My LTTE about auditing elections: the only means of regulation for this arm of corporate control.

[Stevepol]

The following is a letter I sent to the local paper. I doubt it will be published given the biases of the editors, but the chances are better given the melt-down on Wall Street. ES&S incidentally is the theft machine of choice for our local elections.


AUDITING: AN ESSENTIAL REGULATION

Everyone now is calling for re-regulation of money markets and lending institutions in the wake of the financial melt-downs of the last week. But voices have been raised in behalf of regulation for decades. People just preferred to look the other way. Meanwhile, the same scenario is being played out in an even more critical arena of public life: our election system. It is perfectly obvious that it’s impossible to even have a democracy, much less a fair election when our votes are counted in secret by private corporations like ES&S, without verification, using electronic voting machines that have been shown in every serious study to be open to undetectable fraudulent programming, especially by insiders. A chorus of voices has been raised, but people prefer to look the other way. The same class of corporate insiders who played the money markets for all they were worth is in charge of our election system, and the outcome is just as obvious and predictable. If we don’t want to face a melt-down of our democracy, we would do well to audit our elections. Auditing is the only valid way of verifying and regulating this intrusion of corporate control over public life.

[azul]

1. Why can't states and counties just legislate ownership of votes?

How companies ever got possession of public votes is mind-boggling. The votes and the voting process belong to the people only, and I guess that this has to be spelled out in law.

[Wilms]

2. States DO own the vote.

The problem is most states leave them to voting machines, manufacturers, vendors, and the uncertainty inherent in unsecured systems.

Hand counts, lever machines, and risk-based audits take the votes back.

[Kurovski]

3. K&R. (nt)