Reply #4: Our NUMBER #1 problem is the outsourcing of our elections largely to ONE far-rightwing-connected [View All]

corporation--ES&S, which just bought out Diebold and thus gained an 80% monopoly over the U.S. voting machine 'market.' All vote counting in the U.S. is now run on 'TRADE SECRET' programming owned and controlled largely by this one PRIVATE corporation, with virtually no audit/recount controls. ES&S is even worse than Diebold on its connections to the nutball 'christian' right.

There are two kinds of "outsourcing"--the "outsourcing" whereby big corporate monopolies pull up stakes in the U.S. and take the jobs to the cheapest, most unprotected labor markets abroad, and the government "outsourcing" what should be government-run, and democratically controlled, services, such as the postal service, security services and military logistics (food, housing, transportation). These can be "outsourced" to domestic corporations or foreign corporations (as the Bush Junta tried to do to our port facilities), but it is still "outsourcing," even if a U.S.-based corporation benefits. A subset of this government "outsourcing" is government purchases, which can be appropriate or not, depending on oversight and the fairness of the contracts.

THE most egregious example of government "outsourcing" is the 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines, because it is so very, very, VERY anti-democratic. This has also been a form of corporate "outsourcing," in that ES&S has been manufacturing its touchscreen voting machines for the U.S. 'market' in sweatshops in the Philippines! (See Dan Rather's "The Trouble With Touchscreens," www.HD.net.) This horrendous assault on the most fundamental power mechanism in our democracy--the mechanism by which gives "we, the people" exercise our sovereign power--has gone virtually unnoticed and unprotested by our corpo-fascist press and our Democratic Party leaders. It's no wonder then that the Bushwhacks were able to virtually "outsource" the entire government, with unbelievably corrupt actions such as no-bid military contracts, worth billions of dollars, to Dick Cheney's company, Halliburton.

The "outsourcing" of our voting system began just before the Iraq War with a $3.9 electronic voting boondoggle from the Anthrax Congress, which fast-tracked these PRIVATE voting systems all over the country during the 2002 to 2004 period, and it is closely related to that war, in my opinion. In Feb '03, nearly 60% of the American people opposed the invasion of Iraq which the Bush Junta proceeded to perpetrate despite majority opposition. That near 60% peace-minded majority had to be overruled in the 2004 (s)election, to keep the war going and in order to permanently ensconce the U.S. military in the Middle East. Our election system is extremely corrupt and desperately in need of reform in many ways, but this was the final blow to our democracy--the corporate takeover of the very counting of our votes, and BANNING the public from reviewing the code by which the votes are tabulated! The audit situation is even more shocking. In half the states in the U.S., there is NO audit AT ALL--no way to check for machine fraud--and the other half do only a miserably inadequate 1% audit. Thus, ONE far-rightwing connected corporation can determine the results of virtually any election in the country. I believe that this power was used in its rawest form to keep Bush-Cheney in power in 2004 and to put mindbogglingly stupid and corrupt people in power in Congress. It has been used more subtly since then--for instance, to saddle Obama with Puke/"Blue Dog" infested Congress and to shave Obama's mandate for reform. And it lurks in the background, as to our future, in the potential for yet more stolen elections--even including, for instance, the installation of Sarah Palin or re-installation of Dick Cheney in the White House. Don't laugh. ONE far rightwing corporation has the easy--EASY--power to do this and we would be helpless to prevent it.

The "outsourcing" of vote counting is, bar none, the worst manifestation of this corporate pestilence and possibly the worst thing that has happened to our country and our democracy in the modern era. It is the final blockade to critically needed reform. It may well be the final blow to our democracy itself.