New Report Shows 17 States at High Risk For Compromised Election Results

[EFerrari]

New Report Shows 17 States at High Risk For Compromised Election Results Due to Electronic Voting Machine Problems

WASHINGTON, June 22 /U.S. Newswire/ -- A new report released Thursday by Common Cause concludes that the push to use direct recording electronic (DRE) voting machines was misguided, has resulted in serious security and reliability concerns, and should be reversed. The report also assesses states at greatest risk of having elections compromised due to problems with voting machines, presents information on voting systems used by each state and makes recommendations on safeguarding votes to citizens who must use a DRE in November.

"With nearly 40 percent of voters in 37 states expected cast ballots on DRE voting machines in less than five months, Congress needs to stop ignoring the problems and take action to assure that citizens votes are counted as cast," said Common Cause President Chellie Pingree. "We need legislation passed that would mandate random manual election audits of voting machines and require voter-verified paper trails, and citizens need to come to the polls knowing how to safeguard their vote."

The report, "Malfunction and Malfeasance: A Report on the Electronic Voting Machine Debacle," finds that 17 states, including critical swing states such as Pennsylvania, are at "high" risk of having election results compromised due to problems with voting machines known as DREs. States designated as high risk because they use DREs with no paper backup are: Arkansas, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.

Twenty-three states are at mid-level risk of having election results compromised. Those states use a voter-verified paper trail, but do not conduct manual audits. Eleven states are at "low" risk for a compromised election because they require mandatory audits and use voting systems that have a voter verified paper ballot.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usnw/20060622/pl_usnw/new_report_shows17_states_at_high_risk_for_compromised_election_results_due_to_electronic_voting_machine_problems139_xml

PLEASE RATE IT UP AT YAHOO!



:woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo:

[blm]

1. Little by little - the facts are beginning to pile up.

.

[EFerrari]

2. Have to go to work. Please keep this story kicked!

:hi:

[JeffR]

3. K&R

:kick:

[fasttense]

4. Oh crap, my state is at high risk.

"The report, "Malfunction and Malfeasance: A Report on the Electronic Voting Machine Debacle," finds that 17 states, including critical swing states such as Pennsylvania, are at "high" risk of having election results compromised due to problems with voting machines known as DREs. States designated as high risk because they use DREs with no paper backup are: Arkansas, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.

So much for every vote counting but I guess the Dancing Supremes made a mockery of that expression back in 2000.

[progressoid]

8. Mine too...

Arkansas, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.

[Czolgosz]

5. K & R

[zanne]

6. It's so insane.

And you know it's true because the mainstream media doesn't want to talk about it.

[zanne]

7. Self delete

[im10ashus]

9. "Congress needs to stop ignoring the problems and take action"

:rofl:

That will be the day. I've lost all faith in our three branches of government. I think it's high time for a revolution!

K&R!!

:kick:

[proReality]

10. What risk?

KY has definitely been compromised since 2000.

[IndyOp]

11. Common Cause Report: Malfunction & Malfeseance!!!

Here is the link to the Common Cause page:
http://www.commoncause.org/site/pp.asp?c=dkLNK1MQIwG&b=186966

Look for -> Read the Report

:woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo:

[dogday]

12. K&R and Bookmarked as well---Great Information nt

[Zodiak]

13. Why is Ohio not on that list? n/t

[mtnester]

25. They have a "supposed" paper backup

You look through a little window and scroll through what is printed on that paper.

Now, does the tabulation match the supposed paper backup? Who the hell knows. No one audited any of that during the primary that I am aware of.

[The Brethren]

51. Pull the plugs.

They need to remove all the electronic machines and give us back the original ballot system - it wasn't perfect, but a lot more honest and traceable then what we have now. And if not, then we're just going to be spinning out wheels and hitting a cement wall. No amount of protest will matter if they keep rigging the elections and giving themselves power to run our country.

[Fiendish Thingy]

14. There is no "star rating" option on the Yahoo page n/t

[Kurovski]

15. Kick!(nt)

[annabanana]

16. This is a "email to everyone you know" story!!

(With that little note: "From the list of things you won't see on the 9 O'Clock News")

It doesn't seem to be "rate-able".. so lets make it most emailed!

[blm]

26. Send to your local paper, too.

.

[valerief]

17. Doctored DRE. How Hip Hop. n/t

[LaPera]

18. The red states are where Bush padded his vote totals in 2004!

It's going to be very ugly in November, the republican owned Diebold & ES&S electronic voting machines can do as they please, no way to check and no consequences, so why not steal, steal steal...this way they keep the republican majority and there's not a thing we can do about it.

SAY ONE FUCKING WORD OR SO MUCH AS EVEN QUESTION THE MACHINES AND YOU ARE A CONSPIRACY NUT...NOW GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE AND KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT, IF YOU KNOW WHAT'S GOOD FOR YOU!!!

[blm]

22. Pretty sure they padded in blue states, too. No way did Bush have the same

margin of 3 million votes AFTER the west coast reported their totals as he did BEFORE. That proved it to me right there that they were looking to maintain a 3 million vote margin.

[Peace Patriot]

33. Yup, I agree! I looked at the California returns. Kerry won the state by

a 10% margin. Barbara Boxer retained her Senate seat by a 20% margin. Could be explainable by incumbency, or Kerry's position on the war (not strong enough anti-war), or other things--except that the difference between them is to be found entirely in Republican counties, where large numbers of people voted for Bush...and Boxer? Or was it that large numbers of Republicans were defecting and actually voted for Kerry--and had their votes stolen? The discrepancy did not seem related to voting system--at first brush--but to Republican domination of the county. However, if the theft occurred in the central electronic tabulators (controlled by Diebold)--which I strongly suspect--then where would they steal the votes from, with the least chance of detection or anyone crying foul? Answer: the counties where Republicans control the elections. If what I suspect about the California vote is true, then the anti-Bush vote nationwide may have been much bigger than any of us realize. I'm thinking 60% anti-Bush, pro-Kerry--not just a landslide but a huge landslide. And it's interesting that this ratio--60/40--also represents the Democrats' blowout success in new voter registration in 2004 (nearly 60/40, Dem/Repub), AND the prevailing opinion of the country as a whole, over the last several years, on almost all issues: the Iraq war (58% opposed, way back before the invasion--over 70% today), on torture (63% opposed "under any circumstances"), Social Security, the deficit, you name it; as well as disapproval of Bush over the last year (under 40%), a figure that started very low (49% on the day of his inauguration!) and sank like the Titanic afterwards.

And now we have all these people--a majority, and maybe a very big majority--feeling mystified, demoralized, disempowered, thinking OTHER Americans must be nuts, isolated, alone, their isolation and disempowerment constantly reinforced by war profiteering corporate news monopolies in league with the fascist Bush agenda. They sense that 'it's all rigged," but they don't know that a very specific mechanism is now being used to disenfranchise them--"trade secret," proprietary vote tabulation--and that this CAN be gotten rid of, by intense, organized pressure at the state/local level.

Well, if the Common Cause report can help them, that's all to the good. I have some criticism of the report (below)--for ignoring the intentional and Bushite partisan destruction of our voting system--but people can read about the insecurity of these machines and draw their own conclusions.

[faithnotgreed]

19. no way am i letting this drop - KICK

[seafan]

20. Kickeroo! n/t

[senseandsensibility]

21. k and r

:kick:

[mod mom]

23. Thanks for posting this! rec'd

[Peace Patriot]

24. They want the Diebold Congress to fix this? Har, har!

The Bush junta took away your right to vote BECAUSE OF THE IRAQ WAR (their looting mechanism). They are not going to give it back. In fact, the Diebold Congress just voted for endless war, and democracy in the good 'ol U.S. of A. ain't part of the plan.

The only peaceful means that I can see of throwing these election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor' (so to speak) is pressuring local/state election officials--those people right down the street from you who are conducting NON-TRANSPARENT, UNVERIFIABLE elections right under your nose. Ordinary citizens still have some potential influence at this level. This was Common Cause's next to last recommendation (see below). It should have been their first. Congress is utterly hopeless. Would you ask Stalin for transparent elections? Good luck.

One of their other recommendations--if you can't get a paper trail, vote by Absentee Ballot--is a good one. This has the potential of an Ordinary Citizen Revolt against the machines. And if enough people do it (and many are), the machines will be made obsolete; then we can work on getting rid of the central electronic tabulators.

But this patchwork approach to electronic voting (th bulk of CC's recommendations) is seriously flawed, and ignores some fundamental facts about who is counting our votes and how:

DREs are the worst of these new election theft machines, but they are not the whole problem--just the tip of the iceberg. All the votes are 'counted' by central electronic tabulation machines ALSO controlled by "trade secret," proprietary programming code, with virtually no audit-recount controls. Optiscan votes. Absentee ballots. All votes. The WHOLE ELECTION SYSTEM is now controlled mainly by two related corporations with very close ties to the Bush junta--Diebold and ES&S--who are counting all the votes under a veil of secrecy. By prioritizing the problem in this way--saying that 17 states are at high risk, when in truth the entire country is at high risk--Common Cause is taking a compromise position that, in effect, endorses this whole, corrupt, non-transparent, Bushite controlled election system, and says that it can be fixed with "voter verified paper ballots," etc.

I am not against trying to get SOME transparency as quickly as possible, but I think that the "trade secret" vote tabulation throughout the system, and partisan Republican vendors, need to be stated upfront, along with advocacy of immediate return to paper ballots hand-counted at the precinct level--with results posted at the precinct level--for the whole country. The system is too corrupt--DELIBERATELY intended by the architects of the "Help America Vote For Bushites Act," which was engineered by the biggest crooks in the Anthrax Congress, Tom Delay and Bob Ney. Election officials are too corrupt--both by the lavish lobbying that HAVA encouraged, and by the heady power of secret vote counting ("only us professionals and experts know how your votes are counted--you're too stupid to understand this esoteric science"). (That was said, in so many words, by Los Angeles elections chief and major Diebold shill Connie McCormack.) And legislators are too corrupt--a similar problem, millions spent by these Bushite corporations on lavish lobbying, and now even the relatively good legislators are beholden to DIEBOLD and ES&S for their power!

If you vote on an optiscan machine with a "voter verified paper ballot," as CC recommends, your ballot goes into a holding box, and your "vote" is turned into electrons and sent to the central tabulator. The distance between ballot and vote count is TOO GREAT, and the whole thing is invisible. Your ballot no longer matters, and 99% of them are never seen again. It is your "vote" (that is, nothing, air, electrons whizzing around) that is the "thing" that gets 'disappeared,' switched to the Bushite candidate, transferred to 3rd party candidates you never heard of, etc. These machines are extremely insecure and hackable--especially by insiders, who can devise sophisticated programs that randomize the vote stealing, that can respond to on-going election events (say, a big Democratic turnout), and then self-destruct, leaving no trace--all occurring at the speed of light, run on "trade secret" computer programs that no one--not even our secretaries of state--is permitted to review. And even the best auditing rules in the country (1%) can EASILY miss massive vote switching, and can EASILY be foiled by selective auditing.

"Boston Harbor," friends. That's where these machines belong--along with British tea and taxation without representation.

But it's a big, big, big industry now. Lots and lots of money involved--not just in election theft machinery, but also in what it yields: huge, unaccountable military spending, a $9 trillion deficit and multiple tax cuts for the rich. This, and fear, are the causes of this namby pampy attitude among our Liberal Establishment, that this criminal election theft system can somehow be repaired by half measures. It was DESIGNED for election theft--for keeping an egregiously criminal regime in the White House, supported by a toady Congress--and CANNOT be repaired. It must be chucked out, lock, stock and barrel. It CAN be somewhat mitigated, as a temporary emergency measure--for instance, with Absentee Ballot voting--but it cannot be made TRANSPARENT (the very definition of elections: they are transparent or they are NOT elections) with private, secret, corporate voting counting. The BUSINESS of elections must END. Elections must be brought back into the public domain.

I haven't read the full report yet, so I don't know how well Common Cause addresses the political circumstances that led to the blatant non-transparency in our election system. They do list it as a topic, but they do not highlight it. It is buried in the report. I think the politics of it--and the money--are of first importance. It is the scandal of the ages, as far as I'm concerned. It is no subject for polite talk and peons to good government. It was nothing less than a fascist coup.

----------------------

Here are Common Cause's recommendations for addressing this crisis in our election system:

--Congress should immediately pass HR 550, "The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2005," which would require all voting systems to produce a voter-verifiable paper ballot and would also require manual audits of election machines.  

--States should pass laws or institute regulations requiring all voting systems to produce a voter verifiable paper ballot, and mandate that jurisdictions randomly conduct manual audits of voting systems. 

--Election officials should take necessary steps to safeguard machines prior to Election Day.

--State election officials should, wherever possible, immediately retrofit DREs with printing systems to produce a voter verifiable paper ballot, and use those ballots in audits. 

--In the instance where DREs cannot be retrofitted, Common Cause recommends that state election officials decertify those DREs that cannot provide a paper record and turn to other election systems such as optical scan machines for the November elections.

--Congress and states should make emergency funds available for purchase or lease of more secure, auditable machines.

--Voters should be encouraged to vote on paper whenever possible. If facing the prospect of voting on paperless DREs in November, they should advocate for change with local election officials well before the election. If that does not work, where possible, voters should vote by absentee ballot.

--Regardless of the voting equipment in a jurisdiction, citizens should vote. While there is a chance that a vote won't be counted if cast on a paperless DRE, not voting at all will assure that it is not.

[Blutodog]

27. Part of the fascist consolidation of power underway

The Republic is DEAD as a door nail as they used to say. A rigged computerized voting system owned by Bu$hCo gangsters add to this NSA, CIA ,Army Intel and 20 other blackbag Intell. agencies spying and data mining all of us and if this isn't the 21st century version of Soviet Russia or East germany what is it? These thugs have no intention of ever allowing a free and fair election again in this sorry ass country the once late great USA. It's time to hop ship folks it's not going to get better here in our life times. They have all the power the $$ and the guns and they aren't about sharing any of it. GAME fucking OVER!!

[Peace Patriot]

34. "this sorry ass country"

If you don't like it, go live in Russia! Oh...oops...we ARE Russia--same kind of elections they had over there under Stalin. Big Brother "counts" the votes. Big Brother wins.

But, really, Blutodog, telling people the truth, as you see it, is one thing. But telling people to "hop ship" and "GAME fucking OVER" is quite another. Our democracy is not dead until the last believer in democracy is dead. And we are not there yet. As I see it, we have a window of opportunity to change this non-transparent voting system, at the state/local level. There is a strong, growing grass roots movement to do just that. Electronic voting is not required. It is occurring as the result of corruption. And the power of election systems still resides at the state/local level. And once we get transparency in some places, we can start electing good representatives, who will help with restoring our right to vote nationwide. I am convinced that Bushites are the minority--maybe even a much smaller minority than we thought (30% to 40%). They cannot win in the face of an organized, focused 60% to 70% majority committed to transparent elections.

So, instead of being the Voice of Doom, why don't you go on down the street to your Board of Elections or Country Registrar, and get some people to go with you, and demand transparent vote counting? Don't speak Doom until you've seriously addressed the matter at issue. And I suspect that you have not. Correct me if I'm wrong. I'm just guessing about you, on the basis of this utter Doom and Gloom position.

I certainly agree with you that things are very dire. But so were they for black citizens in the 50s, for black South Africans in the 80s, for women a hundred years ago, and for the poor in India during the British Raj.

You want to give up, and go live elsewhere? Fine. That's your right. But as for myself, I feel an obligation to my fellow Americans, to our great democratic heritage, and to the people of the world, and future generations, to DO something about this fascist junta, when I see a practical, strategic means of affecting the situation. We Americans have taken much from the world, in resources and exploitation. It is mostly OUR global predator corporations who are oppressing the world, and endangering the very planet. We have also in the past been a beacon of hope to the world, with our belief in equality and democracy, and our "melting pot" diversity (so rare in the world to see such a mix of tribes and cultures living peaceably together). I think we have an OBLIGATION to try whatever feasible means we see to turn this situation around.

Finally, I would suggest that you look to Latin America for inspiration. Latin America has suffered grievously from brutal oppression and exploitation--a lot of it inflicted by our government and corporations. But today--as the result of a lot of hard work on TRANSPARENT elections (on the part of the OAS, the Carter Center, EU election monitoring groups and local civil groups)--we are seeing an amazing, peaceful, democratic, Leftist (majority rule) revolution throughout Latin America.

TRANSPARENT elections are the key to everything. That's my view. And if we still have a chance to restore transparent elections--and I think we do--then we must try to do so.

[Blutodog]

61. Your Pt.?

Is the lecture over yet? Seeing is believing. Until the HAVA act is repealed you'll never have any transparency in elections. If anything the Rethugs have made even more inroads into Blue states like Calif. with these infernal vote stealing devices since the last election. So no offense but until I see the so called opposition waking the fuck up to the fact that the so called otherside are not gentlemen and ladies but a gang of proto-fascist hoodlums I'll keep saying just what I said. Nothing's changed yet.

[Kurovski]

28. Kick.

Hi there, sfexpat2000! :hi:

[Stevepol]

29. Put this on the reading list. Essential reading. To be covered on Mid-Term

[EFerrari]

30. Thanks for the kicks and votes!

:kick:

[Peace Patriot]

31. The "political forces" behind electronic voting is airbrushed, as I feared

[Peace Patriot]

42. ...oops, something happened to the rest of my analysis of CC's

discussion of the "political forces" behind HAVA. I lost it somehow in the posting. Basically, they don't mention the highly coercive, corrupt atmosphere in the Anthrax Congress, and Tom Delay's and Bob Ney's essential roles in engineering this coup: paperless electronic voting run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by Bushite corporations. The two biggest Bushite crooks in Congress (abetted by Christopher Dodd) pushed this dreadful bill through. We shouldn't be surprised at the result--the total corruption of our election system--but it should not go unmentioned in a report on the election system. In fact, it should be Point #1: They DIDN'T WANT a transparent election in 2004, or ever again. This was not something that just kind of happened. This was a quite DELIBERATE assault on our democracy. But CC makes it sound as if there was benevolent intent in the design of HAVA. Right. Benevolently intended NON-TRANSPARENT elections run by Bushites with no paper trail. There was nothing benevolent about it, and it was no inadvertent mistake, or wrong-headed do-goodism. It was PLANNED to be BAD, to STEAL votes, and to HIDE the evidence.

[mom cat]

32. Kickity, kickity kick!

:kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick::kick:

[The Brethren]

59. mom cat

can we have a few more kicks... :toast:

[JudyM]

35. K & R

[garybeck]

36. just 17 states? with >90% of the votes counted in secret, i'd say it's

more like 50 states.

can anyone name a single state that has transparent elections?

(i hear crickets)

[Peace Patriot]

37. CC mentions Kevin Shelley--that Shelley sued Diebold's ass for lying

about the security of their machines (touchscreens), and that he de-certified the machines; then they say "unfortunately" Schwarz appointee Bruce McPherson recently re-certified them. But they don't say what happened in between.

They also don't mention that Shelley demanded to see Diebold's source code as part of the lawsuit (all of this prior to the 2004 election). And they categorize California as at "low" risk of election fraud. Bullshit, I say. California is a TARGET of the Bushites and their election theft corporations. And Shelley was a target. He was "swiftboated" out of office on entirely bogus corruption charges, BECAUSE he sued Diebold and demanded to see their source code. His own party deserted him (our party!)--hiding under their desks in fear, or outright colluding with the corrupt county election officials, like Connie McCormack (Los Angeles), who said she wanted to "bulldoze" the Secretary of State's office to get the Tom Delay/Bob Ney-appropriated HAVA millions to help out her best friend, Diebold's chief salesperson in California, by pouring millions into Diebold's pockets for crapass, paperless, unaccountable, insecure, hackable touchscreen voting machines! (Shelley had withheld the HAVA funds for purchase of these decertified machines.)

The battle is joined in California. THIS is the most vulnerable state in the union. This is where the Bushites arranged a weird recall election with 125 candidates on the ballot (for testing out randomized vote distribution programs?), after their buds at Enron robbed the state of $9 billion, and their buds in the corporate news rags blamed Gov. Davis for our budget woes, and gave zillions in free publicity of actor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Those corrupt county election officials have WON! They now get their millions to pass into Diebold's pockets, and we get Diebold touchscreens--the worst of the worst of this election theft technology. Those were the machines that election officials took home--a major security breach--in the recent San Diego CA-50 Bilbray/Busby election. This culture of secrecy and corruption creates more and more insecurity and more and more corruption. It feeds on itself. If they can get rid of an honest man like Shelley, and then frigging illegally RE-certify these machines, after installing Diebold shill McPherson, what can't they do?

And here's something else: prior to our honest Secretary of State, Shelly, we had Republican Bill Jones as Sec of State, who, together with his chief aide Alfie Charles, were the two who devised the election rules to go along with the election theft machines they were authorizing for this state--including machines manufactured and secretly programmed by the third big election theft player, after Diebold and ES&S--Sequoia. Jones and Charles now work for Sequoia.

Shelley banned "revolving door" employment (a very corrupt practice). He also--in facing this Jones/Charles' privatization and corporatization of our election system--not only went after Diebold, he provided Californians with a paper ballot option, and he was the one who insisted on a mandated "voter verified paper ballot." He was doing his best. And they got him. They drove him out of office on trumped up charges--which I am more and more convinced were a Bush junta spy/black ops operation. Shelley didn't have any money for his personal legal defense. (--tells you something about Shelley!) The Bushite Election Assistance Commission (HAVA-created) was threatening an investigation. He would have been relentlessly harassed and tied up. The new state Democratic leaders abandoned him. His mother died in the middle of all this, and he gave up.

It is the ugliest political event I have ever seen in California. And it's harrowing to see just a little piece of it so coolly described by Common Cause--and be advised by them that we are at "low" risk of election fraud. To put it another way, if California is at "low" risk of election fraud, the rest of the states are really screwed. I would have liked a different categorization of risk. High risk. Higher risk. And Highest risk. There is no "medium" or "low" risk of election fraud, with Bushite corporations "counting" all the votes with secret programming.

CC restricted the risk assessment to two items: use of DREs (touchscreens) and no paper trail. Well, California now has DRE's--in a quickly deteriorating situation--and still we're "low" risk, in their opinion.

On a hopeful note, we do have a fabulous candidate for Sec of State, DEBRA BOWEN (running against McPherson, who is an appointee). Schwarz is also running in his first real election. (The recall was not real--millions and millions of dollars of free publicity from Larry King and Time magazine, in 6-week campaign with 125 candidates.) With McPherson and Schwarz running for office for the first time, why do you think they needed DREs, the least accountable and least transparent of the voting machines?

[EFerrari]

39. I agree! We are THE target. And what they did to all of us via

what they did to Kevin is harrowing.

We are not at "low risk" in any way.

[suziedemocrat]

38. In Indiana it's not a problem unless FOX News says it is.

I'm so sick of this state!

[bobbolink]

40. what I want to hear.........

is a message by a group of hackers that they plan to hack the vote in NOV towards the dems.

That's the only way I can think of to get the RW to take it seriously.

GO HACKERS! ;)

[Peace Patriot]

41. I just want to repeat that, in so far as this Common Cause report is

useful in restoring transparent elections and our right to vote, fine, let's use it. It contains a lot of useful information, and there are other groups doing useful reports and activism, who avoid the politics of the situation, and treat it as a non-partisan issue. I see it as non-partisan only in the sense that I'm pretty sure a lot of Republican, as well as Democratic votes, were stolen in 2004. (I think there was considerable theft of Republican votes for Kerry in Republican counties in California. Kerry won the state by 10%. Barbara Boxer won by 20%. All of the difference between them came from Republican counties. Figure THAT out! ) And I've seen, and surmise, a lot of Democratic Party leadership corruption/collusion on secret, corporatized vote counting (some of it quite direct, as with Bilderberg 'Democrat" Christopher Dodd and his collusion with Tom Delay and Bob Ney on HAVA.) But it was/is essentially a Bush junta plot to destroy our democracy once and for all. And I just don't see that as non-partisan--or in any way normal. I think we've suffered a fascist coup--in our own unique American way, via illusions and delusions (instead Nazi "brownshirts" stuffing ballot boxes and beating people up--we have Nazi electrons running around in the ether of black box voting machines).

[faithnotgreed]

43. this needs to be on the front page

[bridgit]

44. not good, k&r...

[leftchick]

45. NC is at risk too!

Thank you sfexpat! Excellent coverage.

:)

[EFerrari]

46. Yes, it IS at risk! And you have some great activists, too!

:hi:

[leftchick]

53. Yes we do Thank God!

Joyce is one hero among many! :)

[tiptoe]

47. k & R !!

[autorank]

48. 17 states,aboutu 1/3rd of the total---It's the "back wash"...They're all

compromised. We're growing by leaps and bounds in terms of publicity and that's great.

But the killer issues are centralized voter registraiton databases and tabulation processes.
The information on these will blow peoples minds.

[Just Me]

49. THEY HAVE TO FILE A LAWSUIT!!! Damnit, I warned every,...

,...freakin' Democrat I could reach about this prior to the 2004 elections.

THEY HAVE TO FILE A CAUSE OF ACTION,...IN EVERY STATE!!!

btw that is NOT a complete list of states utilizing EVMs without sufficient paper backups.

[Just Me]

50. This is where the CCR, ACLU and other non-profits need to JOIN,...

,...together to challenge this crap!!! Our networking needs a LOT of work because the "assholes" are winning in that area.

[EFerrari]

52. This time, we need to build a coalition that they can't

disappear

:thumbsup:

[In Truth We Trust]

54. K&R- Paper ballots and Hand counts NOW!!! Democracy NOW!!!

[sellitman]

55. Why would a Repuke Congress want to see this change?

As long as they control the vote nothing can come of this. The fix is in and unless we Physically overthrow the government we are fucked.


my .02

[Peace Patriot]

60. Please don't post this kind of statement at DU!

If what you mean is massive, peaceful civil disobedience--a General Strike, or a huge march on Washington--fine. If what you mean is taking up arms, I ask you not to post it here, for your own sake as well as for other posters. I completely oppose armed conflict in dealing with this illegitimate government, not only because armed revolution is obsolete, and harms as many innocent people as it helps, but mainly because I think that violence engenders violence, not peace and justice. It is a vicious cycle, and a sickness that infects even the best-motivated people.

Look to South America for inspiration--a continent subjected to brutal oppression, often at our own government's hands, for centuries and throughout the 20th century, yet, through TRANSPARENT elections--achieved by the hard work of the OAS, EU election monitoring groups, the Carter Center and local civic groups over the last decade--they are at last experiencing an amazing, peaceful, democratic, Leftist (i.e., majority rule, good government) revolution--with Leftist governments elected in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Venezuela and Bolivia--and growing Leftist movements in Peru and even in battered Nicaragua, and reaching all the way into Mexico, where the Leftist mayor of Mexico City is now ahead in the polls for president of Mexico.

If the Latin Americans can achieve genuine democracy--after what they have suffered--so can we! Have heart! Don't yield to discouragement! Have faith in the people! Help them get their power back! Help us restore our right to vote!

[dusty64]

56. Kick!

:kick:

[Time for change]

57. Great that this is getting such publicity!

[iconoclastNYC]

58. Random auditing won't work!

Look at the 2004 "recount" in Ohio... if they cheat on the election what makes you think they won't cheat on the recounts or the audits?

Paper Ballots, counted by teams of bi/tri/quad partisan teams.

You know like almost every other country does it?

Why does America deserve any less?

[Roland99]

62. Well, last time I voted, we still had the optical scan machines....

like the Scantron tests you took in school.