[EL] Case in point: Secret signatures and secret ballots

[Bev Harris]

The news story excerpted below describes a member of the public, a college
student, who sought to authenticate the accounting on petitions.

" Nees ...  delved into the Byzantine and complicated world of petition
signatures and found reams of signatures that he says appeared to be written in
the same handwriting, some apparently copied from previous petitions."

The county attorney is now investigating.

This is an accounting issue, not a privacy issue. The petition signers need to
be publicly disclosed because that's the only way the public can authenticate a
petition.

If you use a hidden accounting system controlled by the government(ie, the
secretary of state and persons he chooses will examine the signatures and tell
us the result, without any way for us to authenticate) you alter the structural
framework of the democratic system, allowing the government to choose itself
(in the case of a petition for a candidate) and to choose the rules for its own
governance (in the case of policy petitions).



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.

Black Box Voting is a nonpartisan, nonprofit 501c(3) elections watchdog group
funded entirely by citizen donations.
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/donate.html
Black Box Voting
330 SW 43rd St Suite K
PMB 547
Renton WA 98057


----------------------------------------------------------------
This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.