Republicans, paper trails & HR 550 (Holt) No easy answers: Mark C. Miller

July 20, 2006 at 13:21:05
Republicans, paper trails and HR 550 (Holt): No easy answers
by Mark C. Miller, author of "Fooled Again"

http://www.opednews.com

EMAIL FROM MARK CRISPIN MILLER MILLER'S response to Michael Scherer's Salon article (see below):

I hate to rain on anyone's parade, but this is not a good idea.

Why is our democracy at risk? Is it just because those DRE machines don't leave a paper trail? Or is it that the Bush Republicans detest democracy, since they cannot wield power without subverting the electoral system? The fact is that they're pushing an agenda that could never win majority support in the United States--from liberals or conservatives. They've therefore had no choice but to commit election fraud, repeatedly and on a mammoth scale, deploying every trick and tactic in the book, and then some.

As I point out in Fooled Again, the Bush Republicans used paperless machines to cut the Democratic vote, not only in Ohio but from coast to coast--but they also cut the vote in states and counties that did not use paperless machines; and in those places that did use them, the Busheviks also relied on many other means of disenfranchising the majority.

They kept Americans from registering, tossed out or passed over countless ballots (including absentee ballots), wiped the names of (at least) tens of thousands from the voter rolls, carefully dispatched too few machines to Democratic precincts nationwide, used "challengers" to bully countless would-be voters into going home or staying home, mounted vast disinformation drives to mislead countless more, arranged a most fortuitous computer glitch so as to keep some two million expatriates from voting absentee, and otherwise transported this whole nation, white and black alike, back to the catastrophic epoch of Jim Crow.

The problem, then, is civic, not just technical, concerning the fanatical persistence of a full-scale movement deeply hostile to the letter and the spirit of our Constitution.

......................

And so it is with the far-right crusade against American democracy. We must oppose that drive in every way we can--and that means not allowing its own managers to cast themselves as champions of electoral "reform."

more at:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_mark_c___060720_republicans_2c_paper_t.htm

Taking the paper trail to Washington: The dangers of electronic voting machines got tallied Wednesday on Capitol Hill. By Michael Scherer
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/07/20/voting/print.html

of course they all have to be dealt with.

We don't wish to see that mistake repeated.