Blog posts
Election Integrity: Katherine Harris and the Florida 2000 Election by Janet Maker
Katherine Harris, a right-wing Christian extremist and minor Republican officeholder with ethical challenges, had the power to change the course of history. The interventions she made in stopping the Florida recount, in enabling the voter purge, and in extending the deadline for absentee ballots, enabled George W. Bush, loser of the popular vote, to become president.
read moreElection Integrity: Vendors of Voting Equipment by Janet Maker
After a series of business failures, mergers and acquisitions, there remain currently only three major players in the voting equipment industry. Dominion Voting Systems Corporation, Election Systems & Software (ES&S), and Hart InterCivic control about 92% of the market. ES&S is the largest, with 44%. Dominion has 37%, and Hart InterCivic has 11%. All three companies are privately held and do not disclose their financial information, and all three have known or suspected ties to the political and religious right wing.
read moreElection Integrity: Problems with Black Box Voting by Janet Maker
Protecting our elections is not very difficult. However, there are two reasons why the necessary protections have not been put in place. The first is that voting machines are owned by private companies and have proprietary software. Most will not allow access to the source code, so we have no way to verify that the machines are not rigged. The second problem is that for the most part, election administrators have failed to adopt the recommendations that would make elections safer. There have never been consistent, mandatory security standards governing the operation of computerized voting, so vendors have had a relatively free hand selling their flawed products.
read moreElection Integrity: Voter Suppression in Alabama’s 2017 Special Election, by Janet Maker
While the election does prove that it’s not impossible for Democrats to win, the playing field is not level. On a level playing field, both parties have an equal chance of obtaining a majority of the vote. On a playing field that’s rigged by voter suppression and black box voting machines, Democrats might require 10 or 15 percent more voters in order to win a simple majority.
read moreElection Integrity: Black Box Voting and the 2016 Presidential Election Recount by Janet Maker
This is the fourth article in our series examining election integrity. The term black box voting was popularized by Bev Harris, owner of the website and author of the 2004 book by the same name. The book defines black box voting as “Any voting system in which the mechanisms for recording and/or tabulating the vote are hidden from the voter, and/or the mechanism lacks a tangible record of the vote cast.“ You can watch the Emmy-nominated HBO film Hacking Democracy as it follows Bev Harris and her band of citizen activists while...
read moreElection Integrity: Gerrymandering by Janet Maker
After the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton blamed her loss largely on Russian hacking, and Donald Trump blamed the fact that Hillary won the popular vote on millions of illegal ballots. In my opinion, the chance that either of those claims is true ranges from zero to negligible. But the election really was rigged, in ways that we are examining in this series of blogs. This month’s blog focuses on the manipulation that occurred not during the presidential race, but before it — in the drawing of lines for hundreds of U.S. and state legislative seats. According to an Associated Press analysis, gerrymandering gave Republicans a huge advantage before a single vote was cast.
read moreElection Integrity: The Problems with the Two-Party System by Janet Maker
This is the second article in our series examining election integrity. A Gallup poll in August, 2017 showed that only 16% of respondents approved of the way Congress was doing its job; 79% disapproved. The last time that Congress had an approval rating as high as 50% was in 2003. Dissatisfaction with the two parties is a likely reason that voters were so attracted to Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump in 2016; neither candidate followed his party’s line. For most of his political career, Sanders had identified as an independent rather than a...
read moreElection Integrity: The Electoral College by Janet Maker
I first became interested in election integrity after the 2000 presidential election. Not only had the Supreme Court arbitrarily stopped the Florida recount and handed the election to Bush, but I had become aware of other things that didn’t smell right, such as faulty voting equipment and voter suppression that made the vote count seem closer than it really was. I joined the League of Women Voters’ committee for election integrity. We analyzed the issues, put together a presentation, and gave it to local groups. We hoped that the League...
read moreThe Importance of Critical Reading and Thinking by Janet Maker
Critical thinking and reading are not difficult to teach. It would be easy to design a curriculum to teach those skills at every level from kindergarten through high school, not only in reading instruction, but also in social studies and science. There is an obvious argument that critical thinking and reading are important skills for citizenship as well as for equipping students to lead productive lives. Societies educate children for the type of citizens they want them to become. Do we want to produce worker bees who will unquestioningly obey authority and do what they are told, or do we want to produce critical thinkers capable of taking part in democratic decision making?
read moreNeoliberals, Neoconservatives, and Neofascists by Janet Maker
Political parties exist to secure responsible government and to execute the will of the people. From these great tasks both of the old parties have turned aside. Instead of instruments to promote the general welfare, they have become the tools of corrupt interests which use them impartially to serve their selfish purposes. Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between...
read more