Thread by @doctorow

Back in Feb, I published a @washingtonpost op-ed about the disgraceful legal threats and smears ES&S - the voting machine monopolist - had thrown at SMART, NY activists who lobby for election security and against unaccountable voting machines.

washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/0…

1/

For years, orgs like SMART argued that the defect-riddled machines from the likes of ES&S were a threat to US election integrity, not just because they were hackable, but because this made it easy for push a bad-faith narrative of a stolen election.

pluralistic.net/2021/02/04/vot…

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Of course, this is exactly what happened, with Trump and his cult taking up a baseless narrative that Dominion Systems' (terrible) voting machines had been used to steal the election. Far from being chastened by this democracy-destabilizing moment, ES&S seized upon it.

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ES&S lumped SMART's accurate, measured warnings about its flagship Expressvote XL machines in with Trump's unhinged claims about Dominon's machines, hoping that the general public wouldn't know enough about the specifics to tell the difference.

pluralistic.net/2021/01/11/see…

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That is, ES&S was tacitly colluding with Trump to making voting machines a culture war bullshit topic, turning the years of selfless, well-informed, highly technical scholarship on the dangers of voting machines into a marker of unhinged conspiratorialism.

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Despite legal threats from a vicious monopolist, SMART didn't give up. Their bravery is paying off. The NY Senate will take up SB309A, a voting machine bill to ban "hybrid" machines that mark and count ballots, among other election integrity measures.

legislation.nysenate.gov/pdf/bills/2021…

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The bill also prohibits counting non-human-readable ballot marks like QR codes and bar codes insisting that any automated ballot tally count up the same marks that a human recount would rely upon.

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SB309A mirrors the language of federal laws like the SAFE Act and PAVE Act, which were struck down after massive, coordinated lobbying campaigns by the voting machine industry.

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And SB309A has the support of the nation's foremost election security experts, led by Princeton's Andrew Appel.

docs.google.com/document/d/1rd…

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Despite what Trump and voting machine profiteers would have you believe, election integrity is not conspiratorial culture war bullshit. Between Bush v Gore and 2020, we ignored the warnings of security researchers - and now we're paying the price.

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Passing SB309A would mark a turning point for sound, evidence-based election security, and make New York State the leader in sound elections.

eof/

ETA - If you'd like an unrolled version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

pluralistic.net/2021/06/07/fir…