So I read the scope of work in the Request for Proposal from the Secretary of State's office and prepared a report with some concerns. We will be presenting this next Friday at the Senate/House Governmental Affairs Committee meeting.
TLDR:
• Statements of Secretary of State’s office would have the public thinking the scope is just to replace the aging AVC advantage machines and that the rest of the infrastructure and procedures would remain intact
• The scope of work in the RFP shows that this could be closer to a complete replacement of large segments of the existing infrastructure and procedures, thereby taking a large portion of the chain of custody out of the hands of humans and placing it in the control of a single vendor.
• If the scope in the RFP is unavoidable, we can still work with this. The state will have to show their work and make the paperwork from the vote on the front end readily available to the public. For in-person voting, the paperwork is the Voter Verified Paper Audit Trails (VVPATs). For mail in tabulation, the paperwork is the ballots. The VVPATs and the ballot images created by the tabulators must be available for download on the SOS website along with the election results.
• With the scope being as it is, without readily accessible paperwork, there is little to nothing apparent that the state can do to comfort the public. Complaints and litigation would become a feature of nearly every election.
Just so everyone knows: the ruling class was pushing for mail in voting well before COVID:
House Bill (Feb 2017): https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/946/text
Senate Bill (May 2017): https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/1231/text
Regardless of how this election ends up...
TLDR so some bullet points:
-
He has shown us all what is possible and decades of gaslighting has been exposed (i.e. reducing regulations and taxes actually does bring industry back)
-
In the private sector he will litigate like crazy to get things before the supreme court
-
We now know that we are not voiceless and alone. We are aware of each other now and that we can affect change.
-
We have a power structure outside of the DNC/GOP now that is incumbent upon us to cultivate
Now is the time to act and stop expecting others to save us. Just brainstorming for ideas on how to be effective, perhaps we start with election security and see where it goes from there. I have spent time in 2016 talking to the Louisiana Secretary of State's office about election policies and the voting machines. They were surprisingly accessible and responsive. Seems like a decent meat and potatoes place to begin to organize. Open for ideas that do not include sky screaming.
