Lack of Election Reform Threatens to make all Progress Irrelevant

The Gorilla in the Room Must Be Dealt With

Lack of Election Reform Threatens to Make All Progress Irrelevant.

by Anthony Wade

http://www.opednews.com

"The good fight has been fought for some years now. Progress has indeed been made."

"There is still an 800 pound gorilla in the room that only a handful seem to be talking about."

"That gorilla is election reform, or the lack thereof. Just today, the resident election reform experts, Fitrakis and Wasserman, warn us that the recent special election in Ohio, may also have been stolen. I say also because any objective review of the 2004 election reveals that it was indeed stolen. How else do you explain a man who cannot break a 49% approval rating, earning 11 million more votes than the previous election? Fraud. I have heard all the right wing blather in reaction to this. I do not object to the word conspiracy, because by definition, that is what this is. "

(snip)

"Whatever progress we think we have made in the past few years is completely irrelevant if the elections are not guaranteed to be fair."

"There are so many crimes out there being committed by this administration you can bet that they will do whatever they can to not lose control of either house in 2006. They correctly recognize that if that were to happen, then REAL investigations would ensue, complete with subpoena power."

"It is obvious that the tide has shifted and public opinion is rapidly drawing away from the party that has led us down this path of destruction. The majority of people in this country now correctly believe that Bush has lied to us about going to war and his personal ratings are plummeting. There is no question in my mind that if the elections were fair and honest, that the GOP would lose control in 2006 but the question remains, will they be fair?"

:silly:

Karl Rove was involved in the elections in which rumors were circulated that Ann Richards was a lesbian; that Senator John McCain was mentally unstable; that he had fathered illegitimate children; and that his wife, Cindy, was a drug addict.

I would suggest that any election reform bill include the following:

Any person who, in reckless disregard of the truth, directly or indirectly publishes a libelous statement regarding a candidate and/or a member of the candidate's immediate family, in any federal election, including any primary or caucus for such federal election, shall be guilty of a felony ....

Maybe passage of such Election Reform could be a Referendum/Issue for '06.

No matter how flagrantly the GOP abuses it's power; and no matter how hard the Dems work to win - it won't matter if they can still steal it. The GOP will only increase their control in 2006/08.

Seriously; how are we even going to get our foot in the door?

Our politicians don't seem to be interested in the subject. Why?

...the new election rules (for the past six years now) have been:

...He/She who cheats best wins. Period.

...when our side starts playing the game to WIN, we will have campaigns that "know what needs to be done" to win. It is really that simple. And it really is the only way to save American Democracy...cuz by the en of the 2006 elections the Repubs will have stolen super-majorities in both chambers of congress. And then it is one-party rule for as far as the eye can see.

I know that in a large sense, I am not saying anything new here, but I want to try to sum up a solution in a visualization...(please respond and point out all the gaps that you can find, and we will work together to patch them up!)


picture it, u walk into your polling place (with lines moving along just fine)...you check in at the first counter to prove you are a registered voter, same as now, your name is then checked off the voters list, marked off in a computer system..therefore you cannot vote more than once.
you then walk over to a private booth, enter it and find a basic normal computer, (heck even just a pentium I) attached to a 17" monitor in an ORANGE casing, with a standard printer attached to it....the computer itself is not plugged into any outside communications lines...you then step to the monitor and it is in its READY TO BEGIN SCREEN...please click enter to begin....at the first screen you will be asked to enter a 5 digit pin# and confirm it (A PIN # that YOU create right there on the spot in your own mind)....once u do this the computer automatically cues into starting the selection process for each candidate/issue on the ballot...once you are finished, a final screen appears showing you all of your choices, if any need to be edited, then edit, if they are correct type in your 5 digit pin 1 more time for absolute PIN confirmation...once that has been done, then 1 simple little sheet of paper with a 17digit bar code # ingrained on it prints out (PLEASE NOTE: THE BAR CODE WILL PRINT ON BOTH THE TOP AND BOTTOM OF THE SHEET, ALSO ON ONE HALF OF THE SHEET THE NAMES OF ALL THE CANDIDATES YOU SELECTED ARE LISTED). You take this single sheet of paper and tear it in half so that you have the barcode on both sheets. You deposit the 1 copy with the list of people you voted for on it into a sealed envelope, and place the other sheet (which is just a barcode with a phone # to reach the automated board of elections confirmation line) in your pocket. You proceed to the exit where bipartisanly monitored and videotaped box is located for the ballots to be dropped into. From there, at the close of polling the boxes are carried to the back and counted. At the same time right at the close of the polls, a bipartian team goes to each computer and downloads a simple file which contains all the vote tabulations along with a unique bar code attached to each vote within the same computer program. This becomes the unofficial tally for the precinct..In the 2-12 hours after the close of polling the ballots will also be optically scanned by bar-code. The bar-coding will be simultaneously matched up with the "downloaded" initial totals that the precinct first reported..*Also-all counts by precincts are to be both emailed and phoned for double confirmation (under watchful bipartisan eyes)to your state's main Elections office. These totals become the unofficial first results...over the course of the next 2-5 days all votes are handcounted for all races with a 10% or less margin of victory. If there are discrepencies another optical scan will be conducted, and then another hand count...the 2nd hand count being a "final" decision. In the meanwhile any voter, and everyone will be encouraged to, can call the phone # on their stub, enter their 5-digit PIN# (WHICH ONLY THEY KNOW, SINCE IT WAS MADE UP ON THE SPOT IN THE VOTING BOOTH). This allows people to know that there vote was officially counted correctly!
You see where this all leads??? It is endless checks and balances, and if something doesn't jibe consistently, then a re-vote will be demanded for that precinct, and all voters who had their names marked off the voters list like when you first walked in, are contacted and told to come to a re-vote session...(hopefully things would never get to that point, they shouldn't)... Actual people will not be able to vote multiple times, that is covered in the very beginning, as for votes being "switiched' or miscounted..it simply wouldn't happen, it couldn't ..to much paper backup...and most of all
THIS CAN ALL BE DONE ON VERY BASIC WINDOWS PLATFORM COMPUTER SYSTEMS, NO WORRIES ABOUT SOURCE CODE OR VULNERABILTY FROM BEING ONLINE..NONE OF THAT...AND VERY BASIC PRINTERS CAN BE USED, NOTHING 'NEW' NEED BE CREATED!...

anyways...i know i have left "angles" of this out which observant minds will find, and hopefully point out in response to this...maybe we can collectively smooth out the "major refinements" and other details that would need to be addressed....
but it comes down to bar codes...bar codes!!!!!

any takers?...if we wanna be the Forerunners of Democracy, we can't let up at ALL!

Why Orange Box????? Ukraine!!! (& isn't Florida the quite the "Orange" state?!!?)

2 other things if u want to read some more

http://www.perfectvotingsystem.com
google search Clinton Curtis

WE CAN GET OUR MINDS TOGETHER NOW TO MAKE THE SOLUTION TIGHT AND PRECISE....SO THAT OUR TRULY PROGRESSIVE REPRESENTATIVES & SENATORS HAVE SOME AMMO. TO RALLY LAUNCH IN THIS DEBATE!!!

WE CANNOT KEEP "HOPING" WE MUST PROVIDE SOLUTIONS IN A 2-WORD CULTURE!

"Backdoors Exist"
"Ashamed of a Sham"
"Fair Play=Fair Respect"
"Bank = Receipt, Democracy = Blind Faith?, NO WAY"
"WITH PAPER TRAILS, CAPERS FAIL"