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as well as before the General Election. It is the primaries in which we are being denied the choice of REAL Democrats--anti-war Democrats, Democrats who represent all of the people, not just the war profiteers. Money is a huge factor, too--in the war industry's discouragement of real representatives of the people--but what money can't stop, the voting machines can rig.
Why do you think Christopher Dodd is running for president? Diebold owes him one.
A real snake-in-the-grass, that guy. With Hillary, at least we can see what she is. Not so Dodd.
Reading this post, a thrill went through me. It is so right on. The focus is absolutely right. 'Trade secret' vote counting is an assault on the rights of all voters. It is, in essence, robbing us of our right to vote. The case is so righteous, it couldn't possibly lose in an honest country with a real justice system.
But we should be prepared for disappointment, as to an easy victory--steel ourselves against demoralization. In the FL-13 case, my ears are still ringing from the fascist opinion of the judge. This was a case of egregious election theft. ES&S election theft machines 'disappeared' 18,000 votes for Congress in Democratic areas, in an election that was decided by some 350 votes--and, of course, 'won' by the Republican. When the Democrat Christine Jennings' lawyers took the matter to court and requested to review ES&S's 'TRADE SECRET' code, to try to figure out what happened to those 18,000 votes, ES&S REFUSED, and maintained that they have a "right" to profit from our elections with trade secrets (which, of course, provides them with the ability to steal our elections), and this "right" of theirs trumps the right of the public to know how its voters were counted.
But it wasn't so much this argument by the fascist shits at ES&S that is still boinging in my head--it was that the judge agreed!
And we can expect this outrageous argument on "private property rights" to rear its head again, and if it gets taken to the Supreme Court, what do we think THOSE fascist shits are going to do?
Another problem is that the Constitution does not specifically grant a right to vote to individual citizens. It is left up to the states to each decide how congressfolk and president are chosen, and theoretically the members of the Electoral College could vote differently for president than did the state's voters. Further, Congress has the power to refuse state voting results (as it should have done in FL-13). They can choose whomever they want for president--they have that power, in the Constitution--and also control their own membership. The states have popular elections (one person, one vote), and state laws and traditions have created things the way they are, but Congress has precedence over all. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 addressed the discrimination against black voters, in particular--the effective denial of their right to vote, by poll taxes and other rules, and intimidation. But the Voting Rights Act was not an amendment to the Constitution which, to this day, says nothing about the right to vote.
Other provisions of the Constitution certainly apply--such as the equal protection clause--but I'm afraid that the bottom line of this will have to be a sort of "common law" argument--in other words, the right to transparent vote counting (and thus the right to vote) is so obvious, so fundamental and so necessary, that it needn't be codified in order to be an enforceable legal principle.
Bear in mind that this Supreme Court is a very activist court--in the cause of fascism. They will not hesitate to overturn and violate their own precedents, as they did in Florida 2000, to keep the fascist oiligarchy in power--and out of jail--and to serve the war machine. To them, the law is bendable and twistable, to that purpose. Precedents should be argued, but we shouldn't be surprised if they ignore or overturn them. For this reason, I think the strongest argument is common law.
If those old scandinavians holding their "Thing" (congress) had forced some of their voters to cast their votes as balls of snow, while others got to use stones, it would have been OBVIOUS to all that it was not a fair vote--provided that someone had the courage to buck the establishment and say, "But these other votes are now water--how do we know who they voted for?"
Plain common sense.
Against plain common sense, we have the entire Corporate Ruler power and money machine, which was not content to privatize and loot our natural resources, our water and electricity infrastructure, communications, health care, and everything else in our "commons," even the U.S. military, but has now privatized our very voting system, claiming it as their private property. And this new medieval church--the Church of the Corporation--is so pervasive and all powerful that we, as a people, hardly see it any more, or question its "right" to rule over us.
So the fascists may argue--and the judges may echo them--that, since nobody can make money from our voting system without "trade secrets," and everybody knows that the sole purpose of our government is to help certain people make a profit, ergo "trade secret" vote counting MUST be permitted. They will twist the notion of common law to suit themselves. Don't laugh. We've heard similar nonsense on torture and a host of other issues. I would fully expect it from this Supreme Court and other Bushite judges. Essentially, this is what the FL-13 judge said. It's OBVIOUS that corporate "trade secrets" trump the voters' right to know how their votes were counted.
Obvious to fascist running dogs, but not to ordinary people.
I tend to think that the recovery of our right to vote can only be accomplished by a long slog through every local and state elections office in the country--a difficult, complicated campaign--but doable.
The thing is, once a government takes away your right to vote, they are never going to give it back, voluntarily. And without the right to vote, you have lost your power over them, to force them to do so. That's the situation at the federal level. Our federal government isn't ours any more. It belongs to global corporate predators. We still have a chance, though, in local/state venues, where ordinary people still have some influence, and where the local registrar lives down the street, and the state capitol is not that far away. Local officials are more vulnerable to embarrassment, charges of corruption, and other public pressures (as all public officials should be).
This lawsuit can help us. It can educate the public, and help put pressure on local officials--even if it gets turned back by fascist judges. The matter is SO CLEAR. And the folks doing this lawsuit understand it so well. We MUST restore vote counting that everyone can see and understand. Anything less is NOT democracy.
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