You have to give a lot of credit to NPR’s Diane Rehm.
Just last week, on a program devoted to voter ID laws, she asked the perfect question of an Electionline.org public relations shill. I don’t think Diane is allowed to determine who she has on the show. Another problem I’ve noticed is that the most important questions are always asked at the very end of the program and don’t don’t have time to evolve into a good discussion.
Diane’s question was a very simple one:
But how can you know [the machines are] working properly?
There is only one answer to that question, which anyone without a certain motive or with any brains could give, especially if they were getting paid to be an election expert:
You can’t.
Here is the complete conversation at the end of the program where Diane follows up diligently on this important issue. You can tell me if you think shill is too harsh of a characterization of Mr. Chapin:
CHAPIN
10:54:30
And the only thing that voters can do is take care of themselves, make sure that they are registered, that they know where to vote, that they know what’s on their ballot, they know how to operate their voting machine. We have a responsibility to one another as fellow voters. But, in many ways, when it comes to Election Day, you have to make sure you are the moving part that’s working most properly.REHM
10:54:50
And you’ve raised at the very end of the program the issue I’d like to raise with you and that is the voting machines themselves. There are an awful lot of people worried about those. What can you say to them?CHAPIN
10:55:05
Well, I think there are election officials who are worried about them. I mean, just anything else that you buy at state and local government, you’ve got maintenance and upkeep issues. Again, if you’re a voter, know how your machine works, know how to fill out your ballot, know the rules for correcting a ballot if it makes a mistake. Machines of any kind can work well. They can work poorly. Your responsibility on Election Day is to make sure your vote not only goes in the front of machine but comes out properly through the back.REHM
10:55:33
But how can you know that it’s working properly?CHAPIN
10:55:37
In a precinct count optical-scan state, for example, know what happens, how to look for a machine kicking back a ballot for — over votes.REHM
10:55:46
How do you know that? How do you know that?CHAPIN
10:55:49
You can reach out to local election officials. You can ask questions to poll workers. One thing that election administrators are very good at is making lots of information available. You have to know how the machine works, and if you don’t know, ask questions because people are there to help.REHM
10:56:05
But if you’re asking questions and holding up the line, as one of our earlier callers said, you know, that can get pretty difficult for voters.CHAPIN
10:56:17
Yeah. But I think that’s the lesson for voters, is that voting doesn’t begin and end on Election Day. Just as ideally you want to know who you’re going to vote for before you enter that voting booth, you should know how the process works. And if you’re not comfortable with the process, there is an opportunity, and I would even suggest the responsibility, to make sure you know how the process works.REHM
10:56:39
So you need to know how that voting machine works before you go into the polling booth?CHAPIN
10:56:46
Ideally, you should, yes.REHM
10:56:48
But how do you have that opportunity?CHAPIN
10:56:50
Again, I think you reach out to your local election official. I think most of them have websites. There are opportunities to do demos with voting machines. Sometimes it’s familiar. But if it’s a new technology, don’t be afraid to ask questions ’cause there’s no shortage to people willing to answer them.REHM
10:57:04
Doug Chapin, director of Electionline.org at the University of Minnesota, Wendy Weiser, director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice and Hans Von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation, thank you all so much. And thanks for listening. I’m Diane Rehm.
Complete program, including audio and full transcipts.
Thanks for trying Diane!
Speaking of election fraud shills. Behold John Fund:
And eight years ago:
#1 by Larry Bergan on June 22, 2012 - 9:10 pm
I love the picture at the link to the program which seems to harken back to the photo we all saw hundreds of times on the media in the 2000 Florida election scam.
What a grand farce it twas.
#2 by cav on June 23, 2012 - 8:35 am
If some one writes in a peculiar candidate choice, but that choice never makes it to the tally, you can be sure the machines are NOT working – properly or otherwise. Unless, of course the meaning of ‘working properly’ has more to do with reflecting some predetermined outcome and less to do with the actual sentiment of the ‘People’.
Oh,.. but I believe the later has already been disestablished .
#3 by Larry Bergan on June 25, 2012 - 10:19 pm
“Hey! Where did everybody go?”
~Woody Allen – “Take The Money And Run”
#4 by Glenden Brown on June 26, 2012 - 8:24 am
It’s interesting to me that the voting machines were rolled out after the election of 2000 when Republicans blatantly cheated in Florida and disenfranchised thousands of eligible voters. Typical conservative tactics – invent a problem then sell a solution.
#5 by cav on June 26, 2012 - 8:27 am
Yes.
#6 by Larry Bergan on June 26, 2012 - 5:29 pm
Glenden said:
2000 election indeed. You’ll remember that “hanging chads” were the reason we needed to spend billions over the next years to purchase voting machines and Utah was right in front of the plan to do that.
What most people don’t know is that the punch cards, which were meticulously tested over decades were actually destined to fail in the Florida 2000 election.
Brad Friedman still has the Dan Rather report which interviews employees of Sequoia who had been dying to get the story out.
Watch PART THREE of the Report in The BradBlog post. Pretty stunning.
This was, of course, after Dan Rather and others were fired from CBS for reporting the truth about George W.Bush’s desertion from the National Guard. He was recently, totally vindicated on the accuracy of that report.
#7 by Larry Bergan on June 26, 2012 - 5:46 pm
A couple of other very interesting facts about the terrible 2000 election abomination.
Under the law, Florida was supposed to automatically proceed with an hand count but you’ll recall they just kept running the punch cards back through the machines and declaring they had counted them three times and Bush still won. Then you saw what happened when Florida’s Supreme Court ruled they would have to counted manually – a bus of shills pretending to be angry Floridian’s mobbed the precinct and shut the counting down until the Federal Supreme’s could inject themselves into a states rights issue.
They bought themselves additional time by having a truck full of ballots go slowly across the state. None of those ballots were ever counted.
#8 by Larry Bergan on June 29, 2012 - 6:17 pm
The Irish know what to do with very expensive pieces of junk. Break them up and turn them into something useful instead of something the destroys democracy.
I could never understand why Utahn’s, who usually go bat-shit crazy when their tax dollars are getting wasted, continue to put up with this.
#9 by Larry Bergan on July 1, 2012 - 2:18 am
Best blues song EVER!
#10 by Larry Bergan on July 1, 2012 - 2:29 am
Maybe 7/11 should change it’s name to 24/7/364.
Just sayin’