[EL] American elect

Fri Nov 11 19:40:53 PST 2011

http://www.ballot-access.org/2011/11/11/two-california-professors-take-differing-views-of-americans-elect/

The Americans Elect board can't overrule the presidential choice of the voters in the AE presidential primary, if the presidential candidate and the vice-presidential candidate are of opposite major parties.  Rick Hasen did not say they could overrule, in his original Politico piece.  But when he summarized what he said a few days later, he used a short-hand that made it seem that they can.

Richard Winger
415-922-9779
PO Box 470296, San Francisco Ca 94147

--- On Fri, 11/11/11, Paul Lehto <lehto.paul at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Paul Lehto <lehto.paul at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [EL] American elect
To: "Larry Levine" <larrylevine at earthlink.net>
Cc: "law-election at UCI.EDU" <law-election at uci.edu>, "Smith, Brad" <BSmith at law.capital.edu>
Date: Friday, November 11, 2011, 7:32 PM

If you combine secrecy/non-transparency like AE has, with a Pollyanna attitude that says outlandish conspiracies are laughable (which they are) the paradox is that outlandish conspiracies have a free hand to flourish, because all the sensible people will laugh at the allegations, and the secrecy/non-transparency will hide things from being plain-as-day.

Conspiracies flourish under secrecy.  They seek it out.  Conspiracy is one of the most commonly proven criminal charges in court, not an improbable oddity.  All "conspiracies" constitute are agreements to do something illegal or (outside law) to do something socially undesirable.  

The same spirit that laughs off the risks of secrecy with its facilitation of conspiracy that goes with it, would laugh every time US fighter jets were scrambled because there MIGHT have been a Soviet or other attack, but really it was a flock of birds on the radar - or whatever.... 

If people really care about something, and if they think it through, they will act to overprotect somewhat.  Sentinels of democracy, so to speak, people who want to protect democracy, will err on the side of safety like a sentinel.  Just get up off their butts and check out the noise they heard, even if they're pretty sure it was just a cat or dog.

I understand, fully, the humor behind outlandish combinations of folks imagined as a conspiracy - part of humor is surprise and the unexpected.

But when it comes to AE Rick Hasen's points are exactly correct.  If the Board of Directors can overrule the voters, that alone makes it undemocratic.  Then add the secret, non-transparent vote counts and secret donors, and you have the conditions for problems including but not limited to conspiracy, and they have triply redundant facilitation:  the secrecy alone is sufficiently fatal, add the directors over-ruling the voters and that alone is also fatal.  How many deaths must respect for democracy die before its election-law defenders ALL see the problem?

Paul Lehto, J.D.

On Fri, Nov 11, 2011 at 5:31 PM, Larry Levine <larrylevine at earthlink.net> wrote:

I am reminded here of the comment I made a few minutes ago about reforms and
reformers who become wedded to the notion that they are about to save the
world only to find out later that the world doesn't really want to be saved.
This whole American Elect thing may be the wackiest one yet. It adds up, in
my estimation, to "I don't like the way things are now so I'm going to come
up with something that pushes the boundaries of the law and turns the
electoral process on its head no matter what the outcome." I start with an
innate distrust of anyone who thinks they know better than everyone else.
And listening to the advocates of AE, that's what I am feeling. One thing is
certain: it will help either the Dems, the Reps, or neither. Oh, yeah,
there's another certainty - some people will be attracted to it because they
just love sticking sticks in the spokes. If it wasn't this it would be
something else.
Larry

-----Original Message-----
From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu
[mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Bev
Harris
Sent: Friday, November 11, 2011 11:04 AM
To: Smith, Brad
Cc: law-election at UCI.EDU

Subject: Re: [EL] American elect

I've recently read that Americans are more concerned about protecting their
hubcaps than protecting their vote. Perhaps that goes for election attorneys
as well.

While election lawyers on this list are ridiculing critics of
AmericanSelect.org, you ignore the point Rick Hasen made about the complete
lack of transparency and questionable (read: "impossible") security problems
of its Internet voting scheme.

A quick aside to Rick Hasen - I was glad to see your article, but the issue
is not "security", it's "transparency". You can never secure a computer
against its own administrator, so that's actually a moot point. The
insoluble problem of Internet voting is that it can never be publicly
authenticated. It conceals who voted, chain of custody of the votes, and the
count from the public, rendering the election nonpublic and controllable by
whoever controls the server.

Whether Peter Ackerman is well intentioned or not is irrelevant. If guessing
about people's intentions was relevant, banks could just stop videotaping
teller transactions. Instead, they could just focus on hiring employees who
are "well intentioned."

Regardless of whether Peter Ackerman is well intentioned, he appears to be
scarily clueless about how Internet voting actually works. He's not the only
one -- I met with Senator Mike Gravel, who is pushing for direct democracy
using Internet voting.

Also at this meeting was M.I.T. computer security expert Ron Rivest. Rivest
explained to Gravel that Internet voting cannot be secured. In a side
conversation with me, Rivest also admitted that it is not and never will be
possible to secure a computerized voting system from its own administrator.

I'm sure that ridiculing imaginary conspiracy theories is more fun than
discussing how the mechanism used by AmericanSelect to control the choosing
process actually alters public ability to self-govern.

Bev Harris
Founder - Black Box Voting
http://www.blackboxvoting.org

* * * * *

Government is the servant of the people, and not the master of them. The
people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right
to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them
to know. We insist on remaining informed so that we may retain control over
the instruments of government we have created.

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Paul R Lehto, J.D.
P.O. Box 1 
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