Lou Dobbs poll on boycott of Touch Screen Elections a stroke of genius [View All]

[Land Shark]

While DUers are rushing to condemn Lou Dobbs' current online poll in this thread <http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x437024> I tend to think it's a stroke of genius to ask people if they are boycotting elections until the electronics are gone (given that 30% are currently saying "yes"). DUers, of course, are appropriately concerned about depressing the vote and, for the record, I think people should vote as a protest at least and talk to the pollworkers along the way. But, please hear me out on this:

The one and only (but highly misleading) claim to fame of DREs is that they "save votes". This claim is derived from allegedly lower "residual vote rates" (which are the sum of all overvotes plus all undervotes) relative to other voting systems. Thus, the pro-DRE community puts out studies and press releases claiming that DREs have "saved" a million votes in the last presidential election alone, for example....

That's Baloney, of course. But it's a fact that this is a big part of the pro-DRE spin.

BUt, whether he meant to or not, Dobbs' response in the latest CNN poll on boycotting elections is genius. The 30% or so of respondents (to the horror of those in DU ELection forum) that plan on boycotting elections due ot electronic voting PROVES THAT DRE'S HAVE HIGH RESIDUAL VOTES TOO. THose boycotting are "undervoting" on every single race on the ballot. All the DRE reminders in the world to vote aren't convincing these people to vote. They'd VERY MUCH LIKE TO vote and have it counted, but it just ain't being counted. These are not "true undervotes" where people simply don't have an opinion on a given race. These 30% in Dobb's unscientific poll are likely highly opinionated on some of the races on the ballot.

Perhaps our new rallying cry should be to "restore the vote" to ALL voters, drawing attention to the suppression of the vote by DREs themselves by their very nature of their technology and the distrust it appropriately engenders. Use of these DRE systems as well as Forced voting on these DRE systems in light of such high levels of boycott/nonparticipation is absurd.

First, and as always, DREs refuse to count the vote publicly

Now, DREs and their backers are also refusing to count those who refuse to use DREs in their ballyhooed "residual vote" rates, creating misleadingly low figures that are then used not only to promote DREs but TO HAVE DREs DECLARED CONSTITUTIONAL IN CIVIL RIGHTS LITIGATION LIKE STEWART V BLACKWELL

and that makes this, IMHO a big deal.

You can vote at this link for Lou's show, or connect via the DU thread above.
<http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/lou.dobbs.tonight/>