Rod Smith airs first ad that includes election reform!!

http://rodsmith2006.com/page/s/firstad

He is the man!

:toast:

:thumbsup:

first Dem ad I have heard here for governor...caught my attention for sure!

Rod was the prosecutor on that case. It was so sad, so tragic, and so interesting.

for voting and honest recounts, but--given what I know about our election system--it was pretty lame, and I told him so in an email comment. The key to the problem is private corporate control of vote counting, using TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code. What good is a paper ballot record of your vote, when the vote is separated from the evidence of the vote, and turned into electrons, manipulable by secret code, with non-existent or inadequate audits, and even rarer recounts?

They can still steal elections.

Transparent elections are real simple. People vote, and you count the votes in public view. Anything done OUT of public view is wrong, undemocratic, and potentially tyrannical.

That's what we had in 2004--virtually the entire election "tabulated" out of public view, by corporate-controlled, trade secret programming code, and not only this, by code owned and controlled by BUSHITE corporations (Diebold and ES&S).

I'm afraid there's a general mode among Democratic leaders to preserve corporate control of our elections, or at least to preserve big electronics contracts, by merely requiring a paper trail and relying on audits and recounts to check for mistakes or fraud. This is the DNC/Common Cause position. They do it by pushing optiscans, as opposed to paperless (unauditable, unrecountable) touchscreen voting. Optiscans have a paper ballot, which is dumped into a box, and never seen again (or rarely). Your vote is still turned into electrons, which are manipulable by secret corporate electronic tabulation code, and the only way to check for fraud is to match the ballots with the electronic totals, which almost never happens. It is some deterrent effect, but no real security at all.

It is TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code in the CENTRAL TABULATORS that is likely the real culprit in recent stolen elections ('02 and '04).

All this code must go. All secrecy must go. All private corporate control must go. Anything less is not democracy.

Electronic voting has made vote counting a very complicated business. Rod Smith also mentions independent "certification" of the electronic voting systems in this ad. When Tom Delay, Bob Ney (the biggest crooks in the Anthrax Congress) and Democratic colluder Christopher Dodd set this all up, they failed to provide any sort of controls to prevent fraud, and one of their outrages was to permit secret industry "testing" of the machines. Independent testing is somewhat better. But it does NOT solve the main problem--the most egregious violation of our democracy ever devised: TRADE SECRET VOTE COUNTING!

The complicated process of "certifying" these machines and their trade secret code, in such a way as to preserve corporate trade secrets and proprietary rights (i.e., money, profits) is full of peril. Even an independent "tester" is a business. They are part of the industry. How to control this and achieve absolute assurance of integrity in the most important part of our democracy: voting?

It's just not possible. It's TOO COMPLICATED. And wherever secrecy is involved, there is danger to our democracy.

I repeat. This is a very simple matter. People vote, and you count their votes in public view.

There is the additional matter of corruption. This electronic system is filthy. It was designed for fraud, and produced a fraudulent nationwide election in 2004. Lavish lobbying and big money contracts have polluted the current population of election officials. Corporations after big bucks--and who are big contributers to Bush/Cheney!!!--never should have been invited into our election system, and permitted to exploit this most vital aspect of our democracy, with crapass, insecure, extremely insider hackable machines--or any secretly coded machines.

We're going to reward these fraudsters and election thieves with MORE contracts?

We need to clean house. The election theft industry--both the corporations and the election officials they have bought--needs to be cleaned out entirely.

You can't fix this by requiring a paper trail. That only makes a very corrupt situation SLIGHTLY better.

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THE ABSENTEE BALLOT PROTEST FOR NOVEMBER

There is already a big citizen rebellion brewing against the machines. Absentee Ballot voting is already up to 50% in Los Angeles. These citizens want a PAPER BALLOT, HAND COUNTED. AB voting isn't safe either (see below), but if this protest gets bigger, it has the potential to bring the election theft industry to its knees.

By voting by Absentee Ballot, you REFUSE TO COOPERATE with this rigged system. DON'T VOTE ON THE MACHINES--any of them! Flood the registrar's offices with MOUNTAINS of paper Absentee Ballots, and force them to deal with it.

The beauty of this protest is that it's easy. Almost everybody can do it. Some states have stricter rules than others; almost all states have some form of AB voting.

Currently, they mostly just scan the AB votes into the rigged electronic system--similar to optiscan voting. This has to stop. We must demand that they count AB votes by hand in full public view, and provide the totals BEFORE any electronics are used. And if enough people vote by AB, we will have the clout to demand this. Indeed, we will have reformed the system.

But the first step is to vote by Absentee Ballot--and to get everyone else (the 70% of the people in this country who despise the Bush junta) to do it. We have the numbers. We can BOYCOTT these machines and get rid of them.

Then we tackle the rest of the problems in our elections, and in our country.

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Extra measures include: Photocopy your Absentee Ballot before you send it in; send it registered mail, return receipt requested; or deliver it in person, at the registrar's office or the polling place (if possible). Write a letter (send separately) to your local election officials about your objections to corporate-controlled secret vote counting, and demand a public hand count of AB votes.

I just gave up. I have tried to understand what is desired, and the more our Democrats speak out the less they satisfy.

I hereby officially give up.

You say, "I've tried to understand what is desired." I am very specific: "All this code must go. All secrecy must go. All private corporate control must go. Anything less is not democracy. "

Do you understand what I mean? And do you approve of "trade secret" vote tabulation code? How can you approve of it--if you do--and maintain that an election is open and aboveboard? Please explain.

It's a very simple matter. People vote, and you count the votes in public view.

Why is that so hard to understand? All this obscurity and complication, that only electronic experts can understand, is made to order for fraud. Add in paperless voting machines, and you just about guarantee fraud. You have removed any deterrent to it (--potential audits, recounts). But even with paper, if the vote is separated from the evidence of the vote (as it is in all electronic systems), without strict, high level audits, the vote totals can EASILY be changed on a massive scale without detection. And it is this potential for massive, undetectable fraud, that is so bad. With old-fashioned paper ballots and handcounts in full view of the public, the scale of potential fraudulent counts, out of the sight of human eyes, was incomparably smaller.

Electronic voting--as designed by Diebold and ES&S, Tom Delay, Bob Ney and Christopher Dodd--was made to order for massive, undetectable vote stealing. It could not have been better designed toward that end. The machines are highly penetrable (hackable), especially for insiders. They have massive security holes. The foundation is Windows, a piece of crap platform, according to techies. Most election officials had little idea how the systems worked. Private corporate personnel therefore had easy access to the machines after they were sold--in addition to having programmed them with TRADE SECRET code. These two chief corporations involved both have very close connections to the Bush regime and far rightwing causes. And lots and lots of money changed hands--highly expensive voting systems, with high on-going maintenance costs--and scandalous lavish lobbying of election officials and legislators.

Adding a paper trail is a patchwork fix. It merely provides a slight deterrent. It doesn't fix the problem of separating the vote from the evidence of the vote, and turning the vote into electrons, to be manipulated by TRADE SECRET code.

"I hereby officially give up." Good. If you don't understand what I've said above, then I wouldn't want you influencing anyone on how my vote is counted, or the votes of other Americans. I want TRANSPARENT elections. No secret code. No corporate control. People vote, and we count the votes in public view.

And you as much as condemned the efforts of the DNC, their voting rights summit.

I am not stupid, I did keep up for long time with all the latest. I do understand the basic premises.

I just think that there has to be middle ground, and that posting in every thread saying not enough is not the way to do it.