Diebold and the DNC

Well, the generally incompetent Terry McAuliffe has reached the end of his term as chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and a battle is raging within the party to see who will replace him. The Clintonian branch of the party is agitating for a "centrist" chair (read: business as usual, compete for voters by sounding more like the Republicans--in other words, the same tactics that have been losing elections for the last 30 years). The progressives in the party would like to see a co-chairmanship of Howard Dean and Simon Rosenberg, the visionary behind the New Democratic Network.



There are also several other names being tossed around, most of them in the centrist/business as usual camp. One of them, though, would be far worse for the party than merely a complete lack of new ideas:



If you care about solving the electronic voting problem, and stopping it, you must not allow Roy Barnes to take over control of the DNC. Because the moment he does, Diebold and electronic voting become the owners of our party.



Barnes, the former governor of Georgia, was instrumental in getting Diebold machines, even then known to be hackable and unreliable, installed in Georgia prior to the 2002 mid-term elections, in which 146 of 159 counties in Georgia had unexplainable voting "anomalies" in favor of Republican candidates.



Unfortunately, Democrats at large do not get to vote for the DNC chair (something that needs to be remedied in the future). For now, the new chair will be elected by the 440 members of the DNC itself; background on the Committee, and a list of the members, is here.



Mr. Barnes cannot be trusted with the future of the Democratic party. It would be good to let the members of the DNC know that.