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

[Bev Harris]

The government is not the public, and the choosing process -- ultimately,
control over our own government --is not an IRS tax return. Are you seriously
suggesting that the government should be the checker for its own selection?
There is a difference between the government checking a document that the
public can also authenticate and the government being the checker of a document
that the public can never authenticate.

> Review of ballot petitions is hardly the only instance where we rely on a
> government employee to verify the accuracy of a document. Every year,
> millions of Americans file tax returns with the Internal Revenue Service.
> With the exception of income reported on information returns (W-2, 1099,
> etc), the entire system is premised upon an individual taxpayer voluntarily
> reporting any and all income.

IRS tax returns do not control the government. Elections and ballot questions do
exert control. Because our system of government is founded on the concept that
the people have the right to self-governance, control of the choosing process
(elections) can never be removed from the public.

If you eliminate the public ability to examine the essential accounting
processes for its own choosing process, you eliminate public controls and
transfer power to the government.

Having the secretary of state confirm the accounting is fine, but it cannot be
substituted for allowing the public to confirm the accounting.


> If you are in favor of public disclosure for ballot petitions, why not
> require public disclosure of tax returns?


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


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