"Voter Verified Paper Ballots", Andy wanted people to remember...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4046336What a community we once were, there were those who made it thier life's mission to bring us down, they are winning that war it seems.
When did we decide right is wrong and wrong is right is the way to win .
So much time has been spent fighting each other that the light has dimmed...
Many needed voices have disappeared....
Election fraud is not nor has it ever been a conspiracy, it's fact, and it continues, Diebold has won, how some choose to down play this excessive and illegal criminal activity that has only gotten worse leaves me stunned...
At one time the majority of DU truly cared, what happened?
= new reply since forum marked as read
And here's to Andy! He was one of my very first friends on DU... 
I remember exactly how we ran across each other. He made a post very late one night because he was extremely upset about the death of a young man he'd tried to help. But by the next day, he'd pulled himself together and was trying to organize donations to help the young man's wife and baby. He replied via PM to thank every DUer who had posted support on his late night thread and we remained in touch - and friends - after that. Of course, I first knew him as God_bush_n_cheney... 
...from the voting rolls in Brooklyn, between April and November of last year, with no notice to the voters, so when they showed up today to vote they were told they are not Democrats and couldn't vote. They were given "affidavit" ("provisional"
ballots, which generally are never counted. A lawsuit was filed, and city authorities seem concerned, so maybe, just maybe, these votes will be counted--though probably not. And we don't know the full extent of this disenfranchisement yet.
Several Democratic Party run polling places didn't open until 12 noon, and there was chaos--machines not working, etc.--in many places. Lots and lots of people disenfranchised in NY today--a state that Clinton won, numerically, by about a 15% margin, while exit polls said the margin was about 4%.
In Arizona, very similar things occurred. Polling places suddenly cut from 200 to 60 in the most populous county. And thousands of people, having waited in 4 to 5 hour lines, when they got to the front, were told that THEIR registration status had been changed from Democratic to something else, and they couldn't vote. This was also done without the voters' knowledge. Part of the responsibility in AZ was local officials. But part of it was the Democratic Party, which exhibited no vigilance whatsoever over their party members' voting rights--their party members who voted same day, that is. No interference was reported for early voters. Early voters mostly went for Clinton. Same day voters for Sanders. Same day voters were massively disenfranchised.
These disenfranchisements of Democratic voters directly by the Democratic Party establishment or by Democratic Party malfeasance, are contemptible and outrageous.
Electronic voting systems make it EASY to purge voter rolls. You just program them to choose who you don't want voting, and, like magic, those voters are stripped out of the eligible column. The Bush Republicans did this to black voters in several states in 2004. It is shocking to see Democrats engaged in Republican vote suppression. But I think we need to understand that SOME Democrats benefit from low voter turnout. Didn't used to be this way. Is now.
Also, Sanders, the anti-establishment Democratic candidate, has done much better in caucus states, where votes are counted by hand or voice in the public venue, than he has in states with primaries run on electronic systems which contain 'TRADE SECRET' code, owned and controlled by private corporations. This could be accident or coincidence. Is it? Or is it telling us something? Hard to know, when party and local officials do only a very inadequate 1% audit (comparison of ballots to electronic results, if they have a ballot at all--many states don't--but having a ballot means nothing if the ballots aren't counted sufficiently to detect fraud).
Electronic systems are DESIGNED so that it is hard, and even impossible, for ordinary people to know if fraud has been committed. The public is forbidden to review the 'TRADE SECRET' code. Many state rules--devised by the major parties--make recounts and verification nearly impossible.
Electronic voting was spread like a plague throughout the U.S., between 2002 and 2004, with the complicity and even enthusiasm of our Democratic office holders, and became a very corrupt business for secretaries of state, into all that money from the Feds and wining and dining by the electronic voting companies. It was a damn sickening spectacle, as our right to see our votes counted was taken away from us.
Sickening is the word for all this, and all of what our political system has become--remote from ordinary people, run by 'professionals' many of them on the take, or cosseted with "revolving door" deals, and, of course, awash in corporate cash at every turn.
I feel that all of our activism on election integrity during the 2004 election era, here at DU and elsewhere, went for nothing. The situation is, if anything, worse now than it was then. Then, we had honest exit polls--the only way to tell fraud from not fraud in electronic systems (exit polls that are NOT 'adjusted' to the official results). Then, electronic voting and voter purges were not so accepted. Then, people still remembered handcounting their ballots in the public venue and being active citizens at their polling places.
Now, people still get outraged when their right to vote is denied, but they don't know half of what is going on behind the scenes. They are confronted with election officials giving them unfathomable news--they can't vote because of some weird 'glitch' that happened behind the scenes, and are told to go see a judge in another part of town, or are made to stand in line for 5 hours and then are told of this weirdness. Or, they know damn well that most of the people in their community or neighborhood voted a certain way, and the TV is telling them they didn't, and they have NO WAY to determine the truth. It's all been turned into electrons inside a 'TRADE SECRET' code system, and anti-public election officials treat them like they are morons for asking about it.
Poor Andy! He would be appalled to see what has happened, or rather, what has not happened. The People have at least semi-awakened to the rigging of "Citizens United" but not to the nefarious machines that are being used to strip them of their right to vote, or simply to change their vote. And they can't seem to do anything about it. They don't even know it.