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Vote-by-mail is NOT Safe From Executive Power
by Brian T. Lynch, MSW
I have a different view on mail-in ballots than most. Yes, it has been safe and very beneficial in the past. The question is how safe is an election against a determined attack by a ruthless potentate? That is the question we must answer. The potential vulnerabilities of vote-by-mail against threats by the Executive Branch to undermine or discredit an election are very significant. Elections are state functions.
Each state has full constitutional authority and autonomy to conduct its own elections. There are no national elections in the United States. That is perhaps the most fundamental separation of power in the Constitution that most of us don’t think of when we think of checks and balances.
To the extent that a state relies on the US Postal Service to handle state election ballots, it surrenders some of that autonomy to the federal government. It is a massive vulnerability because the U.S. Postal Service is under the direct control of the Chief Executive, Donald Trump.
We have already seen moves by the President to exploit this vulnerability when he installed an acting Master General, Louis DeJoy, on June 15, 2020. DeJoy was a top fundraiser for Donald Trump and the Republican National Party and a stalwart ally of the President. DeJoy is the first Postmaster General in 20 years with no prior experience at the U.S. Postal Service. He was president of LDJ Global Strategies, a Greensboro, North Carolina-based, boutique firm with interests in real estate, private equity, consulting, and project management.
When DeJoy began his tenure as 75 Postmaster General, he immediately began implementing sweeping changes to USPS operations in the face of backlash from unions, employees, and lawmakers. USPS announced a reorganization and corresponding executive shakeups that have already degraded the reliability of the USPS. Congress has expressed concern that new Postmaster DeJoy was consolidating power within the organization. The net effect has been slower mail delivery and a growing fear that the USPS will not be able to handle the great volume of mail that is expected due to huge numbers of mail-in-ballots.
When President Trump says that mail-in-voting will create a mess in this election, that isn’t a prediction… it is a direct threat by a man who is already acting to deliver on it.
And that isn’t the only vulnerability of mail-in voting. But focusing on the US Postal Service, there are a number of things that could help mitigate the threat of missing or late ballot deliveries. Proper handling of mail-in voting by mail might alleviate the vulnerability.
Maintaining the chain of custody
All mail-in ballots could be sent by certified mail with a return receipt request. Currently, the normal chain of custody in a state election is maintained in most states. Pickups by postal workers break that chain of custody. There is no proof that your ballot was picked up, and not stolen out of your mailbox, or from a mail drop. There is no way to track your envelope or ensure it has been delivered.
If your ballot is misplaced before it is date stamped at the Post Office, there is no way to prove you sent it before election day. If the USPS is going to play a vital part in a state election, vote-by-mail ballots should all be handled as certified mail, at no cost to the voter. Congress should allocate money to the US Postal Service to defray the cost to certify every mail-in ballot.
Additionally, every state board of election office collecting and processing the ballots should receive an electronic list of who has mailed every ballot being sent by certified mail. When the ballots are received at the Boards of the election, the return receipts and mail-in ballot should be timestamped as having been received in the office and the verified delivery cards returned to the voter. This would go a long way in securing vote-by-mail ballots.
Postscript from 8/13/2020. Trump says it out loud:
Tyranny of the Minority – Losing Majority Rule
Part 1 – Losing Majority Rule
Most people pay attention to pocketbook issues that affect our family or retirement, but quite understandably avoid the rancorous politics we see on TV. There is a sense that government is failing because elected officials can’t agree and the country is evenly divided, but many important issues do get rationally settled in the opinion of vast majorities of the public.
For example,a large majority agree that global warming is happening and we are causing it in some way. Almost 90% of us agree we spend too much on defense. Large majorities believe we should generate more electricity from wind and solar. About 80% of us believe there should be universal background checks on gun sales and almost everyone agrees that big banks caused the great recession. Despite a near consensus on these and other issues there is gridlock in Washington.
One explanation is that there is not a lot of passion behind these majority views, so meaningful change against an organized and well funded opposition is out of reach. In the face of majority agreement, Congress fails to act, or act contrary to the will of its citizens. On the surface it may seem like political gridlock between evenly matched forces, but this is an illusion. There are many issues supported by majorities in both parties that can’t even get a hearing in Congress because a tiny minority who oppose it are able to kill it. This is tyranny by the minority when the majority isn’t allowed to govern. To understand what’s happening really requires us to pierce the noise of partisanship and media bias.
The voting majority has lost its ability to govern. In frustration more and more ordinary citizens feel alienated or betrayed, leaving us vulnerable to the radical fringe.
Evidencethat the majority has lost the ability to govern is everywhere. The smallest special interest group, the wealthy elite, are by far the most influential and obvious force in Congress. CEO’s of major corporations testified in Congress that they don’t want or need tax subsidies and Congress increases their subsidies. Wall Street asks for and got billions in bailout money with no strings attached. Try to attach some strings or implement substantial financial reform and Congress kills it, either outright or later on through the budget process. There is evidence of the failure of majority rule in the way the filibuster has shut down open debate and killed popular legislation. There is evidence in the inability of Congress to debate and vote on immigration reform, which is popular and has strong bi-partisan support. The debt ceiling crisis, the budget cliffs and the government shutdown are all signs that the majority has lost control of the federal government. The growing assault on voting rights, recently passed anti-abortion legislation and the imposition of emergency managers over democratically elected city and municipal leaders are other examples.
The truth is forces on the political spectrum are not evenly matched. Many political battles are asymmetrical. The nations shift to the right is mostly due to the success of highly motivated and well funded conservative action groups. For example there are right wing Christian groups opposed to secular society and what they see as moral decay. These groups promote socially conservative issues. There are Tea Party groups opposed to taxes. They promote free market capitalism and limited government. Then there are many extreme nationalists groups, gun rights groups, militial groups and the like. All of these groups have different aims but are drawn together by strong anti-tax, anti-government sentiments and by at least a laissez-faire view of capitalism.
Money and organizational clout for these action groups comes mostly from wealthy capitalists who want to weaken the power of government to tax and regulate commerce. There is an anti-government alignment of interests between the wealthy elite and each of these groups.
There is another, less visible segment in these groups as well, a far right group with a welll defined ideology but no central organization. These are the real insurgents fighting for control of the Republican Party. Their goal is to dismantle the Federal government as we know it, limiting its powers to the narrowest extent possible under their interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. They are the members of the Tea Party who pull it further to the right. They are the members of conservative Christian right groups that fan the flames of anti-government rhetoric. Some belong to hate groups, conservative issues groups or libertarian organizations. Everywhere they show up they agitate to pull the organization further to the ideological right by sowing dissatisfaction with our Federal government. They seek an individual level of freedom that transends any personal responsibility to society or majority rule.
Who are these far right ideologues and what do they want?
Imagine a future in which our Federal government is forced to cut back on every service or function not specifically named in the U.S. Constitution. What if, to keep Wyoming and a few other Mid-West and South-Western states from seceding, we give up our national parks. These are sold off to corporation such as Disney, ExxonMobil, Boise Cascade, Massey Energy Corp. and various land development corporations. Under this scenario Texas or some other states may have already seceded and we now have to worry about the nuclear armed country of Texas on our southern border.
Imagine the Federal government no longer able fund departments and agencies over the objection of a minority of sovereign citizens. Gone are the Departments of Education, Energy, Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, Interior, Labor, Transportation.. all gone and replaced by individual state control, subject to the ability to fund them over the objections of “sovereign citizens” in each state.
The Environmental protection agency, The FDA, FCC, SEC and almost all federal regulatory agencies would all be gone. These are considered outside the enumerated powers of the Federal government. Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are obviously gone as well. It is up to the sovereign citizens of each state to decide what they decide to fund or not fund within their own state.
In this future all Federal powers would be limited strictly to military defense, protection of the rights of individuals with respect to constitutional liberties and settling interstate commerce disputes among the states. In this future citizens could target where their tax money goes. In effect, majority rule would be subject to minority consent, in fact to consent by each sovereign citizen’s consent.
Continued in Part 2 – Meet the Gray Coat Conservatives.
(Part 2 will detail the belief system of the neo-confederate conservative)
Ted Cruz, Money and the Power to Turn Out The Lights
Most people agree that Senator Ted Cruz, a freshman Senator from Texas, is the quartback of the federal government shutdown. He has his ideological reasons for pulling the plug, for sure, but instead of following the confusing politics behind his crazy Jihad against Obamacare, I decided to follow the money trail that backs him. Ultimate it is money, not ideology, that translates into the power to shutdown the federal government.
In the 2012 election Club for Growth and the Senate Conservative Fund were Sen. Cruz’ top two donors. These conservative fund raising groups contributed over a million dollars to his campaign.
The Senate Conservative Fund (SCF) was Cruz’ second biggest donor, contributing $385,103 to his campaign, according to OpenSecrets.org. The SCF is a leadership PAC, which means it is money raised by other politicians to support certain candidates running for office within their own party. The SCF is associated with James W. DeMint, a former South Carolina Senator and the current president of the conservative Heritage Foundation. SCF gave about $2.1 million to Republican candidates in the 2012 election cycle, which means Ted Cruz received 18% of their direct candidate support. This is significant since James DeMint has been characterized as the hidden hand behind the move to defund the Affordable Care Act (aka: Obamacare).
Club for Growth (CFG) contributed $705,657 to Ted Cruz, making them his biggest donor. That donation amounted to almost 17% of all the money CFG spent in contributions to support Republicans in the 2012 election. Only Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona received more money from CFG (one-million dollars).
But the most revealing fact about CFG’s support for Cruz is that the organization spent $4.27 million supporting a few Republican candidates while also spending a whopping $10 million (in outside spending) to oppose other Republican candidates. In other words CFG is like a wrecking ball destroying fellow Republican candidates who don’t meet their conservative standards.
I tried to learn where CFG gets its money, but this is difficult because it is a “527” organization, a 501(c)4 not for profit, that is allowed to collect unlimited contributions. CFG doesn’t have to disclose its donors or reveal its activity. According to a February, 2011 article by John Nichols of The Nation, The Club for Growth is “an organization funded by extremely wealthy conservatives to carry out their budget-stripping goals.”
What seems to emerge from this view of the government shutdown is a tectonic rift in the financial power base underneath the Republican party. Well organized and well funded sources of money are narrowly targeting resources to heavily fund a select few candidates while, in the case of Club for Growth, using resources to undermine Republican candidates who are less ideologically pure. Indeed, Club for Growth uses its club to cull the herd, a development that has no equal in Democratic politics.
Up until now the Senate and House Majority Leaders held all the purse strings of power to punish or reward members of their party. Not so any more. Ted Cruz does not stand alone when he defies his Republican colleagues in the Senate, as pundits have suggested. Rather, he is the tip of an iceberg around which his caucus has to navigate. He is able to side steps House Speaker John Beohner and whips support for defunding Obamacare in the House because he carries with him both a carrot and a club.
It is difficult to work out all the implications that may result from this rift in the fabric of Republican politics, but over the short term it can’t be very good. The rift is just the public view of a subsurface divide between the wealthy elite who are the titians of power in America. It isn’t clear, to me, exactly what is at play. What are the control points that one group seeks over the other and what would be the gain? Intrigue at that level of play is heavily cloaked in secrecy. For now, all we can do is to try and read the tea leaves.
It’s Time for Citizens to Take Control of Our Democracy
North Carolina doesn’t want you to vote if you live in a college dormitory in that state. They don’t want you to vote if you don’t have a special state identification card. There is a provision in state law that polling places can serve a maximum of 1500 voters, but in Boone, where college students nearly caused the parish to go for Barak Obama, you must now travel out of your way to the one polling place left, which serves over 9,000 voters. With only 45 parking spaces the parking lot will need to fill and empty every 6 or 7 minutes to accommodate everyone. Of course, accommodating all the voters is the last thing this Republican controlled local voting board has in mind.
Throughout the South and in other conservative stronghold around the country the story is pretty much the same. Since the United States Supreme Court struck down part of the Voting Rights Act an ideologically obstinate Republican Party, which is in demographic decline, is responding to growing pluralism and power sharing by rejecting democratic majority rule in favor of vote manipulation and dirty tricks. In one voting precinct in Texas, changes to the distribution of voting machines would have predominately African-American polling places handle ten times the number of voters as predominately White polling places. In every Republican controlled state the voting districts have been redrawn to make it nearly impossible for them to lose their incumbency. And all these changes are not random developments but elements of a nationwide plot to project conservative power and suppress opposing or alternative social views.
Admitting that there is a problem with our democratic process is difficult enough. Fixing it will be even harder. Elections are the province of state governments, each with unique constitutions, chapter laws and administrative policies. In a previous post [http://wp.me/p2WIGz-7B ] I reported on the results of a survey I conducted of the constitutional voting rights articulated in every state constitution. The results were disturbing. Most of the rights we think we have are not supported in the language of most state constitutions and no state constitution has adequately defined voting rights.
Voting is, of course, the cornerstone of democracy. It is the means by which political power is aggregated and distributed within a democratic society. Each vote is a transfer of power collected by the chosen candidate. The integrity of the voting process is therefore critical to a democratic society. It is too precious to entrust in partisan hands. The administration of the election process should be pre-partisan, outside of total government control. It should be directly under citizen control.
Our present system of election relies on election administrators appointed by the party in power. In most states that means the State Secretary of State. Keeping in mind that most states don’t have constitutionally secure voting rights, the legislatures have significant control over election procedures and the Secretary of States have great leeway over how these laws are implemented. Among the strange consequences this has cause is the turning over of elections to private voting companies. Most or our votes are cast and counted by private companies using electronic machines run on proprietary software. The voting companies are accountable to no one. We citizens didn’t ask for this and there was no discussion about this prior to hiring these private firms to collect and count our votes. Since these companies have taken over the election process we have had some of the most unusual and controversial elections in modern times. I have written extensively on this subject in the past (see below).
How should we protect our voting rights? By electing non-partisan, independent citizen boards to run our elections. All voting policies and procedures should be approved through public referendum developed by these citizen Boards of Election. Citizens on these boards should have no party affiliations and should not hold any public office. These citizen boards should be responsible for everything from drawing congressional districts, maintaining voter registrations preparing ballots, assigning polling places, etc. right down to training poll workers and monitoring elections. Any significant changes in voting policy should have to be put to a public vote. If private companies are to be hired to count our votes, it is the voters who should decide whether or not to use them. In my view, there should be nothing involving the franchise that isn’t itself subject to direct citizen approval.
The candidate who collects the most votes wins the consent to govern. In the bargain, the candidate in a representative democracy is expected to represent everyone, even those opposed to him or her. In exchange, all the people consent to be governed by majority rule even if there candidate didn’t win. Representatives should do what is right for the greatest good even if it isn’t what is popular at the moment or aligned with the interests of those who supported the candidate. Of course, this is the ideal, not the practice. But today, the basic bargain that makes a Republic work has broken down. Elected representatives are narrowly pursuing the interests of their political donors and party constituents almost exclusively. The Republican minority in the Senate no longer accepts majority rule, using filibusters to forcing super-majorities on nearly every vote. With this same disregard they are making it harder for citizens who don’t agree with them to vote in public elections. Governments and powerful interests have broken faith with democracy. It’s time for ordinary citizens to take back control over the democratic voting process.
MY BLOGLIOGROPHY ON VOTING ISSUES
The sorry state of voting rights in America, a 50 state comparison
http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2012/03/sorry-states-of-voting-rights-in.html
How voter ID laws might block you from voting
http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2012/07/seven-ways-voter-id-could-block-you.html
Republicans have a 5% election fraud handicap built into the voting system
http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2012/08/republicans-have-5-election-fraud.html
Many state are unprepared for a fair and free election
http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2012/07/many-states-unprepared-for-fair-and.html
Outsourcing or privatized voting process overseas
http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2012/07/outsourcing-our-privatized-voting.html
Voting rights denied to a record number of “felons”
http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2012/07/voting-rights-denied-for-record-numbers.html
Ireland Scraps Electronic Voting Machines for Good
http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2012/06/ireland-scraps-electronic-voting.html
Secret flawed voting software discovered and exposed
http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2012/06/ireland-scraps-electronic-voting.html
Does voter suppression have a new target in Florida (Latino’s)
http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2012/05/does-voter-suppression-have-new-target.html
To know your Voting Rights you must know your state constitution
http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2012/03/voting-know-your-rights-know-your-state.html
Can a convicted, or formerly convicted felon vote? Lots of confusion
http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2012/04/can-convicted-felon-vote-major.html
Colorado sues for voting privacy, but do we have that right
http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2012/02/colorado-group-sues-for-vote-privacy.html
A private company has the first peek at election results
http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2012/02/company-wprivate-access-to-vote-totals.html
Voter suppression in America to get a hearing at the United Nations
http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2012/03/voter-suppression-in-america-to-get.html
Caucus voting flubs highlight election system flaws
http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2012/02/caucus-voting-flubs-highlight-our.html
South Carolina out sources vote count to Spain
http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2012/01/south-carolina-outsources-vote-count-to.html
A voters “Bill of Rights”
http://aseyeseesit.blogspot.com/2011/10/voters-bill-of-rights.html
OUR VOTING RIGHTS – A State by State Analysis
In an off handed comment made after the 2012 election, President Barack Obama said we need to fix our election process. This is a welcome suggestion. Our election process is badly broken and we need to take a good look at it. We should start by asking:
What voting rights do I have in my state?
This is not a commonly asked question, but it should be. Most of us believe voting rights are guaranteed under the federal constitution. This isn’t exactly true. The Constitution contains several amendments to prevented states from disenfranchising certain categories of voters. For example, states cannot use race, religion, gender or the age of anyone 18 or older as a means to disqualify a “citizen” from voting. The actual right of suffrage, however, isn’t a federal guarantee. This is up to the states. Fixing our voting system will be a state by state effort.
In all our public discussions about elections there is rarely mention of how voting rights differ in various states. When you look at state constitutional language on voting rights, however, you quickly learn that many of the rights we take as granted, such as a right to secret ballots, are nowhere to be found in most state constitutions. In fact, state constitutional voting rights differ widely from one state to the next.
The wide variation in voting rights are not immediately evident because state laws, administrative regulation and voting practices over time have created consensual frameworks for elections that appear similar from state to state. For example, the vote counting process is open for public view in most states, but only the constitutions of Louisiana, South Carolina and Virginia guarantee public vote counting. California is the only state guaranteeing that votes will even be counted. After candidates concede defeat based on vote projections, the states are not constitutionally obligated to finish counting every ballot.
When elections run smoothly and no questions are raised, everyone consents to the will of the majority. This is true because in a representative democracy, elected officials are expected to represent everyone’s interests and not just the interests of those who voted for them. But when elections are very close and the process seems flawed, explicit constitutional language is essential to protect the democratic process and win over the consent of the minority. Elections have consequences. Flawed elections or overtly partisan representation can have dire consequences. Faith in our democracy begins with faith in our voting systems.
I am not a lawyer or constitution expert, but curiosity about state voting rights caused me to survey all fifty state constitutions and document the articulated rights in each. Some results of this exercise are presented in the tables below. Keep in mind that some constitutions have very archaic language or formats that make them difficult to interpret. The information below represents my best effort to classify and document basic voting rights as articulated in state constitutions. It is followed by a brief discussion for each of the categories presented below.
– Numerous opportunities for the electorate to receive objective information from a free press.
– Freedom to assemble for political rallies and campaigns.
– Rules that require party representatives to maintain a distance from polling places on election day
– An impartial or balanced system of conducting elections and verifying election results
– Accessible polling places, private voting space, secure ballot boxes, and transparent ballot counting.
– Secret ballots – voting by secret ballot ensures that an individual’s choice of party or candidate cannot be used against him or her.
– Legal prohibitions against election fraud
– Recount and contestation procedures
PERCENTAGE OF CITIZENS COVERED BY THE VOTING RIGHTSARTICULATED IN STATE CONSTITUTIONS |
||
| Num. of States
w/This Right |
Percent of Population
w/this Right |
GENERAL VOTING RIGHTS |
|
1
|
9.7%
|
Right to Have Every Vote Counted
|
|
9
|
10.5%
|
General Right of Suffrage
|
|
21
|
44.0%
|
Right to Free and Fair Election
|
|
28
|
55.3%
|
Right to voting by ballot
|
|
23
|
46.7%
|
Right to secret vote
|
|
3
|
5.6%
|
Right to Public Vote Counting
|
|
15
|
32.6%
|
Frequency of Elections Right
|
|
23
|
36.5%
|
Privilege from Arrest during voting
|
|
21
|
36.5%
|
Privilege from Arrest Exceptions
|
|
2
|
1.6%
|
Right to accessible polling place
|
|
Num. of
States
w/This Right
|
Percent of Population
w/This Right
|
QUALIFICATIONS and EXCEPTIONS
|
|
49
|
99.6%
|
Must be A US Citizen
|
|
46
|
91.2%
|
Must be Registered to vote
|
|
20
|
27.6%
|
State’s Deployed Solders Can Vote
|
|
37
|
83.9%
|
Felony Exception
|
|
12
|
15.5%
|
Treason Exception
|
|
13
|
30.9%
|
Incarceration Exception
|
|
33
|
69.5%
|
Mental Capacity Exception
|
|
2
|
0.5%
|
Moral Conduct or other Exception
|
|
23
|
34.0%
|
Restoration from Exception
|
|
10
|
17.6%
|
No quartered solders
|
|
2
|
1.8%
|
Right to Appeal Voter Ineligibility
|
Can a Convicted Felon Vote? And other voting oddities…
Voting rights in America are mostly defined by state constitutions, not our federal Constitution. A look at all 50 state constitutions finds considerable variation from state to state as to which voting rights are actually protected by explicit constitutional language. All state constitutions include some language which specifies which individuals can and cannot vote. For example, 49 states say you must be a citizen to vote and 46 states require citizens to be registered before voting. On the other hand, only 20 states constitutionally guarantee that their residents in US military service retain a right to vote in their state when deployed elsewhere. The other 30 states may well have statues that grant this privilege to solders, but the right isn’t locked into their state constitutions. Below is a table which shows how common various voter qualification and disqualifications are in the state constitutions. The article is just another example of how confused we American’s are when it comes to our voting rights.
|
Number of States WithThis Right
|
Percent of US Population With ThisRight
|
QUALIFICATIONS and EXCEPTIONS
|
|
49
|
99.6%
|
Must be A US Citizen
|
|
46
|
91.2%
|
Must be Registered to vote
|
|
20
|
27.6%
|
State’s Deployed Solders Can Vote
|
|
37
|
83.9%
|
Felony Exception
|
|
12
|
15.5%
|
Treason Exception
|
|
13
|
30.9%
|
Incarceration Exception
|
|
33
|
69.5%
|
Mental Capacity Exception
|
|
2
|
0.5%
|
Moral Conduct or other Exception
|
|
23
|
34.0%
|
Restoration from Exception
|
|
10
|
17.6%
|
No quartered solders
|
|
2
|
1.8%
|
Right to Appeal Voter Ineligibility
|
Felons’ voting rights restored
http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20120406/EDIT05/304069992/1021/edit
Gilbert Holmes
Recently, I took it upon myself to conduct an unscientific poll.
I’ve asked colleagues, political activists and friends whether a Hoosier convicted of a felony can vote.
Most said no, and others were uncertain.
That tells me that it’s likely that the majority of Hoosiers are under the impression that if you’ve committed a felony, when it comes to voting it’s one strike and you’re out.
That mistaken impression has led to thousands of disenfranchised voters in Indiana who think that because they’ve been incarcerated, they can no longer take advantage of the voting rights guaranteed them by the Bill of Rights and the U.S. Constitution.
This de facto voter disenfranchisement ripples across generations and communities, creating entire classes of people who don’t exercise their right to vote.
Indiana law restores a person’s right to vote after he or she is no longer incarcerated.
One reason it’s so common to think that former felons are permanently barred from voting is that 35 states have stricter voting restrictions than Indiana for felons, and in 13 of those states, a felon can permanently lose the right to vote.
But in Indiana, the loss of suffrage applies only during the actual time of incarceration.
Why should you care? People who vote are more likely to volunteer, give to charities and attend school board meetings.
Former felons who vote are less likely to be rearrested, because voting helps people connect and become part of something positive.
The disproportionate number of blacks affected by voter disenfranchisement, more than 1.5 million across the nation, is an even more stunning number when you consider that one in every 15 black men age 18 and older is incarcerated, and the zero-tolerance policies in our schools have created a pipeline straight to prison for many black teenage dropouts in our communities.
When such a large portion of the community is locked in the criminal justice system, you can be sure their interests are not represented either at the polls or in the halls of power.
If you’re a felon, and you’re no longer incarcerated, you have the right to vote.
If you’re on probation, or on parole, you have the right to vote. If you’re placed in a community corrections program, or subject to home detention, under Indiana
law, you still have the right to vote. Voting is a constitutional right, and it’s one all Hoosiers should be proud to exercise.
Outsourcing Our Privatized Voting Process Overseas
Bev Harris, Blackboxvoting.com
NEW CERTIFICATIONS, PLANNED EXPANSION: Black Box Voting has been investigating and reporting on this disconcerting trend for nine years now. Everything we’ve been reporting has not only turned out to be true, but is increasing. A press release today about the planned expansion of Unisyn into more USA locations renews attention on foreign ownership of corporations selling voting systems into the United States. Unisyn is owned by a Malaysian gambling outfit.
Another major elections industry player, Canada’s Dominion, purchased the massive Diebold Election Systems division (which it shares with ES&S); Dominion also owns Smartmatic, which handles electronic vote-counting in the Philippines and Belgium.
Military voting is now handled in several states by Barcelona, Spain-owned Scytl. In January 2012, Scytl acquired the largest election results reporting firm, SOE Software. Accenture, now based in Dublin Ireland (formerly headquartered in tax-haven Bermuda), claims copyright over the massive electronic voter registration/voter history databases used in several states, including Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Colorado, Wisconsin and Arkansas.
Accenture purchased its voter registration unit from Election.com, a Saudi-owned company based in the Cayman Islands. Because a computer will only do what it’s programmers and administrators tell it to do, whoever issues the commands gains ultimate control over how it receives, counts, and reports votes, voter registrations, and voter histories. UNISYN: According to Barry Herron (formerly of Diebold Election Systems), now Director of Sales for Unisyn, “Unisyn and our business partners are actively supporting installations in the States of Missouri, Iowa, Indiana, Mississippi, and Virginia. We intend to expand into other states in late 2012 and early 2013.” Unisyn also recently made inroads into Puerto Rico.
Another Unisyn election product called “Inkavote” is used in 4 million-voter Los Angeles County (Calif) and in Jackson County Missouri. IS THERE A PROBLEM WITH FOREIGN OWNERSHIP OF USA ELECTION SOFTWARE? Not if you don’t mind some unknown guys working offshore controlling whatever they choose to in the software processing votes and voters.
For more on Malaysian, Chinese, Canadian, Spanish, Saudi, Cayman, Irish ownership of USA election software, see full Black Box Voting article with supporting documents and links: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/8/82176.html * * * * We APPRECIATE the wonderful support many of you have been providing over the years! It is the sole reason we still exist. Permission to reprint or excerpt granted, with link to http://www.blackboxvoting.org
Voter Suppression Humor: NJ-ACLU Cartoon Contest Winner
I was the winner of the NJ ACLU’s 2012 cartoon contest to come up with the best caption or punch line for a cartoon drawn by syndicated cartoonist, Drew Sheneman. Below is my winning entry. Thanks to NJ ACLU and Mr. Shenemen for the opportunity to participate in this fun.
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South Carolina Outsources Vote Count to Spain
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3_xFb1sWKU
By Bev Harris
The genius of democracy is dispersed public control.
As we saw in Iowa when alert public citizens captured evidence of the actual vote count BEFORE it was reported by a centralized state committee, the state Republican Party and the news media initially claimed victory for the wrong winner. They only corrected this mis-call two weeks later, buying the favored candidate half a month of fund raising prowess and prestige.
In South Carolina, 100% of election results will be redirected through a private Barcelona, Spain-owned company, Scytl/SOE Software, before being reported to the public.
There is only one way to immediately find out whether Scytl/SOE reported the right results*, and that is for members of the public to capture evidence of reported precinct results when polls close tonight. Think of it as a giant neighborhood watch.
Precinct results should be posted at each polling site. In addition, during poll closing the public has a right to be in the polling place watching and videotaping what goes on.
Here is a four-minute video showing exactly what to do:
By the way, the results will be published here:
http://www.enr-scvotes.org/SC/36831/63425/en/select-county.html
Compare photos of what you capture at polling places to the results reported at the above link.
For computer buffs, there’s another thing you can do. (The above steps are easy and can be done by anyone.) But for tech buffs, you can download multiple times during the evening, and there are even Web snapshot tools to expedite this. It is not uncommon to see results change or disappear midstream.
In Broward County FL, the results reported by Scytl-owned SOE Software in 2008 showed an entire candidate, who was winning, disappear into vapor in the middle of the count, and in Hillsborough County FL and Dallas County TX, votes that had been reported began to disappear.
The way to see this is to download “time slices” — snapshots at various points in time, and compare them. More information for those of you who like technical stuff is available in the Black Box Voting Tool Kit – http://www.blackboxvoting.org/toolkit.pdf
Follow Black Box Voting for further developments.
* Well, you have to put an asterisk alongside “the right results” because in South Carolinia you get a two-fer. Results could be incorrect at either end of the pipeline — from the ES&S iVotronic paperless touchscreen voting machines, which have a history of incorrect totals, or from the private results reporting firm Scytl/SOE Software, which has centralized control over what gets reported. More
(USA) 1/12 – THE TRAGIC TALE OF EDWARD TRUE AND JAMES FALSE -Permission to excerpt granted, with link to http://www.blackboxvoting.org
By Bev Harris
The actual Iowa winner may “never be known”, and one of the “dead” voters in New Hampshire has now shown up — alive.
It matters, and it’s called journalistic malpractice. TV networks announced that Romney won Iowa, and newspapers pronounced his 1-2 “wins” as “historic.” Candidates dropped out, donors dried up or rushed to send cash to the reported “winner”.
Now we are being told that the Iowa results “don’t matter.” They matter, regardless of any rent-an-expert who shows up in the press. Misreported results manipulated the candidate field from which the rest of America can choose.
The Des Moines Register is now reporting an even greater malfeasance: that the final, certified Iowa result may “never be known.” There were several typos, they say. Some precincts will never be reported, they claim.
That we got a heads up at all about bogus media results was due to an alert Iowa citizen, Edward True, who captured evidence of the 20-vote misreport in his Appanoose County precinct. That people like Edward True were stationed all over Iowa capturing results before they hit the state Republican Committee tabulation was due to Black Box Voting, where the need to do this was explained, and to radio hosts and sites like Bradblog and Facebook, where the word went out.
Mainstream media then began its next act of theatre: They started spinning the false result that THEY THEMSELVES announced as — instead of their own foolishness — “making Iowa look foolish”.
But if we’re looking for truth, here’s what we will find: The mistakes saw light of day because the Iowa caucus was conducted in open public meeting allowing citizens to watch ballots as they were hand counted.
At least it WAS an open system, until the Republican State Committee pitched the bizarre idea that some precincts might never be reported in the final certified result, and the media failed to bay like bloodhounds tracking the truth.
But there is some good news in this: It’s great that public citizens are starting to understand their role in the “neighborhood watch” component of election integrity.
AND NOW FOR JAMES FALSE, OF THE ANTONYM ORGANIZATION “PROJECT VERITAS”
In New Hampshire, media hammertime revolved around James O’Keefe and his “Project Veritas”, who reported that dead people were allowed to vote, “proving” it by sending people around the state to impersonate the dead. He’s basically getting fat grants from fat cats who don’t want so many (real, live) people to vote. He admits to receiving $50,000 for the New Hampshire piece. They are busy manufacturing evidence to manipulate public opinion in favor of voter ID legislation.
Problem is, another alert citizen — who they were reporting as dead — called them on their malfeasance. Robert William Beaulieu is on the video as a successfully impersonated dead voter. Embarrasingly for Project Veritas, Robert William Beaulieu is very much alive.
It seems that Project Falsum Project Veritas did not even bother to check birthdates to match names to dead persons. They mistook a 23-year old for an 80-year old.
Now, we recently saw an article coming out of South Carolina alleging that 900 dead persons voted, and that should immediately call into question how the match was made. By name only? Name and birthdate? Or Social Security number?
Matching by name only doesn’t pass the sniff test, and it turns out that matching by name and birthdate is trickier than you might think. I found 130 people named Mary Williams in a Shelby County (TN) database. Two had the same birthdate. In fact, any time you have a common name, with 100 or more instances, you will find the same birthdate as often as 1 in 3 sets. In a statewide database like South Carolina, it would not be surprising to see 900 name/birthdate matches.
The only way to do a match is with Social Security number, and this is not available to public interest groups.
