Lawyer blasts voting machines-Judges hear argument on their unreliability

Lawyer blasts voting machines
Judges hear argument on their unreliability
Thursday, May 25, 2006
BY ROBERT SCHWANEBERG
Star-Ledger Staff

A state appeals court yesterday heard arguments that electronic voting machines used in 20 of the state's 21 counties are so unreliable the constitutional rights of voters are violated.

Since the votes are tallied by computer without producing a paper record that can be audited, some 10,000 machines used throughout the state are "mystery boxes" that cannot be trusted, ar gued Penny Venetis, a lawyer with the Rutgers Constitutional Litigation Clinic.

She told the three judges those machines are vulnerable to computer glitches and intentional tampering that could change the outcome of an election without ever being detected.

"The right to vote is the most fundamental right we hold," Vene tis said. "It is in jeopardy by the continuing use of these machines."

more at:
http://www.nj.com/printer/printer.ssf?/base/news-3/1148535576209920.xml&coll=1

It just isn't right!!

Here's something I think I'll write the legislature....."Would you make a big money purchase without getting a receipt?"

I haven't had a lot of respect for the legal profession. Yet, with all of these groups of concerned attorneys around the country suing on behalf of our rights, my view has a different perspective. Thank God there are some who have convictions, who sense of right and wrong drive them to fight the injustices that are taking place, like in this instance. Now let's just hope there are enough decent judges left out there to hear these cases.

nice to see hero coverage!

in both counties I've voted in so far (Camden County and Gloucester County) - they use odd electronic machines i've never really heard of before. it's not even easy to explain....briefly, you go into a booth with a curtain around it and press buttons (real buttons, not touchscreen) for the candidates you want to select, then you hit a large button toward the bottom which then makes a sweeping "beep" sound which means your vote has been 'cast'. No paper record or anything. Who knows where my vote went or if it counts? :shrug:

TRANSPARENT--run on "trade secret," proprietary programming code--code so secret that not even our secretaries of state are permitted to review it--with virtually no audit/recount controls, the machines are manufactured, programmed, serviced and controlled by BUSHITE CORPORATIONS...

Diebold: Until recently, headed by Wally O'Dell, a Bush-Cheney campaign chair and major fundraiser (a Bush "Pioneer" like Enron's Ken Lay), who promised (in writing) to "deliver Ohio's electoral votes" to Bush-Cheney in 2004; and

ES&S: A spinoff of Diebold (similar computer architecture), initially funded by rightwing billionaire Howard Ahmanson, who also gave one million dollars to the extremist 'christian' Chalcedon Foundation (which touts the death penalty for homosexuals, among other things).

Diebold and ES&S have an incestuous relationship; they are run by two brothers, Tod and Bob Urosevich. Together, Diebold and ES&S 'tabulated' 80% of the nation's votes in 2004, under a veil of secrecy.

Sequoia: The third big player; employs former Repub Sec of State for Calif, Bill Jones, and his chief aide Alfie Charles, to peddle their secretly programmed machines--an outrageous example of "revolving door" employment and conflict of interest. Jones and Charles were the ones who first brought this election theft machinery to California.

All this resulted from the infamous "Help America Vote Act" of 2002, engineered by the two biggest crooks in Congress, Tom Delay and Bob Ney (abetted by Christopher Dodd). What they created was a $4 billion federal boondoggle for Bushite electronics companies, with no controls on lavish lobbying (corruption of state/local election officials from one end of this land to the other), no controls on partisan vendors, no paper trail (let alone a real paper ballot), no controls on lavish lobbying or "revolving door" employment, protection of "trade secret" vote tabulation, virtually no regulation of the security of the machines (an underfunded, Bush-appointed commission which was told to "go slow"), secret industry "testing" of the machines, and draconian deadlines to force election officials into fast, unthinking purchase of expensive, insecure, unreliable and very hackable electronic voting equipment.

I really think that the partisan aspect of this disaster--and the deliberate set up of a Bushite-controlled, NON-TRANSPARENT election system for 2004 (and beyond)--should be emphasized in discussions of this matter, not set aside in a wrong-headed attempt to somehow be "fair" and appeal to the "fairness" of Republicans and people with their heads in the sand. And, although there has been fear, corruption and collusion in our Democratic leadership on this issue--widespread, I think--it is mostly a Bushite plot to take away our right to vote. A coup. A fascist junta.

Most of Congress (just about anyone 'elected' since 2002) is holding illegitimate power. The Bushites have hand-picked most of our Democratic "representatives." You wonder why they vote with the Bushites, and never raise the slightest, weeny little voice against BUSHITE CONTROL OF NON-TRANSPARENT ELECTIONS? It's because they know who they owe their power to.

This matter has puzzled me for a long time--the SILENCE of the Democratic leadership about this EGREGIOUSLY unfair election system, installed during the 2002-2004 period. I've thought of all sorts of things--corruption, fear. (HAVA was passed by the Anthrax Congress.) But I'm coming to the conclusion that, a) most of the Democrats have been illegitimately elected themselves, and are beholden to the Bushite electronic voting corporations for what little power they have; and b) corruption, fear, Corporate Rule in general, the military boondoggle in Iraq, and pro-Israel policy also come into it.

We have no political opposition in this country--except among the people, who have been disempowered, demoralized, and, above all, disenfranchised. If we DID have a true opposition, at the party/government level, that opposition WOULD BE screaming its heads off about NON-TRANSPARENT elections. It's a no-brainer. If you can't see the vote counting, you don't have a democracy. Add in the PARTISAN Republican election theft machine VENDORS, and what you have is TYRANNY--by Bushites, fascists, warmongers and their Vichy colluders.

The EFFECT--the silence of the Democrats on this vital matter--tells us the CAUSE. They are a token opposition, chosen by the Bushites--with a few sops here and there, in particularly difficult election venues--New York, California, et al--to the true left majority in the COUNTRY. So, we have John Conyers and Barbara Boxer, and a few others--maybe 25% to 30% of Congress--representing 60% to 70% of the American people (those opposed to the Iraq war, torture, the $10 TRILLION deficit, the rich stealing from the poor, state religion, etc., and FOR progressive values--peace, justice, fairness).

30% are ruling over 70%. Again, the EFFECT tells us the CAUSE. The elections have been rigged, big time.

The PRIMARY culprit is the fascist cabal that is running the electronic voting corporations and the Republican Party--and the entire federal government and its military and intelligence machinery, at the moment. The distinctly secondary culprits are the toady Democrats and corrupt election officials in the states and counties.* From the point of view of grass roots Democrats--the majority of the voters, overall--it is a very partisan issue. But it is also a partisan issue from the point of view of the country as a whole, which has suffered so much from this rightwing Republican coup. There may be Republican voters out there--in fact, I'm sure there are--who have ALSO been disenfranchised. (Some think that Republican voters took the worst hit of vote stealing in 2004--Republicans who voted for Kerry.) But it is now the pervasive mode of the Republican Party to rig elections and suppress Democratic votes. It is indeed their signature. And until the sensible Republicans take back their party--or it blows itself up with endemic corruption--their party must take the blame. It is to "elect" rightwing Repubicans that this whole, corrupt, non-transparent election system was put into place, by some of the biggest crooks in the Republican Party (abetted, to be sure, by one of the biggest traitors in the Democratic Party, Bilderbergan--global corporate predator group--Christopher Dodd). Ultimately, it is the Corporate Rulers who are our enemy. For now, it is their rightwing Republican operatives who have destroyed our election system in order to gain and retain power, who must be blamed and defeated for this outrage. And it is a supremely PARTISAN matter.

Lawyers who take this matter into court--and who will often be facing Bush-appointed judges--must frame it as a non-partisan issue, I suppose. But, to me, the most outrageous part of it is the PARTISAN vendors--the rightwing-connected corporations that are 'counting' our votes behind a veil of secrecy. Because THAT is the REASON FOR the secrecy! Rightwingers cannot get elected in most venues in this country--especially given all of what the Bush junta has done--without rigging the vote.

And do they think that the partisan JUDGES are going to look at this matter objectively? Fat chance. The pro-democracy lawyers should be looking very closely at how the judge got elected, or who appointed him/her, and at what their political and financial affiliations are, and should be seeking conflict-of-interest evidence, and using it in court, if they find it.

The COURTS are now unfair--the federal courts tilted way to the right by an illegitimately "elected" rightwing President, and highly skewed-to-the-right Congress, and the state courts by rigged elections, money/corporate influence, and other means--as well as virtually all of the elections being unfair and non-transparent.

The best hope I see for throwing these election theft machines out is public pressure at the state/local level--a long, difficult, multi-venue struggle, but one that we can win. I doubt that Bush/Corporate judges will do it. The lawsuits are helpful for public education--and on the off-chance that fairness, transparency, and democracy will actually win in court. But these lawsuits do hold the peril that non-transparent, Bushite-controlled elections will be cemented in place by bad court decisions--and the higher up the lawsuit gets, the more likely that truly bad decisions will come down.

For instance, in Pennsylvania, citizens are trying to defend their local law that says that the voters must approve any major changes in the voting machinery--with Diebold machines (or ES&S) at issue.** Torture memo writer Alberto Gonzales--Bush's AG--is intervening in the suit to PREVENT voters from having any say about the election systems. And if this suit gets to the Supreme Court--as it well might--who do you think will win? The people? Democracy? Or the Bushite corporate election theft machine vendors?

If we lose the right to control election systems at the state/local level, it's all over.

----------

*(I should mention a major culprit in non-transparent elections, co-equal with the Bushites--the war profiteering corporate news monopolies. But I won't get into it here. It's a topic all by itself. Suffice it to say that their exit polls--used elsewhere in the world to verify elections and check for fraud--are not used that way here; instead, they are tweaked--doctored, falsified--to match the results of Diebold/ES&S's secret vote tabulation programming. And they--all of them together, as a consortium--use only one pollster, Edison-Mitofsky. You wonder why the matter of non-transparent, Bushite-controlled election results has been "black-holed" by the corporate news monopolies? Effect, meet Cause.)

**www.votepa.us (well-organized local group of citizen activists in Pennsylvania, where important legal issues are at stake, including state's rights over election systems)
Provisions of the PA lawsuit:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x423739

Some of you here may recognize me from the Environment/Energy Forum. These election issues and energy issues are very closely related. The current leadership of the United States is in a panic. They don't know how they will hold onto their political power as the United States loses control of the international oil industry. One way they might hold onto their power is to take control of the election process. The other way is to discourage decentralized alternative energy schemes. If smaller government units such as towns and neighborhoods become more self-sufficient with respect to water, food, electricity, and fuel, then the political and economic power of the large corporations and central government are greatly reduced.

For what it's worth, Bill Jones is now the Chairman of the Board for Pacific Ethanol.

http://www.pacificethanol.net/_content/about_leadership.php?nav=main&a=About&b=Leadership+Depth

The current economies of ethanol are not good. Ethanol cannot replace gasoline as an inexpensive motor fuel. The only way this industry will expand is with massive government support, and the effect of this support will be detrimental to the overall economy. The middle class will become poor, and the poor will suffer ever greater abuses.

It's easy to lose sight of the bigger picture in this forum. Peace Patriot brings it home with this sort of post. This is the kind of thinking you need to do to guide your own personal stategy of election reform.

SOme places can grow sugar cane, some cant. Economically speaking, in the USA, Ethanol from Corn makes no sense.

Oh yeah, they make ethanol in Brazil at some profit, but the environmental costs and the toll on the human spirit are entirely unacceptable.

for ethanol to burn in their cars. Some solution! U.S. ethanol production relies heavily on petrochemical fertilizer (more energy put in than you get ut) to grow corn to burn in cars instead of feeding the world. Some solution! It reminds me of so-called "cheap" nuclear energy which doesn't factor in waste (fuel and facility) retention/disposal. Decentralized (individual and community-based)) energy IS the solution and the threat to centralized corporations) just as decentralized capitalism is both solution and threat to fascist centralized capitalism.

Imagine corporations where workers retained perpetual 51% ownership, where corporations carry the full tax burden, and where corporations cannot remove themselves from their communities without workers' 2/3rds vote (distributed capitalism). Corporations would reflect the will of their workers (those who through their creativity and effort generate the corporate success and wealth). Further imagine a government which services the will of its people and acts for the benefit of we the people (What a country!).

Now, wake up and smell the coffee! Until we the people regain control of our voting processes, returning it to local citizen control, its ALL just fantasy and bizarro world continues. Election reform IS a first cause prerequisite to correcting everything else! Until we the people regain our democracy, multinational centralized capitalist corporations will rule over us all and we all will become as the immigrant slave class.

SOS and election adminstrators have a hellaciously complicated task in running elections with so many ballot options. They are inclined toward being uncritical when voting machine companies offer to make their jobs easier, regardles of party.

:eyes: