were not on my radar at the time, and who knew about Ney or Abramoff? Not me.
But I've been wondering since. How did the electronic voting boondoggle--$4 billion to Bush buds at Diebold and ES&S--get achieved? And what happened to the Democrats on Bushite companies owning and controlling the tabulation of our votes with 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code? (I know that, on the paper trail, Tom Delay bottled it up in committee; wouldn't let it get to the floor, where all and sundry would have had to vote transparent elections up or down. Nothing the Dems could do about that, with bully Delay blockading it, and it being just after 9/11. But what about the secret programming code, and Bushite partisans owning it? Looking at it in Calif., the CA 2 to 1 Dem majority state legislature just let it go by. No notice taken of Diebold, except by the new Dem Sec of State Kevin Shelley, and they got rid of him with Dem collusion; no notice at all taken of ES&S, or of Sequoia, where the former Repub Sec of State Bill Jones now works! )
H.A.V.A. = Help America Vote Act. (Right.) Supposed answer to Florida "hanging chad" scandal of '00; replace it all with electronics (as it turns out, run by the likes of Wally O'Dell. Jeez.)
For an easy to read pamphlet on the perils of electronic voting ("Myth Breakers"):
http://www.votersunite.orgOne of the myths is that H.A.V.A. requires conversion to electronic voting. IT DOES NOT!
What few lame controls H.A.V.A. mandated have been delayed (...ahem) and not implemented due to UNDERFUNDING and lack of political will of the Fed oversight group (Election Assistance Commission--EAC). Testing of electronics, meeting standards, etc., all slowed down. And no paper trail (let alone real ballot backup) was ever required.
We need...
1. Paper ballots hand-counted at the precinct level (--Canada does it in one day, although speed should not even be a consideration, just accuracy and verifiability)
or, at the least...
2. Paper ballot (not "paper trail") backup of all electronic voting, a 10% automatic recount, very strict security, and NO SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code!
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See new Bob Koehler column on the fiddled results of recent *ELECTION REFORM* (!) initiatives in Ohio:
http://www.tmsfeatures.com/tmsfeatures/subcategory.jsp?custid=67&catid=1824(We can't achieve transparent elections BECAUSE the election system is non-transparent! Bloody irony.)
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We also need an electronic election fraud scandal to hit the airwaves, to prevent them from fiddling the numbers in '06 and '08, with public and media pressure--because I don't think we can get rid of these machines before that.
I was thinking the Ohio initiatives scandal might do it--such an obvious flip-over of the results. But maybe Ney and Abramoff will do it for us. Otherwise, we need...
..parallel elections, independent exit polling, intense statistical analysis of results, and other tools for verifying the next set of elections--to hopefully at least get evidence in '06 to prevent fraud in '08.
For a project for statistical monitoring and challenges of the '06 and '08 elections (they need donations!), see:
http://www.UScountvotes.org--------------
We can no longer depend on the media exit polls for verification. In 2004, the war profiteering corporate news monopolies fiddled their own exit polls, on everybody's TV screens late on election day, to FIT the results of Diebold's and ES&S's secret formulae--thus depriving the American people of major evidence of election fraud. Some alert bloggers/techies grabbed screen shots of the real exit poll results (Kerry won), and that's what all the fuss has been about (some of it). The tweak they did to their exit polls, to make it look like Bush won, was impossible. (See
http://www.TruthIsAll.net.)
The corporate news monopoly exit pollster, Edison-Mitofsky, has promised that we will never again get to see their real results. They will prevent it next time. Ergo, we need independent exit polls. I'm hoping the Dem Party or SOMEBODY will do independent exit polls. (Dems, where are you? Are you still out of your minds on this matter? Are Diebold's and ES&S's lavish lobbying worth it to you?)
(Somebody explain to me how the Dems could tolerate Bushite corporations counting all our votes in secret, without one word of objection. Ney, Abramoff, Rove & Co. couldn't have done this without Dem silence.)