|
Fascist idiot: 30%
'Democratic' Congress: 22%
----------------------------------
But we really do need to understand it--not just lament it.
The beginning of understanding:
In October 2002, the Anthrax Congress passed two important resolutions: The Iraq War Resolution (IWR). And the "Help America Vote Act"--a $3.9 billion boondoggle to fast-track electronic voting machines all over the country, run on trade secret, proprietary programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations, with virtually no audit/recount controls. The IWR guaranteed unjust war; HAVA provided the means to shove the unjust war down the throats of the American people, 56% of whom had already decided that they opposed the war (reflected in all polls a few months later, Feb 03, on the eve of the war--NYT 56%, other polls 54-55%). 54%-56% is a significant majority. It would be a landslide in a presidential election (and believe me, it was). It was to defeat that peace-minded, justice-minded, progressive American majority that HAVA was passed, in the same month as the resolution that gave Bush the power to start the war.
And, sure enough, that big majority has grown to a whopping--unprecedented--70% anti-war majority today. Trade secret, proprietary vote counting was needed, on an on-going basis, to continue defeating that ever-growing anti-war majority on into 2006 and the Diebold II Congress--a Congress that was constructed, with strategic use of trade secret vote counting, to escalate the war and keep it funded--despite a 70% majority against the war, not just in the Democratic Party but in the country (--it's about 90% in the party).
70% of the American people against the war. 60% to 70% of Congress for the war. What's wrong with this picture?
I'll tell you what's wrong with it:
DIEBOLD ("Premier"): 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), with initial funder and major investor 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); and
SEQUOIA: The third major election theft industry player, which hired CA Secretary of State, Republican Bill Jones, and his chief aide, Alfie Charles, to peddle their machines--an example of the deep doo-doo corruption that has been wrought throughout our election system, among sec's of state and county officials, by these monstrously expensive e-voting contracts.
These are the people who 'counted' 80% of our votes in 2004, under a veil of corporate secrecy--as the result of the fast spread of these machines during the 2002 to 2004 period.
This egregiously non-transparent, Bushite corporation-run, unverifiable, unaccountable, and highly corrupt election system has continuing uses, beyond (and in addition to) this war. But its initial purpose--to get us into an unjust war that we can't get out of--has been fulfilled. That is why now--after voting nearly unanimously for HAVA--the Democratic leaders have conceded (or some of them have conceded) that maybe we need a paper ballot, to be able to verify our election results.
But notice that, for them to permit us a paper ballot, we have to pay more billions of dollars to these corporations--to switch from the paperless touchscreens (extremely hackable by insiders) to the paper ballot-based optiscans (only slightly less hackable by insiders). The corporations get rewarded for destroying our democracy, by getting their pockets stuffed with our tax money again. In the optiscan systems, you vote on a ballot, which is dumped into a box, with 99% to 100% of the ballots never to be seen again, and your "vote" is turned into electrons, manipulable by trade secret code. Easily manipulable. One insider hacker, a couple of minutes, leaving no trace, that's all it takes--and millions of votes can be changed in highly sophisticated ways (for instance, random distribtution of the unwanted candidate's votes to minor candidates).
This awesome power of trade secret vote counting is, of course, in addition to many other methods of disenfranchisement and election theft, which have been chronicled since 2004 (voter caging lists, not enough voting machines, intimidation and threats, computer breakdowns, and on and on--often against black and other minority voters), and including money itself. It costs so much money now to run for office that, if it's for Congress, for instance, you can't even think about it, as a serious run, unless you have a million dollars in the bank, up front. This weeds out many leftist candidates who would make magnificent public servants, anti-war candidates, anti-corporatate candidates, anyone who threatens this mind-bogglingly corrupt political establishment. In 06, the pro-war Dem leaders went around dropping millions into campaigns, at the primary stage, to defeat any anti-war challengers of the establishment candidates. And if any made it through that gauntlet, old rightwing bigot Howard Ahmanson, or Wally O'Dell, was there to defeat them in the general election.
So-o-o-o, when people like Pelosi and Reid cry "we don't have enough votes" to stop the war, or impeach these fuckers, what they are not telling you is that they didn't want enough votes in Congress to do these things. Otherwise their first act on January 1, 2007, would have been to repeal HAVA. They are apparently happy to have a 22% approval rating, to be able to serve global corporate predator and war profiteer interests. They know that they are protected. They can parade their "liberal" images in the collusive corporate media, and get away with ESCALATING the war, with no consequences, because the vote counting system is thoroughly rigged by Bushite corporations.
Admittedly, our political system is a very complex animal, and our country is huge, full of a wide variety of people, cultures and traditions, and not easy to characterize or understand. And there are many factors that influence elections--the corrupt, monopolistic corporate media, big money, personalities (as purveyed by the corporate media), entrenched power of various kinds, "jobs" (Defense contractor jobs, logging jobs, etc.), local issues, and so on. But the one thing we have in common now is that one or another of these partisan Republican, rightwing corporations--Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia--is counting all our votes with trade secret code, woefully inadequate security, often no audit at all (and only a 1% audit--count of the actual ballots against the machine totals--in the best of states). And we can't seem to get rid of them. And our own political party leaders are covering for them, and have horribly betrayed us--and all Americans--on this matter.
The best two things we need to work for now are these--and the fight has to be carried forward in local-state venues (where ordinary people still have some influence):
1. A ballot for every vote.
2. Count all of (or more of) the ballots.
The minimum count of ballots, against machines total, needed to detect fraud is 5% to 10% (depending on the closeness of the vote). In Venezuela, they hand-count a whopping 55% of the vote, as a check on machine fraud--and they have an open source code system (anyone may review the code by which the votes are counted). In a trade secret system, nothing less than 100% should be required.
Can't we do at least as well as Venezuela? They are a model of transparent elections, compared to us. Our system is a disgrace--and the biggest scandal in American history. And a measure of just how useful the corporate news monopolies are to our democracy is how much people hear about this enormously scandalous, democracy-killing vote counting system in the "news."
Without trade secret vote counting, back in the old days of hand-counted paper ballots, with accompanying high citizen participation, elections were guilty until proven innocent. That is the democratic contract. No one who counts our votes, or has access to ballots, is to be trusted! The system was required to be 100% transparent, with all contending parties, and random citizens, observing the count. Of course stealing elections was tried, and sometimes succeeded. It can happen in any system. But never with pervasive invisibility, and secrecy, all over the nation, and three private partisan corporations having the capability of high speed, massive, untraceable vote stealing. It is easy for them to steal entire states. Easy! And put those states together, and add states that didn't have to be stolen, and pad the vote here and there, with small percentages from unfriendly states, and maybe throw in some ugly suppression of the black vote for good measure (or as a distraction?)--and you have a stolen national election.
I believe that is what happened in 2004. And it happened again, in a somewhat different way, in the 2006 Congressional elections. There is hardly a member of Congress who can prove that he or she was actually elected. I think many of them were not. They were Diebolded into office to escalate the war and keep it funded--and for other fascist/corporate purposes. (They call themselves "Blue Dog" Democrats--they want to cut everything in the budget except war funding.)
Elections, and election officials, are guilty until proven innocent. They must prove to us that all the votes were counted--not the other way around. That is the most fundamental premise of democracy. It is the contract between us and our representatives. They have to be elected by the majority, and the burden of proof is on those in power. If the vote counting is not transparent, it's not democracy.
22% approval rating for the Democratic Congress. This is why. Non-transparent vote counting has only purpose: to steal elections. Stolen elections never represent the majority. That is the point--to not represent the majority.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
