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for many years to come.
I was going to post this if somebody else didn't. It pulls no punches, and it's fully up to the occasion. I hope, and maybe I'm deluded to hope this, that the members of this committee will truly read this submission to the EAC and get the impact of it. What it is literally saying is that our democracy is teetering on the edge of extinction and we have to have some officials with the courage to see things as they are. Actually, the situation could hardly be more obvious, but people have dilly-dallied and compromised and willfully ignored facts for so long it has become second nature and now black is white and brown is purple. Brad has put the issue in the simplest possible terms.
One of my favorite places in the document is this, and it could hardly be made plainer:
"In that light, I call for an immediate end to the dangerous path this commission continues to enable in its support of the fully faith-based, privatized, proprietary, non-transparent voting systems which have disabled and deprived us --- we, the people – from being able to ensure that elections results indeed represent the consent of the governed.
The Election Assistance Commission has overseen and enabled a federal process which, up until now, has granted a federal blessing to voting systems such as Direct Recording Electronic (DRE/touch-screen) devices for which it is literally impossible for anyone to prove that any single vote, ever cast on such a system during any actual election, for any candidate or initiative on the ballot, has ever actually been cast and recorded accurately as per the intent of any voter.
I extend the invitation --- to any vendor or official, including any member or employee of this commission --- to prove otherwise, and to demonstrate that any such vote was ever recorded accurately during any American election. Even as I well understand that that proof, the minimum citizens could ever ask for in regard to their voting system, will never come.
That such unverifiable systems are in use today --- and will be used again by millions of voters this November --- is an unmitigated disgrace, and underscores a massive collective failure of common-sense oversight and a nearly-unforgivable delinquency by those charged with that task at the federal level.
Such a failure is also the result of previous collective efforts by federal commissions and enabled bodies which have preceded this one, and of anyone who would allow or encourage the use of such systems in our democracy, be it this week, this November, or in any American election to come.
The very basis for our Constitutional system is one of checks and balances. Yet without the ability to apply such checks and balances, such as with the DRE systems used to record millions of votes in this year’s election cycle alone, the citizens have been completely blinded and robbed of their right and ability to assure the consent of the governed."
As Brad well says, "That such unverifiable systesm are in use today . . . is an unmitigated disgrace and underscores a massive collective failure of common-sense oversight and a nearly-unforgibvable delinquency by those charged with that task at the federal."
Thank God somebody is saying these things. I can't say I have much confidence that the people who are supposed to be listening to the people will actually listen and do something, but at least they are being confronted FINALLY with the TRUTH. They can dodge and rope-a-dope all they want, but they are facing the truth.
I for one am very grateful for what Brad has said and done.
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