Brad Friedman from
Brad Blog and four other Los Angeles bloggers had the rare opportunity to have lunch with Senator Feingold this past weekend.
I'll swallow my jealousy for just a moment while I tell you what transpired at that lunch.
More on the flip:
Brad wrote:
Feingold, in person, is as affable and charming and smart and impressive as he is on TV. Probably more so (especially after his BRAD BLOG compliments. I'm a cheap date!)
I had two major points that I was curious about and hoped to get a sense of from him during our meeting. 1) Why he chose not to tell any of his Dem colleagues about his Censure Resolution condemning Bush's warrantless domestic spying program before announcing it on This Week and then introducing it in the Senate the following day and 2) If he understood the extent of the havoc being wreaked on our country and democracy in the wake of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA).
Russ' response to the first question was something that many blogosphere progressives and DLC-loathing Democrats probably already knew: he didn't tell his colleagues because he knew that Democratic consultants would spit on his censure proposal, resulting in it never seeing the light of day. So he just decided to do what he felt was right and go out on a limb.
The answer to Brad's second question was somewhat more lackluster, though showing encouraging signs nonetheless. He admitted that he wasn't up to date on many of the issues surrounding electronic voting machines, but did feel strongly that a paper trail is an absolute necessity. He also wanted Brad to send his Senate office more information on this topic. Russ added something interesting, however, that many people don't know:
I can't recall which race it was (and I hope I'm relating the story accurately as he told it, it was very loud in the restaurant) but apparently the machines in use at the time had reported his opponent had won the race by just 32 votes. In the recount, or canvassing of the race, they had discovered that the Election Workers had forgotten to zero out the machine after testing, and prior to beginning the official balloting. The canvass had found that there were 31 votes already in the system for his opponent before balloting even began. Without the paper ballots to go back to, to sort things out, he says he might not have won that race at all.
If that isn't an glaring example of the need for verifiable paper trails, I don't know what is.
Check out other bloggers' coverage at Huffington Post, Martini Republic and SteveAudio. And last but not least, Howie over at DownwithTyranny.com who gave me the heads up immediately after the lunch took place. Thanks for the coverage guys.
I posted this over at my blog.