--they use OPEN SOURCE programming code--anyone may review the code by which the votes are tabulated, and...
--they conduct a whopping 55% audit (comparison of ballots to electronic results)--more than five times the percentage needed to detect fraud in an electronic system.
By comparison, our system is now entirely privatized with 'TRADE SECRET' programming code--code that the public is forbidden to review--in all states. Half the states do NO AUDIT AT ALL while the other half do a miserably inadequate 1% audit. Recounts are impossible in half the states and almost impossible in the other half (because of prohibitive costs and overly strict rules).
What is perhaps worst of all, the 'TRADE SECRET' code in about 80% of the voting systems in the U.S., is owned and controlled by one, private, far rightwing-connected corporation--ES&S, which bought out Diebold.
You wonder why we don't have universal health care, and why we are being bled dry by war profiteers, prison profiteers, banksters, transglobal corporations and the super-rich? You wonder why our educational system is being destroyed and other beneficial public systems--such as Social Security, Medicare and the U.S. Postal Service--are targeted for destruction? You wonder why we are inflicted with corporate resource wars despite our opposition to unjust war?
But, most of all, do you wonder why we can't do anything about these horrors? Why we seem paralyzed as a society? Why our democracy isn't functioning? And how so many utter scumbags have somehow gained the power of public office--in congress, and in governorships?
Private corporate vote 'counting' with 'TRADE SECRET' code is the 'final solution' for the peace-minded, justice-minded, progressive American people. It was foisted upon us by the Anthrax Congress, with a $3.9 billion e-voting boondoggle that contained NO audit/recount control requirements, in the same month as the Iraq War Resolution (Oct. '02). These billions and the filthy lobbying that accompanied them spread e-voting like a plague all over the country during the 2002-2004 period. We were not a healthy democracy at that point. The Supreme Court had appointed a king--the most insulting, demeaning and destructive leader we have ever known. But we still had a chance to correct the ship of state.
The first task of the 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines was to prevent that from happening--to 're-elect' Bush-Cheney, despite their egregiously unjust war, revelations of torture, outright treason (outing of the entire CIA WMD counter-proliferation project all over the world), massive theft (billions missing in Iraq; Cheney's own company vastly profiting) and other crimes. The use of these unauditable voting machines, plus purges of black voters in certain states (also done electronically), insured a victory for unjust war, torture, treason and theft--and, by 2008, bankruptcy and a second Great Depression.
The second task of the 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines is unfolding now: an all-out assault on our basic rights (labor rights, women's rights, rights to life and liberty, privacy rights, right to health care, right to equality before the law, right of habeas corpus, et al) and on our best public programs.
Task three will likely be restoration of the Bush Junta, after this period of forgetting, wherein the vast crimes of that Junta are never mentioned--never arise in political debate and are blackholed by the corporate media. As for investigation of those crimes--a necessary step in reform, forget it. President Obama informed us of our powerlessness when he said, "We need to look forward not backward" on the crimes of the rich and powerful. "We the People" have NO power to reform our government. That is what 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines are all about.
'TRADE SECRET' vote 'counting' didn't create all of the problems in our democracy, but it is an utter blockade to reform--to our democracy renewing itself.
The fascist crap that these unelected people in congress and in state houses are doing is NOT us. It is alien. It is the work of extremists who do NOT represent the vast majority of Americans and who are acting in the interests of transglobal corporations and war profiteers who have no loyalty whatsoever to us or to democracy.
Venezuelans, on the other hand, have voted themselves a "New Deal"--universal health care, universal education through college, fair sharing in the oil profits, good wages and benefits, fair taxation and so on. They have also declared their independence and sovereignty and are proceeding, in alliance with other leftist governments--Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru and more--to transform Latin America into a region of hope and prosperity for all. Venezuela was recently designated 'THE most equal country in Latin America" on income distribution, by the UN Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean. How did they manage this? By working hard to insure the integrity of their vote counting system and the transparency and honesty of their elections. And when the right tried a coup d'etat (supported by the Bush Junta)--in 2002--the Venezuelan people rose up and peacefully defeated it.
They had something to rise up about. They have a REAL democracy in which an FDR-like leader CAN be elected.
We need to restore vote counting to the PUBLIC venue as our first step back toward democracy and toward the kind of society that we want to live in. PUBLIC vote counting is the bottom line of democracy. Without it, all the other things that are wrong with our democracy get worse, by orders of magnitude. We have NO POWER to correct them. That is what we are seeing.
--------------------------
(A note about Obama: I do think that he was truly elected--on the hopes and dreams of the American people for peace and social justice--and by a bigger margin than we know (5% to 10%). He was deprived of that big mandate and inflicted with a Diebold Congress to prevent reform, and may also be hogtied by deals he made--for instance, not to prosecute, or even investigate, Bush, Cheney & Rumsfeld. The far rightwingers who control the 'TRADE SECRET' code are not stupid. They knew that we would need a period of forgetting. And that is the problem with Obama. He was also permitted to be elected. He is the "forget the past" president. Thus a resurgence of the very people--rightwing extremists--who brought us to ruin is being made plausible. These manipulators of our vote counts do not want outright rebellion. Brainwashing is easier. We have been brainwashed to believe that, because Obama was elected, our voting system is okay. IT IS NOT!)
= new reply since forum marked as read
