Can someone please explain why Democrats went along with HAVA?

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

The "Help America Vote (Republican) Act"?

Given that the vote was being turned over to private entities? That are pretty much all aligned with Republicans? With no transparency of software, or independent review or oversight of the election process, and in many cases no possibility of recounts?

Why would they have gone along with this, and not fought it or made it much better than it is? :shrug:

Was it carelessness, weakness or something else?

[Gabi Hayes]

1. because it would've passed anyway, then they'd have been painted

as being against election reform?

that's what I thought after wondering the exact same thing you OP

I just read a great blog at Huffington Post on this....I'll see if I can find it, and it deals with this subject: how the dems are messing this up badly, with the PUGS taking the fraud initiative, vis a vis Sequoia, and how they're setting DEMS up for vote fraud!

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

3. What's the point of worrying about how opponents will "paint" you if they

get to count up the votes so they always win? Um, isn't that a more important issue?

[Gabi Hayes]

13. well, yeah, there's that, heh. however...

from what I've read, the dems haven't been, as a party, all that concerned about this issue.....for whatever reason, they chose NOT to fight against the theft in Florida, or to mount any sort of followup to Palast's easily corroborated investigation of Choicepoint's role in that crime

they also CHOSE not to be very well prepared for what they KNEW would be an onslaught against voter turnout/vote count in Ohio.

how does one explain it? I wish I knew

all I know is that it never ceases to amaze me when this party seems to be acting against its own interests, to say nothing of the interests of its putative constituency

the lily livered response of most dems/operatives in almost all situations also never ceases to amaze me, Sen. Kerry's defense of himself today (only two and a half years too late), being an obvious, and very welcome, exception

[napi21]

2. I don't know exactly what they were told before the vote, but

even I would have voted for it after the disaster of 2000! I know I didn't know that the dumb asses who negotiated the deal were going to allow the Company to keep the software proprietary! I didn't know that there would be no way to audit the results!

I guess I can fault the Dems for not asking the right questions up front, but if you think back to 2000/2001, all of us were looking for a way to prevent THAT disaster from ever happening again!

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

4. Don't you think the thing should have been approached with more care,

with review of all the details?

These are NOT small details.

[napi21]

9. Of course, but you and I do that in the business world, Congress

doesn't do that! none of them, on either side, ever look at the details. They're used to someone else doing that trivial stuff. They never do the research on any subject, they get staffers to do that...if we're lucky. If we aren't lucky, the lobbiests do it for them!

Why do they always write laws that are so complex that they do nothing but create court challenges? I don't think any of them ever heard of the Kiss Principle!

KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID!

[morgan2]

5. because they just vote on things that sound good?

Voting machines have always been made by private companies. They were too dense to realize that with computerized voting the company making the machine can transparently manipulate the vote.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

8. It sounds like "carelessness" is the answer then.

[Junkdrawer]

6. It was a clever deception...

After Florida, Dems were sold a bill of goods that "Only rich people get the advanced voting equipment, poor people get punch cards."

Many, many, well meaning Dems and other progressives then pushed for Federal money to get ALL voters the "advanced voting equipment".

That was a master stroke. Contrary to popular belief, Republicans are not dumb.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

7. It sounds like the answer is "carelessness" then. I'm sorry, I find this

difficult to excuse.

All it takes is an evening of brainstorming possible scenarios to see the problems that could arise, especially to the party NOT aligned with the voting machine corporations.

If it weren't for this, we'd only have to worry about the usual sleazy campaigning, vote supression and other dirty tricks, instead of having also to worry about unverifiable wholesale vote theft that we may never know about.

[Junkdrawer]

10. It took A LOT of effort to get groups like Common Cause...

and The League of Women Voters to change their views. Initially, these and other prominent groups pushed for the machines as a way of stopping the disenfranchisement of poor people.

I think they looked at the "Stringent Federal Regulations" nonsense the machine supporters were spouting and didn't look closer to see that the voting machine companies basically certified themselves.

John Conyers was one of the HAVA supporters who now, I'm sure, regrets his position. I'm reminded of a scene from Fahrenheit 911 where Conyers is quoted as saying "Let me tell you very few Bills are actually read by representatives."

[BeFree]

11. It was a masterful plot to make HAVA

Tom Delay was behind the whole thing. Two Dems, Stenny Hoyer and Chris Dodd were sucked in. Not only were all the major voting groups behind HAVA, the Disabled American lobby got in on the act.

Then there were all the local election officials who had been lobbied by the vendors, and with vendor-planted visions of a much easier job via the computer counters, they too pushed HAVA.

All this was backed by the new money HAVA made available: $4 billion. Who was gonna say no to getting a piece of that pie?

[marions ghost]

17. yes

this is how it happened. A real stealth operation. Certain influential groups were targeted and once they were on the bandwagon, then others just fell into line. State election boards were courted heavily by the manufacturers and spent that HAVA boondoggle money with great enthusiasm, among other incentives. Congress railroaded it through, the same way they've railroaded the Rethuglican agenda at every opportunity, while others worked it at state level. Dems were caught with their pants down on this issue. With the exception of a few they gave it lesser priority, and after 2004 with the media denial they knew they couldn't get any immediate traction with it. Not only were they hindered by the Rethug congress but they sensed rightly that the public had a serious case of denial about it. Gotta remember, that was before the Hindenburg started hitting the ropes. Now that it's a more 'popular' issue, Dems are coming around to having to face it. Election integrity--the ugly duckling issue that nobody wants to bother with. Except it's the core of a democracy.

We have to realise that the election system has been corrupt for a long time. It took the e-voting boondoggle to show just how much elections operate outside any form of adequate regulation or recourse in the legal system for criminal activity. It is so commonplace that in some states, people seem to turn a blind eye, viewing election theft as "just what you have to do to get where you need to go...."(if dishonest) or "what you have to overcome" (if honest)--a sad state of affairs.

If you think that statement is too cynical, what about the idea that all Dems have to do to overcome election theft is to pour extra effort into Get Out The Vote. That in itself, is a damning concept. How can this be?--that one party has to perform substantially better than the other party in order to win? And yet, people throw this thought out as though it's just a practical fact of life.
:wtf:????

[SoCalDem]

12. They fell for the ole Briar Patch scheme

We made a "fuss' over Florida '00, so there were the good ole repubes , just waiting to "help" us.

To refuse their "offer" would have been trumpeted by the media as "Dems "say" they want reform, but they voted against election reform"..

get it??

they have this barrel, and our people elbow each other out of the way to have their turn laying across it. :grr:

[ProgressiveEconomist]

14. IMO one important factor was weak representation on the "bipartisan

commissions" set up to write policy recommendations for HAVA.

Because of his soft spot for "states' rights" and "anti-illegal immigration", Jimmy Carter gave away the store, TWICE.

Despite warnings about the political shenanigand Republicans would play with the vote, the Carter-Ford Commission failed to insist on mandatory national standards for statewide elections.

And the 2005 final report of the Carter-Baker Commission even recommended "Voter ID", which would disfranchise at least 11 million, disproportionately Democratic voters, in 2008.

See the DU discussion archived at http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=2184544&mesg_id=2185783

[OzarkDem]

15. Most Dems didn't understand the tech aspect

As someone who actually lobbied Dems at the federal, state and local level, most of them didn't have a good grasp of the technology, if any at all. Same for their staffers.

You might be surprised, but until the last few years, most high ranking elected Dems didn't even know how to send an email. Recall the Dems in the Senate who didn't even realize that GOP'ers were able to access all their files on their network because they hadn't secured it?

So it was very easy to "dupe" them on HAVA. They didn't have the technological skills to understand all the different ways that the system could be corrupted.

[marions ghost]

18. yes

this is an important point. Lack of understanding of the technology made it easy to sell e-voting.

[BurtWorm]

16. Because for some stupid reason, they didn't take Bush v. Gore seriously

enough. Unbefuckinlievable.