Finding Ulysses

Bo Lipari addressed a group of us at the Fire Hall last night. He has an amazing amount of energy and a complete grasp of the complex issues surrounding voting integrity. There’s good news and bad news. I’ll give you the bad news first.

NY State is still being threatened by the Department of Justice. We accepted 50 million to upgrade our equipment according to the Help America Vote Act. The DOJ might sue and take their money back (chump change, right?) The decision on which kinds of machines to buy, is currently in the hands of County Election Commissioners, the majority of which favor Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines. Bo refers to this technology as a failed experiment. We are also being threatened by legislation at the federal level which would attempt to take some of the choices away from the states and give it to the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) The commissioners are appointed by the president.

The good news is that Bo’s group, New Yorkers for Verified Voting, has had considerable success in Albany in getting legislators, and New York State Board of Elections Commissioners, to seriously consider the vastly superior system – Paper Ballots with Optical Scanners (PBOS). If he can convince the Commissioners not to certify the DRE’s then when the County Commissioners finally are allowed to pick machines, they will be limited to the PBOS systems.

More good news – There is a chance, that we might convince the powers that be in Albany, to build their own voting machines from off the shelf parts, and have state employees write the code. Bo said that this was done by the state of Oklahoma 14 years ago, and worked well there.

I don’t understand why we allow our elections to be run on equipment purchased from, and maintained by, and secret code owned by private corporations. Private corporations always have, as there primary motivation, profit. In fact, a corporate manager can be sued or fired for ignoring his fiduciary responsibilities to maximize shareholder profit. Profit should not enter into decisions affecting the running of our elections.

If you missed the talk last night you can learn more at NYVV.org You can sign up to get email updates, and most importantly you can contribute inorder to keep Bo going to Albany and fighting for our rights.