The best tribute we can pay to Martin Luther King is to...

[Peace Patriot]

...throw Diebold and ES&S election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor' NOW!

Bushite voting machine companies have stolen our right to vote just as surely as the poll tax did.

The "TRADE SECRET," PROPRIETARY programming code in the new electronic voting systems is non-transparent. It is so secret that not even our secretaries of state are permitted to review it.

Transparency is the first requirement for real elections. Non-transparent elections are not elections. They are tyranny.

The new electronic voting machines are unreliable, insecure and extremely hackable. They are also very expensive, and require on-going upgrades and servicing, increasing their cost and their insecurity.

There are virtually no audit/recount controls on electronic voting. One third of the country voted without any paper trail at all in 2004 (non-recountable elections). The rest have extremely inadequate auditing for election errors and fraud that occurs at the speed of light, and inside a black box with no scrutiny, and that only need one hacker and a couple of minutes to change thousands, even millions, of votes, leaving no trace.

The voting machine companies who control these machines are run by rightwing Bushites, who are the only beneficiaries (in addition to corrupt election officials) of the $4 billion electronic voting boondoggle, funded by Bush's "pod people" in Congress, and mis-named "The Help America Vote Act." HAVA encouraged a rush to purchase these machines, permitted lavish lobbying by the companies, and failed to require a paper trail for the 2004 election. (Tom Delay blockaded it.)

Our elections used to occur in the public venue, run by elected officials. They are now run by private corporations who refuse to disclose how they are tabulating our votes. Our elections have been effectively privatized.

We have been hoodwinked. We have been sold a bill of goods. We have been had.

The great progressive, antiwar majority in this country has been disenfranchised by electronic voting systems, just as surely as black voters were being disenfranchised in the 1960s.

Martin Luther King knew how important voting is. His 1965 campaign concentrated on voting rights, supported by the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Without the right to vote, we can do nothing. We have no sovereignty as a people, no power. With it, we can change the world!

The Bushite assault on everybody's right to vote has been combined with a new assault on black voting rights, in Ohio and other places, with egregious violations of the Voting Rights Act in 2004.

In the South, in the 1960s, it was the Democratic Party that was at fault for denying black voting rights. Today, it has been the Democratic Party's fault for remaining silent while Bushite corporations took over our election system. The Democratic Party, the party of the people, did a turnaround in the 1960s, and became the champion of black voting rights and civil rights. It can turn around again, and become the champion of transparent elections and the voting rights of all. It can, and it must--because if it doesn't, our democracy is over. Whatever corruption has been involved in this electronic voting boondoggle, and behind that corruption, additional corruption on the war, must be rejected.

So, black and white together, Democrat and, yes, Republican, together, and all parties and all Americans together, we MUST restore our right to vote. We must do it NOW. We shall overcome!

[thefool_wa]

1. Recommended

Well put. The only solution is paper voting, and the criminalization of electronic vote casting systems, pure and simple. Electronic machines that produce paper results which are then placed in a sealed container are one thing, but the "virtualization" of voting is transparent only in that you can see the corruption more clearly.

Stop Diebold! Stop Bush! Give us back OUR country, or we'll take it back!

[kster]

2. I disagree

Boston Harbor is to far for me, I could be tossing them into Lake Michigan in just under thirty minutes.



RECOMMENDED !!

[Wilms]

3. I disagree

Boston Harbor is to far for me, I could be tossing them into Santa Monica Bay in just under thirty minutes.



RECOMMENDED !!

[MissWaverly]

4. I disagree

where they belong is in court as "Exhibit A" The only way we can get back our democracy
is to make those accountable pay otherwise it's like the speed limit signs that say
speed enforced by radar. Nobody pays attention to them.

[Febble]

5. I'd add to that:

DREs were responsible for the differential disenfranchisement of black voters in Franklin County Ohio, because they were expensive, scarce, and inequitably distributed; and they were responsible for the differential disenfranchisement of black and Hispanic voters in New Mexico because they were apt to record undervotes in these communities.

But punchcard and lever machines are still disenfranchising black American and other ethnic minority voters as they have been for years, possibly because they are inadequately maintained in poor communities, or because they are difficult to use where voter education is poor. And provisional ballot allocation still systematically disenfranchises more black voters than white voters.

As do registration and felon purges, and all kinds of voter suppression tactics.

So - by all means throw DREs into Boston harbour to celebrate Martin Luther King day, as NM has done metaphorically and provisionally this week. But don't stop there. Don't stop until Jim Crow has been eradicated from the face of America, and to do that, a heck of a lot more needs to be done than ditching DREs.

I know we may disagree on the sense in which the 2004 election was "stolen" - but I know more surely than I know anything about that election that the votes that were stolen, in all senses of that word, were stolen disproportionately from black Americans.

Which is why, among so many other reasons, those pictures from New Orleans made me weep.

[Peace Patriot]

7. Agreed! The treatment of black voters in '04 is the shame and disgrace of

our nation. Nothing hurt me more than that! I was part of Martin Luther King's voter registration team in Alabama in 1965. It was so horrible to see this happening again, 39 years later! I can't tell you. If fact, that, more than anything, is what catapulted me into the Election Fraud/Election Reform movement. That bitter, bitter picture of what the Bush junta was all about: old, poor black people in voting lines for 5 hours and more. It burned deep. And then to find out about the purges--a million black voters purged, nationwide--in Greg Palast's estimate.

I guess the struggle for freedom is just never over. It has to be won again and again.

The callousness of the US Congress including many Democratic members toward this matter was also a disgrace, and of course there is no disgracing the Bush junta--their villainy was and is plain to see. They deserve jail for egregious violations of the Voting Rights Act which I have no doubt were directed by the White House.

Clearly, we can do NOTHING about it until we are ALL re-enfranchised! That was my point. We are ALL DISenfranchised now, and we cannot get justice for ANYONE without the collective power of our right to vote, which we MUST recover!

[mod mom]

10. I agree. I wish Howard Dean would speak to the inner city precincts

that were disenfranchised when he comes to Franklin County instead of speaking to a group who can afford a monthly donation to the Democratic Party. The Dems can not win in Ohio without this base, but they failed to fight for their votes in '04. Do they really think they will get the turnout they got in '04 with this lack of action? I don't get it.

[Febble]

11. Link to my favorite rant:

by Shanikka

[Hissyspit]

6. I disagree

Boston Harbor is much too far for me. The ATLANTIC OCEAN off the Outer Banks will do the job, although it seems maybe North Carolina has already tossed them.



RECOMMENDED!!

[nicknameless]

8. So many rethugs in Dem clothing these days, it's hard to really know who's

robbing us. Regardless of label, they must be held accountable -- personally! The Guvwurld solution.
These e-voting representatives and election officials know very well what they're doing. We need to make them answer for it!

A comment was make on BradBlog recently about the reason that Diebold was having such problems in North Carolina.
Once again, PERSONAL ACCOUNTABILITY made the difference:

http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002193.htm

In NC, the law required that the CEO of the voting company swear an affidavit that the code put in escrow was identical to what was put on the voting machines. Personal responsibility, personal liability.

THAT was why Diebold balked in NC.

We can -- and we MUST -- overcome!

K&R

[kster]

9. kick.nt