Forum Navigation
Topics
Log In
Log Out
Forum Search
New Today
New This Week
Advanced Search
Tree View
Forum Account
Edit Profile
Register
Forgot Password
Forum Tools
Help/Instructions
Contact Moderators
Administration
|
| (US) 1/07 - HAVA sponsor Bob Ney sen... |
|
| Author |
Message |
    
Bev Harris
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Site_admin
Post Number: 441
Registered: 10-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, January 19, 2007 - 12:02 pm: | 
|
Associated Press - Friday, January 19, 2007
Ex-Ohio Rep. Ney sentenced to 30 months
http://news.bostonherald.com/politics/view.bg?articleid=178065
WASHINGTON - Former Rep. Bob Ney was sentenced Friday to 2 1/2 years in federal prison for trading political favors for gifts and campaign donations from lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Ney, the first congressman ensnared in the lobbying scandal, pleaded guilty in October to conspiracy and making false statements. He admitted being corrupted by golf trips, tickets, meals and campaign donations from Abramoff.
"You violated a host of laws that you as a congressman are sworn to enforce and uphold," said U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle, who recommended that Ney serve his time at a federal prison in Morgantown, W.Va.
Ney will also serve two years probation and must pay a $6,000 fine. Huvelle recommended he enter a prison alcohol rehabilitation program for treatment of a drinking problem he has acknowledged in recent months. Completing the program could knock about a year off his sentence.
Huvelle did not set a date for Ney to report to prison.
The sentence was harsher than recommended by prosecutors or Ney’s lawyers, Huvelle said, because Ney had violated the trust placed on him as a public official. "Both your constituents and the public trusted you to represent them honestly," she said.
Ney apologized to his family and constituents during a brief speech to the judge.
"I will continue to take full responsibility, accept the consequences and battle the demons of addiction that are within me," he said.
Earlier, Ney’s defense team filed letters from his doctor and a former staff member who described his drinking problems and how they accelerated when he came under scrutiny in the Abramoff lobbying scandal.
Dr. Renato F. Dela Cruz, the congressman’s physician, wrote that Ney’s behavior had been influenced by an increase in alcohol consumption that began in 2001. Cruz said he urged the lawmaker to cut back, but the recommendation was ignored.
Matthew D. Parker, a former aide and friend, said Ney "was a functioning alcoholic who could rarely make it through the day without drinking and would often begin drinking beers as early as 7:30 a.m."
Huvelle said Ney’s alcoholism didn’t fully explain his pattern of corruption.
"It wasn’t an isolated aberration. It had a consistency to it: It involved significant and serious abuses of the public’s trust," Huvelle said.
The six-term lawmaker is still eligible to receive his congressional pension. The National Taxpayers Union, which tracks pensions, said Ney would be eligible for about $29,000 a year if he waits to draw it until 2016, when he turns 62.
Ney’s election-year scandal drew criticism from Republican congressional leaders and the White House. White House spokesman Tony Snow said Ney’s criminal activity "is not a reflection of the Republican Party."
His is the latest in a string of convictions in a scandal that so far has caught several lobbyists and two members of the Bush administration.
The gifts Ney received ranged from a trip to Scotland bankrolled by Abramoff’s clients to thousands of dollars in gambling chips that Ney got on two overseas junkets from foreign businessman Fouad al-Zayat, a Syrian-born aviation company owner in Cyprus.
Abramoff, once an influential lobbyist, is the star witness in an FBI corruption investigation that has shaken Capitol Hill. He is serving prison time for a fraudulent Florida casino deal. |
Russell Novkov
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Rnovkov
Post Number: 161
Registered: 02-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, January 19, 2007 - 5:52 pm: |
|
It is about time that he has been sent to prison.
Russell J. Novkov
|
Mark E. Smith
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mymarkx
Post Number: 174
Registered: 07-2005
Best of Black Box? 
Votes: 2 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, January 20, 2007 - 1:13 am: |
|
It is important to remember that Ney is the author of the Help America Vote Act.
HAVA is not a law, it is a crime against law, written by a criminal.
HAVA should not be amended it must be repealed.
It did not help the disabled vote and it made it impossible for anyone else to know if their votes were counted accurately.
Not only has the sponsor of the bill that imposed machines into our elections been sent to jail, but several of the labs that test those machines have not met NIST standards.
We used to have a medical profession in this country. Now we have a health care industry and the quality of health care has gone down and is affordable to fewer people.
We used to have public utilities in this country. Now we have an energy industry that can, at any time, create artificial market conditions in order to raise our utility rates.
We used to have elections in this country. They used paper ballots, hand-counted by pollworkers at the precincts. They weren't perfect, but nobody ever heard of 18,000 missing votes. Now we have an elections industry and nobody knows if their vote was counted accurately or not.
Health care should be a profession, and a right, the way it is in every other developed country in the world, not an industry.
Public utilities should be public so that they can serve the public, not privatized so that they only serve the interest of shareholders.
Elections should be a public process, not an industry. If we continue to allow elections to be an industry, I guarantee you that the next thing the corporations will do is outsource them. You'll mark your ballot, a pollworker will put it into the optical scan machine, the results will be transmitted to Mexico where they will be fed to the central tabulators in India, and the elections industry executives will get multi-million-dollar bonuses while their corporations get lavish government subsidies as a reward.
The Request by Nancy Tobi that Bev is supporting seems very strange to me. It would allow optical scan machines, which Bev and Harri Hursti proved are easily hacked in untraceable ways, to be retained in our elections, so long as there was a paper ballot.
But we know from experience that local elections officials may never allow those paper ballots to be counted, and that even if they did, clear evidence of fraud is not sufficient to change an election once the candidate has been sworn in. We have clear evidence of fraud in Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004, not to mention numerous other places, but Bush is still in office.
Why would somebody like Bev, who runs a site called Black Box Voting, be supporting an initiative that would allow black box voting machines to be retained in our elections?
I am stunned, shocked, and horrified. Bev has long been one of my heroes. But I don't want the elections industry to be able to keep their machines in our elections. I don't even want an elections industry, I want public, non-privatized elections. No proprietary hardware, no proprietary software, no corporate-hired technicians, no ENRON-style "auditors," just people voting, people counting the votes, and people watching the votes being counted so as to avoid fraud.
I know that Bev has stood up to threats in the past. I don't think that Bev could be bribed. So how did the election industry convince Bev to support an initiative that would merely amend HAVA instead of repealing it, and would still allow the elections industry to keep their infernal black box voting machines in our elections?
(Message edited by mymarkx on January 20, 2007) |
Catherine Ansbro
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Catherine_a
Post Number: 3595
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, January 20, 2007 - 5:20 am: |
|
Hi Mark,
I was surprised, too, by this. I would love to know more about what is behind this compromise "solution". |
Bev Harris
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Site_admin
Post Number: 442
Registered: 10-2006
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, January 20, 2007 - 6:21 am: |
|
Mark,
You are always an exceptionally articulate writer, and I really enjoy your posts. You deal with two issues in your post, above -- the issue of industry takeover of the public commons, and the issue of the Request by Voters.
You and I are coming from the same place on the issue of industry takeover of the public commons. It's clear how it happened, and author/radio host Thom Hartmann did a brilliant analysis of the foundation of what became the removal of the public commons from The People. As Hartmann points out in his writings, the beginnings of removal of human civil rights, replaced by corporate greed, can be traced to the late 1880s, where a mischaracterization of the Supreme Court's Santa Clara decision allowed corporations to claim "personhood" -- that is, the same rights, under the Bill of Rights, that humans have.
I'm working on original research on a number of fronts right now, and I must tell you, the degree to which corporate influences have overtaken governmental decisionmaking literally sickens me. In fact, I can only look at the evidence trail for a few hours before I have to shake myself loose.
Mark, I find that you are an eloquent communicator on the issues of corporate personhood and displacement of the public commons, and your ability to capture the essence in your writings is extremely valuable at this point in our country's history. Keep it up.
Request by Voters
Mark, I think you misconstrue the Request by Voters, which can be read in its entirety here:
http://www.wethepatriots.org
One of the chief problems with so-called "election reform" is that it has been taking place on the wrong level. It has been dealing with mechanics instead of first defining what the election system must provide for the citizenry. Because of that, people are fixating on solutions before defining the problem.
The Request by Voters deals with three areas: The need to have a paper ballot marked by a human (not a machine); the right of access to elections information; and the right to local control and oversight.
It does not talk about DREs or optical scans or hand counted paper ballots.
quote:The Request by Nancy Tobi that Bev is supporting seems very strange to me. It would allow optical scan machines, which Bev and Harri Hursti proved are easily hacked in untraceable ways, to be retained in our elections, so long as there was a paper ballot.
The Request by Voters goes up one level from the mechanics of elections to the foundation that needs to be in place -- regardless of what system is used. It isn't meant to prescribe what system of voting will be used, it's designed to start defining a foundation for our election system based on civil rights principles.
quote:But we know from experience that local elections officials may never allow those paper ballots to be counted,
Correct. And the foundation for that is Freedom of Access to Elections Information by any citizen, in a timely manner. While it may appear that hand counted paper ballots automatically provides freedom of access (it almost does, and comes closer than any computerized system), in fact, during my current Freedom of Information research, I've learned that there are several locations where The People are not allowed to watch the vote counting; other locations where they may stand in the room but can't necessarily see what's on the paper being counted. We are seeing an unprecedented effort by the two major political parties to wrest control and oversight away from the citizenry. If they take control of Hand Counted Paper Ballots -- and they will, and the foundation for political party control of the oversight is embodied into law in many states -- well then, we're still not much better off. We need to first lock in the civil right of every citizen to Freedom of Access to Elections Information.
quote: and that even if they did, clear evidence of fraud is not sufficient to change an election once the candidate has been sworn in.
That's correct, and that's why the "audit" model is fatally flawed. In our system of government, candidates must be seated and there is no constitutional provision that I'm aware of that permits an "audit" to unseat a wrongfully seated candidate. That's why the emphasis needs to be to get the count right on election night and to open up the right of recount to make it accessible and affordable for citizens, BEFORE the election is certified.
quote:Why would somebody like Bev, who runs a site called Black Box Voting, be supporting an initiative that would allow black box voting machines to be retained in our elections?
First, the term "Black Box Voting" means voting on computers that we can't look inside. "Black Box" is actually a computer industry term. Black box testing is testing where you can't look under the hood, can't look at the source code, can only test be examining output. Logic & Accuracy tests are an example of Black Box testing. White Box testing means you can take the whole thing apart and put it back together again, look at the source code, and really get at how it works. That is not allowed, and even the testing labs really are not allowed to do proper White Box testing. But even if they were, it would not suffice, because at no point has the citizenry ceded its oversight rights over to testing labs.
The Request by Voters is, as mentioned above, not a document designed to prescribe a voting system. Saying "it allows optical scan machines" is like saying "hey, the Freedom of Information Act still allows nuclear weapons."
The Request by Voters is just a letter which begins to carve out the underlying foundation needed for our election system. If the feds control everything -- the current EAC model -- the citizens lose their oversight rights. Without Freedom of Access to Elections Information, citizens lose their right to elections participation and oversight. And without voter-marked paper ballots, citizens are turned into proofreaders instead of voters, ultimately with computers verifying computer data, not humans creating the record. By the way, the hot topic in the deluded minds of legislators is not whether people should act on their own ballot or allow a device to mark it for them, but whether people should get to proofread something a computer recorded vs. letting a different computer program "verify" the first computer's data. Really sick.
We need to step up one level and deal with the foundation before we deal with the mechanisms.
quote:
I am stunned, shocked, and horrified. Bev has long been one of my heroes. But I don't want the elections industry to be able to keep their machines in our elections.
I think you're having these reactions because you expected the Letter by Voters to deal with a different (but related) issue. It isn't defining the mechanics of voting, it begins to define the underlying rights -- right to mark your own ballot, right to elections information, right to local oversight.
That's all it does.
quote: I don't even want an elections industry, I want public, non-privatized elections. No proprietary hardware, no proprietary software, no corporate-hired technicians, no ENRON-style "auditors," just people voting, people counting the votes, and people watching the votes being counted so as to avoid fraud.
All valid points. Elections right now are controlled by two kinds of machines: Industry, which manufactures computers and machinery to authorize voters' right to vote, collect their votes, count their votes, and if industry gets its way, it will also manufacture the tools that "verify" the computer data that they claim is "votes."
The second machinery is the two-party winner take all system. Without getting into the merits of the other political parties, or the methods of voting used in most civilized democracies, what we are seeing in the United States is the attempt by the two major parties to achieve exclusivity over observation and access, pushing the citizenry aside. The two dominant political parties are busy shutting off access to even be on the ballot for anyone not annointed by the party structure, and it is the political party structure -- not the citizenry -- that really wants the voting computers.
The political party machinery, in turn, is heavily influenced by industry. It cannot survive without nonstop cash injections from lobbyists and corporate funders.
No "letter by voters" will address everything that's wrong with this picture. In fact, Hand Counted Paper Ballots doesn't address the core problems either.
We need to step up one level -- away from the mechanics, just for a hot second here -- and take a hard look at what we, the citizens, want our election system to do for us.
quote:I know that Bev has stood up to threats in the past. I don't think that Bev could be bribed.
You are correct about both the threats, which I still get occasionally, and that I can't be bribed. And don't forget the smear campaigns, which are enabled both by industry and by the powerful political parties who are becoming positively allergic to the phrase "We the People."
quote: So how did the election industry convince Bev to support an initiative that would merely amend HAVA instead of repealing it, and would still allow the elections industry to keep their infernal black box voting machines in our elections?
Industry has nothing to do with the Request by Voters. The Freedom of Access to Elections Information clause alone gives industry the heebie-jeebies, because point 4 specifies that the information cannot be protected by removing it from public custody -- in other words, it OPENS UP PRIVATE COMPANIES TO FREEDOM OF INFORMATION. That is actually based on state laws in some locations. I was surprised to learn that SOME locations require private companies to submit to FOIA if their revenues are primarily from public funds -- a juicy target, but one I am sure will stonewall citizens through litigation if they attempt to enforce their rights. This is one reason, I believe, that in some states the big four vendors are paying subcontractors.
The Request by Voters isn't focused on how votes are cast -- that doesn't mean I don't have an opinion on that, it just means this particular letter doesn't focus on that. It focuses on grabbing back some civil rights turf in the area of foundational issues. Mark, about the abominable HAVA issue, please e-mail me privately.
I'm tied up in a research project right now (Mark, one which I'm sure you will like very much!) and won't have time to engage in a debate on these issues here today, but I did want to clarify some things, and also, Mark, to let you know how much I value your insightful communications.
And one last thing -- I'd like to acknowledge the taciturn Russell Novkov, who is consistently supportive and a rock-steady participant on election integrity issues.
(Woops, Catherine, my computer hiccuped as I was posting this, and by the time I restored by own internet access, there you were. Hallo!)
... |
Sharon M. Foster
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Smfoster
Post Number: 87
Registered: 02-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, January 20, 2007 - 6:36 am: |
|
"the beginnings of removal of human civil rights, replaced by corporate greed, can be traced to the late 1880s, where a mischaracterization of the Supreme Court's Santa Clara decision allowed corporations to claim "personhood" -- that is, the same rights, under the Bill of Rights, that humans have."
All of the rights and none of the responsibilities except--as you, Mark, and others have pointed out--to the shareholders. (And sometimes not even to them.) |
Bev Harris
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Site_admin
Post Number: 444
Registered: 10-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, January 20, 2007 - 6:49 am: |
|
Yep, unlike humans, death and taxes are by no means certain to corporations. |
Bruce Bostwick
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Lihan161051
Post Number: 67
Registered: 03-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, January 20, 2007 - 7:36 am: |
|
Elections should be a public process, not an industry. If we continue to allow elections to be an industry, I guarantee you that the next thing the corporations will do is outsource them.
I wholeheartedly agree that elections should not be an industry. Unfortunately, an industry has taken over the business, and as with the other examples you provided, the industry will continue to feed itself and extend its power until it is forced to relinquish the market to the public. The one ironclad guarantee I can give you is that the industry players will never willingly give up their source of profit, nor will they ever willingly give us the quality of service a public process does by definition. They will have to be forced out of the market, which means, like it or not, that we'll have to compete with them to win back our election process.
Some of the solutions will have to be incremental ones. I would like to see, as one specific strategy among others, a not-for-profit public-driven research group develop an electronic voting system that *is* designed from the ground up for security, accuracy, and accountability, to meet a minimum standard of "equal to or better than paper ballots", and preferably exceed that standard. I'd also like to see another not-for-profit public-driven research group develop a secure, accurate, and accountable paper ballot system that exceeds current standards and possibly directly competes with the electronic system above.
The outcome of those two somewhat competing strategies will almost certainly be something that raises the bar so high that the commercial profit-driven DRE vendors either give up and drop out of the game, or are forced to step up and really make an effort to make their systems work like we all know they should. And since the current situation is about the worst possible case, where the market is locked up by a few big commercial interests who have no incentive to even *try* to meet *minimal* standards on those three parameters, that process can only improve things. But the point is, the only really effective means of getting rid of that industry is to become one ourselves, and put our money where our mouths are, and show them how it's done .. |
Bruce Bostwick
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Lihan161051
Post Number: 68
Registered: 03-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, January 20, 2007 - 8:16 am: |
|
While it may appear that hand counted paper ballots automatically provides freedom of access (it almost does, and comes closer than any computerized system), in fact, during my current Freedom of Information research, I've learned that there are several locations where The People are not allowed to watch the vote counting; other locations where they may stand in the room but can't necessarily see what's on the paper being counted.
There were a number of documented instances of this during the 2000 election in Florida, and a much larger number of them during the 2004 election. The 2004 "locked room" incidents were particularly disturbing since vaguely worded "terrorist threat" excuses were used in several cases as a pretext for forcing public observers out of vote counting areas.
We are seeing an unprecedented effort by the two major political parties to wrest control and oversight away from the citizenry.
I wouldn't say "unprecedented", because there is one particularly egregious precedent:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tammany_Hall
I keep a Thomas Nast cartoon on my wall of Boss Tweed leaning against a ballot box with a smug and threatening look, with the caption, "As long as I count the Votes, what are you going to do about it?" as a reminder of what happens when we let go of the election process and let the parties control it .. Nast's comment in the caption was, "That's What's the Matter." Nuff said, except to say that's where we're headed, if it's not where we already are .. |
Bruce Bostwick
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Lihan161051
Post Number: 69
Registered: 03-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, January 20, 2007 - 9:09 am: |
|
I'd like to add that I don't feel it's *ever* appropriate to block public observation of vote counting. There are few things that get me as steamed as stories of locked doors with windows taped up, security guards telling would-be observers to get lost, or in the case of electronic voting systems, tabulator monitors turned around to where observers can't see them. ('Yeah, you can watch a couple of guys sitting in front of a computer for a couple of hours, we'll let you "observe" that, but you can't watch anything that gives you any actual information about what's happening..')
*That* is where we gave away control of the system, and the part that burns me up more than anything else is that the people closing off access to vote counting know full well that about 99% of the people they tell to "get lost" will think that's just how the system works, and the 1% or less who know better can easily be dismissed as cranks and conspiracy theorists. And that won't change until the remaining 99% really get to the point where the light bulb comes on and they realize what's been stolen from them .. |
Bruce Bostwick
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Lihan161051
Post Number: 70
Registered: 03-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, January 20, 2007 - 9:24 am: |
|
And last but not least, HAVA (to get back on topic) is worse than useless, because it actually *discourages* doing things right. The law I'd like to see is one that makes an election system vendor liable for the cost of any recounts or outright invalid elections conducted with their equipment, and also makes them liable for things like double-bookkeeping back doors in central tabulating equipment or features designed to open up hidden access using third party software like MS Access, etc. that would be very hard to interpret as "accidental" lapses of security design. (There's a certain vendor I have in mind that would find it very difficult to stay in the election industry under those rules, and one or two others that would have some scrambling to do to clean up their acts.) If nothing else, it would sure go a long way toward tackling the lowball-bidder implementations currently in place .. |
Mark E. Smith
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mymarkx
Post Number: 175
Registered: 07-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, January 20, 2007 - 12:29 pm: |
|
"The law I'd like to see is one that makes an election system vendor liable for the cost of any recounts or outright invalid elections conducted with their equipment...."
But Bruce, the whole purpose of a corporation is to avoid liability. That's why they call them "limited liability corporations." |
Bev Harris
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Site_admin
Post Number: 448
Registered: 10-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, January 20, 2007 - 12:34 pm: |
|
The liability angle probably won't work, although I admit it's intriguing. One of the problems: The election officials are currently extremely dependent on the vendor, and they'd be likely to have to take an adversary role.
Heck, if vendor liability could solve anything, we'd already be doing better. Election officials all over the country could recoup their money based on false claims. Unfortunately, they have elections to run, and the length of time it takes to go through the courts is MUCH longer than the length of time they have between elections. They'd be stuck trying to run elections while dependent on a vendor they are litigating against. Not a pretty picture, and therefore, we won't see this kind of litigation happen very much.
|
Bruce Bostwick
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Lihan161051
Post Number: 71
Registered: 03-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, January 20, 2007 - 12:54 pm: |
|
"The law I'd like to see is one that makes an election system vendor liable for the cost of any recounts or outright invalid elections conducted with their equipment...."
But Bruce, the whole purpose of a corporation is to avoid liability. That's why they call them "limited liability corporations."
That's the corporation's problem.  The fact that a corporation's goal is not to have any liability doesn't obligate Congress to avoid *holding* a corporation liable. (The inevitable collective outcry from the industry lobbyists notwithstanding, of course.) And my very strong feeling is that, since at least one vendor has not only not put any noticeable effort into addressing even *known* security vulnerabilities of their system, not to mention not putting any effort at all into addressing theoretical ones, that's a level of negligence that cannot be anything but culpable.
And putting the burden of paying for the results of an almost completely unauditable election of questionable validity, at best, on the state gives the state entirely too much incentive to avoid ruling an election invalid because doing anything else would expose them to astronomical costs and no small amount of embarrassment, so the problem is both underreported and subject to powerful incentives to sweep it under the rug and pretend it's nowhere near as severe as it really is. And the corporation that left the door wide open to the problem in the first place by (IMHO criminally) negligent design not only isn't held responsible for the mess they instigated, but is actually rewarded by being paid for the product they sold the state. I can't even list the number of ways that situation is screwed up, it would take up too much bandwidth.
Maybe it shouldn't be a civil liability issue -- you're right, Bev, that would pit the EO's against the vendors and the inevitable foot-dragging and legal maneuvering would make the whole system grind to a halt. But there should be some legal responsibility where it's due. Maybe federal criminal penalties? (If the SEC can throw Martha Stewart in white collar prison for a stock deal that smelled a bit hinky, surely it's not *that* hard to fine a corporation for contributing to an election mess like what we have now .. ?)
(Message edited by lihan161051 on January 20, 2007)
(Message edited by lihan161051 on January 20, 2007) |
Catherine Ansbro
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Catherine_a
Post Number: 3596
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, January 20, 2007 - 2:25 pm: |
|
Thanks all for this interesting discussion.
Bev, if I understand you correctly, one could support both the citizen's request and also the Kucinich paper ballot bill, which focuses on a certain methodology. If this understanding is incorrect please explain where I am mistaken. |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 5862
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, January 20, 2007 - 4:56 pm: |
|
Absolutely -- and Black Box Voting is in total support of the Kucinich Bill.
Government is the servant of the people, and not the master of them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. We insist on remaining informed so that we may retain control over the instruments of government we have created.
|
|
|
