Rush Holt interview re Black Box Voting, Democracy Now, October 30th, 2003 [View All]

[Eric J in MN]

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/30/1624227&mode=thread&tid=25

I'm sure some people here have already seen this interview since it's from October 30, but I didn't see it until recently, and so I decided to post about it.

Here the interviewer asks Rep. Rush Holt about the response to his bill for a voter verifiable paper trail for electronic voting machines.
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AMY GOODMAN: What's been the response of Republicans in Congress?

RUSH HOLT: Silence.

I have about 60 co-sponsors on the bill, not a single Republican, and I've pleaded with the Republicans and said, look, this is not a partisan issue. This is not payback for Florida. This is not an attempt to get at the chairman of the -- of the manufacturer of these voting machines. This is just to preserve the sanctity of the central act in our democracy.

And the silence scares me.

You know, a number of my colleagues, Republican colleagues, have come up to me expressing some interest in this, some concern about the voting. I've explained my bill to them. They said that sounds good, let me go back and talk to my staff and presumably talk to the leadership.

And I never hear from them again.
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In the month since, the number of co-sponsors has increased to 84 with at least 3 Republicans.

To check if your Congressperson is a co-sponsor, go to:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d108:HR02239:@@@P