Paper ballots NOW!!! Hand counts NOW!!! Impeachment NOW!!! nt

[In Truth We Trust]

[kster]

1. Paper ballots NOW !!!! Hand counts NOW !!!

No more secret vote counting machines !!!!

[MADem]

2. Heh, are you transmitting from IRAQ, or the US???

Hell, this is one way to get on the same page with the poor Iraqis, having fixed, bullshit, sham elections....

[Wilms]

3. .

[abluelady]

4. But then the election workers will have to work harder

and where will all the papers be stored, yada, yada, yada. The election workers need a big attitude adjustment. Election reform is an uphill battle and the hill gets higher and higher all the time.

[mom cat]

16. Democracy is worth it...Damn the excuses!

[abluelady]

17. Of Course You're Right.

But it is amazing the excuses that I've heard.

[helderheid]

5. and 5 makes it great

[Peace Patriot]

6. 80% of the nations' votes were 'counted' by two far rightwing Bushite...

...corporations, Diebold and ES&S, using SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code.

You almost don't need to know anything else. (But there is so much more....).

Wake up, America! Throw these election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor' NOW!

[troubleinwinter]

7. Paper....

Paper Ballots (as the legal vote of record)
Proper Auditing
Mandatory Random Recounts

And Impeachment!

[Independent_Liberal]

8. Here yee! Here yee!

:)

[Independent_Liberal]

9. Recall! The time to act is NOW!

www.recallthecongress.com

Recall Sensenbrenner, Hastert, DeLay, Hyde, Santorum, Frist, etc. Show them the exit ramp. Hold new elections and then begin the impeachment.

[tritsofme]

37. You can't recall a federal congressman or senator

for the same reason states can't impose term limits on federal congressmen or senators.

They must either be expelled, resign, or die to leave office before their term ends.

[robbedvoter]

10. Pickles: "my husband and I know every vote counts" So relax, kids

Everything is taken care of - teevee said so!

[yowzayowzayowza]

11. Required:

1. Opti-scan readable voter verified paper ballots, and
2. Audit every counting device in every election.

[Stephanie]

12. Watching them count the Iraqi vote was just infuriating.

Why can't we have that? Paper ballots, hand counts, full transparency, plenty of observers.

[mopinko]

13. return democracy to the U.S.

NNNNOOOOOOWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[LuCifer]

14. I wish I could nominate this topic 948 times!!!!!

And I wish our elected Democrats in CONgress would cure their collective case of Crainial Rectosis and GET WITH IT ALREADY! Or '06 will be rigged just like 2000, 2002 and 2004 was. Your choice people.

Lu

[interestedparty]

15. Can someone tell me again...

What was the original rationale given for the
lack of a verifiable paper trail?

I somewhat remember this issue comming up through
the courts, and an argument was given as to why
this is justifiable. Does anyone remember?

[loyalsister]

25. One reason

Equal Rights
Access to new technology has provided us with an opportunity for everyone to have an opportunity to cast private ballots. There are millions of people who cannot.
People here need to take the tin foil off and get and education. Get a job at your county clerk's office or volunteer as a poll worker to learn the real facts about voting machines.
There is a world of difference between the manufacturer and owner of a voting machine. The county or state owns the machines once they come under electoral office control. The manufacturer no longer owns or has access to the machine once it is bought. Why people insists that they do, has mystified me.
Do people not think they lock these things up, or are people just under some optimistic delusion that more people agree with us politically than don't?

[jmowreader]

29. It doesn't matter whether you "lock these things up"

Two words: "proprietary software" and "service contracts."

On proprietary software: The program that runs the Diebold and ES&S voting machines (both use the same program) belongs to Diebold. When you buy a voting system from one of these companies, you get a nonexclusive license for Diebold's Accuvote package as part of it. You are not allowed to view the source code for it, decompile or modify it, or in any other way tamper with it. No one outside of Diebold and SAIC knows what's actually in there, and they're not talking.

On service contracts: When you buy a large computer system it always comes with a service contract. A worker from Diebold comes in on a regular basis to install new upgrades, run Norton Utilities or whatever else it needs, and you have access to the services of a Diebold field engineer during polling.

There are many reports on the Web of Diebold guys skulking around during elections.

[loyalsister]

33. And the reason there isn't competition?

Diebold wouldn't be the only one if the nutcases had let the market forces work so that there were several different manufacturers.
But, noone wanted to get into it, because there was only one thing people were calling for.
So, we have what we have and HAVA says we have to have new equipment ASAP. As for these reports, I am skeptical of a lot of what I read here, considering how many people think Kerry won Ohio.
I think that it's quite possible that some people would rather believe every election since 2000 has been rigged than to believe that many people don't see through this admin- and keep believing it until we win.

[stepnw1f]

18. Paper Ballots NOW!!! Impeachment Now!!! (nt)

[kster]

19. A SIMPLE IDEA:

A simple idea: get together with your neighbors
to politely but unyieldingly insist that in the next election, your ballots be counted at your voting precinct, where the public's presence can assure that nothing is done to manipulate the count. The law in many states says that this is required.

Right-wing Technology-Oriented folks favor Paper Ballots.
The age-old paper ballot is far superior to any computerized voting scheme. See the online article titled Paper Ballots.

Paper Ballots can be counted in short time. If Americans can count as well as the French, then we can finish counting our country's paper ballots in a few hours. Christopher Bollyn, reporter, witnessed an election in France:

"When it comes time to count, as many citizens as can fit in the room are allowed to come in and watch the counting. Sworn election officials, some from each party in the election, in front of all the observers, count the ballots into piles of 100. Each set of ballots is placed in a bag. Then, one bag at a time, the election officials count the ballots, announcing each one. They tally up one bag and move on to the next, until all are done.

It takes a relatively short time to count 1,000 votes, and by having many election precincts throughout the country, all of France can be counted in a matter of hours, in front of thousands of eyes." (From Black Box Voting, Chap. 14, p. 196)

http://www.lionsgrip.com/voting2004paperballots.html

[Wilms]

20. kick n/t

[callady]

21. Right On!- Beware Biometric Elections

Haiti's Biometric Elections: A High-Tech Experiment in Exclusion

by Andréa Schmidt

In order to vote, every Haitian over the age of eighteen must register for a new national identification card that will replace previous forms of identification. After the elections, the card will become the mandatory ID for all Haitians, linking them to government services and financial records.

<snip>

Each new card includes both a digital photo and digital fingerprints. At this point, about 2,9 million voters of a possible 4 million have gone to register for their cards at registration offices set up around the country by the Conseil Électoral Provisoire (CEP), with substantial logistical support from the Organization of American States (OAS).

<snip>

No one seems to be concerned or particularly aware of the ramifications - threats to privacy, government and intergovernmental surveillance - that accompany biometric identification. People look amused when I relate how a biometric national ID card for Canadians was rejected by parliament in 2003 after much outcry about citizens' right to privacy. The card was proposed by Denis Coderre, Canada's immigration minister at the time, who cited its importance for national security in the wake of 9/11. Immigration Canada ended up instituting a mandatory national ID card only for immigrants with permanent resident status. The card has not yet become biometric, though it carries a digitized strip that contains a range of information that helps the Canadian government track permanent residents.


Haiti's ID cards are being manufactured and digitized out of country, by the Mexican branch of Digimarc, an Oregon-based company that is on the International Foundation for Elections Systems list of suppliers. (IFES works with such organizations as USAID, the National Democratic Institute, and Elections Canada, to provide "targeted technical assistance to strengthen transitional democracies.") Digimarc signed the 1.5 million dollar contract with the OAS, and the company's systems are used throughout the hemisphere. It has produced or is producing biometric voter registration cards for a number of Latin American countries, including Colombia, Honduras, Brazil, Mexico, and Puerto Rico. Additionally, it has created biometric drivers licensing systems for thirty-two states in the U.S.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=5...

[jillan]

22. If you want paper ballots - move to Iraq.

They have them.
We don't.

[Ferret Annica]

23. It's just a matter of time...

... Before they don't even pretend the elections are fair.

[jillan]

26. That is the worst picture I have ever seen!

I feel like crying my eyes out.
Those poor people. I can't stand it!

[Ferret Annica]

34. Airborne!

I agree. I went to Panama in Daddy's invasion to get his old stooge Noriega for having the audacity to go mustang on him and the CIA.

I saw the aftermath of an incident of slaughter where a van carrying a woman in labor and her family were shot up by a panicked roadblock team from the 82nd's 3/505 PIR who shot and killed all but her Mom. This was even though the vehicle had had the flag of truce tied to it's radio antenna.

Blood pooling in the tropical sun has a sickening smell I will never forget. It pools with a layer of red on top settling on the yellow hemoglobin.

I wish Neo Cons could see what their wars and 'glorious' acts of mayhem and destruction actually physically does to human beings. But alas, they even think their kids are too good for that, and expect the poor to go fight en mass for in these things.

[jillan]

35. Just curious...

How do you get on with your life after experiencing that?

These pics stay with me. I can't imagine how I would feel if I saw it with my own eyes.

[Ferret Annica]

38. Torn human flesh in the context of that situation...

...Baby limbs mixed with the curious and dark entrails of the body that had belonged to a woman longing to see the child that had grown in her those months before it's near birth. Small, wax like, surreal with those taking in the measure of the scene as the corporeal remains of lives lived too short a time, and one life not lived at all did their work with the coldness of a hunter gutting a deer.

The buck sergeant went AWOL upon returning to Bragg. His wife ran off to Alaska with another man in his absence. The private manning th 60 caliber machine gun he had been urged to fire by the panicked and frightened NCO is far worse off then I am with memories that do take some of the luster off of life.

You compartmentalize my good fellow or woman. You do what you can to live on. You have less patience with bullshit. You anger easier if prodded to it, then you give strange measures of mercy and back off as you remember how final and cold the ultimate violence of death is.

Why invade such a poor country with such people so desperate for a future for their children and a good life in such a brutal and overwhelming fashion? How can you even stand some of your own brethren soldier when you see the worse of them act so coldly and selfishly once the glassy eyed fear you had seen in their eyes as they stood in line at Green Ramp at Pope AFB loaded down for war with parachute and reserve, and overweight packs has faded away with their worse fears of death not realized after all?

Most of the time there was boring. Feeding mosquitoes and rucksack flopped killing time until we could leave to go home. The return was well choreographed with a jump into Ft. Bragg with units forming up on the appropriate markers to march toward media and family members for a triumphant welcome home the Bush administrations like to emotionally gloss over nasty little details like the small, so tiny it was hard to believe they were real fingers I saw protruding from what had been a woman's belly.

The answer is you do the best you can. Things that happen that trigger the sudden onset of the bad memories of sight, sound, smell, and emotion the psychologists call PTSD. But few get help for it, because they don't really care if you have it, and they don't want to spend money dealing with it.

And you wonder if those who died there were not actually better of then you were. You wonder if you really survived the experience at all when the carefree person you were before the Army seems like a stranger to whom you've become.

An imperfect answer, but it's hard to find words for this sort of experience after watching such a brutal and criminal aggressor invasion like this person in the White House has done in these more recent times. Knowing we are torturing and bedeviling a country in the cradle of civilization between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers - us, the barbarians who kick in the gate and piss at the door post on the way in to claim the glory we feel is owed us.

Willy and Joe would be penned by editorial cartoonist Bill Maulden with their hair raised and fingers on the triggers of M1 rifles as they wondered whether to shoot us if they came face to face with the sort of military we now have. I have trouble seeing how our self-righteousness and arrogance could look much different then that one found in German troops in WW II.

How does one live knowing in a deepened way what is wrong with the way things are?

As me again in a year or so, if we all are still alive. Maybe I can answer you then.

[senseandsensibility]

24. kick

We ALL meed to be screaming this.

[EFerrari]

27. Can't argue with that.

:)

[autorank]

28. Now is right. When they can't prove they won, they're illegitimate!

:yourock:

[Mnemosyne]

30. .

:kick:

[Hubert Flottz]

31. If counting our votes is too much "Hard Work"...

Then filling out our tax papers is too!

[madokie]

32. With the results delivered by hand, even if it takes a few days.

[New Earth]

36. AMEN!!!!