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and Georgia needs to be able to sue Diebold for every penny plus punitive damages, and they should have 110% support from all of Congress and the Judicial Branch (even the Unitorious Executiver branch should side with Georgia--but that's too far beyond even the fantasy of having Congress or the Courts stand up for the Democratic Rights of Americans).
More and more it looks like we need a new government; new, citizen supported/funded elections for the Presidency, and every seat in Congress... and perhaps a means to re-select Federal Judges and the Supreme Court. Of course, such unheard of elections would be done by the simplest, most rigourously secure methods and certainly leave a clear paper trail. It seems we need an ability to call for public referendums; the ability to do something like various parliamentary systems do--to call for a vote of no confidence to change the government as well as the ability to call for an unscheduled re-election for any position within government (requiring the office-holder to run again to be considered for continuing office or to require their removal and replacement by the winner of a newly called election in which the prior office holder is not allowed to participate--it would depend on the circumstances). This power must extend to calling for new appointments for judges to replace those who've offended a supermajority of the citizens. Sure, it must be difficult to implement such changes, but it shouldn't be so hard to call for the referendum. Upon recieving the results of such a referendum, if a supermajority (such as 66.66% or perhaps even slightly higher) is achieved, the process would move forward. Either immediate removal with an appointed temporary stand-in, or allow the individual to continue during the preparations for the new election (which should be a process that we have designed and prepared for so that the whole show can be performed inside of three months (or some similarly short span)).
Even if we had the foregoing capabilities--at this point, we'd literally have to call for referendums on nearly every currently elected official. It's possible, I suppose that we could select the primary movers and shakers and that would be enough to reign in (put the fear of God (the People, rather)) into most of the remaining bunch in order to make them respect their oath of office and attend to their "real" duty--to represent the People and to Defend the Constitution of the United States (as it is, one might call it the Untied States) of America.
The root of the problem lies in Campaign Finance and with the country's Corporations who use their money to achieve power over our elected officials (who need the money to greedily hang onto the power of their office--regardless of the quality of their performance). Our elected "leaders" do not answer to us--we can be taken for granted because, for the most part, we can be manipulated through the use of money to buy advertising to control what we get to see, hear and read. No, they answer to their sources of money, the Corporations primarily. So, our real war is against the corrupting influence of 'big money'/Corporations... yet, the only way we can control our government is through the occasional election--hence we have three needs: (1) be able to call for replacement of offending office holders including holding replacement elections, (2) truly reforming campaign finance to allow and even footing for any fairly qualified person to run for office, and (3) take massive regulatory control over all forms of mass media to ensure that such power to manipulate the minds/knowledge/worldviews of citizens be done in an honest and fair manner (competition once helped to ensure competing views were heard, but with an oligopoly consisting of mega-Media Corporations controling both the market and what information reaches the public, honesty and fairness do not in any way apply to our public information/mass media systems). One: the power to hold our leaders accountable mid-term (Public Referendum), two: remove primary mechanism of corrupting them (Campaign Finance), and three: control and restore freedom to the primary mechanism by which public opinion is formed (MSM).
Sure, we can't make progress on any such things while ruled by our current leaders. Plus, for the citizens/electorate to be able to call for impeachment/removal/replacement of a sitting elected official would require an Amendment to the Constitution--which is not something to be undertaken lightly; we would need some serious academic/legal research and debate--but it seems reasonable and appropriate (things move much faster and the power of our leaders is vastly greater now--we can ill afford to wait years to remove a corrupt or functioning lunatic from office). Without proper controls and regulations, neither does a free market remain "free" nor does the content provided by the media giants--we must regulate them and break-up their virtual monopoly over information. We must restore the "fourth estate" to once again serve as a marketplace of ideas.
Small steps, such as restoring a minimal balance in Congress between Democrats and Republicans may help prevent the situation from growing worse--but it's intolerably bad already. Even if we managed a total Democratic majority, we wouldn't be in the best of shape--we'd be facing the enormous problems left to us by the Republicans, and it could take decades to merely undo that damage--much less actually make any progress. Plus, given that Democrats are loathe to ignore laws and decisively force compliance--or rather, the desire to move forward by achieving consensus even with a helpless minority (that itself would want to reciprocate with destruction, while obstructing in every way possible), our recovery would be even slower. Of course, having experienced single-party rule, the People probably won't be wanting to give Democrats the same chance at such power. Perhaps reasonably so because, even though it's generally less common, corruption and misplaced allegiance (such as to Corporations for their financial contributions) does occur with Democrats too (and if they were a majority, the Corporations would be striving to provide Democrats with heretofore unknown opportunities for temptation).
Again and again, it seems there's no happy way forward. Worse, it seems that without a truly severe and determined struggle against the current status-quo, we're doomed to face ever worsening conditions. This is a path we cannot afford to continue to follow, and with every day we do, we come closer to the instance in which any alternative (at all) will be not only preferrable, but urgently necessary. That is terrible beyond most people's imaginings.
Lest we fix our electoral woes--and ensure valid, fair and honest elections; it's over. Say goodbye to the America we once knew. It's that serious and more. What have we done, though. We've tried and tried; courageous individuals all over the country have tried to use their offices to correct the problem. They've relied upon the system to respond to their efforts--it hasn't. Georgia is a fine example; after all those efforts, to have only one printer in several precints for the entire state? No hope for a proper election. The waste of $116 million taxpayer dollars actually destroyed any hope for honest elections. No hope of getting the money back or punishing the guilty Corporations (even if they could bring suit, would the get a 'pro-business' "Conservative" judge?).
We haven't done enough. Do we really think we'll win enough seats in November under these circumstances? Republicans are running scared though... doesn't that mean something? No, alas, because most of them don't really know for sure that the voting system has been hacked in their favor. So, really, if they're scared, they're needlessly so.
Will we have a Democratic Leader rise up with a plan and achieve a sufficient groundswell of support from the party's base to be able to ensure some truth in the elections? They would have to do so despite both recieveing zero positive coverage from the Media and being thwarted at every level of government. Still, without such a leader to organize the people--get used to speaking Republican.
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