Tag: politics

Are Our Elections Truly Free and Fair?

by Greg Snyder

I am a citizen. I vote. I am a registered democrat. But I do not vote based strictly on party. Nor do I have an allegiance to party over country. I am not partisan. I do believe in inclusive, whole community-based politics based on cooperation, discussion, compromise and progressive ideas and policies that help people and improve our lives. I do believe that politics should be representative of ALL the people, not just a few. There are people who would label me as socialist or communist or woke or liberal or whatever. I am not threatened by those labels because I don’t fall prey to gaslighting and political manipulation. I’m done with them. I know these labels never honestly describe a person. Whenever these labels are used to describe anyone who has similar beliefs that are inclusive and based on representative democracy, they are an over-simplified generalization and rhetoric that is used to persuade (gaslight) the gullible, ignorant, fearful, and vulnerable in order that they believe the worst things about the person being labelled. This turns us against each other. It is very corrosive. These labels reduce the person to a cliché and oversimplify him or her and don’t really say anything at all that is true about that person. I think this applies to all the people who are accused of and attacked using this type of labelling or name calling.

I am not an expert in computer technology. I am not writing this to impugn the makers of the computers that the states use to conduct elections. I am simply asking some questions because I have questions. It is very strange indeed trying to send a message like this out into the ether without any solid chance that it will be received by anyone with the type of expertise I hope exists. My sending this message out is kind of like the messages on plaques that have been put onto some of the space crafts that have been sent on long journeys out into space. They are of strange markings, the meaning of which it is hoped will be understood by some alien races out there in space. I am writing this note with the hope that maybe it will be seen by some people who have ideas on how to restore trust and ensure transparency for those of us who have trust issues. I hope to find people with knowledge of computer technology and people who know how to implement remedies for problems in politics. But also, and more importantly, I am writing this for the people of the United States who vote with the hope that the voting systems they are using are trustworthy and are not being manipulated to cheat and skew election results. I am not proposing any conspiracy theories here. I am just asking some questions. I am not paranoid. But I do have some questions. If anyone reacts to my asking these questions with accusations that this is a political attack, they need not be so reactionary. If any of the questions I am asking are uncomfortable or objectionable, why is that? There is nothing to fear in questions if they can only serve to clarify. Clear and truthful answers only dispel distrust and refusing to answer questions or ignoring them or evading them only shows that underneath it there is the possibility of something that is wrong and may need correction.

So, after 575 words of disclosure and setting up the questions I have, I’ll ask those questions:

These questions are for people who know how election computers work, how they are programmed, and how they are made secure and how hacking them is prevented.

Can the voting machine computers be made to change or flip votes that have been entered into them?

Can changing or flipping votes be prevented? In other word, can voting machines be made so that vote changing and flipping cannot occur?

Can voting machines be reprogrammed by local officials employing their own IT experts to change or flip votes after they have been bought by a state from their manufacturer?

Is there a way to verify that votes have not been changed or flipped? Is there a permanent hard copy record of the vote that cannot be covered up, erased, or removed that can prove that a voting machine’s programming has not been or has been modified?

Is an audit done after every election to verify that there was no tampering or modification done to voting machines? Can there be a federal election law that requires that such an audit is done after every election to ensure transparency that the vote was conducted free of any modification to the voting machines as part of the certification of the election results?  

These questions are for the Secretaries of State in all the states:

Are your voting machines examined before and after each election to ensure that they have not been tampered with and are the results of those examinations archived and made available to the public?

Do you administer audits of the elections before you certify and make public the results of the elections? Are the results of your audits available to the public?

These questions are for our federal, state and local elected officials:

If they are not already in place in your state, in addition to voting in person, would you consider implementing voting by mail, expanded early voting, making provisional ballots available, automatic registration of all eligible voters through the DMV for example, and verification and auditing of voting tabulation machines before and after each election to ensure their safety and the validity and integrity of the vote?

Trump has promised that “Don’t worry. You won’t have to vote ever again” as one of his campaign promises. Yes, there are a winner and a loser in every election. But all voters should feel that they can trust that their votes will be fairly counted and have assurances that this in fact takes place. With our politics being as polarized as they are, it is very easy for regular people to have distrust for election results that do not make sense to them. If voting were made more transparent and security measures are taken to guarantee a truly free and fair election has taken place and that the entire process is entirely transparent and a matter of public record that is available publicly, it would be a great relief to voters who have some suspicions that we as voters have not been given the assurances that we need that our vote is safe and secure. A few simple fixes to our election process would help to restore some trust in the notion that we do, indeed,  truly have free and fair elections.  

Contemporary Expectations

by Greg Snyder

Al Capone probably didn’t expect to be arrested and prosecuted for tax evasion. He probably knew that he was committing crimes and that he could be held accountable for them. Al Capone, back then, probably didn’t doubt that if he were ever caught in illegal actions for which there was evidence that could send him to jail that he would be sent to jail. And that’s what happened. He was sent to jail on the evidence against him. Al Capone probably would never have expected that if he were arrested, charged, prosecuted, went to trial, found guilty, and sentenced to prison, that he would walk away from it a free man. And that’s what happened. He went to jail.

Since the arrest and incarceration of Al Capone, white collar criminals have become increasingly more emboldened. Today, the hubris and arrogance of white collar criminals who have been arrested, indicted, and taken to trial, especially from the 1980s on, have accompanied them as these criminals have adopted a very different set of expectations. Unlike Al Capone, for the most part, many of them don’t worry about the possibility that they might be convicted and sent to jail. They have the expectation that the trials against them will not successfully convict them. In fact, many of them expect to be acquitted and walk away as free and unfettered men. They simply hire a team of lawyers who devise clever ways to twist law and on that basis get them acquitted, even when there is sufficient evidence against them. They have come to truly appreciate the tiered justice system that places a much higher bar to convict them and make their convictions stick. This is not true for the more ordinary, less professional and less wealthy defendants in the criminal justice system who can’t afford to hire a small legion of high-priced lawyers to get them off the hook.

In the decades since the 1980s, the ostentation of corporate malfeasance has often gone rewarded rather than punished when prestigious law firms defended cases that to the observing public seemed to be culpable by the evidence that was made public and also by public opinion, especially in many of the most scandalous white collar cases that were litigated not just in court rooms, but also in the media. There have been, of course, some high-profile white collar crime court cases that did in fact convict. But it seems that justice in many other cases seemingly did not prevail when the verdict was an acquittal.

The 1980s in the United States saw the beginning of the contemporary trend of selfishness, hoarding, and ruthlessness that have come to be the aspirations of a new corporate and political culture. Greed is good became a national mantra. Hoarding glorified. Celebrity worship took off and has become one of the most consuming pastimes of America. This has helped to create an atmosphere in which white collar crime has almost developed a cult following. It has somehow become the stuff of the new American myth of power and wealth and privilege. It has become the new patriotism. It has taken on the mantle of the All American. It has dangerously inflated hubris and arrogance almost to a bursting point. It has also occurred with such frequency and predictability that it no longer catches the public off guard or causes consternation at how badly unjust the system seems to have become. It’s a pretty sad state of affairs.

All of these trends, combined with the Citizens United ruling by the conservative John Roberts Supreme Court have helped to give rise to an expansion of a small economic class of ultra wealthy individuals and families that used to work behind-the-scenes but has overtaken American politics. Conservative think tanks like The Cato Institute and The American Heritage Foundation, families like the Waltons, Mercers, Mellons, Kochs, De Vos, etc., individuals like Musk, Thiel, Buffet, Bezos, Zuckerberg, etc., while not being criminals arrested and taken to trial, may have tangentially benefitted from the media success of white collar criminals who have successfully evaded conviction. As a social class, if any social class has benefited at all from this miscarriage of justice, this is it.

Regulations are Protections

by Greg Snyder

A top priority of republicans is to slash federal spending on all kinds of regulations, policies, and laws that protect the American people.

Regulations keep our air and water clean, make polluters responsible for reducing emissions and cleaning up toxic messes made by them. Regulations protect consumers by preventing usurious fees by unscrupulous banks and thereby help keep more money in consumers pockets. Anti trust regulations keep corporations from becoming monopolies and injuring a truly free market. If you have some security in retirement because you have Social Security and Medicare, regulations make it so.

These are just three kinds of regulations, environmental, consumer/banking, and retirement/social safety net, that republican working not on behalf of their constituents but on behalf of their billionaire political patrons, want to gut.

There are many other kinds of regulations that support and protect the the American people. So, when republicans talk about how terrible and wasteful government spending is ask yourself, “Who would benefit from such cuts?” Is it the billionaire donors who want to completely escape and disassociate themselves from the social contract that when they participate in it asks them to pay their fair share of taxes and live in society as socially responsible citizens, not as an elite, entitled, ultra rich sliver of the population that desires freedom from any civic responsibility?

Ask yourself, “Would getting rid of the regulations that these republicans are working to eliminate, help or hurt you and your family? Those are two very important and very easy questions that you can and should always should ask yourself when you see or hear republicans talking about slashing spending and ending regulations. Think about those regulations and about how they affect your life personally. Most often you will find that the regulations that republicans want to slash positively affect your life and improve your standard of living. Is that what you want?