A Brief History of Computerized Election Fraud in America (Truthout)

[Amaryllis]

A lot you already know, but interesting to see the history laid out like this.


A Brief History of Computerized Election Fraud in America
By Victoria Collier
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Saturday 25 October 2003

�Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty� --Thomas Jefferson

In the 2000 election, George W. Bush stole the presidency by combining various forms of vote fraud, not all of which could be concealed from the American public. The month-long battle in Dade County ended with open slaughter of the democratic process, and the occupation of the country by a regime of what may be accurately described as corporate fascists.

That�s the bad news.

The good news is, the 2000 election also marked a turning point in American consciousness. Or, I might venture to say, an awakening.

Before W�s coup, most Americans were, for lack of a better metaphor, asleep at the wheel. This metaphor works just fine, because our electoral process is the wheel that guides our nation, the mechanism that allows us to control the engines of power, and to turn our country in a new direction if, for instance, we�re nearing the edge of a cliff.

Nothing is more important to an American citizen than the right to cast a ballot.

But modern Americans have been abandoning the voting booth in droves. Over the past fifty years, less than half of all eligible voters went to the polls, sometimes less than 25%. However, far more astounding is that those who voted rarely bothered to wonder if their vote was counted accurately.

More:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/102503C.shtml

[tommcintyre]

1. Some related reading:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0671867407/qid=1119745762/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/103-5739606-3618252?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
Who Will Tell The People? : The Betrayal Of American Democracy
by William Greider

From Publishers Weekly
This provocative manifesto, an eight-week PW bestseller in cloth, charges that America's political parties, unions and media organizations have abandoned the citizenry, leaving powerful moneyed elites in control of politics and government.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
An angry inquiry into the putative decline of democracy in the US. Unlike many observers, Greider (Secrets of the Temple, 1987, etc.) goes beyond the manifest deficiencies of electoral campaigns to focus on the politics of governance--and he concludes that so- called monied interests are ascendant in Washington's power centers. By the author's anecdotal account, the institutionalized intervention of these corporate advocates into administrative as well as legislative affairs costs ordinary citizens dearly--from purposefully lax enforcement of federal law and indulgent treatment of casino capitalism through an inequitable tax system. In Greider's canon, the sorry state of the union does not lack for guilty parties. He blames the ebb of democracy in America on both major political parties (which cater to affluent elites), the press (which no longer mediates between the public and its representatives), big business (as exemplified by the awesome influence wielded by General Electric Co.), and even the populace (whose activism has been limited of late to grass-roots concerns). Greider goes on to argue that the cold war's end offers the US a historic opportunity to renew its democratic principles and to apply them on a global basis. For starters, he proposes that a citizenry committed to challenging the status quo could make multinational enterprises more accountable to society at large, if need be by denying them access to the vast domestic marketplace until they measure up to populist standards of responsibility. Whether the heterogeneous American people have an agenda as explicitly progressive as Greider assumes (and embraces) will strike many as a very open question. Still, a provocative and sobering assessment of how self-government's reach can exceed its grasp. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

<A little dated, but check your library - definitely an eye-opener, and worth the read.>
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http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1879957132/qid=1119745484/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i2_xgl14/103-5739606-3618252?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
Indispensable Enemies: The Politics of Misrule in America
by Walter Karp

<Harper's Bookshelf>
An unsparing analysis of the way the Democratic and Republican parties collude to stay in power. Walter Karp’s acute insight reveals the sorry state of party politics in America today.

<One reader's review points to the following from the book:>
* A State inherently tends toward collusion and monopoly-granting, and therefore expansion, and this necessarily leads to war.

* Special privilege is in direct odds with liberty and self-rule, and only serves to further entrench a ruling political elite. And this he says, is a result of the "Hamiltonian tradition."

* Political ideology necessarily takes the form of the ruling bureaucracy.

*Decentralization is the key to breaking the back of the Hamiltonian system.
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<Another reviewer says:>
Best book about politics ever written, September 20, 2002
Reviewer: J. Davis (Oakland, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
I learned more from this book then I did in all the classes I was required to obtain my political science degree. The main premise of the book is that the Republican and Democratic party leaders collude to keep power, often by not contesting elections that could easily be won with any money or effort expended. A quick example from 25 years after the book's publication should suffice to verify Karp's thesis.In the state of Florida in 1998, half of the congressional seats were not even contested (several other "contests" simply have write-in candidates with zero chance of winning). This was despite the fact that both parties knew winning an extra seat or two might well determine who controlled the next Congress. Unfortunately, this fact is overlooked by not only the public, but all of the so-called experts on TV. Right now, the public perception still is that the parties fight like dogs to win elections at all possible costs. Karp sees what the pundits oftoday can't; namely, the goal of party leaders is to maintain control of their organizations,not to win elections. One quote from former Democratic speaker Sam Rayburn demonstrates this principle;when faced with a coming landslide for his party and a gain of many seats for his party,he ruefully says :"I'd just as soon not have that many Democrats, they'll be difficult to control." This is the shocking but real story of how politics in America really works. A truly indispensable work.

<Again, it is dated, but HIGHLY worth the read. Victoria Collier recommends this book.>
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http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0807004499/qid=1119744803/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/103-5739606-3618252?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
Why Americans Still Don't Vote : And Why Politicians Want It That Way
Book Description
Americans take for granted that ours is the very model of a democracy. At the core of this belief is the assumption that the right to vote is firmly established. But in fact, the United States is the only major democratic nation in which the less well-off, the young, and minorities are substantially underrepresented in the electorate.

Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward were key players in the long battle to reform voter registration laws that finally resulted in the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (also known as the Motor Voter law). When Why Americans Don't Vote was first published in 1988, this battle was still raging, and their book was a fiery salvo. It demonstrated that the twentieth century had witnessed a concerted effort to restrict voting by immigrants and blacks through a combination of poll taxes, literacy tests, and unwieldy voter registration requirements.

Why Americans Still Don't Vote brings the story up to the present. Analyzing the results of voter registration reform, and drawing compelling historical parallels, Piven and Cloward reveal why neither of the major parties has tried to appeal to the interests of the newly registered-and thus why Americans still don't vote.