The Repubs must be in charge of the voting machines, like usual

[babsbunny]

This cannot be happening! The 2 people who will not be able to beat the Repub candidate is 1st and 2nd place? It's clear to me anyway!

[cali]

1. huh? please tell me you're kidding. What a totally absurd claim

[SammyWinstonJack]

2. Something is definitely wrong. People just aren't getting it, I guess.

The day after the GE should be interesting. :shrug:

[Peace Patriot]

3. Must be? They ARE.

Here are the people who are 'counting' all our votes with "trade secret," proprietary programming code, and virtually no audit/recount controls:

DIEBOLD ("Premier"): Until recently, headed by Wally O'Dell, a Bush-Cheney campaign chair and major fundraiser (a Bush "Pioneer," right up there with Ken Lay), who promised in writing to "deliver Ohio's electoral votes to Bush-Cheney in 2004";

ES&S: A spinoff of Diebold (similar computer architecture), with initial funder and major investor rightwing billionaire Howard Ahmanson, who also gave one million dollars to the extremist 'christian' Chalcedon Foundation (which touts the death penalty for homosexuals, among other things); and

SEQUOIA: The third major election theft industry player, which hired CA Secretary of State, Republican Bill Jones, and his chief aide, Alfie Charles, to peddle their machines--an example of the utter corruption of the electronic voting scene, as well as its deep ties to the Republican Party.

In South Carolina, it was ES&S touchscreens, with no paper trail at all--zero auditing, no paper trail whatsoever, no recount even possible. Some states have a ballot backup to these egregiously riggable systems, but routinely don't count ANY ballots (zero audit). The best states do a 1% audit--i.e., 99% of the ballots are never counted (woefully inadequate in a "trade secret" code system)*.

We would be--we are--out of our minds to trust any of these results.

And, of course, "trade secret" vote counting is just the 'coup de grace'--the final blow--to our election system, which was already filthy with money corruption, and corporate news monopoly corruption. But until we get rid of these extremely insider riggable voting machines, we will get nowhere in reforming that, or anything else.

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*(By comparison, Venezuela, which has an "OPEN SOURCE" code system (the public can review the code), handcounts a whopping 55% of the votes, as a check on machine fraud. That's why they have a president and legislature who look after the interests of the poor and the country as a whole, and we have a president and a congress who look after the interests of war profiteers and global corporate predators.)

[onenote]

4. so you're saying that Edwards really won?

Wow. and Wow again.

You need a ticket to reality land.

[Peace Patriot]

5. No, I think Babsbunny is suggesting that our vote counting system is manipulated

and this could well be the goal of such manipulation--to nominate a Democratic candidate with serious weaknesses that can be used to write a narrative of their defeat in November, after they Diebold another winger Republican into the White House.

And since corporations with very close ties to the Republican Party and far rightwing causes clearly and fully have that capability--they are counting all our votes with 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code--code so secret that not even our secretaries of state are permitted to review it--and with virtually no audit/recount controls--why WOULDN'T they do so?

THIS is the REALITY, OneNote. They CAN do it--one inside hacker, a couple of minutes, leaving no trace. Thousands of votes, indeed, millions of votes, can be changed in an instant, and the controls on that happening are minimal to non-existent.

This, of course, has been the "coup de grace" to our election system--and to our democracy--long since heavily corrupted with war profiteer and global corporate predator money, and heavily manipulated by the corporate news monopolies. The final blow. Direct control over election outcomes.

With this kind of power, the fascists can, a) start eliminating leftist (majorityist) views, early on, by giving leftist candidates little or no coverage (or "swift-boating" them); b) pour money into the campaigns of Bushites and "Blue Dog" (traitor) Democrats, in the earliest stages--to prevent peoples' candidates from entering races or ever gaining traction; c) eliminate leftist, or even liberal, candidates who manage to run the first two gauntlets and make it into a general election--by untraceable, unaudited--and in many cases, unauditable--vote stealing; and d) use these powers--money, media, direct vote stealing--to shape a federal government and a congress that do the bidding of fascists, war profiteers and global corporations, and even to concede, say, 25% of congress to leftists/liberals, to maintain the illusion that we, the people, have some say in government policy.

Again, OneNote, this is the reality. So, someone who speculates on what such power might be used for--what its goals may be--is dealing with reality, while you seem to be in denial about reality.

Tell me this: With SEVENTY PERCENT of the American people opposing the Iraq War and wanting it ended, how is that we "elected" a Congress that has done just the opposite--that has ESCALATED the war, and poured billions MORE of our non-existent tax dollars into Bush/Cheney's hands, to keep killing Iraqis until they sign over their oil rights?

Why is Congress the OPPOSITE of the American people on this vital matter--60% to 70% FOR the war?

It doesn't make any sense. The democratic corrective to these heinous, criminal and fascist/corporate polices--TRANSPARENT vote counting--should long ago have kicked in, to steer the country back to a reasonable course. (It should have kicked in in 2004, as a matter of fact--when people were flocking to the Democratic Party--registering Democratic, 60/40 to Republican, in order to "throw the bums out"--and the real exit polls said they had succeeded.)

Now we're headed right off the cliff of fascist economic policy--our treasury completely looted by war profiteers, and staring at a $10 TRILLION deficit, with billions having gone missing in Iraq--and furthermore, millions of jobs "off-shored" to cheap labor markets around the world, and INCREASING fascist control of the media (both of these latter, the result of Clinton policies), with the fascists salivating over the gleeful prospect of stirring up sexism or racism, in their next narratives, and/or inflicting us with a candidate (Hillary), who is not only a committed corporatist (will take it all out on the backs of the poor and the working class, and protect the rich, and help the Corporate Rulers consolidate their enormous gains under Bush), but who will take the brunt of the rebellion when the shit from this regime hits the fan. It will be Hillary who calls out the Darth Vader troops against the old grannies' in wheelchairs whose Social Security pensions and Medicare have evaporated, and against the injured Iraq vets without homes, without medical care, without jobs, and against the rebellious young who have no future, or who oppose the coming military Draft, or to put down the food riots and other chaos that will ensue, when the Bush Crash finally hits.

Yes, I can see it. They don't want any FDR type to come to the rescue of the poor, and brave the hatred of "organized money"--as FDR put it--to re-balance this very unbalanced country. This tipped over country--with profits and government "milk trains" pouring billions into the pockets of the rich, and leaving the poor to pay the bill. They want to keep looting us, until we are a discarded rag of a country. And, since they have the capability--I ask again--why WOULDN'T they use it--to pick nominees and to install whomever best serves their overall fascist schemes and its narratives?

That's a very reasonable thing to speculate about--and simply pooh-poohing it, like it's "tinfoil hat," is UNREASONABLE, given the FACTS of our election system.

Also, considering that Edwards is the only top candidate who has made anti-corporate statements, and who has taken an FDR-like stance in defense of the poor and the middle class--the majority--it's reasonable to presume that he has been targeted for elimination. But, in my opinion, this may not have been to promote "weak" Democratic candidates, in order to narrative their "defeat" in the fall, but rather to install one of the "weak" Democrats (bought-and-paid corporatist, or up for sale--Clinton and Obama), in the White House, to, as I said, take the brunt of the Bush Crash.

And, considering what happened in Germany, in the 1930s, it may be then that we will be inflicted with Hitler II. After the meltdown. The center-left's inability to govern, in Germany, in the early '30s (after the Crash of '29), set the stage for Hitler's rise. This is one of the reasons that I have opposed abandoning the Democratic Party, and splintering/fracturing the forces that represent the majority. Although the parallel with Germany is not exact (historical parallels never are), it's a considerable worry of mine--that bought-and-paid-for Hillary is being set up (or Obama is), or rather, that WE are being set up for a period of brutal fascist rule, beyond even Bushitism.

My advice is to pay less attention to who you intend to "vote for"--for whatever that act is worth these days--and much more attention to what happens to those electrons that they are calling your "vote." And to keep on it--whatever happens (Hillary, McCain, whatever)--because we cannot reform and repair ANYTHING until we restore transparent vote counting. It is the bottom line of democracy. It is the only way we that we can start sending real representatives of the people to Washington. And we have lost it. It is gone. That should be our first priority.

Movements to restore transparent vote counting are gathering steam in state/local jurisdictions all over the country. Join them! Support them! Think strategically. Think long term. Think beyond the next election.

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Edited to correct typos.