Exposing Official Misconduct

John Burik is correct that many activists felt that California's Red Team Reports were sufficient, since Ohio uses the same machines. So we grumbled about the additional cost to taxpayers for Ohio to run its own tests. Given what's been exposed in Rothenberg's article, we see now that in Ohio's political climate, Brunner had to run new tests: all of Ohio was ignoring what California (and Florida, and others) found.

Both Burik and The Brennan Center still fail to recognize that using machines to record or count our vote constitutes a secret vote count - we can't see inside those machines. Secret vote countes are not used in democracies.

As this idea sinks in to justice advocates across the nation, the movement for hand-counted paper ballots is growing.

Instead of spending more money on technological fixes to attempt to secure unsecurable and otherwise outrageously expensive systems, we should upgrade to hand-counting the ballots at the precinct, on election night, before all who wish to observe.

No machine will provide us with a basis for confidence in reported results because the use of machines obscures the vote count. Why should we trust government? This nation was founded on distrust, ergo a system of checks and balances was developed.

BlackBoxVoting has been presenting video and written reports on what's wrong with the "Trust Us Model" of electoral management. Only a fool or a fascist would allow public elections to be obscured from the public.

The way to begin to restore a basis for confidence in reported results is for citizens to observe and perform the vote count. It means donating time on Election Day, instead of waiting to be told who you voted for. Instead, we tell them.

Given that the ACLU sued in Ohio to continue using the absolute worse election system devised, Brian Rothenberg's point is well taken