Unverifiable voting is un-American: My Nashville Tennessean LTTE

[Fly by night]

Good morning, folks. In the past week, there have been three major ER-related stories here in the Orange State. The first is that Harold Ford, Jr. has pulled ahead of Bob Corker in the race to replace the Cat-Killer in the U.S. Senate. (BTW, Corker has refused to debate Ford on "Meet the Press":what a chicken-shit.) The second story is that a Republican-hired firm has been caught turning in fraudulent voter registration forms, using real people's names but fake SSNOs, etc. The third story is that our very corrupt State Election Coordinator has refused to check our new statewide voter registration database for registrations with false SSNOs (those starting with 8s and 9s.) The following is my response as a LTTE to the Nashville Tennessean. Here's hoping it gets printed.

IMHO, Ford will have to have a double-digit lead going into the election to overcome the last minute surge from the all-important "silicone and slimy software" demographic put in place throughout our state. Peace out.
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To the editor of the Nashville Tennessean:

As we head into the November election, Tennessee is being watched closely for the national importance of our Senatorial race. But all our governmental races are important -- they always are. And the legitimacy and stability of our democratic form of government requires a free, fair and verifiable election process, something that is now sorely lacking in our state.

At this critical moment, we read stories about Republican-hired firms turning in forged voter registration forms and about our State Elections Coordinator (Brook Thompson) refusing to review the state voter registration database for obviously fraudulent registrations. Brook is also directly responsible for forcing the adoption of paperless electronic voting technology on our counties, technology that does not use or produce paper ballots available for recounts if problems surface (as they did in several Tennessee counties during our primary). Further, this new equipment uses secret software to count our votes that is not even open for inspection by any election officials or by the voting public before or after the election.

These electronic voting systems are the “astroturf” of elections – shiny, glitzy, so-called “state of the art” technology that is so glitch-prone and so easily hackable as to harm the very processes they are supposed to support – competent and honest elections. At best, the decisions made to purchase this equipment were dangerously uninformed. At worst, these decisions to undermine our democratic process were intentionally made, either for personal profit or partisan political advantage. Or both.

It is perhaps not coincidental that Congressman Bob Ney (R-Ohio), the chief sponsor of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) that forced this new equipment on us, pled guilty recently to official corruption charges that will soon land him in federal prison. So we now know at least one of the chief architects of this electronic voting nightmare is thoroughly corrupt. The question remains how many other election officials at the local, state and national levels are also corrupt; and how many were merely ignorant, gullible or lazy when they acquiesced to this new, expensive paperless electronic voting equipment.

We need election procedures, and officials, we can trust. And even then, as Ronald Reagan would have said, trust alone isn’t enough. We must be able to verify our elections by recounting our votes, if necessary, so that the American people – in fact, the world’s people – can have faith that the consent of the governed in our country has been accurately recorded and honestly granted. Anything less is highly dangerous and potentially treasonous – anything less is un-American.

(Fly by night)

[Stevepol]

1. Tremendous letter. Right on point. K&R!!

[Fly by night]

2. Thanks kindly. Here's hoping they print it this week.

[texpatriot2004]

3. K & R for Transparent Democracy nm

[glitch]

4. K & R well done.nt

[galloglas]

5. Glad you posted this!

In an early posting of TN problems by Land Shark, URL below,

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x451591

the same subjects/reasons keep coming up.

I defy anyone to tell me how the exact same chords keep being hit, regarding the Photo Voter ID acts (like HR 4844), if they are not distilled down to bullet points and distributed before hand.

Whether in the Tennessean, here at DU, or any of the other places I've seen the Photo Voter ID bills discussed, the proponents of such bills act as if they are all told by the minister (Rove? Baker?), "turn to page xxx of the hymnal"!

At that point, they all sing the same song,

"Rock the Demos, cleft in half,
make their numbers minority,
We've the votes now to pass our HR,
disenfranchise those without ID!"


IOW, this is no visceral reaction on the part of those proposing the Voter ID Acts.

It is plotted to take away those rock steady Democratic votes from those who 1) don't have passports, 2) aren't in the military, or 3) don't drive.

If HR 4844 was not basically dishonest and immoral, it would start this program for newly franchised voters, age 18, or just naturalized, and begin inplementation about four years after passage.


But it is anything but honest.

It's being sold as "The Reichstag is aflame! Kill the Communists!"

(or in the case of HR4844),

"Stop them at the border!! Juan and Jose are bringing their family of thirteen million to vote your Civil War ancestors tombstones!!"

"Remember the Alamo!!"


God help us from these hypocrites!

[Olney Blue]

6. Great letter! K and R.

[Fly by night]

7. Thanks, guys. It's nice to know that even those of us who are non-voters,

... at least temporarily, can still speak our minds in the land of the free and (if they try to steal 2006) the home of the (pissed off and) brave (I hope, I hope).

Remember the Battle of Athens (TN). And keep your powder dry.

Fly by night, U.S. Bureau of Prisons number 16502-075

[DemReadingDU]

8. and thank you!

nice to see you can post every now and then

The Dems are poised to take over next mnonth, but those electronic voting macines are going to be hard to beat.

[Kurovski]

9. Great use of Ronald Reagan's quote.

Recommended!