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with these rightwing Bushite-controlled machines "counting" all our votes? What are we doing REWARDING them with more billions of dollars in contracts to "fix" the election system that they so obviously and deliberately broke?
Canada hand-counts their ballots in one day--no problem! We USED TO do that, quite efficiently. Why isn't this taxpayer money that is being so freely larded onto rightwing Bushite corporations going to local vote counters, precincts and registrars to count the votes in a way that everyone can see and understand?
Why are these billions to Diebold and ES&S treated as a fait accompli that we, the People, cannot undo?
A voting system that the corporations insisted be non-transparent--with a 0% audit in many cases, and a meager 1% audit in the best states--and that, by its very nature, was fraudulent to begin with, cannot be trusted. The Democrats in Congress are now agreed on a 2% audit (automatic recount, in some cases).
In Venezuela, they hand-count FIFTY FIVE PERCENT of the ballots, against the electronic totals, in all cases, cuz they don't trust the machines. 55%! THAT's an audit!
The machines that are now "counting" our votes--with 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code--have been proven to be so insecure and insider hackable, they should have had a 100% audit from the beginning! But a third them don't even HAVE a ballot TO COUNT. That's how fraudulent Bush/Cheney's "reelection" was in 2004. And that's how we're getting this obvious 5% to 10% "thumb on the scales" for Bushites, warmongers and corporatists, so that the voters have to outvote the machines to get even a half-decent Congress, and even now, it's pretty obvious that Congress is still NOT very representative of the American people.
Why WASN'T there a 100% audit, in the first go-rounds with these new voting machines? That's the question we should be asking. (And the answer is not very pretty. Ask corporate 'Democrats' like Christopher Dodd, who colluded with Tom Delay and Bob Ney to engineer this corporate-run, non-transparent voting system.)
I'm for every inch forward we can make in transparency. And I know full well just how much corruption was involved in all this, and how hard it is to get past that, now that virtually every member of Congress is beholden to these corporations. (Some would have been elected anyway; many were not.) But we DO have to realize how woefully inadequate, collusive and corrupt HR 811 is--and keep plugging away at the local/state level for 100% TRANSPARENCY in our elections, and NO secret code between us and voting results.
Hand-counted paper ballots is actually the easiest, simplest, cheapest, and most transparent election method. Why not go with the best? Why go with the worst--the most burdensome, most complicated, most expensive and least transparent vote counting method ever devised by election thieves?
Because of all the corruption, we may have to put up with these machines, while we transition back to the best vote counting method. We need two things: 1) a ballot; and 2) a 100% hand-count (to begin with), with results posted at the precinct level before any electronics are used. They can use their expensive new machines to store and report data, and to double-check the hand-count. But if we have those two basics, we will have created a transparent system, that cannot be fiddled by electronic code. One way to accomplish this is to START WITH a demand that the Absentee Ballots be hand-counted, and the results posted before they are scanned (or while they are being scanned). There was a huge increase in Absentee Ballot voting in 2006--with voters trying to find a way around the rigged electronics--it was 50% and more of the vote in some places. This is a big constituency for transparent vote counting.
As with everything else, it's up to us. We, the People. But have heart, friends. Here are the three keys to the awesome democracy movement that is sweeping Latin America, and that has turned most of the South American continent "blue" already:
1. TRANSPARENT elections. 2. Grass roots organization. 3. Think big.
If the South Americans can do it--with their history of brutal fascist repression--so can we!
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