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Two ways forward for election security

2/22/2018

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Possible cyberattacks on state voting databases are not the only problem with US electronic voting. As this article notes, and as a 2015  edition of Corporations and Democracy noted, much of our nation's electronic voting equipment is too old to be consistently reliable. According to the story: 

A ProPublica analysis of voting machines found that over two-thirds of counties in America used machines for the 2016 election that are over a decade old. In most jurisdictions, the same equipment will be used in the 2018 election. In a recent nationwide survey by the Brennan Center for Justice, election officials in 33 states reported needing to replace their voting equipment by 2020. Officials complain the machines are difficult to maintain and susceptible to crashes and failure, problems that lead to long lines and other impediments in voting and, they fear, a sense among voters that the system itself is untrustworthy.
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The federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) was a source of state funding after its passage in 2002, with $3.6 billion given to states and territories to upgrade systems and administration. But since then, there has been no federal level financial support for states to maintain or replace voting machines, and few states still have unspent HAVA funds. (HAVA had its issues, too--its primary author, Rep. Bob Ney, resigned after pleading guilty to conspiracy and making false statements in relation to the scandal surrounding Jack Abramoff, whose lobbying clients included touch-screen voting manufacturer Diebold, a big beneficiary of HAVA procurement regulations).

It's clear that paperless electronic voting machines have to go. Even in the absence of any kind of pre-election manipulation, these machines aren't foolproof, and have been documented to occasionally "flip" votes. Without a backup paper trail, the real results, in a recount, are anyone's guess.

Beyond that, there are two ways to deal with obsolescence of our electronic voting machines. First, we could upgrade old systems with new ones, insisting that new machines also allow for easy, efficient paper-based recounts. But even with improved security and audits, remember that the "hack-proof" voting machine is a myth.

But the second is to go back to hand-counted paper ballots. There are advantages and disadvantages to a purely paper system. Counting ballots is time-consuming, especially when states or cities also use a ranked-choice system. It's debatable whether voters would also step up as volunteer ballot-counters. Ballot-box stuffing is a possibility as well--the results are only going to be as valid as the counters are honest. However, as electronic voting expert Jonathan Simon has noted, ballot counting could bring volunteers from different parties together in support of a basic exercise of democracy, reducing partisanship and increasing local cooperation. The time it took to count and verify the results would defuse the "Super Bowl-style" hype around elections. If it took a day or two to learn who was the next mayor, governor, or president, so be it--it's an important decision that we'll be living with for a while.

The Alliance's Peoples Vote Must Count project is a three-step program to institute hand-counted paper ballots, beginning with a look into election hacking, followed by studying how your elections are conducted, and then introducing a hand-counted-paper-ballot initiative to either replace your current system or provide a robust audit of results, depending on local needs. You can find out more here, and read more about election protection and voter rights in this issue of Justice Rising. 
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GANE: An alternative economic vision

2/21/2018

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You can't just complain about business as usual without thinking about and promoting alternatives. One is The General Agreement on a New Economy (GANE). GANE was developed by the Economics Working Group, while a project of the Tides Foundation. It was the result of a robust discussion among forward thinking economists and policy advocates taking place over several years, and became an Alliance project as part of the Corporate Globalization/Positive Alternatives campaign. 
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GANE is a way of thinking about the economy which centers on the local and builds outward to regional and national levels. It focuses on full employment, equity, and environmental sustainability. This systemic approach is described in GANE as “community federalism.” First published after the 2008 crisis and Wall Street bailout, GANE envisions policy that meets the needs of people in relation to their community, rather than corporate profits. While not a new document, the conditions in which it was written--a casino economy, environmental crisis, and a growing divide between the rich and everyone else--are still with us.  

You can read the full GANE document, as well as articles and reading lists on communities, local capital, meaningful work, corporations and the federal role in transitioning to a new economy at the GANE website. 
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Another town starts thinking about a Local Food and Community Self-Governance Ordinance

2/16/2018

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The town of Starks, Maine, will hold a public hearing on a proposed Local Food and Self-Governance Ordinance on Monday night, February 19, at 7 p.m. at the Town Office. The ordinance will be voted on at Town Meeting on March 10. 
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This week on "Corporations and Democracy"

2/12/2018

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On "Corporations and Democracy" radio this week, Annie Esposito and Steve Scalmanini will discuss "Funding of Mendocino County’s Employee Pensions: Crisis or Just Another Manageable Problem," with guests John Dickerson of Your Public Money and former State Assemblymember Michael Allen. The show airs live on Tuesday, February 13 at 1 p.m. Pacific on KZYX & Z, 90.7, 91.5, and 88.3 FM in Mendocino County CA. You can also stream the show live at www.kzyx.org, or listen to the archived broadcast after the show airs here. ​
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Alliance presence at inaugural No Foreign Bases conference

2/7/2018

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PictureClick on the photo to visit the site.
Alliance co-chair Nancy Price joined activists from across the world to call for an end to the US's foreign military presence at the inaugural conference of the Coalition against US Foreign Military Bases, held January 12 through 14 in Baltimore. The conference brought together peace, health, community and environmental activists from around the country, as well as from Nepal, Sri Lanka, Ireland, Canada, Cuba, Congo, South Korea, the Philippines, Okinawa, and Germany.

The Alliance was a conference endorser, and Nancy organized the “Environment and Health” plenary specifically to highlight health impacts on military and civilian base personnel and surrounding communities, not just from the better-known threats of nuclear weapons, Agent Orange, depleted uranium and chemical/ biological agents, but from the “alphabet soup” of air, land and water pollution from all military base activities.

Plenary speaker Patricia Hynes makes clear in The Polluter Is Not Paying that it’s almost impossible to hold the U.S. military and government responsible and accountable in the US or anywhere else. Marie Cruz on the Navy Base in Vieques, Puerto Rico and Susan Schnall on Vietnam documented the many decades it took to negotiate some clean-up and compensation, noting that as extreme weather pummels U.S. installations, contamination and buried munitions are uncovered and spread.

The United States has as many as 1,000 military bases and tens of thousands of troops in more than 170 foreign countries, especially Germany, Japan and South Korea, as well as thirty-four Naval air carriers either operational or planned, each composed of roughly 7,500 personnel and 65 to 70 aircraft—literally floating military bases.

We pay more for “defense” at an annual cost of approximately $156 billion—money that could be used to support basic human needs (for instance, heat for the Baltimore public schools, where students endured classroom temperatures in the 30s at the start of January, while parents scrambled to fundraise for space heaters and childrens' coats).

The environmental costs include radioactive and chemical contamination of water, destruction of fisheries and farmland, and disruption of climate through massive output of greenhouse gasses. The social costs overseas include disruption of local communities and higher crime rates, including prostitution, rape and sexual abuse. Human rights abuse include using bases for extra-judicial imprisonment and torture.

Ultimately, our overseas bases are not bulwarks of national security, but intended to guarantee multinationals access to markets, resources and cheap labor. As the conference unity statement says, “We must all unite to actively oppose the existence of U.S. foreign military bases and call for their immediate closure. We invite all forces of peace, social and environmental justice to join us in our renewed effort to achieve this shared goal.”

You can learn more about the conference and watch videos of the conference sessions at http://noforeignbases.org/ or see shorter highlights here. The conference program book is online here, with biographies of the speakers. 

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Senators write Trump on NAFTA renegotiation

2/6/2018

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On February 2, six Democratic US Senators wrote President Trump calling for "fundamentally rewriting NAFTA to eliminate its incentives to outsource American jobs, and to level the playing field by adding strong labor and environmental provisions...."

Contact Senators Sanders (VT), Merkley (OR), Gillibrand (NY), Hirono (HA) Markey (MA) and Warren (MA) and thank them for writing this letter in support of the peoples' trade agenda. You can also print a copy of the Senators' letter and mail it to your own US Senators, expressing your support for it and your desire that they sign a copy and mail it to the President as well.  

Letter here. 
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