It's time to bring the Republicans on board. We need to steal an election.

[Ian_rd]

This idea was inspired by listening to the Young Turks this morning on AAR (the ranty guy, can't remember his name).

Republicans don't care about the fiasco of our election system. The politicos don't care because they know this rife fraud benefits their party, and the everyday rank-and-file don't care because they believe the lies told to them by the politicos that calls for reform are nothing more than hysterical liberal conspiracy theories trying to explain away Republican victories.

So let's steal an election or two, or three or four, in manner that will wake up the Right. After all, Republicans love to pretend that liberals are the ones committing fraud in elections, so let's give them what they want.

Prior to 2008, liberal election reform organizations need to consult with the best and brightest of those election activists who have been most effective at documenting and exposing the vulnerabilities in our current election technology. Then those organizations need to hire computer hackers and choose a small number of voting precincts to hack in 2008, precincts in "safe states" that would not swing a national election one way or the other. This hacking should also be obvious, such as a 60% win for a Democrat in an 80% Republican precinct for example. This hacking needs to be well-documented at every phase.

Then after Election Day and if the hack is successful, the liberal organization in question sends out a press release stating that they hacked such-and-such elections, explain exactly how it was done backed up with video, computer code, etc., and be the first to call for a new special election in those precincts because of the fraud they committed. The Republican politicos would predictably jump on this as proof that it is liberals and not Republicans who are nefarious enough to commit such despicable fraud, but they would become unwitting accomplices in an effort to increase public demand across party lines for oversight and review of what is now a totally secret and atrocious system of computer voting.

This is a rather desperate measure, and would require that the hackers and accomplices be willing to face the appropriate legal consequences. This would also not address the many other ways Republican apparatchiks rob elections such as voter purges, lopsided election facilities, intimidation campaigns through the mail and phone, inhibiting get-out-the-vote efforts, etc., but may be an important step toward increasing awareness of our deplorable electoral system.

With the goal of addressing many of the other electoral theft tactics, I started fiddling around with this (it needs work, and I'm not a lawyer):

Right to Vote Act of 200X

Did you know that you don't actually have a right to vote according to federal law? If this right is taken from you, the only way it becomes a federal case is if you were denied your right to vote due to a deliberate campaign of racism. If Americans need only one right not described in the Constitution, it is most certainly the right to vote no matter who you are, and to have that vote counted accurately.

More and more, the people writing our nation's laws are not the lawmakers in Congress. It has become depressingly common for corporate lobbyists - and sometimes the Bush administration (Patriot Act)- to write our laws, which are then passed through Congress only as necessary formality. Well if Pfizer and Halliburton can write laws, then so can we.

Right to Vote Act of 200X

An Act

To ensure the intent of the electorate of the United States of America is faithfully executed in all aspects of the electoral process. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

(1) Every eligible American citizen who is registered to vote has a right to cast a ballot and to have said ballot counted according to his or her intent.

(2) Any action with the intent to suppress electoral participation directly or indirectly is a federal offense subject to prosecution. Actions such as disruption of "get-out-the-vote" drives and similar initiatives, prevention of voters from reaching polling stations, disruption of legal political party operations, disseminating false information in order to intimidate or discourage the electorate from participation in the electoral process, and any and all other methods with the intent to discourage and suppress voter participation shall be punishable by a fine of $100,000 and/or 10 years in federal prison per instance.

(3) For any state, the distribution of available, operational, and legal voting facilities in each electoral precinct must be directly proportional to the number of registered voters of said precinct. The voter wait time for any electoral precinct shall be no more than two hours. Each electoral precinct must monitor wait times to ensure compliance. If wait times are not compliant, said precinct must make available additional legal voting facilities as required to comply with law.

(4) All voting machines, ballots, and tabulation methods, electronic and/or otherwise, shall be approved and certified by independent, nonpartisan, scientific review, the entire process of which being open to public review. Any instance of unauthorized machines, ballots, computer code, or other methods are punishable by a fine of $100,000 and/or 10 years in federal prison per instance, nulls the election affected, and requires another election to be held in its place in order to ensure compliance with law and voter intent.

(5) All polling stations must be attended by personnel trained and appropriately certified in the operation of the voting machines and methods of said precinct.

(6) Local and state governments and private business are subject to lawsuits by the public for any instance resulting in the disenfranchisement of a voter's intent. This includes erroneous denial of voter registration, miscalculated votes, illegal wait times at polling stations, illegal voting machines, ballots, and/or methods, and any and all instances resulting in noncompliance with this law, and any failure to accurately and legally count and record voter intent.

(7) All machines and methods must produce hardcopy records that accurately reflect the voter's intent. Said records shall be securely kept by each electoral precinct for no less than a period of ten years for each election. No less than ten percent of election results for each electoral precinct must be audited with a hand-count of hardcopy records in addition to previously approved tabulation method in order to ensure electoral integrity. The elections audited shall be selected at random by each electoral precinct.

(8) Any and all instances of noncompliance with the law described herein and the appropriate prosecution shall be a matter of public record.

[In Truth We Trust]

1. Hand Counted Paper Ballots NOW!!!

[Ian_rd]

2. I agree - we are NOT ready for computer voting. It can't be done securely.

[fasttense]

3. Actually you do have the right to vote for state representatives,

it is federal representatives that the dancing supremes decided you couldn't vote for and refused to count our votes in the 2000 election.

But aside from that pesky old thing about having a right to vote, I've heard a rumor that JFK was going to win in several districts. When the repukes began stealing elections they forgot it works both ways. If there is a way for repukes to steal elections, there is a way for Democratic politicians to steal elections. Not all voting machines are owned by repukes. There are some machines made and owned by Venezuela.