How or why should I vote if the system is such a mess?

[happydreams]

That GAO report is just the latest in long list of evidence that shows our voting system is thoroughly corrupt. My vote could go to the wrong candidate!!

This is from the GAO report:


"The United States is the only major democracy that allows private partisan corporations to secretly count and tabulate the votes with proprietary non-transparent software. Rev. Jesse Jackson, among others, has asserted that "public elections must not be conducted on privately-owned machines." The CEO of one of the most crucial suppliers of electronic voting machines, Warren O'Dell of Diebold, pledged before the 2004 campaign to deliver Ohio and thus the presidency to George W. Bush."


Doesnt' this fact make the whole election process a farce:

Wasn't it Stalin who said its who counts the votes that determines the winner?

We need to get the corporations out of the vote counting business.

[kster]

1. Yes..nt

[GreenPartyVoter]

2. Well, we need to start fixing it from the ground up. Click the link in my

sig for some thoughts on this.

[Duer 157099]

3. I walked into my local Registrar of Voters office

and got an absentee ballot and plan to return it to the same office (I mentioned to them that I'm not particularly fond of the machines -- they smiled, and were really nice to me)

[happydreams]

6. Yea, maybe that's the answer. I think Oregon has all mail-in voting

But I'm not sure.

[Mme. Defarge]

4. I'm sad to say

that I will not be voting in the next national election unless we have a transparent voting process. I refuse to rubber stamp a sham. Never though I'd be saying this, but the truth is, we've all been disenfranchised.

[skipos]

5. Yeah! THAT'll show the Repubs! Don't vote!

[kster]

7. You should vote

on them vote stealing machines, that will show the Repugs! WHAT? What will it show them?

[skipos]

11. We need to contact every Dem we can in New Jersey and

make sure they don't vote this November 8th. http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newjersey/ny-bc-nj--governorsrace-po1028oct28,0,7677069.story?coll=ny-region-apnewjersey
We need to protest the vote!

Who is with me?

[The Kicker]

8. I wonder.

I wonder if a certain percentage of registered voters is required to have voted for a national election to be valid. Probably not, but if it were, it would be a great way to protest if they couldn't get the required percentage.

[DanCa]

9. Voting is a form of activism it does give me a feeling of pride to go down

to the polls and give myself a voice. Wether my voice gets heard or not I know that I atleast tried to accomplish something.

[Clintmax]

10. It DOES make the election process a farce...

I plan to vote...I always do...but it will be by absentee ballot or any other way that I can bypass those freakin machines!

I was talking to my dad the other day and he said he will not vote again this country gets rid of the Electoral College as well as all the electronic voting machines. I don't know about THAT, and I tried to change his mind, but he's made it up, so that's all there is to THAT.

[Cookie wookie]

12. Instead of protesting by not voting, which will help the republicans

steal the election by an even greater margin, get active.

Go down to your state's elections division and protest: demand a voter-verified paper ballot on all electronic voting equipment and demand that it be counted on election night. volunteer to help count them.

If they say they can't provide it, then demand a paper ballot be provided on election day for everyone who doesn't want to use the electronic vote stealing machines. There are counties across the country, including in California, who are providing that paper ballot as an alternative. Make sure the ballot is considered the ballot of record and make sure that if it's counted by opti-scan (which uses the same vote counting code as the electronic voting machines) demand a hand counted audit of some of the precincts as a check against the opti-scan's count.

Join a group in your state or a national group and fight all-electronic voting. There are groups all across the nation that are pathetically under-manned. Most are run by people with full-time jobs who could use any amount of help from anyone willing to do something to stop this election fraud.

Become a poll watcher and take careful notes of what happens on election day, whether vendors have their techs running the elections, tampering with the machines, etc. Gather evidence.

Get together a group of people to help develop and implement polling at precincts. Find experts to help put this together right, so your parallel counts will be done scientifically. Or demand that your state have a machine in each county, selected at random on election day, that is used for parallel voting = tested in view of the public using the actual code that's counting the votes that day, but by a script so the count can be audited. This is not the same as the "Logic and Accuracy" testing, which is worthless in protecting us from election fraud.

Finally, vote. If you're using an absentee ballot, you'd better have a talk with your election officials to see how it will be handled. Some states don't count them unless a race is close. some states (like Georgia ) have such terrible bookkeeping systems that no one can audit the counts on absentee and provisional ballots. Tell election officials ahead of time that you want to see a clear and transparent record of all absentee and provisional votes, that includes precinct counts of those votes that are recorded on paper that can be used as a way to audit the counts.

If you don't vote, you help the criminals stealing the elections. I as much as any American know the terrible pain of having to live with electronic paperless vote stealing machines as I live in Georgia and have been forced to vote on them since 2002. My hate for this knows no bounds. But as grievious and monstrous as it is to be forced to vote on what all evidence points to as a fraudulent voting system, I still go to the polls and vote. It rips me apart, but I do it anyway.

[kster]

13. Great layout and if I may add

do EVERYTHING IN YOUR POWER from now until election day to BAN any and all forms of electronic vote (stealing) machines from your precinct and or county.

[Cookie wookie]

14. Press your election officials to do what

North Dakota and Nebraska have done, if those officials haven't already sold your vote out to DREs:

"North Dakota and Nebraska Quietly Stay All Paper" by Warren Stewart, VoteTrustUSA, October 25, 2005:

"With little public notice, both North Dakota and Nebraska have decided to join the swelling ranks of states that have passed on paperless Direct Record Electronic (DRE) voting machines and opted instead for optical scan systems that utilize ballot-marking devices to comply with requirements for disabled accessibility."

continued: http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=216&Itemid=51