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owned and controlled by Bushite corporations, and are extremely insecure and insider hackable. They can be programmed to report one thing on your "receipt" and send something quite different to the central electronic tabulators. In California--whose elections are being run by Diebold shill Bruce McPherson (APPOINTED by Schwarzenegger)--the state conducts only a 1% audit (comparison of ballots/receipts with electronic totals), an extremely inadequate audit in this secretive, high speed environment, that can ALSO be hacked (to be selective in where auditing occurs). Recounts--the other possible check on fraud--are extremely expensive, difficult to obtain, and rare.
Do not be fooled by the sop of paper "receipts" or even real paper ballots (as in the optiscans). They provide only a minor element of transparency, and perhaps some minor deterrent effect. The system remains EXTREMELY riggable. And the only question is, how much rigging will the fascists who run these e-voting corporations risk?--the risk being loss of their election theft system for future purposes, to citizen outrage, if they are too blatant about it.
We need to proceed--and to strategize for getting our country back--on the basis of truth and reality. We must not allow ourselves to be fooled, even by a Dem victory today. A modest Dem victory may well be what the Corporate Rulers have in mind, to quiet the natives down and dampen calls for election reform. Until election transparency is fully restored, we do not really have a democracy. We can try to balance things out a bit, by working our butts, as we have this time, and by helping to empower the SEVENTY PERCENT American MAJORITY that despises Bush and his war, but consider this: Why isn't that 70% majority reflected in our candidates' positions (on the whole), and why do we NOT expect it to be adequately reflected in the new Congress? The reason is that Diebold/ES&S--and also the absolutely filthy campaign contribution/lobbying system--control the primaries as well as the general elections. These two elements have already dictated a NON-democratic (with a small d) majority in Congress, that will endlessly play around with Iraq "withdrawal" scenarios, for instance, but take no definitive action on it (like withholding funds). In the current elections, where an edge can be given to Bushites and warmongers, it will be. And we will probably end up with a Congress that has a Dem majority in the House, but one with a strong element of "Bushite Democrats," like the ones who voted for torture and suspension of habeas corpus the other week, who will be the swing voters; and probably a tied Senate, with Joe Lieberman holding tremendous power (--in favor of the war profiteers).
This is what happens when you have NON-TRANSPARENT vote counting. This is WHY we HAVE non-transparent vote counting. And it is not going to change significantly until we RESTORE TRANSPARENT VOTE COUNTING.
I think we can do it--working at the local level--with the huge Absentee Ballot voting protest--a voter rebellion against the machines--as our leverage. But it's not going to be easy. We need to pressure local officials to, a) HAND COUNT the Absentee Ballot votes, and b) POST the results BEFORE any electronics are involved. We need to then extend these principles to the optiscan ballots. And we will thus have created a paper ballot system BY DEFAULT. This strategy avoids a head-on collision with corrupt officials and e-voting corporations, and I think is the most potentially successful one. The election reform movement has been great on raising consciousness, but not great on coming up with a strategy to achieve our goal. Ordinary voters, in their big rebellion against the machines all across the country in these elections, are pointing way.
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