A question from a newbie to the Election Reform forum

[Orrex]

Is there a good reason why Fed-level elections aren't nationally standardized? That is, why aren't all national elections required to use the same ballot standards? If Podunk wants to elect its dog catcher by using a series of colored rocks, that's fine, but when we're voting for the Congress or the Presidency, why the heck aren't we all using the same mechanism?

Sorry if this is obvious or has been asked here countless times before...

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. I live in a town of 600 ppl. a Voting machine would be a waste of money

[Peace Patriot]

2. Just because something is a waste of money is no reason not to do it, in

Corporate-ruled Amerika. Witness the $3.9 billion-plus utterly wasted on these crapass, insecure, insider hackable electronic voting systems! Well, I guess they weren't a "waste of money" to SOME people. OUR money--invested in endless war and tax cuts for th rich!

[Peace Patriot]

3. Orrex, the utter disaster of an election system that we have now is the

result of the Anthrax Congress, and its biggest crooks, Tom Delay and Bob Ney (abetted by Bilderberg 'Democrat' Christopher Dodd), deciding that Daddy Knows Best, and laying down rules, and laying out billions of our dollars, to uniformly destroy transparent, verifiable vote counting throughout the land.

That is the danger of federal solutions--especially when you have master thieves, mass murderers and utter slimebags writing our national laws.

A lesser--but also very real threat--is that, in mandating a national voting system, Corporatists 'Democrats' like Christopher Dodd, would have far too much influence, and would AGAIN mandate something BAD, like mandated electronic voting "with a paper trail" but that leaves the corporate TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code as part of our system. (Without an adequate audit, such a "paper trail" would be nearly worthless.) The Anthrax Congress did not mandate e-voting; it just provided enough money ($3.9 billion) to thoroughly corrupt our election officials, from one end of the country to the other, by enticing them to purchase these secretly coded, hackable voting systems.

At least we have some hope of repairing the damage at the LOCAL level, if Congress would just go away. I don't trust this Congress to do the right thing, which is to require that every vote be hand-counted, in public view, and the results posted BEFORE any electronics are involved. And, even if the House did the right thing, I'm fairly certain that the Senate will gut it, fill it with "poison pills" or veto it.

We have a far, far different situation now, than back in 1965, when the Voting Rights Act was passed, primarily to end disenfranchisement and discrimination against black voters, which was endemic in the south. At that time, the rightwingers screamed "states' rights" in their fight to continue disenfranchising black voters. The states have tranditionally held power over local voting methods and rules. In fact, Delay, Ney and Dodd had to get around this traditional states' rights argument--and local officials' protectiveness of their own power--and did so by bribing them, instead of forcing them.

We have a mixed bagged situation now--in which I really don't trust anyone at the federal level, and in which lots of local officials are corrupt, but at least they're close to home. People can pressure them more easily.