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(--automatic handcount), some because they have no paper TO count, others because of heavy election theft corporation lobbying against it. Even the best states do only a 1% audit--miserably inadequate in a "trade secret" code system. Given the expense of electronic voting, the heavy corporate lobbying against transparency, the infestation of our voting system with the corporate culture of secrecy, and the evidence of stolen elections, it is time to...
THROW DIEBOLD, ES&S AND SEQUOIA ELECTION THEFT CORPORATIONS THE FUCK OUT OF OUR ELECTION SYSTEM...NOW!
Paper trails are not enough. You have to restore the culture of PUBLIC SERVICE and PUBLIC VOTE COUNTING in our election system. Paper trails are a sop. Paper trails are a lie. Paper trails are a way to give more billions of our tax dollars to these bad actor corporations--for optiscans, for printers, for 'maintenance,' for their goddamn secret code, for the paper itself. We need to get these corporate vendors OUT of the system, or we will never again have an election we can trust, and our democracy will be over.
If they had begun by recommending a paper ballot and a 100% handcount for the first few national elections, while their systems were tested out--as should have been done--then we might have some reason to believe that they mean well now. As it is, we have NO reason to believe they mean us and our democracy well, and every reason to believe that they do not. Hell, the other day Sequoia threatened a lawsuit against a Princeton computer expert who had been asked by election officials to review their code! In the Florida-13 case, ES&S argued that their "right" to profit from our elections (and steal our elections--they didn't add) trumps the right of the voters to know how their votes were counted, even in a stinko election like FLA-13! Their arrogance knows no limits. They're manufacturing their election theft machines in miserable sweatshops in the Philippines! When are we going to be rid of these jerks? When? After Great Depression II, when there is nothing left here to steal?
A "paper trail," my ass. That is the global corporate predators' fallback position. Now they think we need a "paper trail." Now! Three major national elections later. And what are we to think of all those non-transparent, secretly coded, so-called elections that have already occurred? Well, we can plainly see the result of that. Our country's going down, for lack of representation of the majority on the war (56% opposed, Feb. 03, NYT poll; other polls 54-55%--now grown to a whopping 70%!) and everything else--most of which Bill Nelson has been collusive on. And what are we to think of these Vichy Democrats who permitted the rightwing corporate takeover of our election system? Their blathering about the Electoral College and the primaries is intended to do one thing--get rid of the caucuses, where the people actually have a say, untallied by Diebold & brethren, just as all their blathering about "hanging chads" resulted in vote counting that nobody can watch, because it's now all done with "trade secret" code. It's shuckin jive.
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