Reply #95: Will telling people the truth about the election system keep them from

[Peace Patriot]

voting?

The answer is that we MUST NOT LET IT. We must strategize on the basis of truth. There is really no other way to restore democracy. One, we need the people in order to repair this non-transparent election system; two, they have a RIGHT TO KNOW what is going on (NOT KNOWING creates demoralization and disempowerment); and three, they need to know how VALUABLE their vote is, and that THAT is WHY it was taken away.

Our collective sovereignty as a people--which we implement through voting--has the potential power to dismantle global predator corporations, and stop war, forever. WE have the power to create world peace and justice, and, not incidentally, to save our dying plant. We are uniquely situated to do so, as American citizens with the LEGAL RIGHT to throw off corporate rule (the entities causing all the trouble) and seriously reform our government. That's WHY they have corrupted our election system and are reversing our votes.

Our message must be: NEVER, NEVER, NEVER give up on your right to vote! NEVER! The election system is damn well rigged--but we CAN fix it, and we CAN overcome it with sheer numbers in the meantime.*

Demoralization and disempowerment occur when you DON'T KNOW WHAT'S GOING ON. That's where most Americans are at right now--they are hugely anti-Bush (and have been for some time; read the issue polls, you will be amazed) and they DON'T UNDERSTAND why he's still in power, and how other Americans can have endorsed a trillion dollar deficit, unjust war, the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocents, torture, multiple tax cuts for the rich, and all the rest. If they KNEW about the election system--and UNDERSTOOD that they have been DISENFRANCHISED--they would have beginning conditions for RE-EMPOWERMENT, rather than depression, disgust and despair.

Re-empowerment and re-enfranchisement require EYES WIDE OPEN. You have to know what's wrong in order to fix it!

Instead of looking at the 2004 election evidence--the rigged SYSTEM, and the overwhelming case that they used it to keep Bush in power--people often argue from speculation and theory. 'Well, if it's rigged, why didn't they win ALL the elections?' Or, 'where's the PROOF? Where's the slam dunk case for a court of law?' (--missing the point that the election system is NON-TRANSPARENT, designed to be impenetrable, and therefore invalid on its face, AND there is overwhelming evidence that Kerry won, from external sources like the exit polls, and from massive internal anomalies). Or, people say, 'surely the Democrats wouldn't let that happen.' I hear this one a lot. And the answer is: They DID let it happen. And we can argue all night about WHY (some of it corruption or collusion, some of it fear, some of it ignorance), but this cannot change the FACT of it--that this is our STARTING reality for the 06 and 08: We have a serious handicap going in, which our party did not disclose in '04, and is not working hard enough to change now.

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Note: Russ Holt has a bill, HR 550, that will stop the corporate privatization of our election system in its tracks, and reverse it. It has 169 co-sponsors (mostly Dems). Sign the petition at: http://www.rushholt.com/petition.html

The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act (H.R. 550) will require full implementation of the following provisions by *2006*:

--Prohibit the use of undisclosed software and wireless and concealed communications devices and internet connections in voting machines (!!!);•
--Mandate a voter-verified paper ballot for every vote cast in every federal election; a ballot verified by the voters rather than by the machines, that will serve as the vote of record vs. electronic records (!!!);
--Provide Federal funding for voter-verified paper ballots;
--Require random, unannounced, hand-count audits of actual election results in every state, and in each county, for every Federal election;
--Protect HAVA voting rights for those with disabilities.

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The election system that was put into place in the 2002-2004 period is FRAUDULENT. It is NON-TRANSPARENT, non-auditable and controlled by Republican partisan companies with SECRET, PROPRIETARY software and firmware. Congress created a $4 billion boondoggle for conversion to electronic voting (the falsely named "Help America Vote Act), which BUSHITE companies benefited from: $4 billion into the pockets of Bushite companies like Diebold and ES&S, with some of it going right back into Republican campaign coffers. And people think they didn't USE this insecure, hackable, not-ready-for-prime-time electronic voting system to keep Bush in power? Give me a break. Show me ANY action of Bushite Republicans over the last five years that was not aimed at DE-FRAUDING, LOOTING AND LYING TO the American people and destroying our democracy. ANY ACTION! But they didn't take advantage of the NON-TRANSPARENT, PARTISAN-CONTROLLED election system that THEY created? Right. (You really don't need the mountain of evidence that Kerry won, but WITH all that evidence, it's a no-brainer.)

ANOTHER problem of common perception is belief that the war profiteering corporate news monopolies would more or less tell us the truth--give us valid numbers--about the election.

The best verification tool we had for the 2004 election was the exit polls conducted by one pollster (Edison-Mitofsky) on behalf of all the war profiteering corporate news monopolies. These are independent, scientific polls of people who actually voted on election day (after they voted). All day long, on Nov. 2, 2004, these polls were saying Kerry won. Around 6 pm, they shut down the reporting system for several hours, with a so-called computer glitch, and when it came back up, the totals had magically changed to a Bush win. Magic, indeed. What they had done was to FALSIFY the exit poll numbers to make them MATCH the results of Diebold's and ES&S's secret vote tabulation formulae. This was not the normal adjustment of exit polls to fit election day demographics. They DOCTORED these numbers in IMPOSSIBLE ways, to confirm the SECRETLY tabulated ("official") Bush win, and to hide major evidence that, in truth, he lost.

See www.TruthIsAll.net for an analysis of what they did. (The pollster has now admitted that Kerry won the exit polls.)

THIS reality is very hard for people to take in--that the news monopolies put FALSE NUMBERS on everybody's TV screens, hiding major evidence of election fraud. People have been suckered not by the propaganda about the war (they overwhelmingly rejected that way back BEFORE the war--58% opposed to the Iraq war, Feb. '03, across the board in all polls), nor by the other fascist lies and 'talking points,' but rather they have been suckered by the ILLUSION that they, the great progressive American majority, are the minority, and that what they are seeing on TV, or hearing on radio, or in some cases, reading in newspapers, TRULY REFLECTS THE OPINIONS OF OTHER AMERICANS, and IS MORE OR LESS PROVIDING FACTUAL INFORMATION.

Well, the war profiteering corporate news monopolies are reflecting the opinions of SOME Americans--a small minority--30%! --and maybe as much as 40% on some issues. The great majority of Americans oppose every major Bush policy, foreign and domestic, way up in the 60% to 70% range, across the board in all polls, and have for some two years now. And this great progressive American majority has been edited out of our nation's corporate news and opinion coverage; and neither is it being properly represented in Washington DC, in proportion to its numbers.

As for providing factual information, you can MAYBE trust their reports on "injury accidents" on the freeway, and POSSIBLY what the weather was yesterday, and that's about it. You only have to review the coverage of Bush's war to know this. Virtually EVERY WORD that they broadcast or printed was aimed at creating the ILLUSION of majority American support for Bush's war on Iraq that DID NOT EXIST.

Most people are living in the frigging "MATRIX" of corporate controlled ILLUSION. And we MUST get them out of it, if our democracy is to be saved. And you can't do that by LYING to them that everything is okay, and that if they just get out and vote, and contribute to the Democratic Party, everything will be put right.

It is NOT TRUE. Diebold and ES&S control the primaries as well as the general election. They--and their buds in the war profiteering corporate news monopolies--WILL NOT PERMIT a true, populist, antiwar candidate to succeed. Despite the utterly overwhelming American revulsion at Bush's war (and all Bush Cartel policy), we WILL have a War Democrat shoved down our throats as our ONLY choice in '08. The election system is NON-TRANSPARENT, and EASILY riggable, and the fascists who are running it, and the war profiteering corporate news monopolies, and, yes, some of our Democratic leaders, are hell bent upon KEEPING it that way.

That is our situation. And we MUST face it, and strategize REALISTICALLY, in order to overcome it--for instance,a) by getting a bill like Holt's HR 550 passed by the skin of its teeth now, or b) by wheedling a commitment to transparent elections from the War Democrat that the fascists may put in the White House in '08, for their own purposes (for instance, to get a military Draft, which Bush can't do), and getting a national bill through THEN, or c), barring those national solutions, continuing our with election reform movements at the state/local level, and continuing to put as much pressure on our Dem leaders as possible to support honest elections.

There are no easy solutions. There will be no easy victory. We have to fight, relentlessly, for democracy to be restored!


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* (I'm pretty sure they had to pre-program the tweak to Bush in 2004, and could not easily change that programming on election day. It was rigged for a 3% to 4% tweak, which occurred in the east coast time zone, early on, and in the battleground states. That's what exit poll analysis shows. The very visible, overt suppression of Dem votes in Ohio was a desperate act, needed to overcome a BIGGER Kerry win than expected. Ergo--if conditions remain the same in the electronic voting systems--it IS POSSIBLE to overcome the fraud with sheer numbers of Dem/progressive votes.

(However, they ARE experimenting with massive vote flipovers. Recently, in Ohio, four ELECTION REFORM initiatives were predicted to win by 60/40 votes, and were flipped over to 60/40 LOSSES on election day. (The machines and their masters are now dictating election policy and PREVENTING reform--a chilling Orwellian twist!)

(Read Bob Koehler's article on the Ohio initiatives. It's damn scary (but then, what isn't these days?):
http://www.tmsfeatures.com/tmsfeatures/subcategory.jsp?custid=67&catid=1824 ).

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General information:

For an easy to read pamphlet on the perils of electronic voting ("Myth Breakers") (One of the myths is that HAVA mandated electronic voting; it did NOT; we and election officials still have a choice!):
www.votersunite.org

For a project for statistical analysis, monitoring and challenges in '06 and '08:
www.UScountvotes.org

More info: www.verifiedvoting.org

For the recent GAO report on the horrendous insecurity of our voting system in 2004:
access to pdf: http://www.gao.gov/docsearch/abstract.php?rptno=GAO-05-956
text only: http://www.gao.gov/htext/d05956.html

For evidence of the lavish lobbying by Bushite electronic voting companies that is corrupting local election officials on a bipartisan basis (a week of fun, sun and high end shopping, for election officials from around the country, sponsored by Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia, this summer, at the Beverly Hilton (hold your nose):
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x380340

Ring of Fire, Robert Kennedy Jr.'s Air America show on corporate accountability: Show on the 2004 stolen election NEXT SATURDAY 12/17, announced on last week's show):
Sat. 5-7 pm (ET)
Sun. rebroadcast: 3-5 pm (ET)
http://shows.airamericaradio.com/ringoffire/