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| 10-15-06: Now we're getting somewhere... |
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| Author |
Message |
    
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 5794
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, October 15, 2006 - 5:00 pm: | 
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Here is the text of the bill, courtesy of Paul Lehto:
Paper Ballot Act of 2006 (Introduced in House)
HR 6200 IH
109th CONGRESS
2d Session
H. R. 6200
To amend the Help America Vote Act of 2002 to require States to conduct Presidential elections using paper ballots and to count those ballots by hand, and for other purposes.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
September 27, 2006
Mr. KUCINICH (for himself, Ms. CORRINE BROWN of Florida, Mr. CLAY, Mr. CONYERS, Mr. FILNER, Mr. GRIJALVA, Mr. GUTIERREZ, Mr. HASTINGS of Florida, Mr. HINCHEY, Mr. JACKSON of Illinois, Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas, Ms. EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON of Texas, Ms. KAPTUR, Ms. LEE, Mr.MCDERMOTT, Ms. MCKINNEY, Mrs. MALONEY, Ms. SOLIS, Ms. WATERS, and Ms. WOOLSEY) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on House Administration, and in addition to the Committee on Government Reform, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned
A BILL
To amend the Help America Vote Act of 2002 to require States to conduct Presidential elections using paper ballots and to count those ballots by hand, and for other purposes.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the `Paper Ballot Act of 2006'.
SEC. 2. REQUIRING USE OF HAND-COUNTED PAPER BALLOTS IN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS.
Section 301(a) of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (42 U.S.C. 15481(a)) is amended by adding at the end the following new paragraph:
`(7) SPECIAL RULES FOR PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS- Notwithstanding any other provision of this subsection, in the case of a regularly scheduled general election for the electors of President and Vice President (beginning with the election in November 2008), the following rules shall apply:
`(A) The State shall conduct the election using only paper ballots.
`(B) The State shall ensure that the number of ballots cast at a precinct or equivalent location which are placed inside a single box or similar container does not exceed 500.
`(C) The ballots cast at a precinct or equivalent location shall be counted by hand by election officials at the precinct, and a representative of each political party with a candidate on the ballot, as well as any interested member of the public, may observe the officials as they count the ballots. The previous sentence shall not apply with respect to provisional ballots cast under section 302 a).'.
SEC. 3. MOVING OBSERVATION OF WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY TO ELECTION DAY DURING PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION YEARS.
Section 6103(a) of title 5, United States Code, is amended--
(1) by inserting `the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November in 2008 and every fourth year thereafter, and' after `Washington's Birthday,'; and
(2) by inserting `in any other year' after `February'.
# # # # #
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WHAT TO DO WITH EVIDENCE:
"Never put it in a funnel."
Always PROPAGATE evidence to at least 5-7 different places:
- A reporter
- Black Box Voting
- Your local elections office (this will seed it into the public record)
- Your e-mail list
- Your local elections reform group
- The EIRS reporting system
- A blog
- Someplace unexpected
EVIDENCE = video, audio, photos, public records
(stories and anecdotes are not evidence)
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Pat Duff
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Arbortender
Post Number: 1
Registered: 02-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, October 15, 2006 - 5:15 pm: |
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The progress of which (or lack thereof) may be monitored at http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?&bill=h109-6200&tab=http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?&bill=h109-6200&tab= |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 5795
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, October 15, 2006 - 5:20 pm: |
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Thank you for the link, Pat, and welcome to Black Box Voting.
Question: On that site, when it discusses progress of a bill, does it always and consistently comment right there in the status section "the majority of bills never make it out of committee"?
Or was that comment (true though it may be) just a special touch for this bill?
# # # # #
...
WHAT TO DO WITH EVIDENCE:
"Never put it in a funnel."
Always PROPAGATE evidence to at least 5-7 different places:
- A reporter
- Black Box Voting
- Your local elections office (this will seed it into the public record)
- Your e-mail list
- Your local elections reform group
- The EIRS reporting system
- A blog
- Someplace unexpected
EVIDENCE = video, audio, photos, public records
(stories and anecdotes are not evidence)
|
Pat Duff
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Arbortender
Post Number: 2
Registered: 02-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, October 15, 2006 - 5:32 pm: |
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Good question and great sense of suspicious smells. H. R. 6199 at the same source, on an unrelated topic, has the same message. It is apparently the default message for new bills. |
Bev Harris
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Site_admin
Post Number: 9
Registered: 10-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, October 15, 2006 - 5:51 pm: |
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Thank you. Then onward and forward. It is very good to get this into polite conversation.
Brilliant citizens have been proponents of hand counted paper ballots, and too often are marginalized, ridiculed, and scoffed at. It is time for hand counted paper ballots to at least get a full seat at the discussion table. That's how this country is supposed to work, after all.
It was nice to see Robin Williams, in "Man of the Year" (a recommended movie for all interested in this issue) lead one of his monologues with the story about the NASA multimillion dollar investment in trying to invent a pen that would write upside down, while the Russians solved the problem by investing five cents in a pencil. |
Brant Lamb
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Brantl
Post Number: 949
Registered: 01-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, October 16, 2006 - 9:21 am: |
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Loophole 1: "Notwithstanding any other provision of this subsection, in the case of a regularly scheduled general election for the electors of President and Vice President (beginning with the election in November 2008), the following rules shall apply:.. ", force the elections off of 'schedule' by any 'emergency' as an excuse and this doesn't apply.
Loophole 2: "C) The ballots cast at a precinct or equivalent location shall be counted by hand by election officials at the precinct, and a representative of each political party with a candidate on the ballot, as well as any interested member of the public, may observe the officials as they count the ballots." This may be inadequate to guarantee an observer placement at a distance where he can actually discern what's on the ballot because your allowed to 'observe the officials as they count the ballots', it's not definitively stated that you should be able to make out what's on the ballot. It should be.
Don't leave this wiggle room! Blackwell and people like him are just nosing around, just dying for this kind of twist. |
Ami Silberman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Jol
Post Number: 136
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, October 16, 2006 - 11:36 am: |
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Bev,
Unfortunately, Robin Williams is not an authority on space history. NASA did not spend any money developing the space pen, the development cost was over one million dollars, and was eaten by Fisher, the cost to NASA was $2.95 each. The problem with pencils (which were used by both NASA and the Soviet Space Agency) were that they were flamible and also a source of powdered graphite, which was a safety hazard.
Full details can be found on Snopes at http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp |
Ben Olasov
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Benolasov
Post Number: 1
Registered: 07-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, October 19, 2006 - 4:38 pm: |
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It'll be very interesting to see who comes out against this...
Ben |
k.c.
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Pendragon
Post Number: 1
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, November 1, 2006 - 10:46 am: |
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There was a similiar bill in 2003/04, but was smothered in committee by the House Admin. Chairman, Bob Ney, (yes the criminal rep from OH). I saved the hilarious exchange that took place between Ney and Howard Dean, in which Ney referred to Dean as a left-winged radical out to destroy democracy (because Dean wanted the votes counted?). I'll post that exchange if I can dig it out (it was originally posted on Ney's website). The backdrop was that Ney was filling his coffers with coal mining industry money, even secured Boich Mining a seat on Cheney's secret Energy Task Force. All Cheney wanted in return was for Ney to:
--kill the bill requiring a voting paper trail
--underfund Election Assistance Committee
--grant no-bid voting machine contracts to the likes of Diebold.
Conspiracy theory you say? Just follow the money. |
k.c.
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Pendragon
Post Number: 2
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, November 3, 2006 - 6:11 pm: |
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Found the Dean vs. Ney battle... this is what I pulled from Ney's website:
that bastard stole our democracy!
(Message edited by pendragon on November 03, 2006)
(Message edited by pendragon on November 03, 2006) |
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