One man, one vote -- step into the future

I usually try to avoid posts that start off like "Republicans are Bastards!" because I know this can piss off otherwise sensible people. Like Ron Brownstein, who writes this crap in his new book: "The Second Civil War: How Extreme Partizanship Has Paralyzed Washington And Polarized America":

Offering both sweeping analysis and intimate detail drawn from exclusive interviews with top officials and strategists in both parties, The Second Civil War captures the currents that have carried America to today's dangerous impasse, from little-understood changes in congressional rules that made it easier for parties to enforce discipline and discourage compromise to the rise of special-interest pressure groups to a vastly changed media environment that has become much more vicious and much less serious.

...little-understood rule changes, special-interest pressure groups? From such a normally smart guy, this is brazen dishonesty. To not state immediately that the rule changes were created by the Republican dominated Congress, and that the special-interest were, until the last 3 years, all Republican dominated, is deceitful, and is meant to picture some bi-partisan D.C. where Dems & Repubs sing Kumbaya while drinking cognac and smoking Cohibas with David Broder.

But that's not important right now. Because Republicans are bastards. As my friend Brad Friedman reported last week:

Today the House GOP members managed to block Congressman Rush Holt’s emergency voting bill with a 239 – 178 vote; a 2/3 majority was required for passage. It is unknown at this time what the next move will be. Maybe an all-out ban on DREs? The bill would get nowhere but it would bring the Election Integrity Community back together.

So? Blocking Democratic sponsored legislation has become reflex to the Republicans of today.

Rep. Rush Holt (D-I'd change my name), who sponsored the voting bill, explains at VoteTrustUS:

Rep. Rush Holt (pictured at right) today strongly criticized House members for blocking legislation – the Emergency Assistance for Secure Elections Act of 2008 (H.R. 5036) – that would encourage states to conduct verifiable elections by converting to a paper ballot voting system, offering emergency paper ballots, and conducting hand-counted audits. Two weeks ago, the same legislation passed the House Administration Committee with bipartisan, unanimous support, including from some of those who voted to block the bill’s passage today.

“This bill would represent a real step forward in our effort to protect the accuracy, integrity and security of the November elections,” Holt said. “The bill that the House leadership scheduled for a vote today is the same one that passed two weeks ago without the objection of a single Committee member. There is no reason why this should be a partisan issue but the Republicans evidently have chosen to make it so. The White House issued a statement opposing the bill and 176 of 203 Republicans voted that way”

. . . Holt noted that the main objection to the bill was, according to Republicans, its cost.

So there you have it. GWBush says "No" and suddenly moderate Republicans vote against their own best interests. WTF are they afraid of, what power can this lame duck still wield?

As I started off this post, I pointed out that I don't like to make blanket statements. So I won't say Republicans are bastards. I'm sure some were born legitimately, not all were spawned by Satan.

But I can say safely that there is an essential difference today between Republicans and Democrats that didn't exist when I was a kid watching the Army-McCarthy hearings in the '50s: Republicans vote for Party first, Nation second. Party above national interests. Party above even self-interest. Party first.

Know what? They are bastards.

Welcome my son, welcome to the machine

Avedon Carol writing at Atrios' place:

You can ask them to do the simple exercise of remembering the last time they fed paper money into a change machine and it was rejected - did they then throw away the bill? Do they think we should trust a machine to count our votes?

Indeed.

Welcome my son, welcome to the machine

Voting systems hacked in test
The successful invasions will be weighed in state's security review.

Teams of computer hackers participating in a first-of-its-kind experiment in California have succeeded in breaking into all three electronic voting machines they targeted.

The systems were invaded in ways ranging from altering votes via a laptop computer to physically breaking into an electronic ballot box with small, concealable tools, the hackers reported to the state Friday.
[...]
The hackers reported successful invasions that could "alter vote totals, violate the privacy of individual voters, make systems unavailable, and delete audit trails."

But Stephen Weir, head of the state association of county registrars, said the hacking was not an accurate portrayal of risk because researchers were given extensive access to the voting machines and their proprietary codes.
[...]
Counties routinely lock up their voting machines to prevent sabotage, keep detailed access records, employ camera surveillance and conduct extensive testing to ensure accuracy, Weir said.

OK, first, if you can delete evidence that the machine was hacked (audit trails) then the hack would be undetectable. Second, Weir is just plain wrong when he claims voting machines are 'locked up':

Practices such as allowing poll workers to take the voting machines home have been widely criticized, Durfee said.
[...]
Regarding precinct workers taking home the machines, Horn added: “The poll workers are not felons. They're volunteers, and we need every one we can get.”

So they let 'volunteers' take the machines home. Maybe they aren't felons ... yet. That's hardly election security, but it is a good way to elect Republicans.




Cross posted at VidiotSpeak