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all over the country, owned and controlled by less than a handful of rightwing Bushwhack corporations, with virtually no audit/recount controls, is that it doesn't have to be an eye-poking 10-15% in any one place--a number that even a Bushwhack judge might harumph over--but it can be 1.5% here, 3% there, 0.05% somewhere else, in selected precincts, regions and states (say Republican areas, where a few %'s more for the Puke won't be noticeable), with a smooth, barely noticeable bump for Pukes, warmongers and corpos in many states, and some "surprising" wins only in selected states (say, close states needed for the electoral college magic number), with the Corpo/fascist media making up all sorts of reasons why the Pukes, warmongers and corpos are winning, despite being loathed by 89% of the people in pre-election polls and exit polls.
So, number one, electronic election theft generally doesn't work that way--in 10-15% gulps--but more subtly in widespread 1%-5% increments that only spoilsports would balk at; and number two, peoples' actual votes, their ballots, don't count any more--the only thing that counts is the word of Diebold & brethren telling us who won.
This was amply demonstrated in FL-13 in 2006, where ES&S (spinoff of Diebold) 'disappeared' 18,000 Democratic votes for Congress in an election that the Puke 'won' by only about 350 votes. When the lawyers for the Democrat, Christine Jennings, took the matter to court, and asked to review ES&S's source code--to try to figure out what happened to those 18,000 votes--ES&S refused, saying that their right to profit from our elections, with their 'TRADE SECRET' code, trumps the right of the voters to know how their votes were counted--and the judge agreed. And when Jennings then took the matter to the Democratic Congress of 2006, it was never heard of again.
So, you see, how people actually voted is no big deal in this Corpo/fascist political system. 18,000 votes? Phht! What's important is Diebold & brethren's PROFITS, and making sure that Pukes or warmongers and corpos of whatever stripe keep the Forever War and the Great Looting on track. These exit polls will be laughed out of court because our political system doesn't give a fuck how people actually vote. It only wants to maintain the illusion that they did.
However, the exit polls could be useful in increasing the levels of citizen awareness and outrage, to the point of all us marching down to our local registrar's offices or homes, with all of our neighbors, and demanding that our votes be counted in the PUBLIC VENUE for all to see. Ordinary people still have some potential influence at the state/local level, which still has jurisdiction over voting systems--so that is the best hope for reversing this coup d'etat, the Corpo takeover and privatization of our election system.
Vigilance, such as these citizen-implemented, transparent exit polls, may act as something of a deterrent, though it won't matter much to Diebold & brethren in vital races. They can and will steal any election that is essential to the Corpo/fascists, and will pass it off as a "computer glitch" or whatever. And if it's any comfort--and it shouldn't be--the Corpo/fascists who are running things may decide to let Obama win (he is, after all, on board for the Forever War--will just move it to Afghanistan--and for the Great Looting--will wring his hands when there's no money for anything) to kill the election reform movement, and the 'TRADE SECRET' code will then come back to bite, really bad, in 2012 (why an Obama win should be no comfort at all, as to 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting).
I'm not saying that people shouldn't take exit poll discrepancies to court--and any other evidence that they can wrench from Diebold & brethren's black boxes or corrupt registrars--and raise holy hell about stolen elections in every way possible. I would never say that. But the most important component of any hard struggle is fully understanding your strategic position at the outset. The public has NO RIGHT to public vote counting any more. That right is gone--fini, kaput, dead--and our democracy went with it. How we can recover transparent vote counting, the bottom line of democracy, in these circumstances, is the problem.
Bear in mind, also, that I may be wrong about things. Diebold & brethren may be planning a 10%-15% heist, and putting McDrone and Ms. To Nowhere into the White House. Obama may be more of a threat than I have guessed. It's extremely difficult to tell, in our byzantine empire, what the fuck is going on. And if they do it, maybe these citizen exit polls will be the key to UN-doing it. They are, in any case, very important as some of the only evidence that we will have about who really won what. In half the voting systems in the country, there is no ballot--nothing to count or recount or audit. In the other half, there may be a ballot but only 1% of them are counted (very inadequate) and recounts are very expensive and difficult to obtain. So, basically, the "evidence" has been almost entirely removed from the voting system, and from the public.
This is why the Corpo exit polls in 2004--the real exit polls (the data that was screen-captured by alert bloggers and staticians before it was doctored)--was so important. That data showed a Kerry win by 3%. Diebold & brethren had reversed that win, and given it to Bush, through widespread, small-percentage electronic fraud (combined with other vote suppression and stealing, particularly in Ohio, a state that had not been fully Diebolded by that time). Those real exit poll numbers started the election fraud/election reform movement. That it the main value of real exit polls, in current circumstances--that they can rally the citizenry to action.
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