Saturday, December 22, 2007
A Missed Opportunity
Almost a month ago I wrote a post called Time To Check Your Least, in which I said I wasn't going to beat myself up for not writing enough. Since then I've posted more often than in quite some time. This reinforced the notion explained in that post that commitment to the least you can do philosophy will inherently increase what the least can amount to. I have to take this same outlook in considering yesterday's appearance on the Peter B. Collins show as a missed opportunity.
Click here for the full .mp3 archive of the show. Drag the slider of your media player to the start of the third hour and listen to Peter B. and Brad Friedman question Humboldt Registrar of Voters Carolyn Crnich about the so-called Humboldt Transparency Project. I was not given an opportunity to respond or comment on this, but I would have only repeated the concerns I have raised previously, including in this Eureka Reporter OpEd from July 6, 2007.
In summary, the Transparency Project would allow the public to view pictures (scanned images) of all ballots cast to perform a recount in whatever way one chooses. However, a secondary computer count is promoted as the way to go, although this completely defeats the purpose of checking the official, original count done by secret computer programming; and it relies on post-certification auditing which recent history shows will have no chance at overturning an inaccurate outcome. In addition, to do this ballot image recount without a secondary computer count would be entirely unwieldy and impractical, without even the prospect of proper observation or witnessing typically associated with post election hand-counting or manual auditing.
Not getting to respond to that wasn't really the crux of my missed opportunity. After returning from a commercial break, Peter B. prompted an exchange between the Registrar and me. This is where I blew it yesterday. The Registrar questioned the assumption of six seconds to count each contest per ballot. I noted that this is a variable that can be changed by the user of the hand-count forecast tool, but I then veered off into discussing the New Hampshire origins of that data point. What I should have said is that we have been trying for months to get assumptions from the Registrar herself plugged in to the forecast tool so that the community would have the opportunity to judge the Voter Confidence Committee's (VCC) hand-counting proposal based on the Registrar's official assumptions. Immediately after the segment had ended I realized my missed opportunity and e-mailed Peter B. with one last thought...
Peter B. took a call at that point from Jim Lamport, another regular attendee of the Registrar's monthly Election Advisory Committee meetings here in Humboldt. I have no problem with Lamport's defense of the Registrar, especially since I was not attacking her. I do respectfully disagree with Lamport's assessment that computers are ideally suited for vote counting. Since my phone line into the broadcast was already cut off, I was very glad to hear Brad Friedman challenge this position. Upon concluding that call, Peter B. did me a real solid and read the e-mail I submitted, quickly summarizing that the VCC is in search of official numbers from the Registrar precisely so the public can objectively judge our proposal. This was a save, in my view, salvaging to some extent the opportunity I see as missed.
There was another aspect of the discussion I wish I had handled differently. I noted that New Hampshire counts votes by hand in 45% of its polling places and the Registrar replied that this leaves a 55% majority of polling places being counted by optical scanners. Of course this is true, and I explained it as a function of jurisdiction level choice as opposed to being a state mandate. The opportunity I missed was not asking the Registrar whether Humboldt voters have had an opportunity to make the same choice, which of course we have not.
Earlier in the day, several hours prior to the radio show, the Registrar left me a voice message in response to the two messages I had left her in the two days prior. She mentioned that she and Kelly Sanders in the Humboldt Elections Department were busy gathering up all the data the VCC requested last week in an open letter. When these numbers are provided, yesterday's missed window of opportunity will open once again.
Permalink:
http://wedonotconsent.blogspot.com/2007/12/missed-opportunity.html
Labels: Brad Friedman, Carolyn Crnich, hand-counting paper ballots, Humboldt Transparency Project, Jim Lamport, Least you can do, Peter B. Collins, spreadsheet tool, VCC
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Time to Check Your Least
This past week I was approached by several people wanting my involvement in different election integrity projects. I agreed to do a conference call discussing a campaign calling for the recall of electronic voting machines. I endured a seemingly endless e-mail thread about pooling resources specific to each machine vendor. More locally, a writer who once did a story on me wrote to ask how she should proceed with a community member who wants to tell of election irregularities.
With Paul Lehto's eternal encouragement, I submit it is a necessary challenge for each of us to recur to principles. I have cultivated many phrases and unique arguments throughout hundreds of essays in the past five years or so. These would be my principles to which I shall now recur.
I have often written of "the least you can do." From Blueprint For Peaceful Revolution:This motivational meme is great for identifying next steps.
There is sometimes solace in this notion. Life, the unstoppable passage of time, the responsibilities of reality, all these things contribute to my less frequent blog posts. Lament, sometimes, for not writing more could easily be the sort of thing I might beat myself up about. But not so anymore. This "least" idea is so ingrained in my world view that I quickly think of the VCC report that came out earlier this year, all the media work that followed, the creation and distribution of the hand-count calculator tool - and the responses it generated from people who adapted it and put it to work in their communities.
I remember five years ago working with the premise that traditional American activist techniques were futile and we should be reinventing activism. Back then I had published nothing and never even spoken on the record at a public event. But I had an e-mail list, because sending important news articles to friends was the least I could do. Then some readers suggested, and helped me build and launch, the GuvWurld News Archive, a permanent public repository of information the government would probably prefer history not record. It too had become the least I could do.
As I began blogging and organizing, my least repeatedly increased. I recognized this as part of the phenomenon itself - it is inherent, that successive small incremental achievements will necessarily increase or enhance what then becomes the least you can do.
So as I review my activities of this year, I realize I have achieved far beyond what once may have been my least. I conclude that I have at least done my least this year, if not more. Given that, the writing I wish was getting done doesn't hang over my head. It sometimes seems so basic that it ought to fit under the umbrella of least, but in reality much more is required of me to keep up my previous blogging pace than is needed to do the other things I've done this year.
Now back to these projects that stream through my inbox. I don't have the time or resources to do justice to the ones from this week, and this is pretty common. Now, it occurs to me that the Project-Based Format, an experimental talk radio show format that I have previously described, would be ideal for maximizing support of each of these projects and others.
The idea of the show is that the host acts like a project coordinator hooking up with citizen organizations and individuals to advance the work being done for change. It is the same advocacy journalism concept that has driven WDNC and the GuvWurld Blog before it. The success of the radio show will not be determined by ratings or money or audience size, but instead it will be judged solely on its ability to facilitate change. To be in the position, as the host of the show, would elevate one's least to an awesome level.
Since I first wrote about the Project-Based Format, I have always put it out there hoping any radio host already on the air would try out the approach. So far no takers. It may just be that I have to make it work for me to be the host if the format is ever going to be tested. But for all these years now it has been far beyond my least, a goal I haven't really fancied to pursue, though I've had a few encouraging conversations about it with people in radio.
This has been a year of great personal change for me, which I know will continue and hopefully accelerate in the new year. If all goes according to plan, by spring I will dramatically reorient my relationship with time, money, and freedom. Of course my head is full of lots of big ideas, not just the radio show. These are beacons in the distance, glowing signs showing the way the baby steps of least should take me.
I write about the Project-Based Format today because these recent projects genuinely reminded me of an idea I'd only temporarily set aside. But I also write because I so often have the urge to write, and this is just a fortunate moment when I let it happen. Most importantly, though, I write because it is a powerfully positive thing to assert intentions, goals to be manifested. Even this simple thing may be your least. I encourage to you check and find out. Discover the least you can do, and commit to doing at least that much.
Permalink:
http://wedonotconsent.blogspot.com/2007/11/time-to-check-your-least.html
Labels: Least you can do, Paul Lehto, Project-Based Format, Reinventing Activism, Report on Election Conditions, spreadsheet tool, VCC
