What is blockading desperately needed change in America's political system?

[Peace Patriot]

The short answer is: Non-transparent vote counting on extremely insecure and insider hackable voting machines, run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations--a fascist coup that occurred during the 2002 to 2004 period, with the cooperation of both political parties.

There are many other things--developed over several decades--that are blockading desperately needed change in America's political system. We all know what they are.

1. The war profiteering corporate news monopolies.

Five rightwing billionaire CEOs now control all broadcast news and opinion in this country, and many on the Left stupidly call them the "mainstream media," giving them that ground, and contributing to the delusion that these corporate news monopoly "robber barons" represent anybody but their own fatcat selves. TV/radio monopolies are combined with newsprint, and with entertainment, in vast empires of fascist lies and disinformation. These fascist liars often don't convince the American people of anything (--70% of the American people oppose the Iraq War and want it ended, for instance, despite relentless, 24/7 warmongering and fascist propaganda), but they DO succeed in demoralizing the great peace-minded, justice-minded American majority, in making people feel alone, isolated and powerless, in making the members of the MAJORITY feel like they are in the minority! THEN Diebold/ES&S does the rest: produces election results that demoralize the voters and the grass roots political activists.

2. Filthy political campaign money and lobbying.

You have to have a million dollars, these days, to even think of running for Congress--the 'peoples' forum.' And I lost track of the presidential campaign pigsties at about the $100,000 mark. Our representatives spend MOST of their time raising money, and listening the people who have lots of it. MOST of that money goes to the war profiteering corporate news monopolies for 15-second and 30-second campaign ads that tell the voters NOTHING, and that further degrade our political culture. Thus, the war profiteering corporate news monopolies are REWARDED for screwing us over, telling us lies, destroying journalism, and turning "the news" into infotainment. There is hardly an office holder in the country who is not "bought and paid for" by the rich and the corporate. THEN Diebold/ES&S does the rest: cements the power of these "bought and paid for" politicians, guarantees their seats, makes them totally beholden to rightwing forces, and makes it impossible for the voters to dislodge them.

3. The "military-industrial complex," the "prison-industrial complex," the corrupt and very destructive "war on drugs," and the police state boondoggle in general.

Given the hijacking of our military for a corporate resource war, we SHOULD BE discussing a drastic cut in the military budget--say, by 90%, down to a true defensive posture--to remove the temptation of wars of choice. We don't need this bloated, aggressive war machine--nor any of its police state counterparts--to be safe, to prevent "terrorism," to deal with violent crime, or to conduct world affairs. Are we discussing a cut in the war budget? No. Instead, our representatives are CONTINUING to lard TRILLIONS of dollars--much of it in no-bid, unaccountable contracts and expenditures--into MORE war, more prisons, more surveillance at home and abroad, more psyops and black ops, more violations of our Constitutional rights at home and violation of human rights--terrible violations--abroad, not just in Iraq, but in Colombia (in the name of the murderous "war on drugs") and everywhere. The U.S. now supports fascist governments, monarchies and fatcat sheiks, and runs disinformation campaigns, and destabilization campaigns and outright coup attempts against democratic governments (notably Venezuela, also Bolivia and Ecuador). U.S. support for democracy and the rule of law has become a cruel joke.

This huge cancerous growth on American politics, and on the backs the American people--the "military-industrial complex" and its "Homeland Security" apparatus--is now destroying democracy HERE. It is bleeding us dry, and depriving us of our rights. It is a monster. Eisenhower saw the light at the end of his presidency and warned us against it. It is the result of our failure to demobilize after WW II, our failure to cut the corporate war profiteers off the taxpayer tit, the development of nuclear weapons (godlike power of the president), and our corporate rulers' paranoia about "communism." "Communism" is gone. Now they invent "terrorism"--and, in Iraq, are CREATING cadres of new "terrorists"--to replace that bogeyman. The MIC now manufactures wars out of nothing. And then manufactures a vote 'counting' system that would make Josef Stalin blush--to produce phony voter endorsements of their goddamned slaughter of 100,000 innocent people. The tail is wagging the dog. The war profiteers now CONTROL all U.S. foreign and domestic policy. Civilian control is kaput. And the Constitution with it.

--------------------------------

Those are the biggies. Fascist/corporate control of the media. Fascist/corporate control of our politicians. Fascist/corporate control of the machinery of war, and of our pocketbooks. These things have been long in development. They did not happen overnight. And you could view "trade secret," proprietary programming code, and inside hackable voting machines, controlled by rightwing corporations, as a product and a symptom of these other trends. And they are. Our democracy was in grave trouble, already, when they fast-tracked these egregiously non-transparent voting machines all over the country. One indication that we were already in grave trouble is the ease with which they put this Stalinist voting system in place--under the radar--with the support of the Democratic Party leadership. It is STILL the thing that NO ONE TALKS ABOUT. The "Iron Curtain" over this subject is almost impenetrable. And that tells you something as well. This WAS the fascist coup. Prior to "trade secret" vote counting, we still had enough vestiges of democracy to turn things around. Now we don't.

"Trade secret" vote counting is more than a symptom. It is the chief blockade to reform.

None of these horrors of a democratic country gone wrong--fascist media, fascist politicians and fascist control of our military and our pocketbooks--can be reformed, can be turned around--and the ship of state put on a better course--without TRANSPARENT ELECTIONS.

'Trade secret' vote counting is not the only thing wrong with our political system. But it is the democracy-killer. It is the 'coup de grace'--the final kick of the fascist boot. It prevents all change. It enables rightwing Bushite voting machine corporations to shape the overall impact of election results, and thus to control the overall policy trend in the top echelons of government. For every election in which the voters are able to outvote the machines, and elect a true representative of the people, the programmers at Diebold and ES&S can tweak TWO elections the other way, without any means of detection, in many cases without any real "ballots" to count, with no human eyes upon it, and without any way for the public, or the true winning candidate, to fight back.

The FL-13 Congressional election in '06 proved this definitively--that there is no recourse in Diebold/ES&S (s)elections. In the FL-13 (s)election, ES&S voting machines 'disappeared' 18,000 votes for Congress in Democratic areas, with the (s)election decided (for the Bushite, naturally) by some 350 votes. When lawyers for the Democratic candidate (Christine Jennings) took the matter to court, and requested to review ES&S's 'trade secret' code, to try to find out what happened to those 18,000 votes, ES&S REFUSED, and argued that ES&S's 'right' to profit from our election system TRUMPS the right of the voters to know how their votes were counted. Such fascist assertions by Bushites and corporate predators have ceased to surprise us. The surprise, for us--and the real problem--is that, a) the judge agreed, and b) this so-called 'Democratic" Congress has done NOTHING about this--NOTHING!

Clearly, the wrong person is sitting in Congress, representing FL-13, and casting votes in favor of war and other fascist policy. And not even an egregiously stolen election such as this prompts our so-called 'Democratic' Congress to take action to correct it, or to question "trade secret" vote tabulation!

Thus, the programmers at Diebold and ES&S are able to shape a Congress that ESCALATES the Iraq War, that lards George Bush and Dick Cheney with $100 billion MORE of our taxpayer dollars to keep killing Iraqis until they sign over their oil rights, and that not only fails to impeach Bush/Cheney for an outright felony--massive domestic spying without a warrant--one crime among many, many crimes--but immunizes them for this crime and gives them NEW spying powers.

MONEY puts pro-war, fascist candidates into a position to be Diebolded into office. Diebold and ES&S does the rest. "D" by their names, or "R," it doesn't matter. Look at the overall RESULT.

70% of the American people oppose this war and want it ended. Congress does the reverse. You do the math.

---------------------

But the statistic that really gets me is that 56% of the American people opposed this war FROM THE BEGINNING (Feb. '03). 56% is a significant majority. It would be a landslide in a presidential election (and believe me, it was). And that 56% had to include people who believed that Saddam had WMDs and/or had something to do with 9/11. They just didn't think it was worth a war! The WMDs were contained, and were being eliminated by the UN weapons inspectors. And the 9/11 connection, if true, was minor. (The 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia and Yemen!)

MOST Americans thought this war was unnecessary and wrong. MOST Americans did not buy into the Bush Junta's war juggernaut, and RESISTED the 24/7 war propaganda.

You may not be aware of this 56% early MAJORITY opposition to the Iraq War. It was literally drowned out in the 24/7 warmongering of that period. But we can be sure that the political establishment was well aware of it, and knew that it would grow--as the heinous nature of this war became more evident. It was to defeat that peace-minded American majority--then at 56%, now at 70%--that the so-called "Help America Vote Act" (HAVA) was passed in the same month as the Iraq War Resolution (IWR), October '02. The two were/are RELATED. The IWR guaranteed unjust war. HAVA provided the means to shove that war down the throats of the American people--by appropriating $3.9 billion (an election system boondoggle) to fast-track non-transparent electronic voting all over the country by 2004.

And now we see the result--a so-called 'Democratic' Congress doing exactly the REVERSE of their mandate from the people to end the war, and to get this tyrannical president and vice president under control.

They have shaped our political system--with money and now with the 'coup de grace' of non-transparent vote counting--to result in policy that is the REVERSE of the will of the American people, and that is furthermore exceedingly destructive of the interests of the American people. What money can't buy, Diebold/ES&S can tweak and fiddle, 'disappearing' 18,000 votes here, or 2,000 there, stealing 5% here, or 1% there, to produce a fascist Congress with a 'D' by its name.

And we absolutely MUST change this--in whatever ways we can devise--if we want democracy in this country. We cannot even begin to address the major problems listed above--and the many other problems--without TRANSPARENT vote counting. It is the bottom line of democracy. With it, there is hope. With it, our heartfelt, tireless efforts for good candidates and good policies, will bear fruit. Without it, our efforts may produce a victory here, or a victory there, but they will NEVER produce a government that is aligned with the will of the people. They will NEVER produce reform. They will NEVER produce a change of course.

Now, they can put whatever percentage "thumb on the scales" that they need to, wherever and whenever they need to do it, to produce a fascist national policy and government. For the most part, it is undetectable. Where a flash point occurs--a red flag--such as FL-13, they use fascist control of the media, and fascist control of Congress, to muffle, ignore it, treat it as an oddity. Some of us election reformers here at DU experienced this muffling treatment when we discovered the exit poll discrepancy (and many other evidences of 2004 election fraud). Muffled, ignored, treated as an oddity--not just by Bushites, but by Democrats, even by leftists. (We got banned by DKos for yelling about it too loud, cuz the word had come down from above--McAuliffe's DNC--that such talk was verboten.)

It's interesting the excuse that some Democratic leaders have used for escalating the war and giving Bush/Cheney new powers to oppress us with. They say they "don't have the votes" in Congress to do what 70% of the American people clearly want them to do.

Well, whose fault is that, hm? Who colluded with the biggest crooks in the Anthrax Congress to spread election theft machines all over the country? Who 'black-holed' any information about this fraudulent election SYSTEM (and CONTINUES to do so)? Who forbade any talk of election fraud? And who, when talk of election fraud, and overwhelming evidence of election fraud, could not be suppressed, focused the discussion on Ohio and the Bushites' blatant violations of the Voting Rights Act, and AWAY FROM the egregiously fraudulent election SYSTEM that had been speedily installed, with no controls, all over the country?

The Democratic Party's lack of TRUE Democratic votes in Congress is their own damned fault.

I'm not going to get into the failures, treason, betrayals or corruption of individual Democratic Party leaders. Some of them are irredeemable jerks. Many of them are scared. I've little doubt that some of them are being blackmailed. Collectively, they stink to high heaven, although some individuals may be virtuous, or at least doing what they can. It is very difficult to tell. And I do NOT underestimate the danger they may be in, or what-all they may be dealing with behind the scenes.

But I will say this: Their support of non-transparent vote counting, using SECRET code controlled by RIGHTWING corporations, put the fascist boot on our throats. It is the LEAST they could have done, to warn us about it. They did not. It is the LEAST they could have done, once we handed them the gavel, to investigate it and denounce it. They have not done so. It is the one unassailable rallying point for all Americans, except for a tiny minority of Bushite fascists. NEARLY EVERYONE in the country wants vote counting that everyone can see and understand. (A Zogby poll put it at 92%.) They have done nothing. They have covered it up. They have put poison pills in election reform bills (for instance, giving all power over the "trade secret' code to the President, for godssakes!). And now they have postponed reform until 2012!

We, the People, now have before us a fight to the death, to save our democracy--and our own party has colluded in making it a long, complicated, difficult campaign in every state and local venue, to restore transparent vote counting. This fight IS happening. Witness the awesome events in California, recently. (A reformist Secretary of State elected, against great odds--by the people outvoting the machines--and her recent crackdown on Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia, and on the corrupt county election officials who are shilling for them.) This battle is thrilling. There is LIFE in this democracy. The life of the PEOPLE.

Can we win it? I don't know. Democracy movements have history on their side. And we have some wonderful examples to the south of us--country after country in South America finally establishing real democratic rule, based on TRANSPARENT ELECTIONS, and grass roots activism. Talk about "against the odds." This, after decades and centuries of brutal (and often U.S.-backed) fascist oppression. If the South Americans can do it, so can we. That's my thinking.

We have the special problem here of the ILLUSION of democracy, quite deliberately fashioned to prevent a democratic awakening in THIS country. The South Americans do not have that handicap. Fascist oppression there has been overt. They know who "the enemy" is. U.S.-based global corporate predators and their local fascist collaborators; the World Bank/IMF (corporate loan sharks); U.S.-imposed "free trade" (rapacious resource extraction; slave labor); and the phony, murderous U.S. "war on drugs" (guns, bullets, tanks, helicopters, planes, toxic pesticides--to oppress and kill union leaders, small peasant farmers and political leftists).

The new leftist (majorityist) democracies have been very shrewd in identifying the malefactors, strong in opposing them (especially the Andean democracies, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, also Argentina), and visionary in the remedies. All told, the left has swept South American elections--not just in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Argentina, but also in Brazil, Uruguay, Chile and Nicaragua (and they came close in Peru, and even closer in Mexico; Paraguay will likely go left this year, and the Guatemalan left is also looking good). So, the measures taken to understand, identify and defeat the fascist oppression in South America, and to establish democracy and self-determination, which are strongest in the Andes region, are bolstered by alliances among MANY leftist governments, which is providing new protection against U.S./Bushite interference. The goal of the Bolivarians (the Andes democracies) is a South American "Common Market" and common currency. As I said, they have been very smart in identifying the REAL problems, and conceiving solutions.

WE are having trouble identifying the problems. In South America, the OAS and other organizations (the Carter Center, EU election monitoring groups, and many local civic groups and individuals--liberals on a wide spectrum, believers in democracy)--have put in at least decade of hard work on transparent elections in these countries. That is probably the key to it all. It is work we have only just begun--and information and public education are still way behind these South American countries.

Example: In Venezuela, they use electronic voting, but it is an OPEN SOURCE CODE system--anyone may review the code by which the votes are tabulated--and they hand-count FIFTY-FIVE PERCENT of the votes, as a check on machine fraud.

They figured out long ago that you CAN'T HAVE private corporations--let alone RIGHTWING corporations--'counting' all the votes with secret code, and with no audit/recount controls, and expect anything but a fascist result! It's a no-brainer.

But we are still in Illusion-land, lulled by the dream that our Democratic Party leaders would never do that to us, or that--somehow--the war profiteering corporate news monopolies would report it, if it were "news."

So many people were hurt--demoralized, the wind taken out of their sails--by the fabricated Bush/Cheney victory in 2004, believing that a majority of Americans had endorsed unjust war, torture and the ripping up of the Constitution. It's because they believe in democracy that they believed that result. They believe in voting. They believe in civic duty. They believe (or believeD) that democracy was still in working order, here--and if only they fought hard enough, and raised enough money, and registered enough new voters, the people would surely throw Bush and Cheney out office.

Grass roots Democrats blew the Bushites away in new voter registration, nearly 60/40, in 2004. (Where did all those votes go?). They matched the Bush/Cheney money machine, dollar for dollar. They knew they had the people with them. They KNEW it. They could smell it. It was everywhere. And, on election day, the exit polls reflected what they knew--that the people had indeed won.

Then, "somehow," it all got reversed. And since NO ONE in the Democratic Party leadership had warned them about this "under the radar" takeover of the election system by Bushite corporations, and since it was 'black-holed' in the fascist media, most people were bewildered, and many fell into depression and listlessness. People recovered from that, and went all out again in 2006, only to find that the 'Democratic' Congress that they were electing "somehow" turned into a Bushite Congress.

Now we hear we need to fight harder, harder, HARDER...next time. "We need to get rid of the 'Blue Dogs.'" "We need to elect a 'Democratic' president." Harder, harder and HARDER we run, and, as in Alice in Wonderland, get nowhere.

It's the voting machines, stupid!

Nothing is going to change until we change THAT. Voting is our chief power over our government, short of insurrection. It is the mechanism of our sovereignty as a people. We have the numbers. We who want peace and justice are by far the majority. We MUST restore transparent vote counting, if democracy is to continue in the United States of America--once the beacon of democracy to the world--despite all our flaws--now a tattered, disreputable ghost of itself, a "banana republic," at the mercy of global corporate predators.

No matter the errors our country has fallen into--and some of them have been horrible--that fire burning in our hearts--our love of democracy--was born here. We all have ikons of it in our minds. Those are NOT illusions. They are the ideals of our country's Founders, who themselves were flawed, but who passed something of great value on to us, a belief in self-rule by the people, and notions of human rights and equality that have grown, through much struggle and grief, via democracy, to include every human being. They are also our own memories and experiences of democracy--in our lives and in the greater political context--and our knowledge of it from other sources, from reading history, from hearing peoples' stories. An ikon is a spiritual object--something that inspires. And this is a spiritual thing--Americans' belief in democracy. It is not an illusion. It is a sacred trust.

I DO understand why people here are so reluctant to take the blinders off, and to look honestly at the tragic breakage of trust that has occurred between us and our party leaders. To me, the "trade secret" vote counting, and our leaders' collusion in it, is indisputable proof that most of them no longer believe in democracy, and never had any intention of doing the will of the people, and don't have it now. Their actions speak loudly enough. The "trade secret" vote counting speaks even louder--and spoke early to me. So, for all the value of such things as antiwar protests and letter-writing/calling campaigns--and they do have great value, for heartening other Americans, and as public education and moral witness--these efforts to influence "the Democrats" merely result in their dissembling, their lying, their speaking out of both sides of their mouths. They have to do their part to keep up the ILLUSION that they are listening, that we have a democracy. But it is a sham. And I think we must recognize this. Our political system is NOT going to right itself. With "trade secret" vote counting, it CANNOT right itself. Our leaders, who have done this to us, are not deserving of the sacred trust that WE carry in our hearts, the flame that we wish to pass on to future generations, the ideal of government "of, for and by the people." THEY are letting it "perish from the earth." WE must not permit that to happen.

We need to re-focus, and zero in, like laser beams, on the one actual power that we have: voting! We need to get that power back, and we need to use it.

There are three lessons from the South American democracy movement that keep recurring, in one country after another, that seem to be the general keys to its success. The lessons are these:

1. Transparent elections (!).
2. Grass roots organization.
3. Think big.

Think locally. Our county registrars. Our local polling place. Our community. Our state election officials. Our basic civic strength. And think how to connect our civic and community strength with that of other grass roots networks. Think big: our sovereignty as a people, our national self-determination, the will and the interests of the majority, truly good national policy, social justice, the rule of law, equality before the law, equal opportunity, fair use of the country's resources, world peace.

And think strategically, about POWER. What is our power over our government? Voting. And how did they take our power away? By "trade secret" vote counting on insider hackable machines. How to get our power back, as Step One toward restoring democracy and implementing reform? Demand vote counting that everyone can see and understand. Demand it of our county registrars and state officials. Hold them to account.

And I would add this--since the U.S. is a VERY difficult country to reform. Think past the next election. We probably cannot achieve full transparency in the vote counting by next year. It will be spotty, with many anomalous results (Bushites and Bushite 'Democrats' stealing elections, and most likely the presidency). We need to think long term. And if we suffer martial law, more 'terrorist' attacks, a widened Mideast war, a military Draft, more impacts from global warming and deterioration of our infrastructure, and/or a second Great Depression, in the meantime, keep thinking long term. We MUST restore transparent vote counting--the basis of all democracy.

[Kagemusha]

1. Forgive the laconic answer but IMHO, what's blocking change is

...America's political system.

[Peace Patriot]

3. Ok, I think I know what you're saying. But I think this system is still movable

WITH transparent vote counting.

Non-transparent, "trade secret" vote counting is both a symptom, and much more than a symptom. It is an actual blockade to change.

Money can be overcome. Fascist media can be overcome (and is increasingly ignored by the people, as it is in South America). Inertia, over-privilege, bribery, lobbying can all be overcome by persistent election activism, calling them to account, threatening them with removal, putting forth new candidates--IF you have transparent vote counting. Even gerrymandering can be overcome (--though that's a really tough one) IF you have transparent vote counting. The trouble is they've ADDED "trade secret" vote counting TO filthy money, fascist media, inertia, over-privilege, bribery, lobbying and gerrymandering, which gives the majority--even this staggering 70% majority against the war--no chance. We might rally forces, people, precinct walkers, poll watchers and tens of thousands in small donations, and elect a good guy in one place; they meanwhile (s)elect two, three or four in other places, that have been better prepped by fascist forces, to counter the ones in which we outvote the machines. The sleepy districts, where it may be very close--they can tweak real jerks into office, with a line of code. And they're doing this, of course, in the primaries (choosing our candidates) as well as in the general election.

They're always ten steps ahead of us--but, with "trade secret" vote counting, they have OVERALL control of the outcome. We can't catch up even if we run really, really fast.

This is what I mean by a blockade to change. An ACTUAL blockade. And the worse this political establishment has become (especially from Reagan onwards), the MORE undemocratic control they must exert over the election process, to this point, with the Bush Junta, of seizing DIRECT, secret, corporate control of the VOTE COUNT itself.

To begin reform, we have to first peel that blockade back. It is a show-stopper. And it will be the hardest thing to do, because we have to do it WITHOUT public control over vote counting. I think there is still enough potential influence of ordinary people on local and state officials to achieve it, peacefully and lawfully. In local/state situations, we CAN outvote the machines, and we are dealing, in some cases, with our neighbors--our local registrars--or with state officers, not that far away in the state capitol. It is already happening, but is still sporadic, and generally most successful in Democratic areas--although not always. We have a BIG problem in Los Angeles, an overwhelmingly Democratic area, for instance, with one of the worst Diebold shills in the country running the elections. It's taking action at the state level--the election of Debra Bowen as Sec of State--to rein Connie McCormack in. I don't know what's wrong with L.A. county supervisors, but they all probably owe their elections to "trade secret" vote counting, a la McCormack.

Anyway, unless a nationwide (and we're a REALLY big country) participatory democracy can somehow be established, we simply cannot get anywhere--as to national policy--without transparent vote counting. It is a total blockade of change at the national level.

We have two kinds of corruption involved in e-voting: The old fashioned kind, of all these electronic voting billions running through peoples' fingers. And the new and very LETHAL kind, the people who are directing the Diebold/ES&S programmers (possibly Karl Rove, directly, or Rove through various agents at the corporations--I think that's what his hidden RNC emails are all about).

Debra Bowen is taking an indirect--and probably smart--approach of not directly denying the corporations and their county registrar shills the moula for this shiny, new, EXPENSIVE, crapass technology, but demanding secure source code, and in the case of touchscreens, very limited use with required 100% audit. And, if they keep failing the source code tests--paper ballots!

They destroyed Kevin Shelley because he hit them (Diebold) right on the head with a lawsuit, and they thought he was going to expose them. (He demanded to see Diebold's source code just before the 2004 (s)election.) Interestingly, it was some of the county registrars, led by McCormack, who did the overt dirty work (while SOMEBODY did some covert dirty work) on Shelley. Bowen is giving the corporations a "clean slate" chance to run honest elections, with the very strong threat behind it that they will be thrown out if they don't. Some of the county registrars will probably deliberately sabotage the election process and blame it on her. But I think she's stronger and more organized than Shelley was, and will be able to fight them off.

In any case, our task--the task I think we need to do to save this democracy--is NOT transforming or replacing the political establishment. It is simply this: Restore transparent vote counting. The American people will do the rest. They are very, very, VERY fed up. Give them a fighting chance--give them transparent vote counting--and they will start turning things around very fast.

And that is, after all, what democracy is all about: the people rule.

[jimshoes]

2. I enjoyed reading your post

Peace Patriot. Many of your points I am in agreement with. The key is to think and act. We have been passive rather than active, (not everyone, but many including myself) now it is time to make our voices heard. K&R

[Peace Patriot]

4. Yup, now is the time! You are so right!

They got this "trade secret" vote counting system in place because we were all asleep--lulled by the illusion that our democracy would work continue working, more or less. The Supreme Court stole one election, but not again. So we worked our butts off in 2004, registering six new Democrats for every four Republicans. How could we lose with that kind of math in almost every indicator?

Little did we know.

I remember thinking, going into the 2004 (s)election, that I didn't have to worry that much about my home state of California, because Kevin Shelley was in charge--who had sued Diebold's ass, and provided Californians with a paper ballot option.

God.

They didn't manage to steal California for Bush, but they did shave off votes from Kerry here, to help manufacture and pad Bush's national popular majority. And of course the Recall of the year before was a total scam. But Shelley had just been elected, at that point, barely had his name on the door. It took him time to figure out what the hell they were doing, then he made his move (in May '04)--and got totally smashed and ruined for his trouble, with the goddamned state Democratic Party leaders in collusion. A very sickening event.

Anyway, how stupid was I, to think that California was "ok"? I was only dimly aware of the facts of the election system at that time, and have become much more knowledgeable since then.

NOW is the time. No more hoping things will right themselves. Ain't gonna happen until we restore our right to vote.

[NoFederales]

5. There is no doubt that election reform is primary in my mind. That, and

the case being that no candidates, or their Party, are blazing away at undoing the damages that the Bush Administration has wrought. They'll claim change in generic ways, but I don't see election reform on the table, or extricating government from interference by corporate influence, foreign influence--like AIPAC, the Saudis, and those others.

I think the two-party system is broken because of the influence peddlers having purchased it from our representatives--and a good time is had by all, right?

Great post!

Let's get the balloting process fixed first, and then I want to take some swings at a few others....

NoFederales

[puebloknot]

10. Truthout article on changing our whole election system.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/081107Z.shtml

I just found this and haven't even had time to look it over thoroughly, but thought I'd post it and come back later for reactions.

[NoFederales]

14. Holy smokes! It's a blitzkreig, isn't it, with countermeasures being released

everywhere. I, too, will have to have time to sort through some of this information. Thanks, I had no idea how many fronts had opened up. It is stimulating, eh?

NoFederales

[bleever]

6. False elections are the linchpin of our illegitimate regime's power.

Thank you for this outstanding post.

[CK_John]

7. You missed the most important, human nature has a tremendous fear of change. n/t

[superkia]

11. Change like, voting for a candidate that is typical of D.C. tactics instead of a new voice!

If they can get us all to paper ballots and find a way to actually count them, I think this will fall in our hands. Before we make that vote, are we doing the usual, are we afraid of a new voice or face? I think now is the time to step away from the typical Washington politicians that have been doing nothing but letting our country go to hell. Well for most Americans that is, not the wealthy, they are always taken care of. Do we want the same old shit we've been fed for years thats killing our country or is it time to stand and show them that the MSM and their corporations don't control us? I think this election will tell us where we really stand. Are there any candidate that believe in the constitution and are for impeachment? Are there any candidates that are even speaking of these critical issues? Think real hard before you make that oh so critical decision because we will be stuck with it for some time.

[puebloknot]

8. K&R This is a great post, and I appreciate the work you've done...

...to share it with us all.

My fear is that time is running out, and once martial law descends, our only recourse will be to hit the streets, dressed to the Nines in our best orange outfits, and do what they've done "down South." We've yet to see what kind of reaction that would inspire in a government armed to the teeth with draconian weaponry to use for crowd control.

I agree with you that we're not going to get any help out of our elected leaders (not to mention the unelected ones). We have to withdraw fiscal support, since our votes don't count any longer.

There's an event planned for 9/11/07 -- a sort of "sit down, stay home, shut up, and don't spend no money" kind of thing that, if done in sufficient numbers, will get some attention. Or so I hope! Or do corporations contribute so much to buying our government that our measly contributions are accepted for spending change, but would not be missed?

I'm just agonizing out loud here, and welcome comments.

In 2004, when I registered to vote here in New Mexico, and when I pushed the clerk to tell me what systems were in place to assure that my vote would be counted, she handed me a xeroxed copy of a report on the voting method for some African tribe: There were marbles of different colors. The blue marbles went in a hole in the lid of a blue barrel, the red ones went in a hole in the top of a red barrel. You know, kind of like stuffing Valentines in a Valentine box when we were kids. At the end of the day, the barrels were opened, and the votes were counted in public, with the community standing around watching.

I felt *so* comforted that the State of New Mexico was taking my question seriously, giving so much attention to the matter of transparent voting methods! I imagine that the folks up at the Taos Pueblo would have been thrilled to know that, too!

You're right. The basic concern is getting the vote back. Without it, we're history as a democracy.

[annabanana]

9. The work of generations, I fear... n/t

[Peace Patriot]

15. Yes, it may be the work of generations. Certainly undoing all the harm that the Bush Junta

and its Democratic collaborators have done will take many decades. But re-establishing transparent vote counting as a principle--indeed as THE founding principle--of government is the essential first step on that road. And it may take a long time, or it may reach critical mass (public awareness, public action) much sooner, all in a rush. You can never know in beneficial revolutionary movements. Sometimes it can just suddenly coalesce. As a brat of the '60s, I remember this coalescence occurring on black civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, Native American rights, disabled rights, immigrant worker rights, on environmental consciousness and on the out-of-control "military-industrial" complex (the Vietnam War) ALL AT ONCE. It was an amazing era.

There was also something else that happened, harder to define--a sudden realization mostly by the young that the political establishment's viewpoint on them--as "cogs in a machine," as consumers, cannon fodder and slave labor--was WRONG, and that there is another way to BE. There were actually events call "Be-in's" in the early '60s--strong on music, dancing, good food, and colorful clothes and banners, and perhaps the key to it all: FREE ADMISSION, everybody welcome, free music, free dance, free food, free fun. The first "Hippie" events. People trying to experience simply being a HUMAN BEING--not driven by ambition, money and war. Mainstream society--corporate-controlled society--was too limiting. The Beatles and psychedelic rock were only a year or two in the future--the astonishing explosion of the counter-culture. Perhaps most revolutionary of all was the concept "Make love not war." Were we made for war? Were we destined to be ever at war? Or should we be making love instead--not just sexually but in every way: loving other human beings, not killing them. This latter--"make love not war"--scared the bejeebers out of the "military-industrial complex," and they did everything in their power to marginalize and destroy that idea. Money for sex was (is) one of the linchpins of their death cult. All human needs--food, water, clothing, shelter, learning, education, family life, creativity, work--must be money-based. If it's given away, they don't get their cut. (Corporate society as mafia.) The "Hippies" profoundly threatened this "money is all" culture--and are still getting trashed to this day for maintaining that "love" should replace "war."

This all happened AT ONCE--possibly triggered by the trauma of the JFK assassination. Some of it, anyway. That death totally shook people up. With the human rights movements--black civil rights, women's rights, etc.--those were of course the end-result of decades and centuries of struggle. They seemed to "just happen," suddenly. But that perception was in error--although it's true that the convergence of these movements and their sudden success, all at once--a major shift in consciousness that made previous bigotries and limits on human potential unacceptable--was remarkable and very notable in the '60s era.

My generation--although we tried very hard--was too naive, politically, and perhaps, by the '80s (the Reagan Era of Greed), too exhausted (following assassination after assassination after assassination--all our political leaders, JFK, RFK, MLK, taken down, and two million people slaughtered in Southeast Asia) to address the major problem: the "military-industrial complex." The cultural changes, however, are still with us. The Bushites and their far rightwing allies have tried their best to undo them, but they have not succeeded. One of those cultural changes was widespread public suspicion of government-induced war fever--the "lessons of Vietnam"--which was evident in that early 56% opposition to the Iraq War. The majority did not trust what Bush was saying. They were overridden, but still, this war far different from the early and unthinking public APPROVAL of the Vietnam War. People were much more alert to the lies and disinformation of "military-industrial complex"-manufactured war.

Ten steps ahead of us. They KNEW they would need "trade secret" vote counting to get this war in motion. The death cult won--but they had to go all out to TRICK the public, with lies and fiddled vote counts.

Which brings me back to the task at hand: restoring transparent vote counting, the foundation of democracy.

It could take decades. It could happen tomorrow. It's up to those of us who love democracy to keep the flame burning, to educate, to agitate, to support good election officials, and pressure the bad ones out. We cannot CREATE democracy. We can only help it along.

Power to the People! (--another old '60s phrase!).

[yowzayowzayowza]

12. Human & Machine Readable Federally Mandated Paper Ballot Standards.

Forcing all vendors to a standard ballot style allows We The People to play one machine off against another rather than the efaith-based automation we currently suffer.

[bleever]

13. All this stuff, put together so well,

should be something passed on, from friends and family, to all the people now looking to be part of a community that is reality-based.

Keep speaking to the foundational issues, Peace Patriot.

:thumbsup:

[annabanana]

16. A kick for Andy. . . n/t