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Edited on Sun Mar-25-07 09:12 AM by Peace Patriot
righwing billionaire Howard Ahmanson, who also gave one million dollars to the extremist 'christian' Chalcedon foundation, which touts the death penalty for homosexuals (among other things).
THAT's the sort of people who are "counting" all our votes under a veil of corporate secrecy. Why are we surprised at the result?
Kudos to Brad--once again--for bringing us this news! I truly hope that the enlightened activities of People for the American Way, the ACLU and the awesome activists who are working on this lawsuit--and who are always behind dangerous, difficult exposes like this--can move the Democratic Party leaders off their corrupt behinds--the ones who have been larding this corporation and Diebold with billions of our taxpayer dollars, and are now planning to pay MORE billions to them to "fix" an election system that they deliberately broke, with more shiny doohickeys and secret coding. Why doesn't Congress just say: a ballot for every voter, and count them in a way that everyone can see and understand.
It's that simple.
I think, with the Democrats, it's mostly the fat contracts, and all that money trickling through their fingers to the states. So KEEP the goddamned machines (as a temporary measure--they'll become obsolete soon enough--when enough voters get on to them--or when our governments go bankrupt). Just COUNT THE VOTES.
In Venezuela, they hand-count FIFTY-FIVE PERCENT of the ballots, as a check on machine fraud--and they have an open source code system! (--anyone may review the code by which votes are tabulated). 55%!
THAT is an AUDIT!
This is the most plausible explanation I can think of--for our Democratic Party leaders' mindboggling silence on rightwing Bushite corporations "counting" all our votes with secret code, and for the Democrats in the current Congress proposing a lousy, stinking 2% audit. It's the contracts, stupid! It may be worse than that. It may be collusion on the war. I strongly suspect Christopher Dodd and Terry McAuliffe of this--direct collusion with the enemy to manufacture an endorsement of the war, and prevent it from being stopped by the 56% of the American people who opposed it before it started, and the 75% who oppose it now. If you are going to have a unjust, heinous war, in a democracy--especially one with the Vietnam War in living memory--you have to fix the elections. That's what they did. And all the Democrats voted FOR it, in 2002--even more Democrats than voted for the IWR.*
But I think it's mostly just corruption--perhaps some war corruption, and perhaps some fear, too. (If you oppose Diebold/ES&S, you'll be Kevin Shelleyed.) And note ES&S's utter arrogance, in this instance--their dictation of terms for their own audit. They act like Dick Cheney. (And if you oppose him, you get anthraxed.)
So, what are the chances of the Democrats in Congress coming up with a REAL solution (as per above: count the damn votes--machines or no machines)? Not very good.
Anyway, I've proposed a way to get around the corruption that ES&S and Diebold have introduced into our vote counting system, at all levels, and it is this: We had a big increase in Absentee Ballot voting in '06. I think this was a grass roots voter revolt--a boycott of the machines--an effort to get around the rigged electronics. We should be proud. It means that a lot of people have gotten the word, despite the corporate news monopoly "Iron Curtain" over this. The trouble is that this very big constituency for transparent vote counting (it's 50% in some places) is not getting what they want. Corrupt election officials often just "scan" the AB votes right into the rigged system. Human eyes don't count those votes. I think we need to mobilize the AB voters as a constituency, and get them down to their local registrars and state officials' offices to demand hand-counting of the AB votes and posting of the results BEFORE any electronics are involved. This will not only provide a good check against machine totals, it will snowball. Everyone will want their vote to be counted. The key is citizen pressure at the state/local level--the levels at which ordinary people still have some influence. This is the lo-n-n-ng way round to transparent vote counting--but when you've got major obstacles in front of you like bipartisan corruption, you have to get smart and wily and you have to think long term. We may have to suffer through Hillary or Jeb Bush or Chuck Hagel, before we can restore real vote counting. But it is a MUST DO, if we want our country back from the global corporate predators who have seized it.
I often come across impatience here at DU. We seem to think that, as North Americans, we are entitled to an easy, quick solution to our problems. And some still expect the powers-that-be to GIVE our democracy back to us. We need to learn the hard lesson of other cultures, and of history. WE are the "Banana Republic" now. And as these fuckers squeeze every last dime out of us, and use our soldiers as cannon fodder in their corporate resource wars, and destroy our Constitution, and loot everything in sight, and destroy our children's future, we have to learn endurance and patience, and we need to get much smarter about where power actually resides: in the vote. Ask the South Americans (where a big democratic revolution is under way, due in part to long hard work on TRANSPARENT elections). Ask the South Africans. Ask Nelson Mandela (30 years in prison). Ask black Americans. Ask your grandmother. At one time in the democratic world, blacks, browns and women did not have the right to vote. And it was a long and difficult struggle to change that. And many have died along the way, for the future rights of other people. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was not a magic wand. It was the result of one hundred years of struggle. Same with the Declaration of Independence, every one of whose signatories died penniless, including its author, Thomas Jefferson.
That said, I think we can and will win our country back. Just think about these stats: 56% of the American people opposed the Iraq War from the beginning. 75% oppose it now. These are good people, who have been disenfranchised. Some are aware of it. And some are not. Brad and all election reformers have been doing a tremendous and essential patriotic work in spreading the word on this, and leading various struggles to change it. These are the Tom Paine's and Paul Revere's of our generation. We are privileged to be witnessing, and to be part of, American Revolution II--however long it may take to be fully realized.
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*(Only two US Senators voted against the "Help America Vote for Bush Act." Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer. Go figure.)
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