The impetus behind the film kind of started with the voting reform conference that took place in Nashville, which is where you got a lot of interviews with people in the film...
Absolutely.
After that conference, was there more local interest or activism on this?
Well, really that conference was more about... this was five months after the 2004 election. These were people that came from all over the country, thirty states; a combination of journalists, the blogging community, attorneys, statisticians, computer experts, authors... just a collage of people who were working on this issue, or had an interest in the issue. Or just ordinary citizens. And at five months after the election, nothing was going to change. So this was more, "Okay, where do we go from here? How do we come together as a group and recommend initiatives, and organize state by state, city by city, in order to ensure that what happened in the 2004 election doesn't happen again?"
These were people who had mostly been connecting on the Internet. Emails, postings, blogs... and seeing each other for the first time. It was like this gigantic group support session. You know, thinking, "We're not alone!" But it was a real sense of working together. The guy who organized it, Bernie Ellis, is local and had done a lot of work locally, and he was just stubborn enough to believe that you could throw a national conference and people would show up and come together.
The group that put this conference on, they're called Gathering To Save Our Democracy, gave them a lot of belief and urgency - after putting together a national conference, drawing people from thirty states - they started putting their efforts into state and local initiatives. And this law that I was talking about, I believe it passed 32-0 in the state Senate. People outside of Tennessee were going, "Wow, how did you guys do that?" They put their energy into trying to get rid of these touchscreen machines and they succeeded.
Brook Thompson is responsible for the elections in this state, and he was very much against this. But yet, they lobbied, they stayed on point, and the law changed. And it was a huge victory; that was about two months ago.
I really hope that what comes through in the film... this is tough information. It's a little bit hard to get at it; it's complicated. It's not like it's an issue that gets daily coverage in the media, so there's not a lot of knowledge to work with. It's one of those issues, too, that people just don't want to go there. I mean, "I don't want to have to worry about my darn vote, for heaven's sake! I thought I could just count on that." Kind of like depositing money in the bank; you know, I voted for the guy, I'm good to go. People don't want to hear that. So you're exposing them to really tough information, and people tend to get very agitated. They see the film and they don't like [what they're hearing]; but then they get very motivated.
Article comments
1 - Dave Nalle
Your interview would be a lot more interesting if you hadn't stuck to nothing but softball questions and fawning on your subject.
I'd have liked to see you ask him if he had any evidence at all that any voting machines had ever been hacked during an election (there is none) and perhaps hit him with some questions about the hundreds of thousands of bogus registrations from ACORN and other leftist groups, or perhaps the cash for votes practices of Democrats in a number of southern states.
But I guess that wouldn't suit your agenda, just as the media avoids reporting on election fraud in general because they know that any unbiased and halfway thorough investigation will reveal so much more fraud from the left than the right that it would be embarassing.
Think about it. All this furor about voting machines, yet it is the city and county and state electoral bureaucracies which are dominated by Democrats which have been the main supporters of the use of these machines.
Partisans like the people who made this film have identified a legitimate problem, but they need to come to grips at some point with the reality that if there is fraud going on, it's much more likely to be their political allies who are doing it.
Dave
2 - David R. Perry
Dave,
I'm assuming that you haven't actually watched said movie. I would recommend it (it's available via Netflix, by the way; in case anyone here subscribes), as I found it very interesting, and many of the criticisms you mention are dealt with in more detail there. I was not attempting to rehash every point or claim of the film.
Granted, the film has an admittedly obvious leftist bent to it, but I think it's ridiculous to criticize the main thrust of the film, which deals with the need for more accountability and checks and balances in the voting process. That is something that only benefits a real democracy. Your quibble seems to be with "why" they're looking into it in the first place, which is less important.
If you'd like to ask your own questions, the production company seems fairly open to media inquiries. Perhaps you can help fill in the blanks of the discussion.
By the way, your critique would be more interesting if you didn't exhibit an obviously equal, but opposite, agenda. (Agendas come from both sides, you know.)
- DRP
3 - Dave Nalle
Well, I'd normally take a middle course, but when dealing with a partisan position I'm naturally inclined to take the opposite one.
I've done a lot of reading on the voting security issue == things like actual academic studies -- but there's so much propaganda out there that I'm reluctant to watch a film. The format is much easier to use for propaganda and distortion in the grand Michael Moore tradition.
These things are getting on cable, though. So when it does I'll be all over it.
Dave
4 - John
The bias is so overwhelmingly against Republicans that the film is self- discrediting.