Which do you believe will choose...

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

Poll question: Which do you believe will choose...

...our next POTUS, the people, or a handful of programmers?

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Election 2008: Who Decides, the People or the Programmers?

By Ernest Partridge
Online Journal Guest Writer

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_3937.shtml

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So let’s cut past the speculation and (alleged) “paranoid fantasies,” and focus instead on four simple, undisputed facts:

1. Next Tuesday, 30 percent of the votes will be cast on paperless “direct electronic recording” (DRE) voting machines, and 80 percent of those votes will be compiled on computers.

2. These voting machines and compiling computers are manufactured, and their software is written, by private corporations with close ties to the Republican Party.

3. These voting machines and compiling computers use “proprietary” (i.e., secret) software.

4. Accordingly, there is no independent means of validating the accuracy of the voting machines or the compiling computers.

Am I mistaken? I have, during the past eight years, read hundreds of pages of reassurances that our elections are “fair and accurate.” In those pages, I have found not one iota of evidence challenging any of the above four assertions. I read of “paranoid fantasies,” “sore losers,” “they wouldn’t dare,” etc., aplenty, but never, no never, any denial of any of the above facts.

So, assuming the above, it comes to this: if the election returns next Tuesday are fair and accurate, it will be because those anonymous programmers have chosen, for whatever reason, not to finagle the election, and not because they face exposure and prosecution -- not, that is, because there is any compelling reason for them not to steal the election.

In short, they might allow the American people to choose their next president, not because they have to, but because they choose to . . . .