The Baker/Carter election reform report

The report is a sham, of course. The right pressed for its agenda, which became the primary action item -- and the only recommendation likely to be implemented: Photo ID cards for voters. This idea was wafted aloft by a series of GOP canards and pushed by such front groups as the notorious ACVR.

Congressmen John Conyers and John Lewis are mounting an aggressive campaign against this measure, which will right no wrongs but which will discriminate against minorities and the poor.

The nationwide voter ID requirement endorsed by the Carter/Baker Commission would inevitably disenfranchise minority voters and the most vulnerable among us -- those who live in poverty and the elderly. As a whole, the national ID requirement would place steep new hurdles in place for more than ten percent of voters, who currently do not have a photo identification card but are otherwise eligible to vote.

Millions of people simply have no need of a driver's license. Many of the impoverished are afraid to request one -- for one thing, they're afraid of making personal information available to creditors and the law.

If you're among those who snarl "Yeah? So what?", I would remind you that at one time, right-wingers -- to their credit -- decried the very concept of a national ID card. (Any such proposal used to cause the rightists to mutter dark warnings about "the mark of the Beast." I kind of miss those days.) In every recent election, GOP activists have sent out deceptive flyers which attempt to convince the poor and the black that they cannot vote if they have any unpaid rent or traffic tickets. The current scheme is simply an extension of that vile tactic.

That said, the commission does offer some good ideas. According to the Washington Post, they've recommended voting machine paper trails and "impartial administration" of elections. I presume "impartial" means no more Harrises or Blackwells.

But even the better aspects of this commission's work are far from ideal. What need of paper trails at the voting booth if the central tabulators remain hackable? Paper ballots are counted only in case of a recount. As long as the central tabulator keeps the margin of victory wide enough to avoid a mandated recount, chicanery will go undetected.

Yes, a candidate can request a recount -- but that will always be a rare occurrence, due to the expense involved. And if such a request occurs, the recount can be rigged via any number of mechanisms, such as cherry-picking the "randomly-chosen" precincts, as occurred in Ohio in 2004. As you may recall, we also saw at least one example of illicit access to the paper ballots. Old-fashioned ballot stuffing has actually become easier in recent times.

The entire tabulation system must be scrapped. Contracts must be given only to firms who agree not to hide behind the "proprietary information" curtain when inquirers ask just how the system works. And those firms must be run by people who actually believe in the concept of democracy -- a stipulation which would rule out Mr. Ahmanson, funder of Dominionist Christianity.

Most of all, we need international observers.

Unfortunately, the few international observers who caught a glimpse of our democracy in action in 2004 couldn't get their minds past the idea that we have no national election authority. Their attitude seems to be: "The rules change from state to state? That's too weird for us...!" We have to change either their attitude or our rules, and the former is sure to have more flexibility than the latter. Above all, we need more impartial eyes, checking every step of the process.

Shame on Jimmy Carter for lending his good name to this scam.

For more -- much more -- check out the reactions offered by the Brad blog, the League of Women Voters, and the ACLU.

By the way, the good folks at Count Paper Votes (who run a site chock-full of good info, with a special emphasis on coin-gates link to vote fraud) have put together a lengthy (albeit sloppily-worded)response to the Carter/Baker report. Unfortuantely, I can't find it on their site! However, you can read it in this Democratic Underground thread. (Scroll down a bit.)

A few excerpts:

Over 70% of the 150 US based citizen election reform groups vehemently disagree with a conclusion that touchscreen or optical scan capturing and counting our votes will ever result in honest elections or that privatized vendor control will produce anything other than rigged elections. The philosophy and spirit of the Baker-Carter Commision is that the system while broken can be fixed. Contrarily, citizen opinion is that we need to wipe the slate clean and design a uniform, nationwide, hand counted paper ballots, citizen counted on election night (not later with audits) election system.

More:

Citizen groups tried to warn this panel for months and were ignored along with providing volumes of emails and CDs provided containing very real and powerful trench data from the 2004 election. This data was collected by citizens such as CPB Count Paper Ballots, the Houston Citizen Hearing, and earlier outlined in detail by the John Conyers report were largely ignored by the report. Citizen groups were not even references...

By contrast, ACVR was allowed to present data, even though they were a brand-new group run out of a Texas post-office box by staunch Bushmen.