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...a bloodless (if you don't count Iraqis and U.S. cannon fodder) coup...fast-track conversion of our election system to electronic voting machines, run on TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code--code so secret not even our secretaries of state are permitted to review it--owned and controlled by corporations with very close ties to the Bush regime, with virtually no audit/recount controls?
92%, if asked, want transparent vote counting. But nobody asked.
Funded by a $4 billion electronic voting boondoggle from the Anthrax Congress, that favored the LEAST transparent voting machines in a non-transparent system (paperless touchscreens), with no controls on lavish lobbying, no paper trail requirement, no controls on secret industry "testing" of the machines, and no transparency requirements whatsoever. Installed at breathtaking speed between 2002 and 2004. Unreliable and extremely insider hackable voting machines--pieces of crap machinery, really--that nobody could service, repair, maintain or upgrade except private corporate personnel. Election officials were into counting votes--but none of them had a clue how to "count" ELECTRONS.
Virtually all Republican "pod people" voted for it. No surprise there. But all but 60 House Democrats, and ALL BUT TWO* Senate Democrats voted for it. Are they nuts? Did they inhale too much anthrax? Or was this like the Patriot Act--a seeming necessity of the post 9/11 world: NON-TRANSPARENT elections by which to shove the hideous "war on terror," the even more hideous "war on Iraq" and a new and improved war on Lebanon, Syria and Iran down the throats of the American people?
We know what accounts for the silence of the war profiteering corporate news monopolies on Bushite corporations taking over the election system with TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code. They've all gone over to the Dark Side. (Just read Judith Miller's war propaganda on the front page of the NYT, day after day, leading up to the invasion of Iraq. The nation's "paper of record.") Not a peep out of the 5 fascist jerks who own all the "news" in the country. But what accounts for the MIND-BOGGLING SILENCE of the Democratic Party leadership as BUSHITE corporations took over the counting of our votes? It's not as if these corporations were disguised as innocent businesses, into public service. They were out there, pushing for Bush's "re-election":
DIEBOLD: Until recently, headed by Wally O'Dell, a Bush-Cheney campaign chair and major fundraiser (a Bush "Pioneer" right up there with Ken Lay), who promised in writing to "deliver Ohio's electoral votes to Bush-Cheney in 2004";
ES&S: A spinoff of Diebold (similar computer architecture), initially funded by rightwing billionaire Howard Ahmanson, who also gave one million dollars to the extremist 'christian' Chalcedon Foundation (which touts the death penalty for homosexuals, among other things). Diebold and ES&S have an incestuous relationship; they are run by two brothers, Bob and Todd Urosevich. These are the people who "counted" 80% of the nation's votes in 2004, under a veil of corporate secrecy.
SEQUOIA: The third big election theft player, which employs Republican former CA Sec of State, Bill Jones, and his chief aide, Alfie Charles, to peddle their secretly programmed voting machines--the filthy practice of "revolving door" employment.
In any case, the PLAIN FACTS of the so-called "Help America Vote Act"--engineered by the biggest crooks in Congress, Tom Delay and Bob Ney (both now either indicted or resigned in bribery scandals), abetted by Bilderberg 'Democrat' Christopher Dodd--SCREAM FRAUD. This is an INHERENTLY FRAUDULENT election system that violates the most fundamental principles of democracy. Why did the Democrats vote for it? And why did they ALSO place an "Iron Curtain" of SILENCE over its installation? --an "Iron Curtain" so total and severe that, when Democratic CA Secretary of State Kevin Shelley went after one of these bad actors, Diebold, sued them for lying about the security of their machines, de-certified the worst machines (the touchscreens), and demanded to see their source code, prior to the 2004 election, the ENTIRE STATE DEMOCRATIC PARTY came down on him like a ton of bricks and "swift-boated" him out of office on entirely bogus corruption charges? Not the Republicans. Not Schwarzenegger. Not Karl Rove (--although the Bushites likely did the "special ops" that started it). The DEMOCRATS--whom the people of California (in addition to ELECTING Shelley) had given a 2 to 1 majority in both houses of the state legislature to prevent this very thing: BAD government! And now we have a Diebold shill and Schwarzenegger APPOINTEE, Bruce McPherson, as Secretary of State--who just illegally RE-certified Diebold touchscreens!
It's easy enough to understand Bushite "pod people." They are thieves, hypocrites and fascists--entirely lacking in the conscience gene. But what of OUR party--MY party, loyal Democratic voter and supporter that I am, lo these 40 years? Where WERE they when the would-be executioner of gay citizens took over our election system? Where WERE they when a Bush-Cheney campaign chair began "counting" all our votes with TRADE SECRET programming code?
92% want transparent elections. And we get THIS--the most non-transparent election system ever devised by fascist man. 56% didn't want the war on Iraq--back in Feb. '03, BEFORE the invasion. Guess what we got? Not just war on Iraq--DISASTROUS war on Iraq, featuring torture, civil war and wholesale looting of both our countries. 60% to 70% want us out of there NOW. The twerp dictator Bush says no. EIGHTY-FOUR PERCENT (in a recent poll) oppose any U.S. participation in a widened Mideast war. The Bush junta is planning their "Gulf of Tonkin" incident as I write this. We'll be in it before November. 63% oppose torture "under any circumstances" (May '04)--UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!--and we have torture at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay and in secret torture dungeons in middle Europe and points east. IN YOUR FACE fascism, at home and abroad.
And all our Democratic Party leaders can do is wring their hands and say, "Gee, how do these Republicans keep getting elected? Maybe we'd better TONE DOWN our MESSAGE. Just send us more campaign donations, and maybe we can save Social Security."
What difference does it make if Diebold/ES&S (s)elects Democrats in '08, who CAN'T save Social Security because the fund has ALREADY BEEN LOOTED to pay for "Bush's war" and to lard the super-rich with more tax cuts? What difference does it make if we have Bush bombing and invading Iran, from his 15 permanent military bases in Iraq, or Democrats LYING that they will "withdraw" our troops from Iraq "to Kuwait" and then conducting a more efficient, more accountable bombing and invasion of Iran, in a widened war "inherited" from Bush AFTER the "Gulf of Tonkin" incident that the Bush Cartel/NeoCons are even now arranging? What bloody difference does it make if they are ALL warmongers and fascists--but the Democrats are just SNEAKIER?** What the hell is wrong with these people, that they would let Diebold and ES&S take over our election system?!
I've had it--as maybe you can tell. Autorank and Landshark's Zogby poll has sent me over the edge. WHAT IS IT GOING TO TAKE for the American people to get THEIR WILL enforced, as expressed in every goddamn poll in the country--corporate or independent, approval poll and issue poll--over the last three years? --every poll EXCEPT FOR the 2004 (s)election?!!
Hm?
Is this democracy going down--or are we going to fight back? How do we do that--fight back--without being killed, or "rendered" to a middle European country for torture?
We do it as one. We do it by massive Absentee Ballot voting this November***. We BOYCOTT their diabolical election theft machines. We FLOOD election officials with MOUNTAINS of paper AB votes to deal with, and FORCE them to the table NOW. They are NEVER going to GIVE US BACK our right to vote. We have to FORCE it. NOW.
This is the only way that I can see of peacefully getting rid of these machines before our democracy is gone. We have to JUMP-START election reform NOW.
Bust the Machines! Bust Bush! Bust the War! Bust Congress! Bust the goddamned sneaky War Democrats* who voted for Diebold and ES&S to "count" our votes in secret! VOTE ABSENTEE THIS NOVEMBER!
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*(The ONLY Democratic Senate votes against HAVA were Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer. Go figure.)
**(Will I be voting Democratic? You bet I will. The Democratic Party is a mixed bag. Some very good leaders; some traitors to democracy. It is the ONLY VEHICLE for change. If the PEOPLE lead, I believe that the Democratic Party will potentially respond. It has to come from the bottom--the grass roots, the rank and file. And that IS happening--on the war, and on election reform. In Calif, we have a very good candidate running for Sec of State (Shelley's office)--DEBRA BOWEN--against usurper Bruce McPherson. Good candidates have been moved to run for office all over the country--Ned Lamont being a high profile example. CT has the old-fashioned, reliable lever machines (that's why he won the primary), but a new central electronic tabulation system (that's why he didn't win it as big as he should have). Almost all are handicapped by Diebold/ES&S (5% to 10% handicap--"thumb on the scales" for Bushites and warmongers--at least). In some races, turnout can overwhelm that handicap. The Absentee Ballot protest will HELP turnout. It provides MOTIVATION to vote--to help UN-rig the system. In paperless electronic voting systems, it provides a BALLOT--for recounts and statistical analysis comparisons. Some Democrats are good, some bad. But we have NO alternative to the Democrats in most cases. We MUST work through this party for change. Dreams of a multiparty system are way, way off in the future. We must first RESTORE OUR RIGHT TO VOTE through pressure on our party leaders and by refusing to vote on the rigged machines.)
***(Absentee Ballot votes are NOT "safe"--and will NOT produce accurate vote counts in November (that is impossible)--but, if enough people vote AB (and many are--it's up to 50% in Los Angeles)--we CAN create enough panic and crisis in the election theft industry to FORCE reform in the only venue possible, local/state jurisdictions, where the decisions about election system purchases are still made, and where ordinary people still have some influence. An AB vote is a VOTE OF NO CONFIDENCE in this NON-TRANSPARENT vote counting system. It says: 'I REFUSE TO PARTICIPATE IN THE DEATH OF THIS DEMOCRACY by electronic voting machines. They may scan my AB vote into these rigged electronics. They may toss my AB vote aside and "count" it LAST. But it is not by MY action that my vote will be disappeared or stolen. I *WILL NOT* PARTICIPATE IN THIS!' What good will these expensive new election theft machines be, if nobody will vote on them? All electronic voting machines must go--including optiscans and central tabulators--all are run on TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code.)
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Absentee Ballot voting is the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Boston Tea Party, 2006-style. Join the citizen revolt against electronic voting! VOTE ABSENTEE THIS NOVEMBER!
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