Do we still have a democracy? (CrisisPapers.org)

http://www.crisispapers.org/essays/democracy.htm

Ernest Partridge: 'Do we still have a democracy?'
Date: Monday, November 08

By Ernest Partridge, The Crisis Papers
The issue of the reliability of paperless electronic voting is fundamentally misconceived: The citizen is not obligated to prove that his ballot is secure; instead, the citizen has a right to be confident that his vote will be counted, as he cast it. And for reasons acknowledged by both the critics and defenders of "e-voting," the American citizen who votes with these machines, is denied this fundamental right. Was the 2004 Presidential election "fixed"?

The question is virtually absent in the mainstream, corporate media, as if it is at least "impolite" and at worst paranoid and delusional even to ask it.. The final totals of this election are an undisputed "given," and media discussion follows from this hard-core assumption. The issue of the validity of the final election returns, for the nation or for pivotal states such as Florida and Ohio, is rarely raised in the mainstream media.

Meanwhile, in "the internets" speculation as to the fairness and validity of the "official" vote count is active and increasing. Bev Harris' BlackBoxVoting.org has filed the most extensive Freedom of Information action in history, in an attempt to prove that "fraud took place in the 2004 election through electronic voting machines. And Greg Palast has proclaimed straight-out that, had all the votes been counted, John Kerry would have won Ohio, Florida, and therefore the election. It's my job to tell you who got the most votes in the deciding states. Tuesday, in Ohio and New Mexico, it was John Kerry.

Most voters in Ohio thought they were voting for Kerry. At 1:05 a.m. Wednesday morning, CNN's exit poll showed Kerry beating Bush among Ohio women by 53 percent to 47 percent. The exit polls were later combined with -- and therefore contaminated by -- the tabulated results, ultimately becoming a mirror of the apparent actual vote. Kerry also defeated Bush among Ohio's male voters 51 percent to 49 percent. Unless a third gender voted in Ohio, Kerry took the state.
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