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Mutually
Assured Honesty
January 15, 2003
By Judith Foster
Everyone who votes knows that voting is the cornerstone of
our American Democratic way of life. Take away this one right
and our Constitution collapses and becomes just another piece
of paper we can line our bird cages with. Voter fraud and
tampering are a fundamental crime because the result is the
destruction of the foundation of our government, our national
ideology, and even our daily way of life.
It is a documented fact that the presidential election of
2000 was stolen through fraud, lying, manipulation of information,
denial of voting rights to thousands of blacks (through erroneously
adding their names to lists of felons) and through the age
old tactic of intimidation, including staged riots threatening
those who would count the votes. Two years later the insidious
"reform" of electronic voting and the sudden refusal to have
even exit polls counted basically put all the power of our
votes in the hands of the manufacturers of the electronic
voting machines.
Knowing all this doesn't matter to those who never vote and
who are too apathetic or cynical to realize the importance
of this right. But for those Americans who do vote, and who
understand the responsibility of doing so, it behooves us
to demand voting reform that is real and sweeping. A reform
that we need to start working on right now before all the
power is taken away from us.
The way to fix this is not nearly as complicated as most
Americans are led to believe, and I'll get to that presently.
The Bush Mob have systematically perpetrated a slow motion
coup of our government. First they had five Supreme Justices
stop the vote recount and anoint George W. as the President.
Once that was consolidated, Jeb Bush, the new "President's"
own brother, led the various states in announcing that he
was starting voting "reform" in the by-now-infamous state
of Florida.
Two years later almost every state changed its voting methods.
Chads are out. Why? Because it was the chads which were recounted
that proved that Al Gore won the Presidency. The unspoken
lie the current White House wants to fool Americans into believing
is that by getting rid of the chads they are eliminating the
root problem of the 2000 election. We are to believe the chads
themselves were the culprits of all that confusion. But the
truth is that by eliminating the chads or any other way of
being able to recount the votes, the Bush Mob are assured
of having complete control over "counting" the votes in the
first place.
Now with modern touch-screen computers we are expected to
believe voting has been reformed so no-one can tamper or steal
the election again. If we believe that then we've been had
yet again. It's actually easier to tamper with electronic
votes than it's ever been in the history of voting. Without
any backup system the people in power will always be in power.
It's a no-brainer. No printouts, no nothing to make sure our
votes say what we really meant them to say. Computer programs
are written to do exactly what the programmer wants. It's
not even difficult to do, and it takes a lot less work and
organization than having to trot out an army of lawyers or
mobilize thousands of pseudo-rioters, or send intimidators
to minority polls, or make telephone calls to misdirect people
into voting three days after election day.
I have a two part suggestion on how to stop this fraud, and
both include having two independent sources to count the votes,
so each vote is counted twice. This is where each side forces
the other to stay honest. I call it voters' détente.
The first part has to do with absentee ballots, and might
persuade more people to vote in this way. The ballot should
have a carbon copy and two addressed envelopes so when the
voter has finished voting he has an original and a copy which
he sends to two separate places. The resulting count will
have to match.
The second part has to do with the touch screen polls. In
the 2002 vote, an officer gave us a card which we inserted
into the computer and which supposedly recorded our votes.
We then gave this card, the only proof of our votes, back
to the officer. There were no printouts, nothing to keep for
our records or for any voting officials to have in case of
a recount. There was nothing to prove how we had voted and
therefore we were forced to accept what they told us the count
was. My suggestion is that on top of having our votes recorded
on a single card that we get two printouts of our votes. One
to give to another voting official - from a separate team
- and one for our own records. If the two groups come up with
numbers that are too far apart our personal copy can be used
as part of a recount.
This way of counting votes may take a little longer than
it does now, but the ballots will still be secret. And because
there can never be enough counting from unrelated sources,
exit polls should be reinstated, because even though the networks
suffered much embarrassment for supposedly "jumping the gun"
it turns out that the network projections were right all along.
This is a fact which has been buried in our national ostrich-head-in-the-sand-syndrome
over the White House Emperor's legitimacy.
It's time to stop pretending Emperor W. has any legitimacy.
This pretense on the nation's part serves to cover up the
creeping coup that he's spearheading right before our eyes.
If we don't get the voting system truly reformed before our
next election it could be too late.
One thing to remember is that there are allegedly as many
Democrats who voted as Republicans. The country, the House
and the Senate are still allegedly divided closely down the
middle, although after all the lying, cheating and conniving
of the Compassionate Conservative faction of the Republican
party we can have doubts about that too. The machinery to
steal the election was already in place and being practiced
before November 2000. So knowing what we know now, anyone
can have their doubts about the 50/50 division of the Americans.
And we still remember vividly how George W refused in his
smirking way to concede that Gore had won Florida. It's not
only possible, but highly probable that the fix was already
in.
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