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"WATCH LIST"
Marked with: 
"OPEN & HONEST"
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| (US) 2/09 - 2009 version of the anti-... |
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Michael W Mather
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Gypsy
Post Number: 227
Registered: 7-2005
Best of Black Box? 
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, February 20, 2009 - 4:32 pm: | 
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Brad Friedman has reported on the yet-to-be introduced bill and posted a draft (that I haven't yet read).
According to Brad, "only 'qualified' individuals who have 'entered into a nondisclosure agreement with respect to the technology' will be allowed to examine the public's voting hardware and software, according to the bill's language.
'Qualified persons' are defined as 'a government entity with responsibility for the administration of voting and election related matters', 'a party to pre- or post-election litigation challenging the result of an election or the administration or use of the technology used in an election', or one who 'reviews, analyzes, or reports on the technology solely for an academic, scientific, technological, or other investigation or inquiry concerning the accuracy or integrity of the technology.'"
My analysis: Corporate interests still have Congress firmly in their grip.
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Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 10321
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 2 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, February 20, 2009 - 5:18 pm: |
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Hi Michael,
Thanks for posting this. I've been engaged in debate in private listservs on the so-called "new" Holt Bill, which is basically exactly the same as the old Holt Bill, and every bit as much a danger to our liberty as the other Holt Bill.
In fact, clause for clause, it's pretty much the same. Now, one wonders, in a new administration and with new political realities, why would one put forth a bill that supports secret vote counting?
The Holt Bill, like the persistent reappearance of Internet Voting proposals, reminds me very much of the process corporations followed in the late 1800s while grabbing "corporate personhood." They kept coming back to the well, year after year, defeat after defeat, until one year, someone fell asleep at the wheel and corporations grabbed the "right" to personhood.
What we are seeing in elections today is the surreptitious dismantling of self-government. Heck, if corporations can be persons, why not just choose our decisionmakers and in fact, just vote for us?
Well, we wouldn't allow that, because we'd know that is actually just slavery, giving up our inalienable right to self-government. So it must be done surreptitiously.
I see the following three things arising time after time:
(1) Relentless efforts to preserve counting our votes in secret (and we need to remember that this is equally egregious, whether it is government insiders counting votes in secret or corporate assignees; secret vote-counting cannot co-exist with self-governance.)
(2) Persistent efforts to remove political privacy, developing methods to tie votes to voter in database-friendly ways, that is, not just knowing how an individual votes but collecting such information into data banks for use in wholesale manipulation
(3) Relentless efforts to manipulate voter eligibility through making voter lists fluid, and therefore secret at any given point in time, and therefore unaccountable and manipulatable.
The new Holt Bill, just like the old one, seeks to further centralize power and to further institutionalize the concept of counting our votes in secret. It is a danger to our right to self-government.
Thank you again, Michael, for posting this. |
Udar Koschka
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: The_zapkitty
Post Number: 84
Registered: 2-2007
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, February 20, 2009 - 11:16 pm: |
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Analyzing now... which thread would be best for discussion thereof? (As you've hidden away the formal legislative threads ;) ) |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 10324
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, February 23, 2009 - 9:57 am: |
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Hi Udar,
I've reinstated the legislative section of the Web site for the 2009 bills, and moved this thread into it to discuss the "new" Holt Bill. |
Udar Koschka
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: The_zapkitty
Post Number: 85
Registered: 2-2007
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, February 23, 2009 - 11:01 am: |
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Okeydoke! |
Udar Koschka
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: The_zapkitty
Post Number: 86
Registered: 2-2007
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, February 27, 2009 - 1:32 pm: |
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Still readying a point-by-point analysis but in the meantime take a look at this little voter-tracking gem in Holt's latest...
(III) The voting system shall not preserve the voter-verified paper ballots in any manner that makes it possible, at any time after the ballot has been cast, to associate a voter with the record of the voter's vote without the voter's consent.
... ignorance? arrogance? poison pill? |
Daniel Frank McMullan
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Seevotedan
Post Number: 223
Registered: 3-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Sunday, March 1, 2009 - 8:13 am: |
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Now check here if you agree with our five pages of fine-print "Terms of Agreement"....
..those bastards. |
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