FSFP President John Bonifaz recently appeared on Rising Up With Sonali to discuss the Iowa Caucus debacle and the Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump. During a discussion with host Sonali Kolhatkar, Bonifaz outlined the importance of using hand-marked paper ballots in all elections and the necessity of holding voting system vendors accountable for marketing insecure and unreliable products.

“We have three major companies – ES&S, Hart InterCivic and Dominion, – that effectively control the market of voting systems in this country and there needs to be much more scrutiny from Congress, from the Election Assistance Commission and from state governments with respect to these vendors and who their investors are, and how they are marketing their products,”  said Bonifaz.

Free Speech For People and National Election Defense Coalition recently issued a joint statement about the failed mobile reporting app used in the Iowa Caucus and reiterated the need for hand-marked paper ballots nationwide.  The paper records in every precinct in the Iowa Caucus have been critical to the Iowa Democratic Party’s work of reviewing voter preferences and determining the caucus results. 

During the appearance on Rising Up With Sonali, Bonifaz also discussed the Senate impeachment trial and condemned Senators who participated in preventing a full and fair trial. On January 31, the Senate voted to prevent key witnesses from testifying in a trial to determine whether or not to convict the President.

“What’s happened in the Senate is a complete sham. It’s a sham trial. It’s a massive cover-up and those Republican Senators who have voted to block witnesses, to block documents being produced for this trial and just move on to a vote for acquittal – they will go down in history as being complicit with the President and this White House in this cover-up and complicit with the criminal enterprise operating out of the Oval Office, ” said Bonifaz.

Watch the full discussion here.