California," the bottom section "The 2006 Elections."
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2907417As I said there, "The fundamental problem is that there is NO CERTAINTY about election results, which makes it possible for their buds in the war profiteering corporate news monopolies to spin a total reversal of the pre-election polls on election day."
THAT is the long term problem that we must address. The Democrats should be wiping the floor with the Bushites this time round, and should have at least won, if not by a landslide, in 2004. The war was already a mess then. The torture had been exposed. The treason of outing CIA agents. A skyrocketed deficit. The lying, the secrecy, the evidence of extraordinary corruption. And the exit polls said Kerry HAD WON.
Something not right here. Something really, really not right. The outcome of this election should not be in such doubt.
The fact is they have the capability of EASILY stealing it--easily, undetectably, non-transparently, with TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code in all the voting machines and central tabulators, owned and controlled by Bushite corporations.
We MUST face this fact--and get to work REMOVING these goddamned corporations and their goddamned SECRET CODE from our election system. If we keep thinking only from election to election, we will never solve it. We have to think BEYOND the election. We need to do everything we can to win it, but we need to understand that the SYSTEM--the way the votes are being "counted"--is fundamentally fraudulent, and makes the results fundamentally uncertain, and highly riggable.
I don't know if the Corporate Rulers are going to let the Bushites get away with it again. They may not. But, whatever they do--permitting a stolen, or half-stolen or non-stolen election--we MUST get rid of this UNCERTAINTY and RIGGABILITY of the results, by throwing these private corporations and their "trade secret" programming out of our election system.
These highly riggable electronic voting systems were fast-tracked across the country in two years time, with $3.9 billion in funding from the Anthrax Congress (engineered by Tom Delay and Bob Ney, and abetted by Corporatist 'Democrats' like Christopher Dodd). By 2004, Karl Rove could confidently tell George Bush on election night that, despite exit polls showing Kerry winning by a 3% margin, his own "secret" polls said otherwise, and then, AFTER the election, he could attribute their win to their "invisible get out the vote campaign in the churches." No matter that the Democrats blew the Bushites away in new voter registration in 2004, nearly 60/40. No matter that the great majority of new voters, independent voters and former Nader voters voted for Kerry. Rove's "secret" polls and his "invisible" get out the vote effort were swallowed hook, line and sinker by the lapdog corporate press--in a closed system of rigged elections and post-election "explanations," in which no one in the corporate press bothers with the facts.
Facts don't matter. Numbers don't matter. Power is all.
And they went even further than that. They actually rigged their own exit polls--DOCTORED them--to force them to MATCH the results of Diebold/ES&S's secret vote tabulation formulae. (See www.TruthIsAll.net.)
Well, that was how things stood in 2004. As to the cancerous spread of Diebold, ES&S and other election theft machines, things are actually worse now, although consciousness of what the problem is has grown enormously. Ordinary people are trying to fight this rigged system with Absentee Ballot voting (a huge increase in it, all over). I say we should get out front on this indigenous protest, and provide some focus and leadership, and USE IT as a club over election officials, to force reform.
Some other things have changed as well. Why the Corporate news monopolies unleashed a putrid sex scandal on the Bushites four weeks before the election is still a mystery. War, genocide, torture, massive theft, massive spying, shredding the Constitution--they didn't care. But molesting teenage pages, that got 'em. Go figure. And the disaster in Iraq really can no longer be spun. Too many generals and other establishment types--Christ, even James Baker--are sounding the alarm. And then there was Katrina--ABC and CNN reporters standing in the mud with floating bodies around them. Hard to ignore. The colossal malfeasance of the Bushites was visible and palpable. And maybe the Bush Junta has become bad for business--and the Corporate Rulers can't see much more to be squeezed out of our pockets with tax breaks for the rich, deregulation and other pigslop gains. Better get some Democrats in there to "balance the budget" before it all comes crashing down. (Poor people, look out! The "budget balancers" are coming!)
There are also some other issues--failure of the Bushites to secure Mideast oil, China (which gets a lot of its oil from Iran) holding the paper on a lot of our enormous, unconscionable, nation-crippling debt, and the Bushites' "loss" of South America (insufficient attention to killing peasants and leftists, and destroying democratic governments south of the border), which is cutting into the profits of global corporate predators.
In sum, it might not be a totally stolen election. The trick for the Corporate Rulers will be to pad it with sufficient Bushite Democrats (like those who voted for torture and suspension of habeas corpus) to stave off impeachment (and serious investigation), and especially to stave off any real reforms that might cut seriously into their hogfest profits.
I think that's the best we can hope for, until we get rid of secret corporate vote counting.
It's good to hope and pray that they won't steal it again--and to be vigilant and active, in trying to prevent election theft, and in taking strong action if it occurs--election analysis, challenges of suspicious results, lawsuits, demands for recounts, publicity, pressure on election officials--and there are many well-organized groups and projects to "cry foul" on election fraud this time. But it's ALSO important to think long term, and to base our strategy, as the citizens of this battered and stolen country, on reality and truth. Long term, we MUST get rid of these riggable voting machines and restore transparent vote counting, if what we want is democracy.