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I just picked this up from an old email by Lynn Landis.
Found this at www.whoseflorida.com
Voting Machines Violate Constitution - Who Will Launch Legal Challenge?
by Lynn Landes
Wanted - one or more really good constitutional lawyers. Why? Voting machines. We need to challenge their use in our elections.
Voting machines violate the Constitution and threaten what's left of American democracy like no terrorist ever could. Only a handful of private companies sell and service the machines that register and tabulate votes in U.S. elections. And it's all done in complete secrecy. We've lost control of our election process and Congress doesn't seem to notice or care.
Over the last several years, particularly in 2002, election results in the U.S. have come under increasing suspicion due to widespread voting machine "glitches" and unexpected election upsets. In an overwhelming number of these questionable elections... Republicans won. That makes sense. Republicans, such as U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE), long ago cornered the market in voting machine sales and service.
(snip)
Once the machine is in the polling booth critical parts of the voting process become unobservable and, therefore, violate Articles I & 2 of the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act.
to my knowledge no individual or organization, such as the NAACP, ACLU or Common Cause, have challenged the constitutionality of voting machines. Although plenty of distraught candidates have gone to court accusing the voting machines of miscounting their votes, but to little avail.
In a November 1996 article for Relevance magazine, Philip O’Halloran wrote, "Many court cases involving allegations of fraud were brought against vendors of electronic systems. There were no convictions. Was there ever any proof of tampering presented? No. Part of the reason for this may be that during the litigation the plaintiffs were never given access to the vote tabulating program, and hence there was no opportunity for anyone to establish evidence to either prove or disprove the allegations.
(snip)
We should point out that even if the court allowed the plaintiff’s experts to inspect the source-code, there would be no proof that the code provided to the court was, in fact, the selfsame code used in the particular election in question."
(SOOOOO.....)
How can a machine-produced vote ever constitute a legal vote?
Isn't it merely circumstantial evidence of a vote produced by a machine that may or may not have been cast by a voter?
(Sure looks that way to me....)
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