Reply #288: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"? Nope, not re Elections.

[Peace Patriot]

Elections are guilty until proven innocent. The burden of proof is on the government to establish, up front, that every vote was counted, that the count was accurate and that the will of the people was transparently expressed.

This is so fundamental to democracy that it seems weird to have to say it. The right to vote INHERENTLY includes the right to a transparent vote count. Non-transparent elections are NOT elections. They are tyranny. A great deal of power and money is at stake in elections. Motives for fraud abound. Therefore, in a democracy, it is the obligation of the government, of those with the power, to establish, beyond reasonable doubt, that the tyranny of election fraud has not been committed.

No "extraordinary proof" needs to be produced by citizens and voters. If the election is non-transparent, fraud must be presumed, until proven otherwise by the corrupt bastards who are counting the votes behind a veil of corporate secrecy.

With 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY (private corporate) vote tabulation, and miserably inadequate audits (0% to 1%--that is, 99% to 100% of the actual ballots are never counted by anybody), the ONLY "proof" of election fraud that citizens and voters can obtain, short of a recount, is inferential. Then some wag comes along and says, "Uh-uh, extraordinary claims...etc." Nice try. The people have been DENIED THE RIGHT AND THE POWER to obtain the proof they need, because the whole thing (including the exit polls) is done in as a private, secret, corporate process.

But the people shouldn't have to have ANY proof. THERE SHOULD BE NO UNCERTAINTY IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Either a ballot is marked for Clinton or for Obama or others. There should be no uncertainty in what the count of those ballots is, except perhaps for stray marks on the ballot or overvoting (marking two boxes), etc.--which is supposed to be handled in the open. But the BALLOT is NOT what is "counted" in a Diebold election. The ballot is SCANNED INTO a highly riggable electronic system, and the ELECTRONS whizzing through the airwaves is what is "counted." The ballot goes into a box and is shoved aside, and never seen again--except for, at best, a 1% audit. And EVEN IN A RECOUNT, these days, they only check maybe 3% of the actual ballots--and that is done in difficult, complicated "chain of custody" circumstances, and with further involvement of electronics (for instance, in choosing which 3% to count), and is so difficult for ordinary citizens to obtain, and to monitor, that the recount itself is often just another "can of worms."

This process is so non-transparent, and so riggable, as to be absurd.

Your suggestion that "extraordinary evidence" is required, when inferential evidence points to fraud, or fraud is claimed, in this egregiously non-transparent system, is also absurd. It reminds me of Dick Cheney's (or was it Karl Rove's?) claim, when asked how they won the 2004 election, that it was their "invisible get-out-the-vote campaign in the churches," and no proof, no evidence, no facts, no warm church bodies in large numbers, were required by the corporate news monopolies in support of that assertion--the corporate news monopolies, who also ignored volumes of evidence that Bush/Cheney didn't win.

In elections that are based on hot air, anyone can claim anything. Non-transparent elections create that atmosphere of uncertainty, of anxiety, of chaos. And when the fraudulent election system then produces a suspected fraudulent result, wags get to say, "No-no, Tinfoil Hat, where's the hard proof?"

The ONLY remedy for this putrid political atmosphere is COUNTING. EVERY. VOTE. IN. PUBLIC. VIEW.

And your requirement of "extraordinary evidence" militates against the remedy--against transparent vote counting--because it says: The burden is on the citizens and voters, not on the government.