[EL] Secret signatures and secret ballots

[Paul Lehto]

The acid test of real liberty is the ability to "kick the bums out" of
office -- all of them -- or to radically change the laws via initiative.  If
one can't do that, one is not free, one is just a subject.

So since Jim Bopp and others here speak so often of freedom, i want to ask:
 How can a freedom-loving person be satisfied with the government and/or a
few select party apparatchiks being the only ones to meaningfully judge
whether signatures are valid or not?

In fact, these kinds of total or partial secrecy procedures that Jim Bopp
and others are pushing for is a recipe for losing our most fundamental
freedom precisely when we need it the most: For example, to remove corrupt
secretaries of state and selected party cronies who aren't very motivated to
support status quo reform in any major way.  They don't want to see all the
bums kicked out because they are part of the bums the public from time to
time wants to kick out!

When We the People want something profoundly anti-status quo, neither the
existing Washington state system and especially the increased secrecy system
being argued for is at all likely to guarantee our liberties in this regard.
 And yet, as the Declaration of Independence states, governments are created
"to secure these rights".  Foremost among these rights is the right to
change the system via peaceful electoral means, instead of being forced to
using the more violent means actually exercised by Founding Fathers around
1776.

Signature systems need to be designed with the seemingly more "extreme"
cases in mind of major challenges to the status quo and incumbents of both
parties, because these "extreme" cases do happen, and when they do, it is
the most important time for the checks and balances in signature
verification processes to be open, honest and transparent to the public.

Half-measures of openness and transparency, like standing several feet away
as in Washington state, simply won't work.  (Just imagine how easy it would
be to destroy such an "observer" on cross examination if they purport to
have detected a signature problem from such a "vantage" point.)

There's lots of talk on this list about mostly hypothetical harassment or
intimidation.  But for this purpose here, I'll assume all of that talk is
totally real.  Despite weighing all of those facts in favor of the
secret-signing community, I still say:  The threats ultimately posed by
government secrecy and unaccountability, especially as applied to petitions
fundamentally challenging the powers that be, FAR exceed the inchoate
threats posed by fears of some harassment or intimidation to a few petition
signers.  Closing down legitimate, fair and peaceful methods of political
change represented by petitions and initiatives results in evils that are
quantum leaps more serious than "intimidation" and "harassment."

We need elections, and petition verification, to be credible to all
reasonable people on all sides, and especially in the more "extreme"
situations, if we are serious about peaceful continuity of government.

Paul Lehto, Juris Doctor


On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 9:29 PM, <JBoppjr at aol.com> wrote:

> **
>     Actually, in Washington, there are checks and balances without public
> release of the petition signatures.  When the Sec of State is reviewing the
> petition signatures, parties get to have watchers to review the process. If
> these people think there are errors, then they can petition for judicial
> review and the judge then does the verification of the signatures.  The
> people who wanted the list to be made public did not take advantage of this
> procedure. so they had no serious doubt about the fact that the Sec of State
> had accurately determined that there were sufficient valid signatures to put
> this measure on the ballot.  Jim Bopp
>
>  In a message dated 10/19/2011 1:18:55 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
> lehto.paul at gmail.com writes:
>
> In legal parlance, with petition signing, actions at law are adequate
> remedies (about as adequate as legal remedies are in many other areas of law
> even if not always totally satisfactory to all), while there is no adequate
> action at law if one is intimidated at a polling place into changing one's
> vote.  Once the ballot is cast, there's no getting it back and changing it,
> for all practical purposes.
>
> Without disclosure of the names and addresses of petition signers, a given
> Secretary of State's "authentication" that the correct number of registered
> voters have indeed signed a valid petition is a bald conclusory assertion,
> lacking any check and balance.  Signatures and addresses occasionally are
> scrutinized far more closely or even unfairly when the ballot measure is not
> to the liking of the person holding the office of Secretary of State, or its
> equivalent for signature verification purposes.
>
> Without meaningful checks and balances whereby opposing parties or average
> citizens can check signatures and addresses against lists of registered
> voters, the entire petition process is rendered a sham to some very
> significant degree.
>
> If we are to tolerate secret signatures on petitions, then in my view the
> radical lack of any meaningful checks and balances strongly suggests
> dispensing with signature petition requirements in general, because they
> become a pure act of political theater that may or may not express the
> requisite level of support among the voting populace for the candidacy or
> measure in question.
>
> But the fundamental difference between petitions and casting ballots is the
> existence of remedies for petitions and the essentially non-existent
> remedies once ballots are cast into the ballot box.  Election contests,
> especially for those like myself who have done them, are notoriously
> difficult and unreliable ways to "correct" an erroneous election result
> compared to other legal remedies in other areas of law.
>
> Thus, precious little evidence -- even voter affidavits -- can be counted
> on to impeach an election result (though some election contests have allowed
> such forms of proof).  Every time we act politically - even by making a
> speech at a legal convention -- we expose ourselves to small infinitesimal
> or greater risk of not just intimidation, but even attempted assassination,
> as one Arizona Congresswoman and others can attest.  Shall we then have
> secret political office holders, secret judges, secret juries and secret
> everything as a general rule?
>
> Paul Lehto, Juris Doctor
>
> PS  In an election contest filed in the House Admin. Cmte in 2006
> concerning Clint Curtis' candidacy for a House seat in Florida, they would
> not even consider (nor allow any discovery) the affidavits submitted that
> allegedly showed greater numbers of affidavits from some precincts attesting
> to votes for Clint Curtis than reported in the official canvass for the same
> precincts.  While some courts have considered such affidavits, this bolsters
> the assertion that post-casting challenges of ballots are fraught with much
> more than the usual difficulties in terms of adequacy of legal remedies.
>
>
>
-- 
Paul R Lehto, J.D.
P.O. Box 1
Ishpeming, MI  49849
lehto.paul at gmail.com
906-204-4026 (cell)
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