GOP to privately meet on Democrat's voting proposal

[Algorem]

Source: AP

1/14/2008, 4:10 p.m. EST
By STEPHEN MAJORS
The Associated Press

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The Ohio Republican Party has invited Republican elections board members from around the state to gather at a private meeting Tuesday to discuss "the party's response to the Secretary of State's voting proposals," according to an e-mail from a party official obtained Monday by The Associated Press.

The e-mail, which said, "your efforts to keep the information above confidential are appreciated," comes at a time when Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has directed and recommended widespread changes to touch-screen voting systems across the state.

Elections officials in at least three counties have balked at Brunner's directive that counties with touch-screen machines make a certain number of paper ballots available during the March primary for voters who don't want to use the machines...


The private Republican meeting injects partisanship into a debate over voting technology that shouldn't be political, Brunner said Monday...



Read more: http://www.ohio.com/news/break_news/13776727.html?page=1&c=y

[madmom]

1. we had an editorial in our sunday rag about have ridiculous Brunner is for wanting "fair elections"

[Botany]

2. The repugs know they have been cheating.

The data, stories, stats, and exit polls are public knowledge .....
And so the repugs and the press have to try to stop this effort.

[santamargarita]

3. Damn right they know...

Election coups in 2000 and 2004 prove it. These bastards won't stop until we stop them!

[underpants]

7. How many people are in jail because of the 2004 vote?

is it 3 or is it more?

Why would they need to keep this confidential (this meeting)?? Isn't this a matter of public record?

[Peace Patriot]

4. Brunner has to say it's a non-partisan issue, pro forma. But it IS partisan to Bushites.

They want the partisan advantage of stealing elections, by having all the votes counted with 'TRADE SECRET,'PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations, with virtually no audit/recount controls, and by having partisan officials purging anti-Bushite voters from the voting rolls, and by bullying and cheating voters in poor areas, and by every kind of election theft and crimes.

But I think Brunner--and also Debra Bowen in California, and other reformers--are going to find that half-measures with these people only entice them to further crime. They are like sharks, and our democracy is like a swimmer who thinks that being half out of the water makes him safe. Give them even a toe of an opportunity to destroy our democracy, and they will.

We should not just be requiring paper ballots. We should be THROWING THESE ELECTION THEFT MACHINES INTO 'BOSTON HARBOR' NOW! --and tarring and feathering their corporate execs and salespeople and running them out of town. A paper ballot scanned into a highly riggable Diebold/ES&S system is only slightly more secure than a paperless touchscreen vote. In fact, you could probably make a case for the paperless touchscreens being the advanced fascist implement, and scanning systems (with a ballot) their fallback position. In other words, they never expected us to accept touchscreens, but they pushed them in order to make optiscans seem reasonable. A paper ballot is only as valid as the audit (the counting). If 99% to 100% of them are never counted, what good are they? And, along with selling election officials these electronic systems, they sold the idea of NOT counting the ballots.

I'm all for any reform we can get. I also understand the danger to election reformers--not just from Bushites but from corrupt Democratic leaders as well (--having witnessed the fate of CA Sec of State Kevin Shelley at the hands not of Buthites, but of the state Democratic Party leadership). But I also see the perils of incomplete reform. For one thing, it means that the security of our election system is dependent on one official, and if he or she loses an election, we go right back into the clutches of some of the most evil, fascist corporations on earth. Compromising with these corporations--letting them retain any "trade secret" power--is very dangerous.

What is needed is WHACK 'EM UP SIDE THE HEAD reform--totally uncompromising reform, which aims to restore the old American consensus on what a transparent election is. And here I think a distinction needs to be made between Republicans and the Bushites who have seized control of the Republican Party. It should not matter whether an election official is Republican or Democratic or independent. All should understand, and agree to, certain rules of transparency and fairness. That is the ideal. We were certainly striving toward that ideal in the last century, but it has been shockingly abandoned under Bush. And it needs to be made clear--in no uncertain terms, with prosecution, with ostracism and with hard-nosed, uncompromising reform--that we will not tolerate partisanship in the administration of our elections, and if Republicans do not purge their leadership and their ranks of Bushite election thieves, they will be tagged with their proper name--the Nazi Party--and driven out of power and out of politics forevermore.

This is not a matter on which you can be nice. Too much is at stake. And these Bushite sharks, having tasted blood, will circle our honest officials in a frenzy, out for more blood and more power, unless they are stopped. How do you stop a shark? You punch it in the nose!

[kenfrequed]

5. I agree

I cannot believe anyone trusts these flashy-screened secret software bandits.

[Supersedeas]

6. this is a clear indication of the crap that Blackwell got away with