- 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."
-
- Democratic Underground said Harris' postings have been
belligerent at times to other members of the forum and that she used the
website to threaten its operators with lawsuits.
-
- "We no longer believe that it is productive to allow
her to use DU as a platform to promote herself while simultaneously
trashing
us, our moderators and others who have been previously supportive of her
cause," site administrators wrote in the statement.
-
- Harris, a Washington-based publicist, became a leading
critic of electronic voting machines after she discovered source code for
a voting machine made by Diebold Election Systems on the internet in 2002.
When Harris put out a call on the Democratic Underground site last year
for help to examine the code, members who had technical expertise found
numerous security flaws in it. Computer scientists at Johns Hopkins and
Rice Universities then released a public report about the flaws, spawning
a nationwide movement to demand more-secure voting systems.
-
- She said she did not threaten to sue Democratic
Underground
but did complain that some participants in the forums were improperly using
the phrase "Clean up Crew," which she said is a trademarked
phrase
of her Black Box Voting organization.
-
- "They're calling me a con man," she said,
referring
to some postings on the site. "If I try to defend myself, I get
warnings
they'll ban me."
-
- Democratic Underground members have long been supporters
of Harris's work. But for every ardent admirer she has attracted on the
DU site and elsewhere, she has also garnered many critics, some of whom
dismiss her allegations of voting fraud as the rantings of a conspiracy
nut. Other critics condemn her for a confrontational and aggressive style
that has been directed as often at computer scientists, journalists and
other voting activists as it has been at voting-machine makers and election
officials.
-
- Democratic Underground administrators said their decision
to bar Harris from the site has nothing to do with her work investigating
electronic voting.
-
- "Internet discussion forums are by nature a chaotic
and unforgiving medium of communication, and on moderated boards like ours
people are frequently barred from posting for a variety of reasons,"
said David Allen, one of the administrators of Democratic Underground,
in an e-mail. "The fact that Democratic Underground and Bev Harris
have parted ways should not cast doubt on the integrity of her overall
research into voting irregularities."
-
- Harris' expulsion from Democratic Underground follows
a disagreement she recently had with producers of MSNBC's show Countdown
with Keith Olbermann, which, until now, has been supportive of Harris'
work.
-
- Last week Olbermann criticized Harris for not publicly
releasing film footage said to reveal questionable vote-tabulating
practices
in Volusia County, Florida. The footage, which was filmed by a documentary
crew that has been following Harris for a year, is said to show paper
voting
records from a bag of garbage that Harris obtained after scuffling with
Volusia County election officials outside their offices. Harris has implied
on her website and in other public statements that the records indicate
actions that "are consistent with fraud."
-
- Olbermann originally wrote that Harris should release
the footage to back her claims and said that when his staff spoke with
her after his initial blog entry about it, she was "belligerent,
threatening
and demanding" with them. Some members of Democratic Underground have
speculated that Harris wants to hold onto the footage so the filmmakers
can release it in their documentary and make a bigger publicity
splash.
-
- But Harris said she did not receive calls from the
television
program asking for the footage and is not able to release it to the TV
station because it is being used in a lawsuit against the county. She also
said the charge that she threatened Olbermann's staff is untrue.
-
- But some members of Democratic Underground have noted
that Olbermann's description of Harris' behavior is consistent with their
experiences with her. And others have questioned whether she is the best
public representative for the voting activist movement.
-
- "No one denies she's done great work," wrote
one forum member who goes by the name AmyCrat. "It's her PR skills
that are potentially hurting the whole effort (and her own efforts). Good
intentions aren't an excuse for unprofessional behavior."
-
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