Take a Stand for Democracy, REFUSE to use the Vote Stealing Machines.

Demand the right to use a paper ballot, with your signature, and a receipt with official seal, or vote absentee.

That is all.


DIEBOLD VOTING MACHINE.

...as I have in the past two. My ballot will be mailed via certified/signature required mail so they get the message I have proof you got it and I expect my vote to be counted. I will also take a digital photo of my ballot before I send it.

Do you get the impression I don't trust NObody, NOwhere, NO way, NO more? Damned thugs. I want my country put back the way it was before *Co. took over.

There is always a way to subvert any conceivable system.

I vote that way, but have my doubts if they get counted either, or if they do, they use machines to count them-same problem.

So no, it's not a perfect solution, but the machines ARE the pefect solution for us losing every time.

:shrug:

ultimate solution, because all ballots are still tabulated electronically (with corporate "trade secret" programming), and there is considerable corruption in the election system, particularly wherever Republicans are in charge of the vote counting. It's become a culture of corruption and secrecy, where anything goes. I think the "trade secret" programming has made them heady with power. They know they have an unfair advantage. Bush has taught them not to care about fairness and democracy. So even the counting of paper ballots is in peril. But absentee ballot voting DOES provide a tangible record of your vote--helpful to election investigators--and it IS an ever-growing ordinary citizen protest against the machines. And no election should be "called" by ANYBODY until ALL the absentee ballots are counted.

Here is my analysis of the situaton, including recommendations for the immediate future, and activist info/resources:

SOME RESOURCES FOR AMERICAN REVOLUTION II:

Practical suggestions for the immediate future:

1. ABSENTEE BALLOT VOTING. Voting by absentee or other paper ballot options is not the ultimate solution, by any means, but they at least provides a tangible paper record for challenging suspicious election results, and for recounts and investigations. (Absentee ballots were a great help to investigators in 2004.) Absentee ballot voting is also a form of protest against the machines. If enough people do it (and many are), the machines will be obsolete; then we can work on getting rid of the central tabulators.

2a. MONITOR THE ELECTIONS: Statistical, chain of custody and transparency issues. Join with others to closely monitor the coming elections and gather and document evidence. Many volunteers are needed. See www.UScountvotes.org, and other activist groups, below. (UScountvotes.org needs donations!) In addition to statistical monitoring, a close watch should be kept on chain of custody issues (of the machines and any paper ballots or receipts; in the recent Bilbray-Busby election in San Diego, Diebold voting machines were apparently kept at election workers' HOMES just before the election--an incredible breach of security with regard to already very hackable machines.) Demand openness and transparency. Challenge the culture of secrecy that has grown around elections with the onset of secret corporate control of the vote counts.

2b. MONITOR THE ELECTIONS: Racial and class justice issues. Black voters, other minorities and the poor have been the victims of extraordinary harassment and disenfranchisement by Bushite election officials, at the polls and in voter registration purges. This was blatant in Ohio, Florida and New Mexico in '04. One investigator (Greg Palast) estimates that a million black voters were purged from the rolls prior to the 2004 election. Special vigilance is needed in these precincts and in opposing discriminatory rules and practices before and during the election. Are we to let the Bushites spit on one of our finest achievements as a people--the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965?

3. DEMAND INDEPENDENT EXIT POLLS. Demand that the Democratic Party fund INDEPENDENT EXIT POLLS. Exit polls are used worldwide to verify elections and check for fraud. The war profiteering corporate news monopoly exit polls cannot be trusted (they are doctored to match the results from the voting machines' secret programming code; rather than being used to verify elections, they are used to confirm NON-TRANSPARENT "official results"). The Democratic Party owes us, big time, for their lack of vigilance--and in some cases corruption--on electronic voting. This is something they can do to make it up to us.

4. THINK LONG TERM. Saving our democracy promises to be a long hard struggle. We obviously can't get rid of these machines before the '06 elections, so focus on doing our best with the Diebold/ES&S handicap (my guess--a 5% to 10% "thumb on the scales" for Bushites and warmongers), and getting rid of these machines afterward, for '08 and beyond.

5. TELL PEOPLE THE TRUTH. They NEED to know it. Engage them in the fight. Bumper sticker: "Help Us Beat the Machines--VOTE!" There is nothing more demoralizing and disempowering than constantly losing and not knowing WHY. There is evidence that the machines CAN be beaten by massive turnout. Get people involved! Help them to SEE what's happening! THEY will solve the problem, ultimately--if they can only IDENTIFY what it is!

6. PRESSURE LOCAL/STATE ELECTION OFFICIALS. Right now, the best place to fight this fight is at the state/local level, where ordinary people still have some influence. Bush's Congress is NOT going to give us back our right to vote--they are the ones who took it away (with the collusion of some corrupt Dems). Don't look to the Feds--look to your local county registrar, your state election boards, your secretaries of state. Demand TRANSPARENT and FAIR elections. Also educate and mobilize your local Democratic Party and other political party groups.

The first priority in this historic fight for American democracy is restoring our right to vote--the mechanism by which we exercise our sovereignty as a people. Without it, we have no power. We MUST change this.

Never give up on your right to vote! NEVER!

----------------------

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES FOR AMERICAN REVOLUTION II:

Hopeful signs - latest news:

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. lays out the case for 2004 stolen election, Rolling Stone (6/1/06)
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/10432334/was_the_2004_election_stolen/1

California voters sue the state over Diebold:
www.VoterAction.org is suing the state of California and 18 Calif county registrars on behalf of 25 California voter/plaintiffs, on the illegal Diebold "certification" by Schwarzenegger appointee Bruce McPherson.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2180496
Seven of these counties have promised the judge they would use PAPER BALLOTS, and were dismissed from this lawsuit (4/27/06).
http://kcbs.com/pages/29285.php
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2249205

Maryland rejects Diebold:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x418263

Florida - anti-trust accusations against Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia, re: heroic Florida election official Ion Sancho:
(FLA AG subpoenas the companies)
http://www.computerworld.com/governmenttopics/government/legalissues/story/0,10801,110192,00.html
http://www.tbo.com/news/politics/MGBKSY8W8LE.html
(info & discussion)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2183630

Utah county clerk fights back!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x419226

(Tide turning?) New York Times: "New Fears of Security Risks in Electronic Voting Systems" (5/12/06)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2278829

Florida - Rep. Wexler may sue over no paper trail:
http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/breaking_news/14869941.htm

-----

INFORMATION AND ACTIVIST RESOURCES for American Revolution II:

www.votersunite.org (MythBreakers - easy primer on electronic voting--one of the myths is that HAVA requires electronic voting; it does not.)
www.UScountvotes.org (statistical monitoring of '06 and '08 elections--they need donations)

(Activist sites with links to state activist groups or info)

www.votersunited.org (good general info, and state links)
www.verifiedvoting.org (great activist site)
www.solarbus.org/election/index.shtml (fab compendium of all election info)
www.votetrustusa.org (news of the movement from around the country--caveat: $$$ connections to Choicepoint)

www.freepress.org (devoted to election reform)
www.bradblog.com (also great, and devoted to election reform)
www.TruthIsAll.net (analysis of the 2004 election)* :patriot: :applause: :patriot:
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

The Voter Confidence Resolution
http://tinyurl.com/rlnr2 (“We Do Not Consent”)
http://guvwurld.blogspot.com (GuvWurld blog main page)
http://tinyurl.com/amryg (Voter Confidence Resolution

www.debrabowen.com (Calif Senator running for Sec of State to reform election system)
www.johnbonifaz.com (running for Massachusetts Sec of State on strong election reform and antiwar platform)

*Some tributes to TruthIsAll, who is very ill:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x417007
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x417231
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x675477

Congressional bills:

Russ Holt's HR 550 requires a real paper ballot, bans secret software in "voting machines", and has more than 170 co-sponsors, but the audit required is too weak, it promotes electronic voting and centralized power, and the secret software might be permitted to continue in the central tabulators (the bill is not clear). At lot of discussion at DU of the loopholes/pitfalls in HR 550 (many DUers support the bill):
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x422926
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x421136
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=422967&mesg_id=422967
To sign the HR 550 petition: http://www.rushholt.com/petition.html

(Note: Senate Bill-SB 330 and House-HR704 simply require a "voter verified paper audit trail" (VVPAT), which may be best for the moment.)


Also of interest:

Michael Collins (Autorank)'s searing election reform article for New Zealand's Scoop.com
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x971363

Bob Koehler (-- four recent election reform initiatives in Ohio, predicted to win by 60/40 votes, flipped over, on election day, into 60/40 LOSSES!--the biggest flipover we've seen yet; the election theft machines and their masters are now dictating election policy! Title: "Poll Shock" 11/24/05)
http://commonwonders.com/archives/col321.htm

Bob Koehler's latest: "Trust us: Take this box and stuff it" (3/16/06)
http://commonwonders.com/archives/col337.htm
More Koehler:
www.tmsfeatures.com/tmsfeatures/subcategory.jsp?file=20051124ctnbk-a.txt&catid=1824&code=ctnbk

Amaryllis (Diebold, ES&S, Sequoia lavish lobbying of election officials - Beverly Hilton, Aug. '05) -"Election officials for sale to the highest bidder."
www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x380340

HOWARD DEAN remarks on electronic voting machines 04/06
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x994507

Common Cause: "17 states at high risk for election results compromised due to electronic voting machine problems" (6/06) info on the worst of the election theft machines--the touchscreens, but CC ignores secret code and partisan Republican vendors)
http://www.commoncause.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=dkLNK1MQIwG&b=194883&ct=2676319

------------------------------------------------

Throw Diebold, ES&S and ALL election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor' NOW!

:think: :patriot: :woohoo: :patriot: :think:

-----------

"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it." --Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence

:hi:

OVERVIEW: AMERICAN REVOLUTION II

What we now have --in addition to outright illegal suppression of black, poor and other Democratic votes by Bushite election officials and other operatives--is several big electronic voting corporations with very close ties to the Republican Party and rightwing causes--Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia-- 'counting' all our votes with '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. This is the result of the infamous "Help America Vote Act" of 2002, a $4 billion electronic voting boondoggle engineered by the biggest crooks in Congress, Tom Delay and Bob Ney (and abetted by Bilderberg 'Democrat' Christopher Dodd).

Our elections are now NON-TRANSPARENT and UNVERIFIABLE, and under the control of partisan corporations. The $4 billion--and also millions in lavish lobbying--were used to corrupt election officials from one end of our country to the other. And those they have not been able to corrupt, they have driven from office (Kevin Shelly in California), or sought to intimidate (Ion Sancho in Florida, and others). This pervasive corruption, and bullying by the Bushite Feds, has resulted in the widespread purchase, by states and counties, of extremely insecure, unreliable and hackable--and very expensive--election theft machinery, including both voting machines and central tabulators. Most votes--even paper ballot votes (such as absentee ballots)--end up as electrons that can easily be manipulated by "trade secret" programming code. Given the culture of secrecy that has been fostered among election officials, and the financial corruption (big money contracts, lavish lobbying, etc.) that is now pervasive in our election system, no vote is safe and secure.

Transparent elections are NOT difficult: people vote and the votes are counted in public view. But that is not what the Bushites wanted, and that is not we have; we have something more like the vote counting in Stalinist Russia. In current conditions, we must PRESUME an INACCURATE count that favors those in power.

Restoring TRANSPARENT, VERIFIABLE elections is a MUST DO, PRIORITY ONE, MATTER, if we want our country back. Without the right to vote, we can do little or nothing to restore lawful government. We can protest. We can be appalled. But, if the will of the majority--for peace and justice, and good government, as evidenced in ALL the issue polls over the last six years--cannot be enforced, then we might as well be shouting to the wind.

And for those in despair, I would add this: Look to South America today for the model of what TRANSPARENT elections can do. We are seeing a huge, peaceful, democratic, Leftist (majority rule) revolution in Latin America--with Leftist governments elected in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Venezuela and Bolivia, and growing Leftist movements in Peru, and even in Columbia; also Nicaragua, and right on up into Mexico, where the Leftist mayor of Mexico City is now ahead in the presidential polls. This revolution is in part based on the hard work of the OAS, the Carter Center, EU election monitoring groups and local civic groups, on TRANSPARENT, VERIFIABLE elections. If Latin America--which has suffered so much brutal oppression--can do it, so can we! We must not give up! We have an obligation to the future and to the world to restore democracy in the United States. There is a REASON that they took away our right to vote! It is BECAUSE we are a progressive population with the potential to curtail the global corporate predators and warmongers who are menacing the world. Have heart! And remember that Martin Luther King, Gandhi and Nelson Mandela all had their down days, too. Mandela was jailed for 29 years, before he emerged to become the first black president of South Africa. I don't think it's going to take us that long. We have democracy, a free press, and a huge peace movement (re: Vietnam) in living memory. We have an over 200 year old tradition of steady progress in human and civil rights. We have a practical problem to solve: non-transparent elections. Let's get it done!

exercise, eat a healthy diet, think positive (it's not the American people causing these problems and 99% of the Repubs don't know what's going on either).

Really enjoy your posts. I've learned a lot from them and have picked up a lot of strong phrases and ideas to use in talking to people and doing what little I can do to restore democracy.

Keep up the good work!

And stay healthy! I want you around for as long as this problem persists!

...It COULD be hand counted, which is more than you can say for electronic voting.

If enough of us did it, they would get the message and show that people have had it up to here with the election fraud.

65%. So don't be discouraged. The people who believe votes are stolen by machine are speculating. There is exacting evidence of voter suppression in a variety of other ways. One of them being too few machines at predominantly black Ohio districts.

Really - none of the people who truly believe diebold steals votes can tell you where it will take place.

So if you didn't vote absentee, if you have no choice. You get out there and vote ANY WAY YOU CAN!

It has been a dilemma for me--the fear that spreading the word on these Bushite corporate-controlled voting systems will lead to cynicism ("It's all rigged") and non-voting. I have struggled with it. But I've ultimately decided that the TRUTH SHALL MAKE US FREE. If we believe in democracy--if we trust the people--we MUST tell them the truth. Only THEY--all of us, collectively--can solve this problem. As long as it remains black-holed by the corporate news monopolies and by the Democratic Party leadership, it WILL REMAIN UNSOLVED!

The reason that "none of the people who truly believe Diebold steals votes can tell you where it will take place" is because the system was designed to be NON-TRANSPARENT! You don't know if they're stealing your vote in the worst of the election theft machines--the touchscreens (DREs), many of which have NO PAPER TRAIL at all (let alone a real paper ballot backup)--or the optiscans, which have a paper ballot backup, but in which the ballot gets separated from the vote, early on, and the "vote" is turned into manipulable electrons (audits are miserably inadequate for this high-speed, "trade secret" environment, and recounts are extremely rare), or in the CENTRAL ELECTRONIC TABULATORS which are ALSO run on "TRADE SECRET," PROPRIETARY programming code--code so secret that not even our secretaries of state are permitted to review it.

How do you KNOW? They have DEFEATED your knowing how and where they might steal, shift or "disappear" your vote. That was the whole purpose of the "Help America Vote for Bush Act" of 2002: NON-TRANSPARENCY, secret vote tabulation, unverifiability--and also widespread corruption.

My GUESS is that it's the central electronic tabulators (based to some extent on research I did on the Calif '04 vote). (I found weird, inexplicable numbers only in the Republican-controlled counties, irrespective of voting system, so if they were throwing votes to Bush, electronically--to pad his nationwide popular majority--they were likely doing it in the central tabulators, and CHOOSING Repub counties as the ones to be manipulated, because the officials there are the most corrupt and the least likely to cry foul.) But it's just a guess. Who knows? With "trade secret" programming, and a disconnect between ballots and "votes," fraud is possible virtually anywhere in the system. And these machines--central tabulators and voting machines--are most vulnerable to INSIDER hacking. They pushed these insecure and EXPENSIVE machines on the states, and one of the characteristics of these systems is the need for ON-GOING maintenance and upgrades by PRIVATE corporate personnel--the only ones who understand and are permitted access to the software. How insecure is THAT? It's nuts! The machines are not only manufactured by Bushite corporations, they are SERVICED by Bushite corporations (at great extra expense, I might add--they will be a continual financial drain on our election system and on taxpayers forever more).

And if you argue with "Bushite corporations" (as I've seen some election fraud naysayers do), here are the three major players:

DIEBOLD: Until recently, headed by Wally O'Dell, a Bush-Cheney campaign chair and major fundraiser ("Bush Pioneer" right up there with Ken Lay), who promised in writing to "deliver Ohio's electoral votes to Bush-Cheney in 2004."

ES&S: A spinoff of Diebold (similar computer architecture), initially funded by far 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. These are the people who "counted" 80% of the nation's vote in 2004, under a veil of corporate secrecy.

The third major player--Sequoia--employs former Republican California Secretary of State, Bill Jones, and his chief aide, Alfie Charles, to peddle their secretly programmed election machinery--an outrageous example of the corrupt practice of "revolving door" employment. Jones and Charles authorized this technology in California, and wrote the rules for it; now they are selling it.

You want to live in Stalinist Russia, and trust Big Brother to count your votes? That's what we have. It's a bit cleverer than Stalin ever was. Sometimes they let Democrats win (but what kind of Democrats?) And they try to keep the vote stealing to a minimum, to avoid suspicion--although that 60/40 upset of the Ohio election reform initiatives, last year, felt like a test-run for achieving major vote flipovers with impunity. (Pre-election polls, up to election day, said the election reforms would win 60/40. It went the other way on election day--60/40 LOSSES!) I think the overt vote suppression against black, poor and other Democratic voters is a SYMPTOM of the heady power of secret vote counting. With this capability set up, everywhere in the country, why SHOULDN'T they ALSO take the opportunity to SMASH black, poor and other Democratic voters into the dust? Demoralize them. Purge them. Cheat them on precincts and voting machines. Who's to stop them? They treated poor blacks in New Orleans the same way. Why not just rub their ugly, murderous, thieving behavior right in our faces? They have Diebold/ES&S guaranteed power.

I understand why some Democrats--and virtually the entire leadership--don't want to apprise people of these dreadful facts about our election system. The good ones are worried about turnout. And both the good ones and the bad ones are worried about fundraising (our election system is highly corrupted by money, even apart from Bushite control of the vote counting). But I think that this nation, and this democracy, is dying for lack of the truth. It is killing our country. We must tell the truth, and let the people deal with it. If we want to restore democracy, and become a good country again, we must tell people the truth about the privatization and corporatization of our election system. Black-holing this reality is the wrong way to go.

My suggestion for a bumper sticker: "Help Us Beat the Machines--VOTE!" If the Democratic Party would adopt this as a slogan, we would have the biggest turnout in history.

carefully... it is clear that there is only guessing at electronic votes being stolen. He claims that exit polls proove it.. but that question has not been answered yet. Just as much evidence that exit polls were off in places with no tabulators.

But he does show that there is lots of evidence of other types of voter suppression.

VOTE!

But I have to laugh at your apparent notion that--given high speed, massive, hard-to-detect vote stealing capability, all over the country--which THEY set up that way, deliberately, with Delay's and Ney's "Help America Vote for Bush Act"--they DIDN'T USE this wondrous new method of stealing elections! Is this that "shy Republican" theory, rearing its head again?

And one of the characteristics of NON-TRANSPARENT, Stalinist vote counting systems, is that they are set up to HIDE the evidence!

It's no wonder it's hard to find the evidence--hm?

So we are obliged to analyse the election IN THE DARK, on the basis of inferential evidence. The exit polls (the real ones--unpolluted by the "official," Diebold/ES&S, secretly-arrived-at returns) show a Kerry win. That is one piece of evidence.

This reminds me of the old elephant-in-the-room jokes. It's dark in here, but there's definitely something VERY BIG filling this room. You feel its tail. I feel its trunk. Someone else feels its big ears. We all hear its trumpet. The big fat GOP elephant of election fraud!*

I prefer to turn on the light switch, and see what-all we're looking at. We really need to, you know--because that high speed, massive, secret vote stealing capability is still in place!

------------------

(Apologies to real elephants, those noble, endangered beings!)

Also..exit polls being off have followed Bush elections.. including Gov. of Texas, before electronic voting machines even existed.

Sorry. There is no answer. On the tabulators.. it is only speculation.

But there is lots of evidence of other kinds of voter manipulation.

by diebold scanners. It feels safe. it is not. If those ballots were hand counted, it would be safe way to vote. . I think ti is a great thing to not use the machines as a protest. But it will NOT safeguard your votes. in addition, absentee and provisional ballots are, in some instances, not even counted until after the election is called. I learned this watching the vote counting here in california. And the absentee votes are NOT audited, or checked in any way here in LA county. Everyone should take the time to find out how your county counts votes, find an election protection group in your area. It varies greatly. here in LA for example, the absentee ballots are less safe than voting on the machine and CHECKING the paper trail on the machine before walking out. Just be aware, voting absentee may be a great protest, but that is all. The whole process is corrupted; it is not just the machines themselves; it is the people behind them. Diebold is only a faster, more efficient way to steal your vote.

But the majority of Americans will use the machines, and like you say, they steal and cheat much quicker.

machines. It's very big already. I heard a figure of 50% for Los Angeles (where Diebold shill Connie McCormack is in charge of elections). I respect it as a protest. This may well be the massive protest we've been looking for. And it has some things going for it--as I've pointed out. If enough people do it, the machines will be obsolete. Nobody but the tiny band of fanatical fascists and extremist 'christians' who still support Bush wants these suspicious machines anyway. Most people--the vast majority--want their votes counted in public, in a transparent, verifiable way. This is their way of protesting the lack of those basic conditions.

And when this Absentee Ballot phenomenon reaches critical mass--and starts getting some news attention--and more people start pressuring election officials to forestall "calling" elections until these large new amounts of AB votes are counted, then we have something. Why are all these people avoiding electronic voting? It is a short step from that protest to questioning the scanning of Absentee Ballots and the use of central electronic tabulators.

Trust the people! That's my message! They're getting it. They will take care of it.

We got the teeth kicked out of the grass roots democracy movement in this country in 2004. That was perhaps the WORST impact of the 2004 election theft (aside from the continuing deaths in Iraq, the continued torture of prisoners, and the deaths in New Orleans). Kerry wasn't about to withdraw from Iraq, not any time soon (not back then). We've lost some significant ground financially--in more tax cuts for the rich, more trillion dollar deficit spending, loss of the Voting Rights Act (just voted down by the goddamned Diebold Congress), and other wretched policies. But I don't know that we would have had any significant, dramatic change of policies with a Kerry administration. Nancy Pelosi is now talking about a "balanced budget" (and ignoring Iraq!). A "balanced budget," my ass. What they should be doing is dismantling Halliburton and Chevron and a few other criminal global corporate predators, and seizing their assets for the public good. It would have been GREAT just to have merely decent and intelligent people running the country. But real, majority-rule, Leftist policy? Not a chance. The loss was deeper than that.

It was the loss of momentum of this Leftist, democracy movement--after that huge effort to oust the Bush junta, all done by the grass roots--that was so very heavy. The demoralization was very heavy, indeed. We bring out 20 million new voters, most of whom voted for Kerry to oust Bush. We convince most independent voters and most former Nader voters to vote for Kerry to oust Bush. We do boffo new voter registration--and blow the Bushites away. And people all over the country are dragging their non-voting family members, friends, neighbors and co-workers to the polls to oust Bush. And we get whacked upside the head with massive election fraud--every possible kind of election fraud--to steal our great victory away.

But such movements--real, peoples' movements--don't go away. Look at South America! The victories of the fascists are only temporary. These particular fascists--the Bushites--have utterly failed to gain any hearts and minds (unlike the Nazis in Germany). People despise them--in very large numbers--despite the 24/7 propaganda from the corporate news monopolies. They are just looting and destroying everything they can, while they have the chance. They have nothing to offer (not even the great industrial machine/jobs/"master race" efficiency plan with which Hitler plied the Germans). They aren't creating anything that I can see, except possibly a Great Depression. The largely peace-loving, democracy-loving, justice-loving, progressive American people will catch up with them. And their first tactic--as a collective democratic organism, a sovereign people--may well be Absentee Ballot voting.

Absentee balloting is my way of protesting. My area still hand counts absentee ballots, unless it changed recently. I truly believe that there are enough people upset over the last two elections that they will rise up if fraud is suspected in the next one and they will make some demands that can't be ignored.

Many of my friends and acquaintances speak their mind about this administration in private, but are afraid to speak out in public.

I never thought the United States would ever reach this point. I'm ashamed.

in so many different things I don't see why we have to demand to know who won our elections instantly, lets make paper ballets a tradition. I would love to see an open, transparent, paper ballet, one wo/man one vote. I don't care if it takes days to tally the vote. After all the current system is just designed for television ratings any more, and the way things have been going they haven't been any to accurate, in their findings, because of expediency.

Taking longer to count the votes would also help our citizens on the west coast feel that they have a hand in the election results.

We're not going to put the winners in office till January anyway so why do we need to know the results so fast. Lets take our time and do it right!

Tradition!

ways and can't wait patiently.

I can honestly say that I don't care who wins, so long as the winner was chosen by the majority. I think the citizens are smart enough to choose the right person for the times. As long as we suspect there is vote manipulation, we will not trust the person elected to lead our country. The United States can't afford another term divided. We must unite our people, again!

However it would seem ther are some bent on distruction no matter what you do. When BushI was in I said I didn't care if our next President wore his wifes underwear as long as he ran the country right. Under the circumstances I think I came out okay on that one. LOL

should have been Bill's theme song. LOL

His best days are ahead of him. I don't like what he did, but I still like the guy.

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In the current situation--with this new, high-speed, massive vote stealing capability--I think Rove & Co. are, in fact, writing their phony election narratives ahead of time. I had to laugh (grimly!) when Rove or Cheney came out with their "explanation" of their 2004 "win"--their "invisible get-out-the-vote campaign." There is no evidence for any significant success in their GOTV efforts. All the evidence goes the other way. (The Dems blew the Repubs away in new voter registration in 2004, nearly 60/40!). And I think we're reading Rove's narrative for their phony, miraculous, "comeback" victory this fall: hate gays, hate brown immigrants, kill more Arabs--and American voters will love you (so the narrative goes). He's planting all his evil newsturd seeds now.

In 2004, if what I and many others think is true--what they were capable of doing and what they did: they were stealing votes all over the country (small percentages here and there), to manufacture their popular majority, and they were "turning" some of the very close battleground states, to get competitive on the Electoral Vote count, then, in a sense, they were forcing it all to come down to Ohio, where they had an extremely corrupt Bushite/Republican machine in place, ready to commit blatant violations of the Voting Rights Act, to "deliver Ohio's electoral votes to Bush-Cheney." The invisible vote stealing, via the secret vote counting software, was hard to detect--and took a great deal of statistical analysis to gain some sense of what occurred. It seems to have rolled like a wave across the country, with the most vote stealing on the east coast (to secure an early lead in the "official count"), and petering out in the west. New Mexico--a very close vote--seems to have been tweaked to Bush. This pattern is visible in the exit poll analyses. There is also a pattern of vote stealing evident in electronic vs. paper ballot voting (with electronic always favoring Bush). (This is one of the reasons that I'm pushing Absentee Ballot voting--it was very useful to investigators in finding the pattern; Absentee Ballot votes are HARDER to 'disappear'.) Ohio's electronic election theft equipment had not been fully installed (there was quite a movement against it), so, if Ohio was to be stolen--a must-do for the Bushites--they had to steal it in every way possible, which is what they did.

For instance, the "terrorist alert" shutout of the public observers in Warren County was apparently to switch unnumbered punchcard ballots from one precinct to another, thus switching Kerry votes to Bush votes, by the order of the roster on the ballot--a punch for Kerry in one precinct turned into a punch for Bush in another.

See STACKING THE DECKS IN WARREN COUNTY Richard Hayes Phillips, Ph.D ...
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML
Richard Hayes Phillips, Ph.D. April 18, 2006. In my previous paper, ... counties utilized punch card ballots in the 2004 presidential election. ...
www.freepress.org/images/columns/Ballots-HP.pdf

And we know the other ways they stole it--chronicled in many a volume, including RFK, Jr.'s new article in Rolling Stone.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/10432334/was_the_2004_election_stolen/1

I think there WAS an election design--to make it all come down to Ohio. And I think it was premised on their new, high speed, difficult-to-detect vote stealing in other places. I also think it's likely that the vote stealing code had to be pre-programmed and wasn't so easy to change on election day. I think they were dealing with a landslide Kerry victory (maybe by as much as a 10% margin, but certainly in the range of 4% to 5%), and they had to pull out all the stops--every trick in the book-- to flip it to Bush. Their horrible behavior toward black voters in Ohio was both necessary and gratuitous. They like doing stuff like that. Katrina is my evidence.

I thought Tigeriot had a good point about these Bush election dramas. All contrived.

there's only one way to insure a fair election, and thats a paper trail. No other way will due. Has anyone followed the money trail through Diebold? They are the one's with the contract right?