[North-NV-Greens] Fwd: [usgp-dx] Today's Carter Baker Hearing

Fri Jun 17 00:26:02 PDT 2005

>
>
>Carter Baker Hearing
>June 16, 2005
>
>My Notes: Brent McMillan.
>
>At the gentle nudging of our former Presidential Candidate, David Cobb I
>attended the meeting with Dr. Robert Pastor, executive director of the
>Commission on Federal Election Reform today. 
>
>It was held in the Conference Room at Common Cause in Washington D.C.
>and billed as a Common Cause Meeting with Advocacy Groups.
>
>Those in Attendance and/or listed as Participants in the list of
>Attendees:
>
>Chellie Pengree, President, Common Cause
>Dr. Robert Pastor, Executive Director, Commission on Federal Election
>Reform
>Lillie Coney, Associate Director, Electronic Privacy Information Center
>Justin Levitt, Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law
>Warran Stewart, Director of Legislative Issues and Policy, VoteTrust USA
>Ryan O'Donnell, Communications Director, FairVote
>Susanna Gomez, Assistant Director for Civil Rights, AFL-CIO
>Kevin Zeese, Co-Director, TrueVote Maryland
>Brent McMillan, Political Director, Green Party of the United States
>Tanya Clay, Deputy Director of Public Policy, People for the American
>Way
>Alaina Beverly, Assistant Counsel, NAACP Legal Defense and Education
>Fund
>Rob Richie, Executive Director, FairVote
>Steve Carbo, Director, Democracy Program, DEMOS
>Matt Zimmerman, Staff Attorney, Electronic Frontier Foundation
>Jonah Goldman, Staff Attorney, Lawyer's Committee on Civil Rights Under
>Law
>Rob Randhava, Policy Analyst, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights
>Bobbie Bringar, Senior Political Advisor, Verified Voting
>
>Agenda:
>
>1:00-1:10 PM	Welcome by Chellie Pingree, President, Common Cause
>
>1:10-1:15 PM Overview of Commission by Dr. Robert Pastor, Executive
>Director, Commission on Federal Election Reform
>
>1:15-2:00 PM	Brief Statements by Each Group
>
>2:00-2:30 PM	Q&A
>
>2:30-3:00 PM	Group Discussion
>
>Chellie Pingree was late and spoke after Dr. Pastor.
>
>Dr. Pastor spoke about his disappointment with the actual implementation
>of HAVA. He said that by 2004 they had hoped to have Provisional
>Balloting in Place and ID implementation.  Both have failed miserably.
>We really don't know how provisional balloting went.  There were 1.9
>million.  He spoke about trying to get International Elections
>inspectors into the US.  Both Virginia and Maryland would not allow
>unprovisional access. They would only allow inspectors into two selected
>counties.  They even denied Colin Powel unprovisional access and said
>that it was up to the counties.  They  indicated that, "that was the
>American Way."  In a comparison between the U.S./Canada and Mexico on 8
>points, the U.S. now rates last in free and fair elections.
>
>The U.S. has a long way to go before it catches up with Mexico.
>
>In a recent meeting between congress and members of the commission only
>one congressman showed up, Rush Holt. It is clear that congress has no
>interest in election reform.  (Later, Dr. Pastor confided in me that he
>had met with the leaders of the Republican and Democrat Parties and that
>they have absolutely no interest in reforming our election system.)
>
>Next up was Lillie Coney from epic.org.  She is very concerned about the
>implementation of a National Voter ID card and the possible miss-use of
>the information.  She cited as examples how Social Security #'s and
>Driver's License #'s are now used for purposes they were never intended
>for.  This will only create another opportunity for abuse.
>She talked about two important issues. 
>1) Be careful how you ID voters.
>2) Our government, unlike European governments has no Federal Privacy
>Department.
>
>After him was I believe, Warran Stewart from VoteTrust USA.  He talked
>about the fact that DRE's were sold as being:
>1) More Accurate
>2) Better at dealing with overvotes and undervotes.  New Mexico, which
>has DRE's led the country last year in undervotes.
>3) Cheaper
>
>They failed on all of these categories
>
>
>I followed Kevin.  I started by saying that though I had not been
>invited I was there to crash the party.  (Kevin got a chuckle out of
>that.) I mentioned that Theresa Amato and I had compared notes after the
>Ohio and New Hampshire recounts.  We both agreed that the types of
>election fraud that were uncovered could be classed into two categories.
>1) Old School Thugishness - The prime example being the deliberate
>shorting of voting machines to precincts that the elections officials
>did not like the possible way that they would vote, the two main groups
>being targeted, people of color and college students.
>2) Hi Tech voter fraud - I spoke about the election official in Ohio who
>came forward to say that she had caught a representative from the voting
>machine company setting a machine that was about to be tested.  Also,
>about  a week after she had filed an affidavit to this affect she was
>runoff the road by a dark blue suv with tinted windows plated in
>Maryland.
>
>The person after that spoke about Election Day Registration.  Six states
>currently have it and it works fine.  How come the other states don't?
>He spoke about how the Voter ID Card was a Remedy in search of a
>Problem.
>
>Next up was the representative from the NAACP, Alaina Beverly.  She said
>that the NAACP is focusing on two things:
>1) The accuracy of Registration
>2) Allocation of Resources - ex. the deliberate shorting of voting
>machines to precincts of color.
>
>Rob Ritchie talked about the insular nature of Elections officials.
>Polling place plans and Ballot Design are made in secret.  There is a
>lack of review of the planning process.  He gave as an example the
>recent election in San Francisco.  The Center for Voting and Democracy
>had a strong interest in the outcome of the recent San Francisco
>election since it is now the largest municipality in the country to
>utilize IRV.  They offered to review the ballot ahead of time.  It turns
>out that the election commission there had designed a butterfly ballot
>not unlike that use in Florida in 2000.  The elections commission
>accepted their offer of the Center to help with the design of the ballot
>and what the voters saw was a much improved ballot design from what it
>might have been.
>
>Rob also talked about the Citizens Assembly in British Columbia.
>
>
>
>Dr. Pastor asked about what people thought was the next generation of
>Election Reform Issues.
>
>Dr. Pastor made a reference to the 6th District Court of Appeals
>decision.  What do you do about it?  (once again I have homework to do.)
>
>I talked about the lack of enforcement of the 14th amendment and how it
>has been misused to represent the interests of Corporations.  How what
>we are talking about today is symptoms whereas going after the lack of
>will of government to enforce the 14th amendment is to go after the
>cause.  This also reinforced comments that Kevin made earlier about the
>undue influence of Corporations in our elections system.  I challenged
>the Right to Vote act put forward by Jesse Jackson Jr. through the
>Congressional Black Caucus because buried in that is a provision all but
>guaranteeing Winner take all Elections.  Rob Richie said that he had
>been working with Jesse on this and affirmed that Rep. Jackson is
>committed to supporting IRV.  I asked for more info from Rob on this and
>mentioned that we will be discussing this at our Annual National Meeting
>in Tulsa.  I brought up Asa Gorden's work on this thru the Douglas
>Institute for Government.
>
>I also talked about how the War on Drugs is used as a tool to
>disenfranchise a community from voting, how we needed to abolish the
>provisions which stop those who have been convicted of a felony from
>voting ...that this would take away some of the motivation by those in
>power to use the War on Drugs in this way. (There were a lot of nodding
>of heads by those present in the meeting.)
>
>Lillie Coney talked about the development of Fair Information Practices.
>Dr. Pastor mentioned that in many European countries they have ombudson.
>
>I also spoke with Dr. Pastor for some time afterwards. He said that of
>all the elections officials that he had met around the world by far the
>most uncooperative are in the U.S.  There is no close second.
>
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-- 
Paul Etxeberri

"Forests precede civilizations and deserts follow"   ---Chateaubriand