A Reader Responds

From my email this morning:

"If Iron wins, your run will be responsible for anightmarish period for KC -- plus long-lastingenvironmental damange and harm to real people who willsuffer from bad social policies. Irons is an abuserand you are facilitating his possible win. Please,you've demonstrated you can get votes. Great. Nowplease do the responsible thing and urge support for Sims."

--Name withheld

And here's my response:

How much do you know about Ron Sims, and his corruption of our election system? Really, I'm just asking. Because if selling out Democracy isn't enough for you, I don't know what is.

In addition, David Irons has drawn far more Democrats than I have. Ron lost 30% in the primaries, David captured 15% of those Dems, I have captured 10% of those Dems, the fact is I get far more David Irons supporters supporting me instead of David. I get very few Ron supporters that had not jumped ship before they even knew about me. So frankly the idea that I'm taking votes from Ron is just not supported by the facts.

Finally, I am not a Democrat. If you would like to stand up and fight for your beliefs, by all means do so. If you want to go doorbelling for Ron, or would like to espouse why it is you support Ron, fine. But my job is not to protect Ron Sims. My number one issue is Democracy, selling out Democracy is simply not acceptable. There are both Democrats and Republicans I support, Ron Sims is not one of them.

Ron could take all my supporters away in one fell swoop. Come out strongly for open-sourced pulbicy owned software, against Diebold, and for real voting reform. Until then he is not just part of the problem, he is the problem.

Regards,Gentry Lange

PS: Here's some reading from Congress to look into if you are interested.

GAO Issues a Report on Electronic Voting

The General Accounting Office (Congress) has issued a rather detailed report regarding the use of Electronic Voting Machines. The report does a pretty good job highlighting the key concerns that activists have been complaining about for years:

Democrats Reform House

There is also another report our by a group called the National Election Data Archive, or NEDA:

Elections Archive for 2004

So while local election officials say everything is fine, Congress has issued a report supporting many of the criticisms activists have raised.
_____________________________________________________

This whole conversation has shifter to Washblog:
Washblog
Anyone that wants to comment should check it out.