Election Officials Testify Against Independent Election Audits: Gimme a Break!!

ELECTION OFFICIALS TESTIFY IN CONGRESS AGAINST INDEPENDENT ELECTION AUDITS? TOUGH BEANS, THEY SHOULD CONCENTRATE ON SERVING THE PUBLIC EXCLUSIVELY FOR A CHANGE.

Who is going to volunteer for an IRS audit? Even with clean books and returns, nobody wants one. Even an experienced auditor will fumble a little with the uniqueness of each taxpayer's records, but the need for a check overcomes the privacy issues and inefficiency of the auditor not being an expert on the taxpayer's ways of doing things.

Similarly, election officials shouldn't be heard to talk about their "feelings" or "ideas" about independent election audits if they are against them in any way. The public interest overwhelms their reluctance or claim that only they best know their systems. (er, the public's voting systems...) Be quiet with this anti-accountability nonsense, already, Mr. Election Official, think of the public interest for a change. You know, the ONLY thing you're supposed to be thinking about and working for -- the public interest? Yes, even while you count the very votes that give you your own paycheck and power, you are still supposed to serve the public interest exclusively.

You will try hard. Many of you are very conscientious and honest. That does not mean we the public or the Founders of this country are stupid enough to believe you will succeed all by yourself 100% of the time. John Adams said "Trust no man with the public liberty." Paraphrasing Thomas Paine "Be suspicious of any one who approaches the jewel of public liberty." Of course, voting is famously the right that protects all other rights.

This obvious logic and clear public interest requirement for independent PUBLIC checks and balances on the officials doing elections did not stop the ELECTION CENTER, on behalf of many of its election official members, from testifying on March 20, 2007 in the House Administration Committee that independent public audits of elections are not needed, essentially because elections officials are good people trained to be "neutral." See http://electionarchive.org/ucvInfo/US/HouseAdminElectionTestimony2007/HouseAdminTestimony-DLewis-3-20-2007.pdf

Doug Lewis, the Executive Director of The Election Center of the National Association of Elections Officials testified that audits are "not a bad concept", they just need to fit in with the busy schedules of our government servants and should certainly not be members of the PUBLIC looking over their shoulders independently.... because you "turn over the process of live ballots over to people who have no idea what goes into protecting those ballots, who have no experience in assuring...." (blah blah blah)

Is refusing even the lame, partially independent audits of HR 811 any way for the (government) servants to treat their supervising "masters", We the People? What we need are government servants who are faithful and will fall on their swords if at all necessary. Certainly this includes answering some perhaps ignorant questions from puzzled auditors, most of which are going to be government-appointed under the ineffective HR 811 bill anyway.

For the love of all that is good, for the love of democracy, let us consider this critical Context for the understanding of the Need for truly independent and PUBLIC audits, something HR 811 doers not provide:

With optical scan voting systems and DRE or touch screen voting systems we grant these elections officials the custody of secret first counts of the ballots, released on election night, we grant them an uncontestable ability to coronate the winner apparent and the "sore loser" that same night, and the officials enjoy these powers even though it's true that in most if not all cases, the election officials themselves have no personal knowledge at all what the counts are, they just believe in and have faith in their machines as designed and programmed by the vendor, also chosen by those same officials, who claims trade secrecy means never having to show the public their math homework, a privilege unheard of in public schools for important tests. They also have the access to fiddle with the machines. Is this where nobody should have to show their homework or disclose any details of the program's counting, much less let the public supervise?

The election officials claim they have it under control, they're watching (even though they dont know the counts). Who watches those election officials? They would prefer that nobody REALLY watched. This is a problem as old as Rome: Who will guard the Guards?

Only the "boss" in a system, or its highest power, can be the final check or 'guard.' But here, The Election Center through its testimony and ridicule of independent audits directly implies that local election officials are the ultimate authority because they claim some training in neutrality or devotion to neutrality.

But ultimately, because this is a government of the people, by the people and for the people, resistance to independent audits is at best a statement without respect for democracy, or at worst an anti-democratic statement. If elections, featuring vote counting of one plus one equals two in sophistication, became such as EXPERT area that We the People are no longer competent or invited to participate, then somewhere along the line the People have been overthrown in this country. In that case, you can call us lots of things, but not a representative democracy.

In the actual audit being criticized, most of the election auditors would be government-appointed under the Holt bill HR 811, so apparently even having the power to appoint one's own IRS auditor is not enough control for the government officials. We know Enron can not audit Enron, is there any reason to believe elections officials monitoring the transfer of ultimate power are really exempt from temptation? Many of the most noble elections officials unwittingly provide cover for the election cheaters by getting bent out of shape by distrust (checks and balances) and independent audits. But no human being or group of human beings can audit themselves, blow the whistle on themselves, or check and balance themselves. After all, it is obvious that a successful election criminal can become an election official who makes election policy, quite unlike the most successful bank robber in history, who has never become a bank official or set bank vault security policy. So no, it is simply not possible to trust elections officials, even if distrust (checks and balances) weren't so important to the American way of government.

In light of the fact that elections give the government at all levels all their power, and that now e-voting does so under the above secretive circumstances instead of publicly open in-precinct counts, it becomes clear that independent Audits are an absolute necessity of the system which is overwhelmed by inherent conflicts of interest. The public must have the last say, the ultimate power, in any type of democracy. The audits proposed under HR 811 are already very pale and weak substitutes for anything that would actually be robust, and most of the "how to do it" will be published in the United States Code. (nice hints for potential criminals or even elections officials on how to hide mistakes)

In fact, I argue elsewhere that even independent audits of any percentage are in no way a substitute for a proper first count that's transparent and thereby 100% audited prior to the disclosure of the all-important first count, and that secret first counts are in no way consistent with a "voting rights approach" to, er, "voting rights". See http://tinyurl.com/235zx8

We already knew that elections official don't like independent audits any more than the average person wants an IRS audit. Doug Lewis says that the auditors won't be as trained as his elections officials are. But that is just irrelevant. New citizens, like fresh IRS auditors, need to be trained sometimes. Officials should just pipe down and act like real government SERVANTS should, recognizing that there is an overriding need here, and that's for democratic election integrity and public oversight for the very checks and balances it provides, especially considering the conflicts of interest the election officials have in getting their power from those same elections.

In any event, these are the same elections officials (as a nationwide group) being convicted of rigging the presidential recount in Ohio in 2004 and for which there is yet another criminal prosecutor recently appointed to bring still more charges of criminal rigging against Ohio officials. There were no truly independent audits in Ohio in 2004, and a government "audit" like they had in Ohio is extremely unlikely to discover the errors and fraud because they don't want to make THEIR OWN WORK on the first count look bad. See http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2007/2506

There's no such thing as a free ride in democracy anyway. JFK said the work of democracy is never-ending. And the indispensable characteristic of republics and representative democracies is that the people are in charge. The government servants, are servants. Certainly they develop an expertise over time, but that does not in any way limit their need or duty to account to We the People and to fully cooperate with as many independent audits as the public deems necessary or desirable. It is, after all, the very question of legitimacy and the consent of the governed that is at stake in elections, and nothing is more important to above board than that.

Paul Lehto
Attorney at Law
lehtolawyer@gmail.com