It would be nice if those DUers who

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/12537-why-the-democrats-and-media-deny-election-rigging

Monday, 05 November 2012
By Ben Ptashnik, Truth-out, Op-Ed

"An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self-sustained."
Mohandas "Mahatma" Gandhi

It has been an axiom of the election reform movement since the 1970s that "sunlight is the best antiseptic." For that reason I spent more than a decade, including my two terms as a Democratic state senator in Vermont, attempting to shine a glaring light on the pernicious nature of money in politics. Much later, my political antennae led me to believe that finance reform was only one side of the coin, and that it is equally important to focus an antiseptic light on the machinery of elections - what is commonly called election integrity.

That our computerized voting machines could be hacked, even in the good old US of A, has been pronounced a national threat by no less than the Department of Homeland Security. The fact that the machines are ripe for fraud has been proven repeatedly by computer scientists from Yale, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, Rice, Stanford University, the GAO, the Brennan Center for Justice and government-commissioned studies in states like Ohio and California. The Department of Energy Argonne National Laboratory - usually entrusted with matters of nuclear security - easily hacked into voting machines in a few hours with $26 dollars in parts.

Meanwhile, in this coming election, thousands of these privately programmed and serviced voting machines are counting the votes that will fundamentally affect the balance of power in US politics, perhaps irreversibly.

So it is vexing to me that, while our country is veering precipitously to the right, with dire consequences for the planet and society, some commentators in progressive and liberal media institutions refuse to believe that the GOP may not limit itself just to dirty tricks and voter suppression. These erstwhile defenders of democracy and justice immediately and emphatically deny the possibility that certain rogue right-wing elements, and GOP operators like Karl Rove, could possibly be complicit in rigging elections. This denial is preposterous; these right-wing operatives have proven that they will lie and cheat, so why would they not steal?

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These stories are forcing a fundamental question into the public sphere: Should private corporations be allowed to control the machinery and software of elections without serious oversight?

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