"We oppose the idea of a voter-verified paper trail." -- Harris Miller
Most of you haven't heard of Harris Miller, who departed earlier this week as head of the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), a lobbying group for big information technology corporations. But you will certainly hear about him next week, as he is expected to announce his candidacy for the U.S. Senate, as a Democrat from Virginia, running against George Allen. In fact, the media trial balloons this week have treated him as a presumptive nominee, who has the backing of the party leadership, even though they haven't made any formal endorsement.
The quote above, obviously, gets at the reasons why this should concern us, as Democrats.
As head of the ITAA, Miller specifically
lobbied Congress against verified voting, on behalf of the interests of Diebold and other manufacturers of paperless e-voting machines -- members of ITAA. From the article in
CIO:
The vendor community doesn't like it. "We oppose the idea of a voter-verified paper trail," says Harris Miller, president of the trade group Information Technology Association of America. Introducing paper into the mix, he says, defeats the improved efficiency and reliability e-voting promises. "There was never a golden age when paper ballots were accurately counted," Miller says. Adding paper to e-voting will only make the process of administering elections more costly and time-consuming without improving accuracy, opponents assert.
Huh? WTF? I know there may have been problems in the past with voting systems, but shouldn't we be striving to do better?
I understand that Miller was representing the interests of Diebold, and some other members of the ITAA, but this is exactly why one doesn't generally run for office after being a lobbyist for two decades. And I certainly don't think advocating against verified voting is something grassroots Virginia Democrats are going to forgive him for, regardless of the reason -- maintaining the integrity of the electoral process is a bedrock issue for most Democrats, and verified voting supported by the overwhelming majority of us.
(Also, note the reference to "Harris" at the end of this Diebold email from March 2004 on the Ohio hearings, pretty clearly a reference to Harris Miller, though I offer the link with the disclaimer that I don't necessarily agree with all of the positions taken on the Black Box Voting website; this is just raw source material from Diebold...)
Didn't the party vet this guy before they coalesced around him as a presumptive nominee? And if not, why not? It only takes a couple of minutes on Google to find a lot of troubling statements from Miller.
Speaking of which, another major issue where I think a lot of Democrats are going to have trouble with Miller is personal privacy. See this piece from Fox News:
Another method to deter terrorism is data mining, said Harris Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of America. Data mining refers to any number of techniques where a database is used to look for hidden facts, details or relationships.
"What the data mining allows you to do is pull that together and say 'we've seen a major increase in HAZMAT activity in four cities' ... individually, these cities may not think much of it ... but maybe the terrorists are actually probing the system," Miller said.
OK, most of us agree that terrorism is a genuine threat, and I think there may be some role for collection of data which is completely open source and in the public domain, but privacy and legal concerns must also be addressed. Even Joe Lieberman was on the right side on this one:
But some technologies, such as those that use biometrics, are coming under fire for being too intrusive.
For example, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., wrote a letter to Ridge last month citing concern over biometrics-based technologies. Various privacy groups and other lawmakers have also said some homeland security programs need more congressional oversight.
Here's Harris Miller's take on personal privacy:
But others say it's better to be safe than sorry.
"I think the American people are very open to these things," Miller said. "People understand we are living in a different time ... as long as there's some rationale for it, I think people are going to be fairly accepting."
Where have we heard that tired old line before? BushCo, of course!
And, apart from the issue of privacy vis-a-vis government data mining, he also opposed efforts by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) late in the Clinton administration to protect consumers' online data. Yes, he does make reference in this press release to privacy features of web browsers (which most Internet users don't know about), and calls the proposed regulatory actions a "first step down the slippery slope of government regulation of the Internet," but honestly, wouldn't most people like to have some restrictions on how corporations share data about us gathered online? Of course, and certainly most Democrats do.
Harris Miller has not even announced his Senate candidacy yet -- though he's expected to do so next week -- and no high-ranking Virginia Democrats have formally endorsed him yet. There's still time to head off a train wreck here. Writing a negative post on a Democratic candidate is something I do reluctantly -- and I've had a couple of people try to talk me out of this today -- but when I ran across the information on his lobbying activities against verified voting, it became clear to me that I had to say something. Clearly, if the rumors about the party insiders' support for Miller are true, they haven't vetted him thoroughly enough -- as this is a position which is totally unacceptable to most Democratic voters. So I'd like to say this to them -- the blogosphere has vetted Harris Miller for you, and found him wanting as a Democratic candidate -- can you really still endorse him next week knowing this stuff?
Full disclosure: As many of you have seen in my previous posts, I have been involved in efforts to draft James Webb to run against Allen this year. I started reading up on him after Kos mentioned him in late October, and I think he'd make a fine candidate, partcularly given his clear thinking on foreign policy and early opposition to the Iraq War (back in 2002, when few others has the guts to criticise George W. Bush on anything related to national security).
But regardless of whether you agree with me about Webb or not, I think most of us will agree that Harris Miller is simply not acceptable as a Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate. Virginia deserves better -- and hopefully a contested primary will give us a better nominee.
There's actually a lot more material on Miller than I've had time to cover tonight, and my fellow dKos denizen Lowkell is possibly going to cover some of the others later this weekend, if he has time.
Also, please consider this post 'in the public domain.' You may repost it in its entirety on other blogs and discussion groups, so long as you credit it and provide a link back to the original post.