Just Because You're Paranoid . . .

"Conspiracy Theories" Miss the Point

TallahasseJoe

"Just because you're parnoid don't mean they're not after you." This lyric from the rock band Nirvana sums up my feeling about the current swirl of vote fraud allegations arising from the 2004 presidential elections, promoted largely on left liberal blogs and mostly ignored by the mainstream press.

PREVENT FRAUD - DON'T WAIT FOR PROOF OF IT

Many of the accusations and "conspiracy theories" being bandied about may turn out to be false. There may not be evidence to support the claim that John Kerry should have won the election. But that doesn't mean we have a reliable, fraud-proof voting system. And it doesn't mean we should stop fighting for one.

Black Box Voting (blackboxvoting.org) has pointed out the ease with which fraud can be perpetrated with the electronic voting systems currently used in the swing states Ohio and Florida as well as many other states. Bev Harris, the organization's Executive Director, details the stunning flaws in these systems in her book, Black Box Voting, which can be read for free online.

The Founding Fathers understood that "power corrupts". They didn't write the Constitution with the premise that leaders can basically be trusted and we should wait around until there is proof of wrongdoing to question a leader's authority. Instead, the Founding Fathers built a clever system of checks and balances to prevent wrongdoing from happening in the first place. It wasn't perfect, but it was better than monarchy.

We should apply the same principle of checks and balances to our voting systems. Electronic voting may be appropriate - but it should come with a paper trail as a check against electronic fraud. And the computer programs involved should use open source code so that any programmer can check it for flaws.

Similarly, if we are going to have partisan elections officials, they should be kept in check by independent observers at every stage of the voting and vote-counting process.

"SMOKING GUN" MAY BE RED HERRING

What strategy should activists use to pursue electoral reforms? One tactic is to look for shocking evidence of fraud in the 2004 election - a "smoking gun" that will convince America of the need for reform. This might work - but it might backfire big time.

If activists think they've found a smoking gun and it turns out to be a hoax, the reform movement could be discredited. And unsubstantiated accusations against Republican officials by left liberal activists make electoral reform look like a "sour grapes" issue touted by "conspiracy theorists". Activists should follow the lead of Black Box Voting and portray electoral reform as the non-partisan issue it truly is.

The current allegations range from old-fashioned voter intimidation at the polls to newfangled electronic voting fraud.

Outstanding among recent "conspiracy theories" is the accusation made by computer programmer Clinton Curtis against U.S. Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL) that Mr. Feeney asked Mr. Curtis to write software to facilitate vote fraud and "control the vote in South Florida".

Mr. Curtis has made his allegations in a detailed sworn affidavit and has repeated them in testimony before a forum held in Columbus Ohio by the Democrats of the House Judiciary Committee. Brad Blog, the news and opinion web site which broke the Curtis-Feeney story, has posted a video of part of Mr. Curtis' testimony.

At this point it seems to be a matter of Mr. Curtis' word against Mr. Feeney's. If the charges are true, Mr. Curtis deserves a great deal of credit for his courage. If the charges are false, of course, it is Mr. Feeney who deserves our sympathy.

My purpose here is not to evaluate the truth of Mr. Curtis' claims. My purpose is to point out that the truth of Mr. Curtis' claims is irrelevant to the electoral reform movement. Even if Mr. Curtis' claims, and others like them, are completely false, the fact remains that fraud like the kind Mr. Curtis describes could happen. And we can't take that kind of chance with our democracy.

Electoral reform advocates should distance themselves from allegations such as Mr. Curtis', at least until there is airtight evidence that the allegations are true. Otherwise, advocates risk being discredited as "the boy who cried wolf" when the allegations are not supported.

In one way, the issue of voting fraud is just like the issue of terrorism. We know we can't afford to wait around until terrorists attack and then address the issue. We have to do everything possible to prevent the attacks from happening in the first place.

Preventing voting fraud is just as important. In both cases, it is our very democracy that is at stake.

Libertarian Badnarik Hints Fraud May Have Swung Election

Exit Polls Pointed to Kerry

The Libertarian Party's 2004 presidential candidate, Micheal Badnarik, has hinted in a post on the party's web site that Sen. John Kerry(D-MA) may have been the legitimate victor in the election. Libertarians are not typically allied with Democrats or left liberals. Though socially liberal, Mr. Badnarik and his party are fiscally ultra-conservative and strongly oppose gun control.

According to Mr. Badnarik, "The phenomenon that is most damaging, in my point of view, is that for 20 years now, the media have been doing exit polls and using that information to project who was going to win that election," he said.

"And because people leaving the polling places are typically very candid, the exit polls have historically been within 1 percent of the actual vote totals.

"Now, all of a sudden in this election, the exit polls and the vote totals differ by a significant amount -- and the talking heads on television are looking at it and wondering why the exit polls were wrong in this election. From what I can see, there's no reason to believe the exit polls were wrong, and fairly good reasons to believe that it was the election process that was faulty."

Mr. Badnarik and David Cobb, the 2004 presidential candidate for the left liberal Green Party have sought a recount of the Ohio vote.

Programmer Claims He Made Vote-Fraud Software at House Member's Request

Electronic Vote Fraud Scheme Alleged

TallahasseeJoe

Computer programmer Clinton Curtis has claimed in a sworn affidavit that in fall of 2000, Tom Feeney, then corporate counsel and lobbyist to Yang Enterprises, Inc. and now the U.S. Representative from Florida's 24th district, asked Mr. Curtis to write computer software that would facilitate vote fraud with electronic voting systems, according to a reports by Brad Blog.

Mr. Curtis' detailed affidavit recounts a tale of intrigue that includes Chinese espionage and one man's violent death - ruled a suicide - with hints of foul play.

The web site of Yang Enterprises, Inc. calls Mr. Curtis' claims "%100 false" and promises that an "official statement" is forthcoming.

Mr. Curtis' allegations seem to have eluded mainstream media coverage, as searches today of the online archives of The New York Times, Washington Post, Tallahassee Democrat, and Miami Herald failed to reveal any relevant articles.

The Right is Right - About Some Things

The Future of the Left

TallahasseeJoe

The Left is going through an identity crisis right now.

This is nothing new. The Left (like the Right) has gone through several stages. The original Left was actually a bunch of capitalists who wanted to be free from the power of monarchs and feudal lords (the original Right). Then these capitalists became the Right.

The next phase of the Left was old fashioned socialism - the idea that "the people" or "the proletariat" should control all or at least most of society's productive resources - thus eliminating "exploitation" by capitalists.

The problem with this is that "the people" translates into "government" (often, ironically, a dictatorship) and governments are terribly inefficient at allocating resources compared to the market. So socialists pretty much faded into history. (The "democratic socialists" of Europe are completely different and don't usually advocate state ownership of productive resources.)

The next phase of the Left was left liberalism. This is where the American Left is now, and where it has been since the New Deal. The basic idea of left liberalism is a free market with some major exceptions.

You get to do what you want with your land until - oops, there's an endangered species on it. You just lost your property rights.

You get to sell whatever kind of guns you want until - oops, somebody got killed by one. You just became liable after the fact.

You get to charge whatever you want for medical services until - oops, somebody shows up with an emergency and can't pay - you have to take care of them for free.

My point is that left liberalism addresses real problems - but it does so without enough respect for individual rights and incentive structures.


WHAT'S NEXT FOR THE LEFT?

The next phase of the Left (I hope) will be a Left that continues to acknowledge a proper role for government in funding education, in guaranteeing basic health care, and in protecting the environment, among other areas. However, this Left will respect individual rights (including property rights), free markets, and incentive structures.

If private property is to be used for a public purpose (such as environmental protection), the owners will have to agree and receive compensation.

If certain basic services (such as medical care) are to be universally available, this will be explicitly paid for with tax dollars rather than implicitly imposed through unfunded mandates.

If private firms are to be held responsible for the consequences of their products, this will be made explicit in advance through legislation, not determined after the fact by the whim of a jury.

The Right has correctly pointed out major problems in left liberal philosophy. For too long, the Left has had deaf ears to these legitimate criticisms. However, I do not believe the Right has offered a viable alternative so far.

The Left has a lot of work to do to offer its own compelling and unifying vision of American society. It's not good enough for Democratic leaders to appeal to their traditional constituencies. Democratic leaders must reach out to new constituencies - not by compromising the party's principles but by finding more effective and persuasive ways of implementing those principles.

With all these changes, it might seem that "Right" and "Left" are merely arbitrary labels without common themes to define each of them. I do not think that is quite correct.

The Left has always been concerned with ameliorating the evils of arbitrary or over-concentrated power, whether in the form of hereditary elites, racial hierarchy, or class stratification. The Right, on the other hand, has always been concerned with preserving tradition and resisting excessive change.

The Left and the Right each has a valuable role to play - though in a sense, it is the Left that must always lead society into the future.

Voting Reforms Little Help to Poor: MIT Study

Easy Voting No Easy Answer

TallahasseeJoe

Electoral reforms enacted over the past thirty years to make voting easier have unexpectedly reinforced biases in favor or the well-educated and well-off, a new study suggests. The author urges electoral reformers to shift focus from institutional changes to encouraging political engagement.

The 2004 study, conducted by Adam J. Berinsky of the Massachussets Institute of Technology (MIT), was published in the journal American Politics Research, Vol. 31, No. 10.

Reform advocacy groups like Common Cause note that less advantaged citizens are less likely to vote, and often argue that this reflects the "direct costs" of voting - the burden of actually getting to the polls amid the responsibilities of jobs and childcare.

Voting by mail, early voting, and easy access to absentee ballots have all been introduced to make voting easier. These reforms were widely expected to increase voter turnout, to make the electorate more representative of the general population, and to benefit Democratic candidates over their Republican rivals.

But the MIT study, "The Perverse Effects of Electoral Reform in the United States" claims that these reforms "may have slightly increased turnout" but have ironically increased the socioeconomic biases of the electorate. Dr. Berinsky bases his conclusions on a review of several empirical studies that examined voter turnout before and after the introduction of reforms.

Dr. Berinsky points out that the "direct costs" of getting to the polls are only half the story.

The deeper problem is that higher-income and better-educated voters tend to be more informed about and engaged in politics, an important part of why they are more likely to vote. It turns out that even these more privileged voters often miss an election - say, because they are sick or unexpectedly out of town on Election Day. But according to Dr. Berinsky, reforms like early voting make this group of voters less likely to miss elections for such superficial reasons.

Less privileged citizens, on the other hand, tend to be less interested in politics to begin with. Thus they may never vote at all - and the reforms do little to overcome their lack of interest.

"The true costs of participation lie not just in the expression of opinion but in the formation of political opinions . . . Certainly, making the act of participation as simple as possible is a worthy goal," Dr. Berinsky concludes, "but institutional reforms have taken us as far as they can toward a democratic electorate. . . we must focus reform efforts on increasing the engagement of the electorate with the political world . . ."