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Short term: Big turnout, the Absentee Ballot protest, election monitoring--for these elections
VOTE BY ABSENTEE BALLOT, and get others to do so, if there is still time in your state. The Calif deadline for requesting an AB vote in OCTOBER 31. Still plenty of time. (The deadline for voter reg was yesterday, Oct. 23--but if you're registered, you can still get an AB ballot.) In Calif, you can deliver your AB vote to the polling place on election day--if you think it's important for there to be a big showing of people at the polling place. Check local rules for other states. Absentee Ballot voting is the ONLY guarantee that you will be able to cast a vote, in the case of deliberate or accidental machine "breakdown." You will already have voted! But mostly importantly: The Absentee Ballot protest is huge, overall--it's up to 50% and 60% in some places. People are rebelling against the machines! They're BOYCOTTING the machines. It's very heartening--it means they KNOW. Election reformers can use the huge surge in AB voting as a club over local/state election officials to force them to reform the system. And we should be RAISING HELL with the corporate news monopolies about their misinterpretation of the big AB vote as a voter choice of "convenience." They're already doing it! It is NOT "convenience."* It is an indigenous citizen protest against the machines!
GET-OUT-THE-VOTE: If AB voting is still possible where you are, tell disillusioned non-voters we need their AB vote to help get rid of the machines. It's not just a vote--it's a PROTEST aimed at UN-rigging the system. For all others, who don't have that choice, NUMBERS COUNT. The Diebold/ES&S election theft system is in danger of being exposed, and lost for future purposes, if they steal it too big. Ergo: we can overwhelm the machines with sheer turnout. And the third thing to say is, NEVER--NEVER!--give up on your right to vote! NEVER!
MONITOR these elections: The more eyes the better. Make a nuisance of yourself to your election officials on how they're handling/counting AB and other paper ballot votes. Be there to defend voters when the machines "break down"--demand they be given real paper ballots (--NOT "provisional" ballots). Watch for all vote suppression tactics. Report incidents to 800-OUR VOTE (hotline). Or, work directly with an election monitoring or statistical analysis group (www.UScountvotes.org, for instance) to gather evidence and help candidates challenge suspicious results.
Long term: understanding what's going on, educating others, getting rid of electronic voting
The Diebold II Congress is not going help us with this rigged electronic system, in which all of our votes are "counted" with TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by Bushite corporations. The Democrats have not done anything about it until now, and they are not going to do anything substantial to change it in the future. Even if we win 30 seats in the House, too many Democratic members of Congress are Bushite Democrats (like those who voted for torture and suspension of habeas corpus the other week). Bear in mind that Diebold/ES&S controlled the PRIMARIES, too--the choice of candidates in our party. These non-democratic Democrats will block real reform. The best we can hope for from Congress is a mandated paper ballot backup of the rigged electronic system--a system in which the central tabulators (possibly the real culprits) are ALSO run on TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code. The trouble is that audits are inadequate, and non-existent in some places, and recounts are extremely rare. So a paper ballot backup is cosmetic reform. We must remove ALL trade secret programming--and secrecy of any kind--from our election system, if it's democracy that we want.
The best venue for reform is the local/state jurisdictions, where ordinary people still have some influence, and where the decisions about election systems are still made. This is a LONG TERM project, requiring ACTIVE citizenship and intense pressure on local officials until we get rid of the machines.
The facts are plain, and they are OUTRAGEOUS. Our election system has been taken over by rightwing corporations, which are (s)electing both Dems and Repubs. Our Corporate Rulers are not just influencing our elections with billions of dollars in filthy campaign money and lobbying money, they now have DIRECT control of election results. These electronic voting machines--which were fast-tracked throughout the country with $3.9 billion dollars from the Anthrax Congress (OUR money)--are NON-TRANSPARENT. Only Corporate personnel know how they run. Not even our secretaries of state are permitted to review the SECRET code. We MUST change this. And it is not going to be easy.
I don't think they're going to steal it big in '06. They don't want to lose this electronic vote rigging capability. But they're going to steal it cleverly--by giving the Democrats a slight edge in the House, but not an effective edge. And they'll try to use this to take the fire out of the election reform movement. ("What's your beef now--the Democrats won, didn't they?"). As Norman Mailer once said, "You are never in so much danger as when you are victorious."
Truly, my friends, impeachment is not the issue (gratifying as it would be). TRANSPARENT ELECTIONS are the issue! And while the Diebold II Congress goes on about its business of "centrist" politics, and while its corporate-chosen members, many of them millionaires, fly above us all with high salaries, solid health insurance and great pensions, the LOCAL people who have sold away our right to vote LIVE DOWN THE STREET, and the state officials who have sold away our right to vote are not that far away. And those are the people that we can and must get to, with our demand for transparent vote counting. We must force them to reform this system, or resign.
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*(Absentee Ballot voting has ALWAYS been convenient in California. Why the big surge of AB voting NOW--which is BIGGEST in California? It is a PROTEST against the MACHINES! AB voting has risen in direct proportion to the cancerous spread of these highly insecure, insider riggable voting machines. Don't buy the spin. It is NOT "convenience." It is a citizen BOYCOTT and "vote of no confidence" in the rigged electronics. The Bushite push for these machines has been especially intense in California. We lost our good secretary of state Kevin Shelly over it. He had sued Diebold and demanded to see their source code--and was "swiftboated" out of office last year--and replaced by Diebold shill and Schwarz APPOINTEE Bruce McPherson. We have some extremely corrupt Diebold shill county election officials--for instance, Connie McCormack in Los Angeles. This is a big corporate and Bushite strategy to turn California "red." And THAT is why California voters are voting by Absentee Ballot in such large numbers, in a desperate attempt to get around the rigged machines. And this is very heartening, indeed. It means that California voters KNOW WHAT'S GOING ON. And that is a beginning!) (Note: AB voting is also big in other places, for the same reason.)
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