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Edited on Thu Mar-20-08 05:57 PM by Peace Patriot
as well as the recent governor's election.
The first occurred just after the onset of electronic voting--when far less was known about its insider hackability and lack of transparency than is known now. (I myself was pretty much asleep on this matter until after the 04 election.) California was quick to computerize voting, under Republican Sec of State Bill Jones--who later went to work for one of the big three election theft corporations (Sequoia). But suspicions were starting to grow around the time of the 03 Recall, when Democrat and reformer Kevin Shelley had been elected Sec of State and had been in office less than a year. There were 125 candidates on that weird Recall ballot--making it extremely easy to distribute votes for Schwarzenegger's chief rival down the roster, with malicious code. Touchscreens had been introduced and were in widespread use. No paper trail at all. No way to recount or audit those totals. And all optiscans and central tabulators also contained the "trade secret" code with extremely inadequate auditing.
By the end of 2003, Shelley had become very suspicious and, in mid-04--six months before the 2004 election--he decertified all Diebold touchscreens, sued Diebold for lying about the security of their machines, and demanded to see their source code. He also established policies guaranteeing all California voters a paper ballot upon request, banned "revolving door employment" in his office (Bill Jones' corruption), and began to crack down on corrupt county election officials and these big rightwing corporate vendors who had taken over our election system.
But before he had to time to really investigate and find out what was going on, the 2004 election was upon us (in which Kerry won California by 5% to 10% less than he should have, in my opinion--based on study of the election stats), and, shortly thereafter, we had the ugliest "swift-boating" of all, which I have little doubt was orchestrated by Karl Rove. They ran Shelley out of office, on entirely bogus corruption charges--made it impossible for him to do his job--and he resigned in Feb 05.
Schwarzenegger then APPOINTED Diebold shill, Bruce McPherson, as Sec of State, and McPherson proceeded very quickly to undo all of of Shelley's reforms. He made the lawsuit against Diebold go away. He re-certified Diebold touchscreens, illegally, in proceedings that excluded the public. He gave leave to corrupt county officials and the corporate vendors to do anything they damned please.
And those are the conditions under which Schwarzenegger was "re-elected."
I think both of his "elections" were partly Diebold et al, and, in the case of the Recall, partly Time magazine and Larry King, et al, giving this famous actor millions of dollars worth of free publicity to solidify his great advantage on a ballot with 125 candidates (with even the frontrunner not well known), and, in the case of the "reelection," the advantages of fame and incumbency and a totally lapdog press also combined with stealing votes secured his second term.
The purpose of these election thefts, of course, was to continue the global corporate predator looting by the Bushites, at the state level, in the richest state of the nation. Looting of our public commons--such as our parks. Looting of our public pension funds. Looting of our resources. Hijacking and looting of our National Guard. Looting of our $10 billion Calif state surplus (built up by Gray Davis, looted by Enron--another lawsuit that was made to go away). Looting of the poor and the middle class, and looting and destruction of all that we have put in place to create a good society.
We are being looted and destroyed, my friends--they are killing the "Golden Goose"--for what purpose I am not sure, but I can guess. The American people are, in truth, the most potentially powerful progressive force on the face of the earth. We have the sovereign power--latent thought it is, at the moment--to curtail these global predator corporations, who are oppressing everyone, not just us. And so, we cannot be permitted to elect tough leftist leaders--leaders who would act in the interest of the American people--who would be responsive to our demands for social justice and good government, who would lead a great effort of reform and who would act to curtail--and in some cases dismantle (pull the corporate charters of)--these global predators, international loan sharks and war profiteers, who are gutting this country and others.
The powers that are doing this--and that Bush and Schwarzenegger (and, alas, many Democratic leaders) are beholden to--are traitors (fascist pigs of our own making) or filthy rich foreigners (i.e., the sheiks of Saudi Arabia). They are INTERNATIONAL. They break unions here--and take the jobs and our manufacturing capability to India and China--because they DON'T CARE WHAT HAPPENS TO THIS COUNTRY. After looting and destroying us, they have other countries they can plunder and enslave.
That is our basic problem, and it is a very difficult one. Just remember, Medieval Europe had a similar problem--the international, all-pervasive, and immensely powerful (and very fascist) Catholic Church--and it took them over a thousand years to solve it. But solve it they did. I don't think it will take us nearly that long, because there have been a lot of intervening events, such as our own revolution, which have established principles of democracy, and love for democracy, in our own peoples' hearts and those of others. But we do need to know what we are up against. And the first place we need to look--for the power to overturn this global oligarchy--is the voting booth, where very rightwing corporations (analogy--the Catholic Church) are 'counting' all our votes with 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, with virtually no audit/recount controls. Undo THAT, and change will start to happen right away.
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