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virtually everywhere in the U.S., including reversing an Obama presidential landslide, and what could we do about it? The vote counting is done with 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by corporations whose rightwing ties would make your hair stand on end, with virtually no audit/recount controls. Even where there is a paper ballot backup to these machines, some states count ZERO PERCENT of the ballots, and others count only 1% (completely inadequate in a "trade secret" system), and, of course, some states and local venues still have the touchscreens which have NO paper trail at all. What's worse, in my opinion--though it's hard to imagine anything worse--is that, while an increasing number of Americans are aware of this system's vulnerability to insider hacking, I would guess that most of them are unaware that this WAS the fascist coup. You wonder why, with SEVENTY PERCENT of the American people opposed to the Iraq War and wanting it ended, our so-called 'Democratic' Congress continues to fund this war with billions and billions more of our non-existent money (borrowed from China and Saudi Arabia)? This is why. This egregiously non-transparent, anti-democratic, fascist-controlled election system is not just counting presidential votes; it is counting ALL votes (elections for Congress, governor, etc., as well as primary votes in which the parties' candidates are chosen). The only exception are the states with partial or full caucuses for choosing candidates, which--in my opinion, very significantly--ARE NOT COUNTED BY Diebold and brethren, and thus make insurgent campaigns possible. But there are no caucuses in November. All votes--with, I think, only one exception, New York--will be counted with 'TRADE SECRET' code. Even where there are absentee ballots or other paper options, these ballots are scanned into the electronic system and tallied by SECRET code, with ZERO to 1% hand-counting, depending on the state.
New York has the old, virtually unriggable lever voting machines, but the Bush Junta SUED New York to FORCE them to go 'TRADE SECRET' electronic, and that battle is still going on. For the rest of us, there is no way around it. Our votes CAN be stolen--invisibly, undetectably, swiftly and massively.
This is the reality of our situation. We are wide open to fascist election theft. We are also vulnerable to nuanced theft--for instance, they could let Obama win but significantly shave his mandate, and also give him a difficult, "Blue Dog" Congress (like the present one) that will blockade reform--if Obama intends serious reform. It's hard to tell, and it may not be his fault, exactly, that he has to pander to fascist election theft corporations, and those behind them--war profiteers and other global corporate predators--just to get a weak win, that is, a shaved mandate. We need to be realistic about what November can produce in completely non-transparent conditions, with a national political establishment that has gone fascist. And we have to work relentlessly, over the long term, to RESTORE transparent vote counting. The window of opportunity for election reform is still open, so long as our state and local jurisdictions still hold decision-making power over election systems. Ordinary people have potential influence in state/local venues. We have none in Washington DC. Every action of Congress since 2002 has served to narrow that local power over election systems, but mostly it has been done with bullying, and with pervasive corruption (the $3.9 billion electronic voting boondoggle, election theft corporation lobbyists writing our laws, etc.). The final decision is still up to local/state election officials and legislators, and the option of a 100% hand-counted paper ballot system (the best system) is STILL OPEN. There is no law requiring electronic voting. There is no law against requiring a 100% handcount in an electronic system. (The bare minimum to detect fraud is 10%).
We must remember this: There is hardly a member of Congress who can prove that he or she was elected. This is not just a presidential election problem--although that is the most dramatic and obvious aspect of the electronic voting coup. It was put in place to keep Bush/Cheney in power in 2004, and to foil the high level of anti-war sentiment among the American people, which STARTED OUT at 55% to 60%, just before the Iraq invasion--Feb 03 (all polls)--and now stands at a whopping, unprecedented 70%! But to keep the war going, Congress ALSO had to be shaped to give an illusion of change (the 06 elections) with, in truth, no change whatsoever in war policy (or other fascist policy). We find ourselves dumbfounded at what this so-called Democratic Congress has done--ending habeas corpus, literally ripping up the Constitution, ESCALATING the war on Iraq, immunizing Bushites for their truly staggering list of crimes, etc., etc. But we shouldn't be surprise when we have fascist corporations counting every election with 'TRADE SECRET' code. It's not the only thing that is wrong with our election system, but it is the democracy killer. It makes change impossible.
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