Auditing an election system which is vulnerable to undiscoverable tampering is no safeguard. We do not sacrifice election integrity on the grounds that politicians have taken hand-counts off the table. Who really cares what politicians want, anyway? They work for us.
"2. Challenge the existing relations of power and authority and in some way move society towards a more democratic structure. They need not overturn or destroy the existing social structures. Yet in some manner they must pose a threat to the existing social and economic structures. The essence of this threat is that these initiatives expand the realm of democracy and enhance democratic authority;"
Clearly, citizen-run elections do this; as well as citizen-oversight of the count on election night.
"3. Be possible in the sense that their implementation does not require a prior revolutionary, structural reorganization of society. They may set in motion a process of change that pushes society in the direction of dramatic structural reorganization - that is precisely their point. Yet, because they are particular and partial and therefore are not themselves dependent on that reorganization, they are possible."
Hand-count initiatives set in motion a process of systemic change that will push “society in the direction of dramatic structural reorganization” allowing for the many other needed changes alluded to on page 1:
- Clean money laws;
- An end to redistricting by adopting proportional representation;
- Universal, permanent suffrage upon reaching the age of majority;
- Election Day Holiday;
- An end to “convenience voting” of vote-by-mail and extended voting periods that subvert chain of custody, welcome vote-buying and obfuscate the vote count;
- Instant runoff voting, or ranked voting, so that winning candidates are selected by the majority;
- Abolish the Electoral College; etc.
This list truly goes on, the more I read about best practices.
Political Realism - A Policy of Failure
Incrementally implementing hand-counted elections (first the federal races, then the local ones, for example) is wholly different from believing that hand-counts aren’t possible in the U.S. My hope is that election activists move away from this position of defeat, and insist on transparent vote counts, now, as are done the world over in emerging and in stable democracies.
Just because the last two presidential elections were stolen is no reason to accept that 2008 will be stolen. All it takes is motivating the masses into Election Day action. Given that grassroot Republicans are now on board with parallel polling, our movement for transparent elections has a real chance of success. We implement hand-counted elections by doing it ourselves – not by waiting for politicians to do it for us.
This bears repeating: civic engagement is democracy in practice, or as Abbey Hoffman put it, “Democracy is something you do.”
In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire reveals how political realism defeats democratic reform:
"In a situation of manipulation, the Left is almost always tempted by a quick return to power, forgets the necessity of joining with the oppressed to forge an organization, and strays into impossible 'dialogue' with the dominant elites. It ends up being manipulated by these elites, and not infrequently itself falls into an elitist game, which it calls realism’"
In Age of Consent, George Monbiot recognizes self-defeating realism:
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