the "fix was in".
Do you know how fucking frustrating it is to spend so much energy on an issue, to practically ruin your health, your business and your personal life and then to have people come along and ATTACK you for betraying them? To belittle your ethics, your integrity and your intelligence? To accuse you of working for Diebold/ES&S/Rove/Bush?
Do you understand the soul-crushing demoralization that inflicts?
HR-550 is NOT a perfect bill, but damn does it have some teeth! Rather than bitching and moaning about what may or may not happen as a result of the audit provision, you need to pass it before someone REALIZES how sharp those teeth are and starts watering it down.
After the bill is passed, you can work on the bills shortcomings in the state legislatures, or work on an amendment to the existing bill.
(Even MORE annoying is that so few people have actually READ the damn text of the law. You cannot have an informed opinion based on other people telling you what HR-550 says. You have to READ it for yourself, otherwise you run around making asinine statements about the bill "privatizing auditing").
Folks have REALLY got to get over this unrealistic MY WAY or else attitude. It doesn't fly in the real world for people with as little money and clout as we have.
And before someone accuses me of precisely that attitude, I will point out that I have no power to compel anyone to behave in any particular way, I can only try to persuade you using logic and reason. If you choose not to be persuaded, you can continue to oppose HR-550 and spoil its chances for passage.
Do you know what we have accomplished so far? Do you have any REAL idea? We have fought several multi-billion dollar corporations to a complete standstill. Better yet, we have actually defeated them in a number of states. And we did it with next to NO money, no clout, and no friends in the power structure.
Do you know how fucking rare that is? Do you know realize that this kind of accomplishment usually required weapons and bloodshed?
We have taken a subject that practically did not exist prior to 2002, and made it part of the public discussion (there are three quarters of a million articles on "black box voting" on the web, which staggers me, as I have never given birth to a meme before).
And just when we are on the crux of decisive victory, we have people attacking our main weapon, HR-550. People, most of whom have NOT passed a single anti-BBV law or gotten a law changed, are telling us that the law won't work, whereas people who HAVE gotten laws passed are behind it.
If you don't like HR-550, then go to your congressman and get him to write one for you that you do like, then get him to introduce it, then get out there and line up sponsors.
But if you are NOT going to do that, would it be to much to ask you to stop shitting on ours?
David Allen
