Don't Let Congress Use the Carter-Baker Report to Make Vote Verification Meaningless

The Report of the Commission on Federal Election Reform, published this morning and available for download at http://programs.online.american.edu/, is a significant tome at over 100 pages, and its 87 recommendations cover a wide range of issues of concern to election activists. The section dealing with voting technology is of particular interest to those concerned about the accuracy and security of elections in that it explicitly recommends  a requirement for a voter verifiable paper trail on all voting systems.

The Commission’s report very correctly recognizes the need to ensure voter confidence in the election process through a verification process. However, the report specifically recommends that the status of the voter verified record should be left to the states. This is unacceptable. It is fundamental to the integrity of the democratic process that it is the voters and not the machines that ultimately confirm the accuracy of their votes.

Hurricane Katrina and the accompanying floods which destroy New Orleans and other towns in Mississippi and Alabama provided the opportunity for the Bush team to executed it’s basic objective, that of profiting off of any discrepant event which includes both that caused by nature and by man made was done exceedingly well in the case of Katrina. The Rove standard plan is to rush into any situation provide misinformation, arrange for the distribution of any profitable contracts, and get any positive credit for solutions!!.  (NBC News, September, 2005).

Some of the important the important issuers and facts may be given as follows:

Immediately during, not after, the tragedy Bush announced that oil prices would have to go up at the gas pumps (CBS News, September 2005)

The New York Times began a new week with an editorial that typifies the media mind-set of the warfare state.

The Sept. 19 editorial warns of dire consequences from a growing deficit that has been boosted by tax cuts -- in combination with “the pre-Katrina priorities laid down by Mr. Bush.” Those priorities include a U.S. military budget that has reached half a trillion dollars per year. But the Times editorial does not devote a single word to military spending or the Iraq war.

Why not mention the option of an American pullout from Iraq, where the U.S. war effort has already drained $200 billion from taxpayers? Well, those who determine editorial positions at the New York Times -- and the other major newspapers in the country -- cannot bring themselves to call for a quick end to the U.S. military role in Iraq.

Fierce criticism of White House policies is routinely compatible with support for militarism. When the Times condemned the Bush administration’s handling of hurricane relief in a Sept. 2 editorial, the final paragraph included this unequivocal sentence: “America clearly needs a larger active-duty Army.”

This past spring anti-choice representatives in the Ohio House introduced a bill that would completely outlaw abortion in Ohio without exception: not to save a woman's life, not for victims of rape or incest.  It would even put someone in jail for 15 years for driving a woman to another state to get an abortion.  When he introduced the bill, Rep. Brinkman announced that his plan was to get the bill passed and then take it to the Supreme Court and use it to overturn Roe.  Initially this looked like a far-fetched dream, but now with the dual vacancy on the Court, and John Roberts as the nominee for Chief Justice this dream may quickly turn into a reality and a nightmare for women in Ohio.

A funeral services company which recently learned that one of its subsidiaries is negotiating a lucrative contract with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to remove dead bodies in areas ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, paid $100 million to settle a class-action lawsuit several years ago alleging the company desecrated thousands of corpses, and dumped bodies into mass graves.

Moreover, the company paid $200,000 to settle a whistleblower lawsuit that sought to expose that two members of the Texas funeral commission, the agency which regulates the funeral industry, were actually employees of the company they were supposed to monitor--an obvious conflict-of-interest.

In the civil matter, which took place at two Jewish cemeteries in Florida, the plaintiff's attorney said that SCI secretly broke into and opened burial vaults and dumped remains in a wooded area where the remains may have been consumed by wild animals.