DU Bans Bev Harris... My Thoughts

(Note: Comments here do not express the opinion and/or position of my school, employer or collaborators... only my own.)

It looks like Bev is no longer allowed to post to Democratic Underground:

Wired News: Site Bars Black Box Voting Head

By Joanna Glasner

Democratic Underground, a political discussion site that has been a popular forum for debate on the reliability of computerized voting machines, has barred one of its most prominent and outspoken contributors on the topic from further posting.

In a written statement, site administrators said Friday that they barred Bev Harris, founder of Black Box Voting, because her postings on the site "have made positive discussion of verified voting increasingly difficult."

This is interesting... and it will allow me to talk a bit more about a post I did recently ("Activists crash tribute").

I talked to a few people off-line (in the real world, that is) about that post. That is, I usually post snippets, with no real original contribution of my own, to my linkblog, Not Quite a Linkblog. Why did I post such a terse comment to a snippet in my main blog? Well, because I had deliberately been avoiding the topic of Bev Harris in public fora. Why? Because I didn't want to be in the outs with Bev and her crew (Jim March, specifically). That particular incident in Florida seemed so over-the-top that I just had to say something. (It turns out that Bev et al. describe the incident differently, (that is, they thought it would be during a speech by LePore, not a tribute to her) but not so differently as to excuse their actions.)

So, for people not familiar with voting circles and to explain myself to those that are, on to Bev: while most if not all people I have talked to are either pro-Bev or anti-Bev, I am somewhat in between. That is, I definitely appreciate some things that she has done, but definitely feel embarrassed for the entire nonpartisan voter protection movement when she grandstands, crashes a going-away party for an election official or gives a straight-faced demonstration of a chimpanzee hacking an election for journalists and members of congress.

I work with voting system vendors, election officials, activists, lawyers and the public constantly. There is nothing more frustrating than having to overcome a barrier put in front of any of these crowds due to the actions of another crowd. When I was writing the voting machine information sheets, there were times that I had to explain that I wasn't a hacker and had no specific desire to paint the vendor in a poor light.

Bev and certain elements of the voting activist crowd really need to ask themselves a simple question, "What is the best way to get this thing done?" Is it one that makes it very difficult to work with election officials? Is it one that causes the majority of intellectuals and reasonable people to discredit all your other work?

So, there. Bev and her crew do very good things... like the recent FOIA requests and increasing the level of transparency in election administration, for one small example (there are many more). I still remain hopeful that Bev et al. will stop loosing focus and fighting these silly PR wars... and why in holy hell does Bev need a trademark for "Clean Up Crew"? Is she worried that another voter protection organization will take it and unjustly get donations under that name? That's silly.

We need cooperation in voter protection, not spinning wheels and infighting. With respect to that, I'm not sure this post did much to help, but it does give a few of you an idea of the reservations I have with either the pro-Bev or anti-Bev crowds.