Framing the Election Privatization Debate

I was thinking that we need some language to describe the DRE vendors and their shills in Congress, BoEs, and elsewhere that everyone can understand in a sound bite.

I think from now on, we should refer to anyone who sells DREs, supports them or harbors them as "Election Privatization Advocates" or members of the "Election Privatization Movement" or the "Election Privatization Community", etc.

You can make up some more of these, but the point is to show that they are NOT in favor of publicly run, verifiable elections, whether they admit this or not.

We on the other hand are the Pro-Democracy Movement!

If anyone can think of some more like this, please post them here, but more importantly, USE THEM in your everyday conversations with friends, the media, elected officials, etc.

And we should make no distinction between DRE vendors and those who harbor them -- they are either with us or against us!

We should make a list of the individuals/organizations that are for Election Privatization and follow the money trail. There could be some interesting results.

DRE hawkers: Privatized Election Advocates

The whole process: Outsourced elections e.g.

They've outsourced our elections.

What do you expect when elections are outsorced to the private sector.

Or if its Sequoia: They've oursourced our electoins to England, which won't even use voting machines.

In fact Venezuela is much better.

Sorry, I thought I posted this before. This is from the Venezuelan opposition, but it's pretty good:

<http://www.venered.org/english/?id=61>

-snip-

Implications

It is extremely worrying indeed that a company with connections to the Hugo Chavez regime has been selected to run elections in a county of Chicago and given carte blanche to operate in the USA and other countries. Equally preoccupying is the fact that leading players of the global financial market are related to Smartmatic and to some extent to Fidel Castro`s heir.

-snip-

stranger. This is thoroughly bizarre. How the Hell does this happen without the slightest notice here. Holy shit!

and sounds like only the advocates are privatized. It's the elections that we want to call attention to.

I like Election Privatization better for this reason.

Outsourced Elections is OK, but I think in light of Bush's resounding success with Social Security Privatization, we might get more mileage out of Privatization at this point.

If you want to say something like Off-Shore Privatization, referring to Sequoia, go for it! It's the "best" of both worlds!

...people learning about who is 'counting' their votes and how.

Two far right-wing Bushite corporations tabulated 80% of the votes in the 2004 election, using SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code.

You almost don't need to know anything else. (But there is so much more...).

My meme about DREs (touchscreens) is that they are ELECTION THEFT MACHINES. There can be no other purpose for a voting machine run on secret, proprietary programming code, whose manufacturers claim does not need a "paper trail," and who lobby against a "paper trail" (let alone a real paper ballot).

But it isn't just the touchscreens. It's also the central tabulators. All, all has been withdrawn behind a "Wizard of Oz" curtain of secrecy.

Bill, I'm not sure what you meant about Venezuela, but Venezuela has OPEN SOURCE CODE (that is, anyone may review how the votes are being tabulated), as opposed to the U.S., with SECRET code.

The Brits sold it to them but not all of their web pages have been updated to reflect this change.

Thanks for the recommendation.

do you know how its being counted, do you know how its being tabulated if you don't its because big business is counting your vote in SECRET.

All you have to do is demand that your government do something about it NOW.

The safest and most secure way is for "We The People" To Count our votes by hand.

Germany,France,Italy and Canada count their votes by hand.

U.K. recently banned all electronic voting equipment.

The "Election Corporatization Movement":

They've taken our farms,
They've taking our schools,
They're corporatizing our public highways,
They own our hospitals and manage our doctors,
They've invaded our military,
They own our prisons,
They manage our public lands,
They now can take our homes.

Now, they are stealing our elections!

Our votes are being corporatized by secretly counting hidden digital ballots derived and interpreted from voters' input via corporate digital vote processing systems running proprietary, trade-secret software.

With centralized corporate control of exit polls which can now easily be compromised or discounted by the elimination of competition and the scientific application of corporate public relations;

With unaudited and unauditable vote results announced by a corporate media hegemony of private special interests,

The citizenry have lost all transparency to their elections with no assurance their intent is reflected in electronic election outcomes.

Corporatization of our public commons is tantamount to nazism: that which the "Greatest Generation" sacrificed to eliminate from our planet.

Corporatization of the public vote strips away all citizen control of our government, replacing the voice of the people with corporate control by private interests and secret intent.

We are now on the verge of a neo-nazi 1,000 year 4th Reich and it up to us to stop it. Corporatizing the public vote enables and ensures private, secret control of our election results. Without transparent elections and with no assurance the will of the people has been heard, received, and expressed, our democracy is in grave jeopardy.

Therefore, it is incumbent on "We The People" to heed the warnings of history and step up to protect our votes and our democracy before it is too late. If we do not demand a return to citizen controlled and supervised, transparent, public elections, we will lose our democracy to the secret determinations of the corporate boardroom.

Its up to us.

Our Elections??? All happening with complicit Media Silence on the issue where too many folks don't even know it's happening!!!!

Edit to say you really nailed it Kip, it's really hostile corporate takeover of our whole country and massive looting of the treasury while they are at it!!!

a whole heap of "We the People" in the form of fat, happy & stupid stock holders. Nice rant... I'm reminded of Thomas Jefferson:

"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."

The kudzu has over-run the garden and a machete tain't gunna clean it up. Our polity is increasingly "engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy: that is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."(John Kenneth Galbraith)

Despite the promise of our Constitution, we have yet to construct a civilization out of materials beyond charity and avarice. Sorry, don't have much positive to add... Perhaps this from here might suffice. Tho these types of things are incrementally effective, I'm afraid itz gunna take a "significant emotional event" like the Depression to shock "We the People" back into focus.

"Election Privatization Advocates for the secret counting of votes", or something like that. Privatization of elections is bad enough, but maybe some people wouldn't get the point that this involves counting our votes in secret.

Recommended.

in the middle of a casual conversation or a debate, over and over again.

We can't just say that a guy like Chris Dodd favors DREs. We need to say that by doing so, he is supporting "election privatization." That's really the first step to a legal ban on this crap.

Otherwise, we will be told that disabled voters need DREs, and every other excuse in the book.

"a popular vote upon any question officially proposed" -- if the popular vote has been removed, what's left?

And welcome to DU, diva77!

:hi:

You can make this point as you continue the conversation, morphing election into selection.

Welcome to DU!

With no paper trail you just have to "have faith" that the results are legitimate.

Love your user name! :rofl:


Welcome to DU! :hi:

... with software we're not allowed to examine.

That may be a bit wordy but it makes the point with words that are not difficult to understand with most audiences (unlike "privatization" or "corporatization".)

The data that is collected by a consortium of private media corporations is kept secret too. I'm trying to frame some good languare for an exit poll project for NJ (Gov).