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BOYCOTT the machines! DON'T VOTE on them! Vote by ABSENTEE BALLOT--or any other paper alternative except "provisional" ballots. And if you have no alternative, vote anyway (it can't hurt, it might help) but protest. Picket your polling place. Write/call election officials and media. Educate the public, so they understand what's really happening when Bushite "pod people" keep getting (s)elected.
The ABSENTEE BALLOT vote is already huge this year--doubled and trebled from previous years. Up to 50% to 60% of the vote in some places. It's been growing dramatically with the onset of the election theft machines, with big increases this year. The corporate media is already starting to interpret this as voter "convenience." It is not. It is A PROTEST AGAINST THE MACHINES. People don't trust 'em. They're trying to find a means to get around them. They want PAPER BALLOTS, HAND-COUNTED. So they've voting by AB. They don't realize that AB votes are not particularly "safe." In some cases, corrupt election officials merely scan them right into the rigged electronic system. But that doesn't matter as to voter opinion of the machines. The point is they REFUSE TO VOTE ON THE MACHINES.
It's a BOYCOTT! An in-progress, indigenous, citizen PROTEST against the MACHINES!
The deadline for requesting an ABSENTEE BALLOT in California is OCTOBER 31. Still plenty of time. (The Calif, deadline for registering to vote is Oct. 23, one week earlier--3 days from now.) Check local rules for other states. SPREAD THE WORD!
And if it gets big enough--if the 60% to 70% of the American people who despise the Bush Junta vote by Absentee Ballot, as a national trend--the reign of these diabolical machines will be OVER. Election officials cannot defend these expensive lemon machines that break down all the time anyway (by accident or design), and that are extremely insecure and insider hackable, and that are run on TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by Bushite corporations, if that many people REFUSE TO VOTE ON THEM. And what good are these machines if only the stupid people who vote for Bushites (--30% to 40% of the voters) are voting on them? The Dark Lords don't need to steal THEIR votes!
Snag. It's the central tabulators, also run on TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY code, owned and controlled by Bushite corporations, that are likely where the theft occurs. This is why Corporate Democrats say the optiscan voting machines (which seem to have a paper ballot) are okay, and if we just get rid of the touchscreen machines (no paper ballot backup) or make them provide a "paper trail," everything is okay. This official Democratic Party position leaves the central tabulators in place, for continued corporate control of election results. (You don't think the Corporate Democrats are in on this? I'm sorry, but unfortunately they are--that's how these highly riggable voting systems got put in place without objection or warning, and that's why it's so hard to get rid of them. Corruption and collusion of the Corporate Democrats, who see nothing wrong with SECRET corporate vote counting.)
So, let's say public outrage results in a combo of 60% to 70% of the voters voting by Absentee Ballot, and the others voting on optiscans. They scan the AB votes into the rigged system, and now they are no more "safe" than an optiscan vote. It would take a hand-count (audit) of 5% to 10% of the vote to detect fraud, and that NEVER OCCURS. The best states--the best!--have only a 1% audit. Many states have no audit at all. And recounts are extremely rare (expensive, difficult to obtain). So we still have a situation in which the vote and the evidence of the vote (the ballot) are separated, and the "vote" is turned into highly manipulable electrons and "sent" to the central tabulators, where it can be easily and undetectably changed. The ballot (the evidence of the vote) sits in a box somewhere and is never seen again.
The Democratic Party (official position) is pushing the scam of optiscan voting. (Whether it's an AB vote, or an optiscan "ballot," all get scanned into a highly riggable electronic system. The central tabulators are NEVER MENTIONED.*) Why? My guess: what we are looking at is not so much a Nazi plot as a Corporate plot. The Nazi thing will pass. It's pretty rickety anyway. Its purpose was to insult and demoralize us. The Corporates will be left standing--with greatly enhanced powers over the populace, to retain their massive gains under Bush (deregulation, massive tax breaks, lack of accountability, etc.), and to proceed with their global corporate predator plans for controlling all the natural resources on earth and dictating labor terms (sweatshop labor).
(Example: Bechtel Corp. privatized the water in one Bolivian city, and jacked up the prices to the poorest of the poor, even charging poor peasants for collecting rainwater! The Bolivians got pissed, rose up and threw Bechtel out of their country--and elected socialist Evo Morales as president, the first indigenous president of Bolivia. This kind of thing is happening all over South America--leftist (majorityist) governments in rebellion against U.S. Corporate Rule. The Bush Junta has "lost" South America. It will take some clever Corporate Democrats--a la Bill Clinton--to get it back. Bush has become "bad for business." This may be why our war profiteering corporate news monopolies unleashed a Bushite pedophile scandal against his "pod people" in Congress. They have outlived their usefulness.)
HOWEVER, I think that if the voter rebellion against electronic voting gets big enough, the central tabulators will go, too. A 60% to 70% rebellion puts election reformers in the driver's seat, as to pressure on local/state officials (the only feasible venue for election reform), and election reformers know what's what. The SECRET CODE must go, whether it's in the voting machines or the central tabulators.
BUST THE MACHINES! VOTE BY ABSENTEE BALLOT! SPREAD THE WORD!
GET ALL THE NON-VOTERS OUT THERE, WHO COMPLAIN THAT "IT'S ALL RIGGED," TO HELP US *UN-RIG* THE SYSTEM! GET THEM TO VOTE BY *ABSENTEE BALLOT*!
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*AB 550 (proposed by Russ Holt, with 150+ co-signers) appears to ban secret code. But the bill says "in the voting machines." It's not clear that this ban will extend to the central tabulators. (It should say "in the voting SYSTEMS.") AB 550 was the offering of the good Democrats. They may or may not have left this matter vague and subject to Diebold/ES&S (election theft industry) interpretation. It is otherwise a pretty good bill. It's chief flaw is that it was proposed to a Congress almost all of whom were (s)elected by Diebold/ES&S. Not a prayer of passage. The Democrats and other signers get to look good, and nothing changes. If the Democrats were sincere about the provisions of AB 550, they would have been screaming and yelling about the secret code, the lack of a paper trail, and Bushite electronic voting corporations FROM THE BEGINNING, or at the very least--allowing for the fear that gripped the Anthrax Congress in 2002 when the democracy-killing "Help America Vote Act" was passed--prior to the 2004 election. Not a peep out of them.
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Nazism vs. Corporatism
I heard somebody in a debate the other day--I think it was Lincoln Chaffee--say that the Democrats controlled Congress when the Iraq War vote was passed. Without saying so, he was talking about the Anthrax Congress (as opposed to the current Diebold Congress). The Anthrax Congress was the one during which Paul Wellstone's top-of-the-line private plane, complete with top-of-the-line wing de-icers, and two top-notch pilots, suddenly veered off from the landing field, on a clear but cold day with no significant wind factor--a day on which all other planes landed safely--and crashed near the landing field, killing all on board. Ashcroft's FBI was on the spot in no time, confiscated the evidence, never held a public hearing (standard practice for a senator), and somebody floated the newsturd that the crash was caused by "the weather," which all of the war profiteering corporate news monopolies picked up and never questioned. Wellstone had pledged to lead the fight against the Iraq war in the Senate. He was utterly opposed to it. He had the charisma to win the presidency in 2004. That's where things were headed. 56% of the American people opposed the Iraq war, way back before the invasion, in Feb. '03. 56% would be a landslide in a presidential election.
THAT Congress. The Congress during which members, including leader Tom Daschle, received anthrax letters. The same Congress--"controlled" by the Democrats--that passed the "Help America Vote Act"--a scam engineered by major crooks Tom Delay and Bob Ney (abetted by Bilderberg 'Democrat' Christopher Dodd) to destroy our election system, by flooding it with $3.9 billion for electronic voting systems, owned and controlled by Bushite Corporations.
I'll give our Party leaders that much benefit of the doubt: many of them may have been scared pissless, and with good reason.
But that doesn't explain their CONTINUED SILENCE on Diebold/ES&S's takeover of our election system. Two corporations, both with very close ties to the Bush Junta and to far rightwing causes, and with close ties to EACH OTHER, "counted" 80% of the nation's votes in 2004, under a veil of corporate secrecy. (ES&S is a spinoff of Diebold; they are run by two brothers, Bob (Diebold) and Tod (ES&S) Urosevich. Diebold's CEO was a Bush/Cheney campaign chair and major fundraiser. ES&S was initially funded by Howard Ahmanson, who also gave one million dollars to the extremist 'christian' Chalcedon Foundation, which touts the death penalty for homosexuals, among other things.)
Tell me how it is okay with the Democratic leadership that Bushite corporations are "counting" all our votes with TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code. You'd think they would be shouting it from the rooftops, as soon as the anthrax letters stopped coming. Fear, still? Maybe. But I think it's more than that. I think the Corporate Democrats (and the War Democrats as well--often one and the same) see some OTHER benefit--a benefit to themselves and their corporate interests--in non-transparent, secret, corporate-controlled vote "counting." Again, it's not so much as war plot, or a Nazification plot (difficult to pull off in this huge, culturally diverse country), as it is a Corporate plot. Hit 'em with threatened Nazism, and they'll WELCOME the Corporate Democrats back as "more beneficent" rulers (now with enhanced executive powers to stifle dissent on the global corporate program).
Whether I'm right or not, the only way to defeat both Bush Nazism and Corporate Rule is to defeat their secretly programmed voting machines. It's step one anyway. We MUST regain public control of our voting system. Without it, we have no power to change anything else.
And the only way to do that quickly and peaceably, is by massive ABSENTEE BALLOT voting--massive BOYCOTTING of the machines--to FORCE local/state election officials to reform this system, or resign.
Watch for the "spin" of the corporate media-if the big surge in Absentee Ballot voting gets any coverage at all--that voters are choosing "convenience." Contradict them with letters and phone calls. Put the pressure where it is most useful right now--on local/state election officials and legislators--to get rid of these machines.
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