Holt: Decreasing Voter Confidence

By Fred Lehlbach

On Tuesday, Junior sent out a “franking” email to his email list crowing about his “Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act” and his call on US Attorney General Eric Holder to use the Department of Justice’s enforcement capabilities to “ensure the integrity of voting systems and to make sure that votes are counted as cast.”

Curiously, Junior does not raise, in his letter to Holder, any mention of the DOJ’s failure to pursue “enforcement” on the allegations of voter intimidation that took place just outside his 12th District by members of the New Black Panther Party, which could arguably have a more severe impact upon voter’s franchise rights than a failure to have paper ballots.

Junior has attempted to get his Voter bill passed in every Congress since 2000, and it has never advanced. There are objections to it on both sides of the aisle, not the least of which is, it doesn’t solve the problem it claims to solve. Junior does not even seem to know that his bill doesn’t solve the problem, as he has continuously misrepresented the Bill’s provisions, and failed to correct a New York Times piece on the Bill, which repeated his inaccurate talking points that remain posted on his website.

Specifically, Junior wants there to be added after-market printers to Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, or touch screen machines) electronic voting machines. Please note, these are not “paper ballots”, marked by the voter, but a printout of a vote, that could then be verified by the voter. Problem is Junior advertises his bill as requiring voter-marked ballots, while all it requires is printed “voter trails” which are no more reliable, or verifiable, than the same machines without the after-market printers.

This gets confusing, but it comes down to this: Junior has continually misrepresented his Bill, and he knows it. There are many blogs dedicated to stamping out potential voter fraud, and they have repeatedly called attention to Junior’s misrepresentations, only to be ignored. It is also clear from the legislation itself that Junior knows the difference. The same bill makes a distinction between elections in 2010 and 2014, requiring voter-marked paper ballots by 2014. By his own legislation he admits his paper trail is ineffective.

Junior’s Bill also requires technology that only ONE company can currently provide. His Bill creates a monopoly on voting machines. This has also been pointed out to him, and he continues to tilt at windmills with a Bill that is ineffective, subject to monopoly, and which does not stop potential fraud.

Yes, AG Holder, please ensure the integrity of our votes. But if the New Black Panthers want to “Kill Whitey” outside the voting place, that’s OK.