look at this so you'll understand why I say this.
They sold out America for election machine kickbacks.
http://www.onlinereviewofbooks.com/index.htmlHow Democrats Enabled
Republicans To Steal the
2004 Presidential Election
By J. F. Miglio
Since the presidential election, there have been hundreds, perhaps
thousands, of stories on the Internet (and even a few in the mainstream
news media) about voter fraud and how easily the 2004 presidential
election could have been rigged by the Bush Administration and their
corporate allies, Diebold and ES & S, the companies in charge of
counting a majority of all the votes in American today.
What isn't being discussed, however, is the Democratic Party's
complicity in this year's presidential election farce. If you recall,
after the 2000 presidential election, Democrats claimed they were madder
than hell about voter fraud, reiterating ad infinitum how the Supreme
Court "stole" the election from Al Gore and vowed it would never happen
again.
Given their level of anger and righteous indignation, most Americans who
voted against George W. Bush assumed that as soon as he slithered into
the oval office, the leaders of the Democratic Party would rush to their
desks to write legislation that would remedy the problem of voter
fraud-- once and for all.
In addition, the anti-Bush crowd believed that once Democratic leaders
wrote the legislation, that if the Republicans in Congress tried to
block it, the Democratic leaders would immediately call press
conferences, make the rounds on all the news shows, and proclaim to the
American public in the boldest way possible how the Bush Administration
was trying to block legislation that mandated open and honest elections
with fail safe back up systems and paper trails to verify each vote.
Unfortunately, this never happened. Instead, most Democrats (including
John Kerry) got sidetracked by 9/11 and the war in Iraq, allowed two
years to pass, and then let the Republicans seize the initiative. How?
By allowing the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), a
lobbying group representing technology firms like Diebold and ES & S, to
push legislation through Congress favorable to their interests. As a
result, a bill was written called the Help Americans Vote Act (HAVA) of
2002.
Ostensibly, the bill was a bipartisan piece of legislation that was
supposed to ameliorate the punch card voting problems that had plagued
the 2000 presidential election by using touch screen vote counting
machines. In addition, it was supposed to make the entire voting process
fairer and more transparent.
The bill was written by two Republicans, Mitch McConnell and Robert W.
Ney (of Ohio-- surprise, surprise!), and two Democrats, Steny Hoyer and
Chris Dodd (a "Golden Leash" award-winner for taking special interest
money), and it passed overwhelmingly in both houses of Congress,
receiving praise from Democrats and Republicans alike. Steny Hoyer even
went as far as to refer to HAVA as "the first Civil Rights Act of the
21st Century."
Incredible as it seems, the legislation did nothing to restrict the
pervasive control and partisan influence that Diebold and ES & S lorded
over the election process, nor did it use language precise enough to
mandate that any company that manufactured electronic vote counting
machines had to produce a paper trail to verify the authenticity of
voter selections.
In essence, HAVA was a complete sham, an extraordinary giveaway to the
Republicans, and Diebold and ES & S got exactly they wanted: carte
blanche to sell their paperless, touch screen voting machines all over
the country. And as soon the Congress shelled out $3.8 billion to state
governments for the acquisition of new touch screen voting machines that
replaced the old punch card ballots, Diebold and ES & S were there to
cash in-- big time!
Once the Democrats realized what a monumental mistake they had made with
HAVA, they tried to rectify it. Bob Graham and Rush Holt wrote the Voter
Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003, which would have
mandated a paper trail for all electronic voting machines. In addition,
Hillary Clinton wrote her own bill (although weaker than the Graham-Holt
bill) asking for better vote counting procedures. Naturally, both bills
were stalled out in committee, and they had no chance of passage before
the 2004 election.
And here's the kicker: After the aforementioned bills were presented to
Congress, both Chris Dodd and Steny Hoyer, the Democrats who co-wrote
the HAVA legislation, opposed the two pieces of legislation introduced
by their fellow Democrats that would have given it more teeth.
Now let's do a little critical thinking and ask some obvious questions:
1) Why did Chris Dodd and Steny Hoyer go against their fellow Democrats
who proposed legislation that would have strengthened the bill and made
it more difficult for companies like Diebold and ES & S to do business?
Could it be that they received campaign contributions from ITAA?
2) Why did so many Democrats sign on to the bill in the first place,
knowing it did nothing to diminish the pervasive influence of Diebold
and ES & S? Didn't they know that both these companies received
financial backing from billionaire Howard Ahmanson, an ultra right-wing
financier who, over the past several years, has contributed millions of
dollars to fundamentalist Christian organizations, the Heritage
Foundation, and other right-wing groups in tight with George W. Bush?
3) Is it possible that many Democrats were simply unaware of Diebold, ES
& S and Ahmanson? Possible, but if they weren't aware, they should have
been, because ever since the 1990s, there were numerous reports about
their influence on elections, including a nice little piece in 1996 when
Republican Chuck Hagel, who at the time had a major financial interest
in ES &S, ran for the U.S. Senate and won "stunning upsets" in both the
primaries and the general election. ...Read More
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