I work with Democrats Abroad, trying to get people registered and signed up to vote, get them their absentee ballots, and get them active.

One of the MOST pernicious attitudes is the one you describe in your post, and it is one that is widespread.

Combatting it is exhausting, and the steady stream of defeatist, nihilisic, neo-anarchistic propaganda about voting machines, stolen votes, and the non-relevance of peoples' votes is never-ending and constantly stymying our efforts.

Our efforts, by the way, can be found here:

http://www.votefromabroad.org/

Please spread it around.

My take on the issue is this:

Regardless of whether there is outright fraud, infrastructural slop resulting in lost votes, holes in the system exploited by nefarious tricksters, or suppression efforts...all of which could be in existence...the ONLY solution absent an outright popular uprising is to SIGN UP MORE PEOPLE TO VOTE!

Get them excited, get them active, get them registered...overwhelm the system one way or another.

We cannot change it until and unless we have the reins, and we cannot get the reins unless we win elections.

Good for you, Cos. I agree.

I'm working very hard for the Deval Patrick campaign for Governor of Massachusetts. One of the things that appeals to me about his candidacy is his call to bring people back into the process, or to encourage them to get involved for the first time. Too often, we have been presented with candidates who have no imagination or vision, and people become cynical. We can change this by supporting great candidates like Deval.

Great post.  I am so sick and tired of these self-defeating, conspiratorial, excuses to avoid work.

We need to face reality.  Sure, election fraud exists.  But the vast, vast majority of the time when we lose an election, it's because we simply didn't do what we needed to do to win -- NOT because there's some Diebold executive hiding in the grassy knoll.

We need to get better candidates, we need to frame the issues better, and we need to get more people to the polls.   Whining about Diebold doesn't help with any of these things.

Good piece.

And I agree, though it's possible that we may already be too late.

So if we have another exit poll fiasco this time around . . . well, then what? Will you guys finally get on the stolen election bandwagon? How do we repair the system when we cannot gain access to it?

Here's my prediction: The Republicans will miraculously maintain their advantage in the House and the Senate, despite every poll in the world saying otherwise; and Democrats will continue to wring their hands and wonder what they've done to turn off the electorate. The rest of us will look at the polls and the results and yell, "bullshit," while the news media constructs a narrative about how "out of touch the Democrats have become," when the can't even win an election against the most unpopular president in living memory.

And the GOP cypto-fascists will made it through yet another election cycle without anyone challenging their criminal activity, thereby further consolidating their grip over the mechanisms of democracy.

Hope I'm wrong. Please, god, let me be wrong.

I'm working on my wife's local campaign in Colorado House District 21 and I know she will work for paper trail voting. But I really recommend Ken Gordon the Sect of State candidate in Colorado. He has deferred rerunning for the Colorado State Senate (he was President of the Senate) for the sole reason that he believes Colorado could be a swing state in the 2008 election and he wants to assure an honest vote count.

Thank you, Cos, for your post.  In the wake of Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004, it is clear that we must stand up and fight back.  That is why I am running for Massachusetts Secretary of State.

Following the November 2004 election, I went to Ohio and led the fight in the federal courts for a full recount of the presidential vote in that state.  I was honored to work with people throughout Ohio and across the country who came together to demand that the promise of democracy be upheld and that the votes be properly counted.  While we won the right to the recount, Ohio election officials -- led by Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell -- ultimately refused to conduct the recount in a manner consistent with basic due process and equal protection guarantees of the US Constitution.

As we approach another national election, we must continue the fight to safeguard the integrity of our electoral process and to protect and preserve the right to vote.  As Massachusetts Secretary of State, I will press for a new Voters' Bill of Rights, ten new proposed guarantees to strengthen our democracy and expand the political process.  First among these is the guarantee that we count every vote.  For the full list, see:

http://www.johnbonifaz.com/votersbillofr ights

Until we have a uniform federal system (which I favor, along with a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to vote), it is up to secretaries of state to set the standard for how we conduct our elections.  As Massachusetts Secretary of State, I will build and lead a coalition of secretaries of state from around the country committed to progressive electoral reform and to returning voters to power.

Join me in this campaign to reclaim our democracy.

Oregon is a very blue  state and we vote by mail.  I don't know if that  makes the diffenece but it sure would make things a lot easier and more honest if the rest of the country tried our way.  I agree we have to get the vote out and get it counted. There is no reason why we can't do both.  The alternative  is to just let the corporations appoint the people they want to regulate them, like they do  now. Vote and make it count!, should be our motto.  

I  am from Broward County, a couple miles south of Ft. Lauderdale. My queasy feeling started in 2000 when I was trying to do my civic duty volunteering to recount the ballots.  What I am trying to say is that my queasy feeling hasn't gone away in six years. And fwiw, I have voted D in every election since 1972 when I voted for George McGovern. I will continue to do so, so my parents won't turn over in their graves.

The problem that I see is that many people focus on the one or two fanatics and write about their fanaticism. For those who cast doubt on the efforts  of good Americans who want to ensure fair and verifiable voting for all eligible voters, I would ask them to rethink whether or not public criticism is warranted.  A few nuts on the above mentioned web sites have nothing to do with the groups I work with. Furthermore, more and more reputable individuals are speaking out.

Let us not forget that there is also the pressing issue of the disenfranchisement of African Americans in Florida and elsewhere. Please help.

Great post.  I am so sick and tired of these self-defeating, conspiratorial, excuses to avoid work.

Precisely so. Never forget, that in 1985 Marcos stole the election and he still lost.

Winning elections is hard tedious work. It is very difficult to get people to make the connection between that tedious work and the way their country is governed.

One of the best things you can do, other than campaign, is to volunteer to be an elections officer. Also, if you live in Virginia, you can get active in Virginia Verified Voting.

Anyone interested in the bipartisan aspect of this should look at the Colorado REPUBLICAN assembly in Colorado Springs last month. They were delayed 4 hours in counting votes for the Governor's race - why? Because one of their candidates refused to allow electronic voting without a paper trail in their ASSEMBLY. In the middle of Fort Dobson our case was made. This could use a little air time.

I work as a law clerk for our County Clerk, who runs the elections of the largest county in Utah.  

They are using the Diebold TSX machines, which have a paper backup to the memory stick, that is spooled into a secure spot on the machine.  The machines are  not networked to anything, and the meta counters are not networked and are in a secure location.  

From the presentation the Clerk's office gave me (and the responses to my questions) I am satisfied that nothing could happen to the results.

State law won't let us turn them over to the blackbox voting people, and mandates which kind of machines we get.  There is also a 6th circuit case out there that says not having the same verifiable  error-free technology statewide violates HAVA and the 14th amendment (Stewart v. Blackwell)

Retire the tin hats and list to cos.

As I see it, the fraudsters have two choices.

They can get out there and vote no matter what, or they can stay home. If it turns out they're right, then it's possible their vote won't count. If they stay home, they'll never know because their vote definitely won't count.

They can work their asses off pushing their candidates and getting their voters to the polls, or they can just sit around and blog about how the evil MSM is letting democracy be destroyed. If they're right, there's a possibility they won't make a difference. But if they stay home, then they guarantee they won't make a difference.

They can volunteer to observe at the polls or try to become an election supervisor, or they can scream and shout and yell that we're all helpless in the face of the Diebold conspiracy. If they choose the former, they can do their part to be sure that every vote counts and collect hard evidence of any fraud that takes place. If the choose the later, they'll just lose their voice.

I know how I'll be spending my time this fall.

If you care about something, act like you care. Get off your ass and off your keyboard and DO something.

I work with the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition, a non-partisan group dedicated to election reform. The county votes on DREs and there are steps you can take to monitor elections by observing how polls are closed and determining what is going on.
http://www.reformcoalition.org/index.htm l The coalition is very active at the local, state and national level.

Many non-partisan groups have sprung up over the last few years and I would suggest that you see if there is one in your area. This issue is too important to ignore or to be defeatist about.

you would dispense with a lot of that type of attitude if we could see more posts on this subject that weren't centered around criticism.

I happen to agree, but rather then waste more air on the "fraduster"/doomsayer criticism, why not just get to work?

ok, now having criticized the criticism, I am eagerly, eagerly looking forward to this series.

BTW, I applaud Matt and Chris for doing this so very, very important work.

This is totally the place to do it.

-C.

You selectively misrepresent the objection to your stance, so you can easily find cynicism in our corner rather than capitulation in your own.

At what point do we stop hopping from one corrupted elected to the next, vowing to stop this nonsense the next time around?

At what point to we question the legitimacy of the current government?

By your lights, no matter how corrupted the system, we should always accept its processes as legitimate.

Shout out to Cos!
Great to see you working on this and for Bonifaz. (And a shout out to Alice Marshall of VAVV.org too... and all the others who keep on working on election integrity.)

A couple of things that sometimes help me in steering the conversation (not stifling it, but steering it in productive directions):

1. For as long as there have been elections, there's been election fraud. Keep voting anyway...

2. Working toward election integrity is not just about this election (whichever one is coming up). It's about ALL elections.

It also helps to keep in mind that while some jurisdictions are up a creek when it comes to their voting system (paperless, no voter-verification, difficult to vote absentee, etc.) others have some choices and flexibility. There are ways to make the best choice of what's available, and even to influence what's available.

One example: try to work with election officials to ensure there are paper ballots in every polling place as an alternative to touchscreens/DREs (direct recording electronic voting machines), as was done in California while waiting for the VVPAT law to kick in -- Kim Alexander of the California Voting Foundation dubbed it the "Paper or plastic?" option. This serves double-duty - if the machines fail to boot up or crash during the day, voting doesn't have to stop. Just make sure they are not "provisional" ballots, because that's a different beast.

Electoral politics is the strategy through which we pursue change in this country.

I strongly disagree. I don't think electoral politics is the only, the best, or even a particularly effective way to achieve change in this country. Electoral politics reflects change far more often than it generates it. It is at the tail end of the change process.

The best way to achieve change is to educate yourself and watchdog the people who are in office, not elect new ones. If you want voting reform, but have not educated yourself on federal and state voting laws, you can vote all day, every day, and you are not likely to achieve much in the way of positive change.  But a good watchdog can hold anyone's feet to the fire.

...incumbent Palm Beach County supervisor of elections Therese LePore was defeated by challenger Arthur Anderson, who campaigned against paperless voting.

Yeah. And last I heard, Anderson had reneged on his promise that, if he were elected, Palm Beach County would not have paperless elections in 2006.  Too "impractical" to switch, he said.  If he has since carried through on his promise, I would surely love to hear about it.

I can write election software.

The right kind of election software.

There is no doubt in my mind.

I can't raise funds to start the company,
and I can't sell election machines (although I am acquaintances with one voting machine salesperson)
but I can program the darn things.