John Gideon
By Mimi Kennedy, May 6, 2009

For activists and organizers, cyberspace often functions as the meeting place, a place of deep community. We meet—and come to know, cherish, admire, help and love one another—in this virtual realm. We learn names and written voices from e-mail; sometimes we hear each other’s physical voices on conferences calls.

When one of us leaves the earth, and we hear of this passing, cyberspace colleagues can be lulled into a computer-inspired fantasy that this person has simply taken a break, stepped away from the computer for a while—a computerized version of the hope of reincarnation. After all, we still have their e-mails in our folders, their articles on the web.

Even if we do return, as Bob Dylan sings in his song, Mississippi, “You can always come back, but you can’t come back all the way.” It’s necessary to stop and pay homage to the unique beauty of each particular life. John Gideon, in his particular self, was profoundly helpful to our nation—and to PDA—in a profoundly difficult time.

I met John Gideon on e-mail threads and then on PDA’s Election Protection Issues Organizing Team conference calls. Previously, I’d only known him as the writer of great articles on websites, first [VerifiedVoting http://verifiedvoting.org/], then on [VotersUnite www.votersunite.org/], the organization he directed with Ellen Theisen. In 2002 and 2003, when fear over our electoral systems gripped the country, I relied heavily on the few available election-protection sites. My state (California) faced a series of turbulent election events, including a gubernatorial recall, a special election, and the hounding out of office of a Secretary of State for stated reasons that never mentioned his de-certification of Diebold, A move that had infuriated the e-voting vendors. Diebold machines were recertified under his appointed successor. It seemed that a very red carpet was being engineered for roll-out in California for the ’04 election. Ohio was ground zero instead, but problems in California persist, even after the election of election integrity champion Debra Bowen–and John persisted in correcting them.

After the ’06 election, when PDA helped found the United Voting Rights Coalition to lobby against fatally-flawed election “reform”—Rep. Rush Holt’s bill, HR 811, which allowed the continued use of privately owned DRE voting machines, albeit with paper-trail printers tacked on, which added little security but a new profit windfall for vendors—John Gideon arrived on our conference calls with the force of a virtual super-hero. Information is power, and John had information. He compiled it in The Daily Voting News, which published news stories from all over the world on elections and voting. He kept early inventory from the time he realized, as a citizen, the danger to our democracy—to the peaceful transfer of power in any nation—if election privatization continued unchallenged. Voting systems protected by trade secrets were being sold to politicians who didn’t understand them, and the officials who deployed them and voters who used them did so without realizing the vulnerabilities. John was both historian and activist, a rare combination. Chroniclers of history, even contemporary history, have been held by popular wisdom to the standard that requires disinterest as a proof of journalistic integrity–whether that means refusing to save a dying person or a dying democracy. John was braver than that.

The name alone has biblical resonance: Gideon’s Bible! The voice in the wilderness! Gift of God! And the man himself was a physical powerhouse—6’7” and bearded like a mountain sage. I know this from photographs. I never met him in person. Over the phone, his voice was deep and measured—literate and clear in his writing. His keen discernment was distilled from his passion, not obstructed by it. That passion was for information reported with integrity so that people could understand their own situations.

This experience of losing someone you’ve known in the virtual world makes it harder to grieve. Cyberspace spans physical space and even time—it’s hard to feel the loss of virtual touch and presence. When I realized I never met him in real space and time, I began to wonder if I ever knew John Gideon or if to think I did was just a self-serving illusion. But a whispered intuition teaches me a lesson in solidarity. Yes, I knew him, and the work we shared produced effects that neither of us will ever know fully—unless in eternity John has now been given full perspective. He was a key figure in educating people about saving democracy, now and for the future. The space he’s left behind—cyber and physical—echoes with our unified voices, and his sudden departure leaves us to carry on expanding the choir of voices demanding clean, fair and transparent elections. John’s basso profundo amplified our message mightily–it will be missed.

Being a Catholic, I can’t quite shed a sense that John somehow works with us still, from another realm. Perhaps it’s a selfish belief, but it staunches despair. It’s easier to embrace when you don’t have to daily confront the empty physical space someone leaves behind. I sometimes imagine John on a walk away from his computer, where he will return and sit, as I do, with sun shining through a window. But, no—he’s absent from earth, and we must mourn and honor that absence. Thanks, John, for the gift of your presence when you were here, and for all you did. To those who miss a shared life with you as family, friends, neighbors and colleagues, we convey sympathy. In honoring your memory, PDA will continue your work in election protection with as much passion, information, energy and discernment as we can muster.