The American citizen's catch 22: Can democracy be restored through the ballot box?

What ultimately could not be seen years ago in the American citizen's mind was the question and scenario of whether their rights could be permanently taken away should the parties of a two party system agree to remove them. The scenario that no one considered was a two party system that could go from adversarial to one mind on such a grave issue as constitutional frameworks and freedoms. That was the one achilles heel of only two parties with equal access to power.

on electronic voting machines run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by RIGHTWING, BUSHITE corporations, with virtually no audit/recount controls. The so-called "Help America Vote Act" (HAVA)--a $3.9 billion e-voting boondoggle to fasttrack these election theft machines all over the country during the 2002 to 2004 period--was enacted by the Anthrax Congress, under the radar of the American people, in the same month as the Iraq War Resolution (Oct 02) and is closely related to it. The IWR guaranteed unjust war; HAVA provided the means to shove the unjust war down the throats of the American people, nearly 60% of whom opposed the invasion of Iraq, in Feb 03, just before it occurred (all polls).

HAVA was the fascist coup, in my opinion.

You wonder how, with SEVENTY PERCENT of the American people now opposing the Iraq War and wanting it ended, we vote and somehow 'elect' a Congress that ESCALATES the war and lards Bush/Cheney with billions more of our non-existent tax dollars to keep killing Iraqis until they sign the oil contracts? I think it's blatantly obvious how this is being done. 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting was the final blow to our election system--the coup de gras to an already corrupt system, in which change and reform were difficult. Now they are impossible.

Unjust war is the hallmark of tyranny. It is MAIN crime by the Executive that our Founders sought to PREVENT by the checks and balances they built into the Constitution. And it is ALWAYS accompanied by loss of rights by the citizens who are PAYING FOR the unjust war with their taxes and their lives and their children's lives.

Ergo: our right not to be spied upon, and our right to know what the charges are against us if we are arrested, and who is accusing us, and our right to a public trial before a jury of our peers, and our rights against search and seizure, and all our other rights laid out in the Bill of Rights, and our right to know how our money is being spent and our right as a sovereign people to direct that spending, and our right to vote and to watch our votes being counted in a public and open process, and all of the rights established or implied by our revolutionary documents, and spelled out over the decades and centuries in various rulings and traditions, are being taken away by people who cannot prove that they were elected. Not one of them can prove it! There is no proof. The votes are 'counted' by SECRET FORMULAS, that we have NO RIGHT TO REVIEW, and where there is paper ballot backup, it's NOT COUNTED, or counted so minimally (1%) that it is meaningless as a check against machine fraud.

This is what our Democratic Party leaders have done to us--they have taken away our right to PUBLIC vote counting, and thus our right to vote--a betrayal so mind-boggling that most people can't take it in. How could they do that? Are they crazy? Crazy might be more understandable than the truth. It may be that they were crazy with fear in the Anthrax Congress. What about now?

The global corporate predators who rule over us, and who now control our elections, fear us. They do. That, too, is obvious. The American people are potentially the most progressive force on earth. And we are a big country sprawled over a vast landscape, and with a very diverse population, not at all easy to control--a population with strong democratic traditions that have held up for over 200 years, and have been improved upon, over time, with great and courageous movements--such as the anti-slavery movement, the labor movement, the women's movement, the civil rights movement, the environmental movement, the anti-Vietnam War movement. The oppression and looting of this country by corporate predators and war profiteers HAD TO BE subtler, cleverer and more insidious than other tyrannies--and it has taken longer as well--25 years since Reagan started it--with the S&L lootings, busting of the unions, re-writing the tax code to favor the rich, "Star Wars" (massive war profiteering, big budget deficits), illegal war against Nicaragua, genocide in Guatemala, and other horrors in Latin America, a Reagan-worshiping corporate press corps, and the first signs of the uselessness of the Democratic Party leadership as to defending the interests of the majority and the rule of law. 25 years later we have all of this and worse--the end of our Constitution--the main bulwark in the world against rule by multinational corporations and distant, unaccountable financiers who have loyalty to NO ONE. We were the democratic citadel against such tyranny and we have been taken down.

And the final method of that take-down has been rightwing corporate control of the vote counting with 'TRADE SECRET' code.

Our questions to our Congressional oppressors should not be about the war, or spying, or habeas corpus. We should really pose only one question to them: Can you prove that you were elected?

We should make that question reverberate around the land, until everyone is aware of what is means and what they must do, to restore our democracy--which, in my opinion, is this, as the essential staring point:

THROW DIEBOLD, ES&S AND ALL ELECTION THEFT MACHINES INTO 'BOSTON HARBOR' NOW!

Essentially it's for the same reasons (no representation).

counted with an audience.

Get real, actual info to the populace so people can draw conclusions based on fact and institutional analysis instead of the mindless pollyanna fluff they've been spoon fed for so long, and then let em vote.

common ground ground in America. It's also the driving force behind the loss of our constitution.

--and which one is the worst problem--and here is my thinking:

Strategically, it is an issue of power. We have one POWER--our vote. That is an actual POWER--and it is the basis of our sovereignty as a people. It is not influence. It is not advocacy. It is not street protests and writing letters and boycotting, etc. It is real POWER--the method by which we choose the representatives who act on our behalf. And without that actual POWER, we have no ability to change the current corporate control of all news and opinion (except the internet). Corporate control of our PUBLIC TV/radio airwaves--and mega-monopoly control of virtually all media--has occurred as the result of legislation and other acts of government (appointments to regulatory bodies, fascist policy) that we have no actual power over without the power of the vote. We can write a million letters, etc., and sometimes get maybe a postponement of some particularly horrible action, but these monopolies remain entrenched, until we have REAL representatives of the people, voted into POWER, by us, in Washington DC--in Congress and in the White House.

Congress, the White House and the corporate 'news' monopolies simply IGNORE us--they are deaf to us--because we don't have the power of the vote any more. We vote, and we get more of the same. And the reason is 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting, which puts the final twist on an already putridly corrupt political system.

So I think we need to start there--with getting rid of these "TRADE SECRET" election theft machines. And one of the reasons I think that is also strategic--that ordinary people still have some influence at the local/state level. Your local Registrar of Voters may live down the street from you. That person may be appointed by the county board of supervisors, who are also closer to the people than members of Congress. Control over voting systems remains LOCAL. Congress has increasingly encroached on that local control, but it is still essentially a LOCAL decision, what voting method to use. And HAVA, interestingly, DOES NOT MANDATE electronic voting. It is a matter of money and corruption, not a legal requirement. Local officials are vulnerable on the vast amounts of money spent on these egregiously non-transparent--and very faulty and unreliable--electronic voting systems.

We cannot influence the New York Times, the Associated Pukes, NBC-ABC-CBS, Faux News, Time-Warner, et al. They don't give a fuck what we think. And they are furthermore moving as fast as they can to control the one beacon of freedom we have left--the internet. How do we stop that? We might PUT IT OFF by a million letters and phone calls. But they will, inexorably, shut off freedom of speech if we do not have REAL representatives of the people in Washington DC with the actual POWER to protect our interests.

The fast erosion of our rights and freedoms--not to mention the sheer costs of fascist tyranny (a $10 trillion dollar deficit, economic collapse, vast poverty)--will continue INEXORABLEY until we can restore transparent vote counting and start electing REAL leaders.

I can't argue with those working on media issues. How can a people even realize that their right to vote has been taken away, when that matter has been black-holed in the corporate 'news,' and by the goddamned leaders of our own political party? It IS happening--by word of mouth, via the internet and other informal means, with many citizen election reform movements activated in various states. But it is necessarily slow, to be sure--and would be bolstered by a free--or even a half honest--news media. This is rather a "chicken and egg" situation. What comes first--freedom of speech, or transparent vote counting? BOTH are vitally important.

But I think it comes down to strategy. Which of these things do we REALISTICALLY have a chance to reform--the corporate 'news' monopolies, or 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting? Efforts to create alternative news media should, of course, continue--as well as efforts to influence corporate media, if possible (we have no practical power over them any more). But we still have some practical power at the state/local level, to restore transparent vote counting, and the benefits of that are so great that we really MUST do it, and furthermore, we CAN do it. It is feasible and doable.

I don't know what these fascist corporate powers who now control the vote count are going to do to us in November. I rather think they will permit Obama to win--because, policy-wise, he is no threat to them (thus far)--but (in case he is a threat, as to reform) they will use their 'TRADE SECRET' code to significantly shave his mandate, and probably inflict him with a "Blue Dog" Congress (like the present one), that will blockade any real effort of reform, and keep the corporate looters and war profiteers in control. They are very worried about the American people--truly. (The installation of these highly riggable voting systems tells us just how worried they are.) They need a palliative--a government that will pretend to reform, and will throw a few sops to the peon masses--to keep us out of the streets, while they consolidate their enormous fascist gains under the Bush Junta. And after that, they make forget about us--who knows?--and move on to the better looting grounds of China and India. We may be an economic disaster area by 2012--not worth the bother to control. But if not--if there is anything left to exploit or loot (say, Obama rebuilds our broken military, or our creative, industrious citizens start turning things around with, say, alternative energy products)--they can EASILY re-install Bushites even worse than these. That may be their plan--blame Obama for Bush-created economic hardship, crash the dollar or whatever they need to do to make it impossible for the center-left to govern (Hitler's opportunity in the 1930s), and install Hitler II in 2012.

As long as they control the vote counting, they can do anything else they want to do. And we must keep our eye on the ball--restoring our fundamental power as a people--our vote--first of all by restoring vote counting that everyone can see and understand.

One more thing: In Feb. '03, nearly SIXTY PERCENT of the American people opposed the invasion of Iraq. SEVENTY PERCENT now oppose the war and want it ended. Are these stupid, uninformed 'sheeple'? Or are they a DISENFRANCHISED people? Do they need more information--or TRANSPARENT vote counting?

In South America, the media is the same as here--even worse, actually. Yet South Americans have elected good, leftist, social justice governments in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile, and, moving north, in Nicaragua and Guatemala. Same media situation. Different outcome. What is the key to this? The boffo work done by the OAS, the Carter Center, EU election monitoring groups, and many local social movements and civic groups, on TRANSPARENT vote counting and honest elections. The voters IGNORE their rancid, fascist, corporate-controlled media. Somehow they know who to vote for. And, after a decade of work on the fundamentals of honest elections, their votes are actually COUNTED.

I think it will take about a decade here, too. The best thing that has happened here are the Obama SUPPORTERS. An activated citizenry is THE most important element needed for election reform --and all reform. I hope to God they are not lulled to sleep by an Obama victory--and that they understand what has happened when his landslide is turned into a close shave.

We've never had democracy, though we think we did (see Fr. Ed Dowling's famous 1941 comment about it). We have the right to vote for only 3 out of the hundred or so major federal offices that define our lives. How can that be democracy?

Could we *get* democracy via the ballot box? Maybe. It's certainly worth a try.