Every "Troops Home Now!" sign should add "Count all our votes!"

[Peace Patriot]

Cuz that's the problem.

The Iraq War is the symptom.

The tyranny in the White House is the symptom.

Congress ESCALATING the war--with $100 billion in NEW lard for Bush/Cheney and the war profiteers--and then putting on an all-night speechothon claiming they want to end the war, is a symptom.

Our political establishment, true to their "military-industrial complex" paymasters, DID NOT WANT the Iraq War to be ended, Bush/Cheney to be ousted in 2004, or an anti-Iraq War majority to develop in Congress, in sync with the American peoples' growing revulsion at this war--a significant 56% majority opposed just before the invasion (Feb. '03) grown to over 70% today. They knew this would happen. The only way to involve the great, peace-minded, justice-minded American majority in an unjust war was to cram it down their throats. The means: highly insecure and insider riggable voting machines, run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations. They fast-tracked this Stalinist vote counting system all over the country during the 2002-2004 period, with $3.9 billion in boondoggle funding, appropriated in the "Help America Vote for Bush Act" (aka, HAVA), in the same month that they passed the Iraq War Resolution (Oct. '02). The two things are closely related.

"Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." --Josef Stalin

I was thinking about this late last night, looking at pictures of the many Democratic Senators and House members who attended the antiwar rally on the Capitol steps, as the all-nighter Iraq War debate proceeded in the Senate.

There aren't enough votes in Congress to stop the war, or to impeach the bastards who started it. Why is that--when over 70% of the people want it stopped?

It's a no-brainer: An unjust war, and a non-transparent vote counting system to keep the war going.

Excellent as it is for people to carry signs that say, "Troops Home Now," and excellent as it is for Senators to give speeches about it, and to hold marathon Senate sessions about it, these actions do not address the vital strategic issue of WHY Congress does not have enough votes to stop the war: that our fundamental sovereign power as a people--our right to vote--has been royally messed with, and essentially taken away. And antiwar protests and antiwar speeches do not point the way back to democracy: transparent vote counting; vote counting that everyone can see and understand.

It would be better if the Senate has been spending the wee hours of July 17-18, 2007, discussing how and why we lost election transparency, and what to do about it now, five months before the 2008 primary elections. The obvious and best solution is to require a ballot for every vote, and a 100% hand-count of every vote in the country, as a check on machine fraud--which should have been required in the first place. The failure to require this is likely responsible for many deaths, for massive theft of our treasury, and for blatant, and, indeed, catastrophic lawlessnes in the White House.

Are they doing anything about Stalin's dream of an election system at all (let alone dramatizing it to the voters, as they should be doing)? HR-811 (the Holt bill) sanctifies the "trade secret" code--makes it permanent--and puts it "in escrow" under the control of...the President! You and I cannot review the secret code used to 'count' our votes, because it is the sacred private property of a Bushite corporation. Currently, many states have a zero audit (automatic recount)--a fact that should invalidate the entire 2004 election. The best states have 1%. HR 811 proposes--last I heard--2% to 10%, and mandates a paper trail. (Venezuela hand-counts 55% of the votes--55%!--as a check on machine fraud, and they use open source programming code--anyone may review the code by which votes are counted. 55%!)

In other words, this U.S. Congress--which doesn't have enough votes to end Bush's heinous war--is merely tinkering with this "Big Lie" vote counting system. Not throwing it out, in outrage, as they should be doing. Not locking down the Senate to get rid of it and to restore FULL transparency to the counting of our votes. They're keeping as much of it as they can, under intense pressure from grass roots election reform activists, the public, and many computer scientists who are appalled at the insecurity of this system.

Electronic vote counting with "trade secret" code--controlled by partisan rightwing corporations (and/or the President)--is not the only thing wrong with our election system. But it is the democracy-killer. It makes change impossible, as we will soon see. Neither this year nor next year--nor for decades to come--will be see the end of the Mideast war. This political establishment--steel-reinforced by Diebold/ES&S election theft machines--is not about to give up the foothold that Bush/Cheney has gained in the Middle East. We may see a short-term pullback of U.S. troops within Iraq, combined with a lockdown in the 15 permanent bases we've built there and in the 'Taj Mahal' U.S. embassy in Baghdad until the Iraqis sign over their oil. We will more than likely see a military draft, the bombing and invasion of Iran and Syria, and continued tax policies that place the burden of this corporate resource war on the poorest Americans and the dwindling middle class.

A Democrat 'winning' the (s)election next year will seem like the triumphant return of democracy for about five minutes. But like the five minutes of joy we felt after the 2006 (s)elections, it will immediately be followed by something comparable to Nancy's Pelosi's statement, "Impeachment is off the table," and will go something like this: "Peace is off the table," "the right to a trial is off the table," "fair taxation is off the table," and "universal health care is off the table." And we will hear a lot of "Blue Dog" Democrat shuckin jive about "fiscal responsibility" (code words for squeezing the poor, so that there will be something in the treasury for the fascists to steal in 2012).

If we don't solve the fundamental problem of our loss of public control over vote counting, the result will be more of the same. We MUST realize that our political establishment is NOT going to give up the enormous corporate/fascist gains they've made under Bush/Cheney, and that we--the majority, the poor and the middle class--are going to be paying for this through the next century--if our planetary environment lasts that long--unless we restore election transparency, and start electing true representatives of the American people.

Politicians who say "Troops Home Now" and do not add "Count every vote" are being hypocritical. And protesters who do so--wonderful as anti-war protesters are--are insuring their own failure. Protest of injustice is always valuable, but expecting the political system to respond normally to massive public opinion against the war, in these highly abnormal conditions of non-transparent, Bushite corporate controlled vote counting, is not realistic, and it furthermore seems to me to be a prescription for further demoralizing and disempowering the American people. It is unintentional on the part of anti-war protesters. I am not so sure that it is unintentional on the part of the Democratic leadership. In fact, given their whole-hearted support for "trade secret" vote counting by Bushite corporations, I'm not at all sure that they believe in democracy any more than the Bushites do; they may be just a bit more adept at putting on a democratic show, and, of course, the Bush Junta makes them look "progressive."

Our political leaders--at least the Democrats--still need our votes, and, more importantly, our money (to lard into the pockets of all those infotainment corporations for campaign ads). They can't be Diebolded into office with no support at all (--yet, anyway*). And a lot of prep goes into gleaning the candidate field of any true representatives of the people. So we get this 'dumbshow' of a democracy, of a 'choice.' Then, the MOST unrepresentative candidate 'wins,' and we're given another 'choice,' this time between a Corporatist and big supporter of the War, the 'Democrat,' and a...Corporatist and big supporter of the War, plus he drinks human blood, the 'Republican.'

Well, I think many of us are aware of how enraging and disenfranchising our political system can be. I hope for the best, always, and I am a great believer in the American people. And I think SOME of our Democratic leaders are sincere, although why they have been silent about "trade secret" vote counting, I will never understand. (Blackmail?)


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*(I'm very concerned about Christopher Dodd. He is running for president with no visible constituency. He helped engineer the "Help American Vote for Bush Act" of 2002, along with the biggest crooks in the Anthrax Congress, Tom Delay and Bob Ney. Diebold/ES&S owe him. Don't be surprised to see an unexpected and inexplicable 'surge' for Dodd early in the primaries.)

[CountAllVotes]

1. I've been saying that for a long time now

CountAllVotes!

:kick:

[maxsolomon]

2. too cluttered from a graphics standpoint.

you want signs to be simple, punchy, and readable from a distance. perhaps on the back?

love, a design professional.