Reply #109: I am amazed at the number of questions that advocates of RIGHTWING BUSHITE-controlled [View All]

voting systems don't answer.

Why reward these RIGHTWING BUSHITE corporations, who lobbied and bullied and bribed their way into our election system in order to destroy it, with MORE billions of dollars to "fix" the problems that they deliberately and malevolently created?

Why should ANY vote NOT BE COUNTED?

Why should ANY voting machine contain ANY programming code not open to public view?

Why was their NO AUDIT AT ALL--ZERO hand-count, or no possibility of a hand-count (no paper trail)--in MOST of the states in the country in the 2004 election?

How did DRE's EVER GET APPROVED by Congress and state legislatures? Why aren't the perps in jail?

Why WASN'T THERE a 100% hand-count in the first nationwide test-out of these egregiously hackable and unreliable machines, in 2004? Was it the anthrax in the Anthrax Congress that passed this bullshit? Was it fear? Was it corruption? How could this have happened? Who is responsible?

How can we have a voting system in which PRIVATE voting machine VENDORS, a) write laws such as the one in FLA forbidding the counting of ballots; b) make the legal argument in court that their non-existent "right" to profit from our elections with "trade secret" code TRUMPS the right of the voters to know how their votes were counted, even in a stinking election like FL-13 in 2006; and c) the CEOs and funders of the major election system vendors are Bush/Cheney campaign chairs and supporters of far rightwing causes so extreme they make your hair stand on end?

What is the logic of rewarding these fuckwad fascist corporations with billions MORE of our tax dollars, for nearly destroying our democracy?

What is the relationship between electronic voting--using unreliable, insider hackable voting machines--and the use of electronics to PURGE blacks voters and other Democrats from the voting rolls? WHO are the corporate perps that are doing this, and how are they getting such power?

What was in Karl Rove's (architect of Bush/Cheney victories') 5,000 missing emails?

What is behind the mind-boggling SILENCE of our Democratic Party leadership on RIGHTWING BUSHITE corporations 'counting' all our votes with SECRET CODE? Why is our leadership defending them NOW, wanting to give them billions more of our tax dollars, and supporting their fallback position of LIMITED audits in a culture of secrecy?

And, of course, kster's question of: Why SHOULDN'T every ballot be counted in PUBLIC VIEW in the neighborhood in which it was cast BEFORE it is boxed up and carted to a central location that is hard for local people to monitor, and furthermore surrounded with secrecy and rules that make public oversight nearly impossible?

As to this latter, it's like having SECRET PRISONERS--prisoners held without charge, prisoners with no access to the outside world, or prisoners abducted on black flights and rendered to secret torture dungeons in eastern Europe. There is NO possibility of justice in a culture of secrecy--in a culture that bars public oversight. It is an INHERENT abuse of human rights, in the case of prisoners, and of democracy, in the case of 'TRADE SECRET' CODE and its attendant obscurity of the vote counting process, to have secrecy of any kind in these fundamental activities of government.

The ONLY condition in which human rights will be respected by government, and in which the sovereignty of the people in choosing who rules over them will not be eroded and destroyed, is SUNSHINE. Total openness--with, in the case of prisoners, total public access to the charges against them and to their trials, and to the conditions in which they are held; and, in the case of voting, COMPLETE transparency and accessibility to the counting of the votes. No hedges. No corners in which corporate perps, Bushites or any other powermongers can hide. NO secret code. NO secret "boxing" of ballots and trucking them away from the voters before they are counted. NO private interests with any power over the election results whatsoever.

"TRADE SECRET" vote counting is not the only thing wrong with our election system--but it is the worst thing yet. It is the democracy killer. It MUST be undone. We MUST return to total transparency. We MUST evict these corporate perps from the system, and furthermore understand how they took it over, so it never happens again. It is the worst thing that has ever happened to our democracy, and half-measures cannot remedy it. I'm not saying, don't get what you can of half-transparency, or 1% transparency, or whatever sunshine you can achieve in this vastly corrupt political system. I'm saying that to be satisfied with 1% transparency, or centralized vote counting in a "trade secret" system, away from the people, is a HUGE MISTAKE. It is a cover up. It is wrong. It is a corporate fallback position that enables private fascist control of election results to continue and to make a comeback in the system.

I know that well-meaning people have been trying to forge congressional and state legislation in political bodies whose members were elected by Diebold and ES&S and other election theft industry machines. That is a very difficult problem. And any victory for transparency--however limited it may be--should be applauded. When activists in Riverside County, CA, for instance--one of the most corrupt election systems in California--battle the putrid corruption in that county, and manage to get DRE's banned and optiscans (with a ballot) in place, and go after corrupt officials with demands for an audit of the elections office, they deserve more than praise. They deserve Congressional medals of honor. To achieve this, they have had to devote their entire lives to it, with the passion and sacrifice of real revolutionaries. And this phenomenon of heroic citizens in the election reform movement is widespread and one of the best things that has ever happened in this country. But we must KEEP OUR EYES ON THE PRIZE--which most grass roots election reform advocates know. Our goal must be total transparency. Nothing less is acceptable in a democracy.

That is what you have been advocating, kster--and I applaud you for it. And I fail to understand the comments of some posters here who criticize you for repeating this fundamental requirement of democracy. It NEEDS TO BE REPEATED. 100% transparency is the only acceptable condition for vote counting. Private corporations (not to mention RIGHTWING BUSHITE corporations) ferociously oppose transparency of any kind, and should never, ever again be trusted with any aspect of our most precious and fundamental right, the mechanism of our sovereignty as a people: our vote.

The arguments of expense, of trouble, of organization, of lack of people to count the votes, of slowness, of logistics, of security, and all the other B.S. that is laid out against 100% transparency, are obstacles that the corporate perps have FOSTERED, in their takeover of our election system. They evicted the white-haired little old ladies who used to preside over the polling places--and replaced them with "TRADE SECRET" CODE machines! They forced a system upon us that only "experts" can understand--and only their experts have access to. They took all the money--billions of dollars--that could have been used for REAL vote counting. And they quickly created a corrupt culture of lavish lobbying, elitism and secrecy throughout the system, so that Connie McCormack, the Diebold shill who was head of elections in Los Angeles, could sneer at computer expert and voter advocate Kim Alexander, "that woman--she's not a professional!" They held lavish vacations--a week of fun, sun and high end shopping--at the Beverly Hilton, for election officials from across the country, sponsored by Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia!

I'm not saying that it is easy to overcome such corruption--to undo it, and to restore vote counting that BELONGS TO THE PEOPLE. It's like restoring America's reputation as a peaceful country--after the Iraq War, after torture, after eight years of American/Bush Junta aggression! It is EXTREMELY DIFFICULT. It has been MADE difficult--deliberately. But that doesn't mean we should settle for half-measures--for our country waging unjust war or torturing prisoners LESS. There is NO degree of unjust war, torturing prisoners or non-transparent vote counting that is ACCEPTABLE. We may have to--and, indeed, clearly have to--reverse these crimes by incremental victories. We should never forget what the goal is--that no such crimes ever be committed again by our government, against others, or against us.

The Bush Junta has been trying to overturn elections in South America--by supporting coup plotters and rightwing death squads, funding and arming fascist cabals, pouring USAID-NED money and money from covert budgets (OUR money) into rightwing political groups like the white separatists in Bolivia, trying to start a war between Colombia ($5.5 BILLION in Bush/U.S. military aid) and Ecuador/Venezuela, committing dirty tricks, and all manner of anti-democratic activity, particularly aimed at regaining global corporate predator control of the oil reserves and other resources in the Andes region. The many leftist governments in South America have been elected in systems that put our own to shame for their transparency. We need to do the hard work that the South Americans have done, in creating sturdy democratic institutions that elect REAL representatives of the people, for everyone's sake, not just our own. Incremental victories is how the South Americans have done it. They didn't overturn decades of U.S.-supported fascist dictatorships and create transparent elections, and healthy democracies, overnight. It took patience and persistence. It took never giving up, and never losing sight of the goal. We are not even half-way there yet, to transparency and real democracy. We must achieve what victories we can, and PERSIST. 1% transparency. 10% transparency. 50% transparency. FULL transparency. That is my take on those who keep yelling "HAND-COUNTED PAPER BALLOTS, WITH RESULTS POSTED AT THE PRECINCT LEVEL." Do not lose sight of the goal, even in the midst of this godawful Diebold/ES&S-inflicted corruption of our system.