Reply #134: A paper or Absentee ballot is NOT secure if it is fed into a 'TRADE SECRET' system

[Peace Patriot]

with scanners, and there is an inadequate audit. And NO STATE IN THE U.S. has an adequate audit for detecting fraud in an electronic system. There needs to be an automatic 10% audit (handcount, checking paper vs machine total) as a minimum. Half the states are doing NO audit AT ALL (because, either they don't have a paper ballot, or, if they do, they don't count any of them; and the best states are doing only 1% as the automatic audit. That is not enough.

You may vote on a paper ballot or with an Absentee ballot but **99%** of them are never counted--except by a machine whose 'TRADE SECRET' code is owned and controlled by a rightwing or far rightwing corporation!

Even the best states have systems that are made to order for fraud.

Putsch #1: Bush/Cheney, Supreme Court. Putsch #2: 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting, everywhere, forever.

We could have overcome 4 years of the Bush Junta. 8 years of massive thievery and other horrors made it twice as hard. And continued Puke/"Blue Dog" rule with a weak president makes it nearly impossible.

There are many things gravely wrong with our system--fascist money, fascist media, redistricting, suppression of poor and black voters. THIS--"TRADE SECRET" control of vote counting--makes it impossible to address these and other ills. And now that they have "TRADE SECRET' code everywhere, they don't have to be obvious about it (as they were in 2004, and in the Max Cleland all-Diebold 'vote' in GA in 2002 ). They can select an Obama (whom I think actually did win, by a bigger margin than we know) and saddle him with a "Blue Dog" Congress, then they can dis-elect him in 2012 and put some Bushwhack back in. They don't have to bar every good Democrat from office. They just have to select sufficient Pukes and "Blue Dogs" to counter the real Democrats. And the DLC and currently DLC-controlled DNC accommodates this corpo-fascist purpose by funding "Blue Dogs" in primaries (which are also--except for caucus states--controlled by ES&S-Diebold & brethren).

"TRADE SECRET" code--code that neither you nor I nor any citizen, nor ever our secretaries of state, are permitted to review--whether it is present in a touchscreen (no paper) system (the worst--no recount even possible), or a scanning (paper ballot) system (with "TRADE SECRET" tabulators, a 1% audit and only very rare and generally only 3% recounts) is extremely insecure, an invitation to fraud and constitutes a corporate privatization of vote counting.

This is intolerable in a democracy. And if it is not undone by a massive citizen movement at the state/local level, we can kiss our democracy goodbye.