(April 15th, 2008) Congressman Rush Holt [D-NJ] speaks before the US House of...(More)

(April 15th, 2008) Congressman Rush Holt [D-NJ] speaks before the US House of Representatives in favor of the Emergency Assistance for Secure Elections Act of 2008. Result: Failed Ayes: 239 (222 Democrats, 16 Republicans) Nays: 178 (2 Democrats, 176 Republicans) No Vote: 14 (8 Democrats, 6 Republicans) Required: 2/3 of 417 votes (278) Democrats who voted No Kucinich, Dennis [D-OH] Rahall, Nick [D-WV] http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=h2008-188 Summary of the bill: A Reimbursement for Conversion to Paper Ballot Voting System and for Payment of Recounts of Election Results, a Requirement to Develop Methods of Paper Ballot Verification and Casting for Individuals with Disabilities. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/T?&report=hr582p1&dbname=110& --------------------------------------------------- (Transcript) Mr. Speaker, I rise to urge my colleagues to support the Emergency Assistance for Secure Elections Act of 2008. This is a bill that is optional for counties. It's to encourage counties and States to do the right thing. We should all want national standards of accessibility, reliability and auditability for our elections. This is an emergency stop-gap measure to see that we achieve as much of that as possible before the November elections. The principle is simple. Anything of value should be auditable. Votes are valuable. They should be audited so that voters can have the confidence that each vote is recorded the way the voter intended. In too many places around the United States, votes are not audited. In too many places around the United States, they are not even auditable. Voters leave the polling places wondering if their vote will be counted as they intended and election losers and their supporters are left wondering if they can believe the results. (...) [ http://www.c-spanarchives.org/congress/?q=node/77531&id=8517683 ] --------------------------------------------------- Ron Paul voted No, there seems to be a problem "with the Federal Government exceeding its constitutional authority by meddling in the states' election procedures." Debate @ Slashdot http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/15/2156211&from=rss On Federal/Constitutional grounds, I can't understand why Mr. Paul voted against an issue that has recently concerned him personally: from 0 to 31 votes in Sutton, NH. The very next day (April 16th, 2008), Ron Paul voted Yes to the Beach Protection Act (H.R. 2537) which is an uber-bureaucratic piece of legislation devoid of constitutional authorization, a bill that includes an Environmental Protection Agency conducting "a study on the LONG-TERM IMPACT OF CLIMATE CHANGE on pollution of coastal recreation waters." A long-term study on a long-term hypothesis paid with taxes, by a Federal Agency. http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/p000583/ An interview with Ron Paul about his presidential platform on energy and the environment (16 Oct 2007): "On environment, governments don't have a good reputation for doing a good job protecting the environment. If you look at the extreme of socialism or communism, they were very poor environmentalists. Private property owners have a much better record of taking care of the environment..." http://www.grist.org/feature/2007/10/16/paul/ Utilitarian principle? Texas' 14th district has a long coastal line, the positive vote might be conceived as some type of earmark, "a tax return" for sure. Otherwise incomprehensible from a Libertarian/Constitutionalist perspective. http://www.house.gov/paul/images/Tx14_109.gif I don't know, something is wrong with the picture, Dennis Kucinich, who formally requested a vote recount in NH on January 2008, was one of the two Democrats that voted against the Secure Elections Act of 2008. Ok, here is why Kucinich opposed the bill: "H.R. 5036 includes a provision to include optical scan technology. I have serious concerns with optical scan technology and its susceptibility to hacks and security breaches. Recent tests and research have demonstrated the ease with which a person can manipulate the configuration files to change votes. What's more, most of the equipment necessary to accomplish this can be purchased off-the-shelf at most technology stores. Indeed, our voting system needs improvement, but replacing one flawed technology with another will do little to garner public faith in the electoral process." http://kucinich.us/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1753&Itemid=1 Anyone knows why Ron Paul opposed it? Beau's Blog makes a good point against the bill: "The EAC might invite U.N. international observers to be placed throughout America to jointly monitor the fairness of U.S. elections." http://cursed.hastecase.net/blogs/beau/?p=96 Awful stuff! Imagine, someone like Jimmy Carter monitoring US elections ;D(Less)