(6/7/2005) The Republican Party and the corporations that support them have turned our elections systems into a cruel right-wing joke. This joke has Bush and the GOP laughing all the way to the White House, and it has their supporters laughing all the way to the bank. But the joke is on us, the American people, because the GOP and their supporters are playing us like were all just a bunch of punk ass bitches.

In the 2000 presidential election Al Gore beat George W. Bush by over 500,000 votes, and that's not counting the voters who were denied the right to vote in Florida. The extra votes in Florida would have given Gore the presidency.

A recount of the Florida votes was in progress when a group of GOP insiders stormed the building beating on doors and walls, and yelling obscenities at the top of their lungs. Their actions intimidated the poll workers who then fled the building fearing for their lives. This delayed the recount just long enough for the Supreme Court to decide, by a 5 to 4 vote, that there was not enough time for a hand recount to continue and they gave Bush the victory.

 

In the 2004 presidential election the exit polls showed John Kerry beating Bush in a number of key states, but when the final votes were counted Bush won by just enough of a margin to prevent a recount. I believe the exit polls were correct and Kerry should be our president.

As a result of both of these fraudulent elections we have had a sycophant liar, George W. Bush, running our government into the ground. This guy, and his co-conspirators in Congress, have set back our government's fiscal position, legal system, and international reputation fifty years. They are robbing our government, cheating the middle class, and transforming our democracy into a one party plutocracy.

Personally, I think Bush's actions during the past 5 years have been shameful, and extremely right-wing to the point of being fascist, but what can we do? So I guess we all just have to accept this slap in our collective faces and go about our lives.

The problem with the 2004 election was the new touchscreen voting computers that did not generate any paper record of how people voted. The old punch card ballots at least had a audit trail that could be recounted if the election outcome was in question.

This change, and the timing of the change, presents some serious questions and problems. For example, what if computer hackers are able to hack into these new computerized voting machines and change the votes? Or what if some of the computers, or memory cards, break down during the middle of the voting process? How will we be able to recount the votes to determine who really won? Does it matter to you that your vote might not get counted? Or that your vote might get changed by bad people carrying out some sinister partisan motive?

I believe the GOP has deliberately rigged our elections system so that their candidate always wins no matter how the voters vote. This unquenchable thirst for power and control was recently demonstrated in the Senate when the Republicans threatened the Democrats with the "Nuclear Option" if they continued to filibuster Bush's judicial nominees.

The GOP's greed, ruthlessness, and paranoia are ruining our country. I'm trying to expose this fraud before the American people are, once again, cheated of their choice for President, robbed of their legal system, and denied their constitutional rights.

There are only a handful of corporations in the business of building these new computerized voting machines including Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia Voting Systems. Two of the biggest corporations, Diebold and ES&S, have close ties to the Republican Party.

Diebold's CEO, Walden O'Dell, has been a big contributor to George W. Bush and the Republican Party and has publicly stated that he is going to help the Republicans win in Ohio. ES&S's, formerly known as AIS, previous Chairman and CEO is the Republican Senator from Nebraska, John Hagel (R-NE), and Senator Hagel still owns part of McCarthy & Co. which owns a large part of ES&S. In addition, in 1996 Hagel was elected to the U.S. Senate by a very narrow margin using voting machines made by a company he ran and still was part owner. A fact he failed to disclose to election officials. And when his challenger, Charlie Matulka, requested a hand recount he was denied because the law in Nebraska does not require a hand recount in such situations.

With such a clear right-wing partisan conflict of interest it's starting to look like we might have a situation where we have the foxes looking after the chickens, and these chickens belong to the American people. This appearance of conflict of interest is very troubling and it should cause the hair to stand up on the backs of the Democrat's necks. The Democrats need to take a hard stance to ensure their future candidates, like Gore and Kerry, are not robbed of their elections.

Honest elections are central to our country's founding documents and continued legitimacy in the world. All democracies are based on allowing it's citizens to decide, by voting, who will lead them. This new type of paperless computerized voting process holds the potential for de-legitimizing the process, alienating voters, and ruining our standing in the world. The entire voting process might become a joke as exit polls indicate who should have won the election while the actual winner is selected in some secret backroom by a shadow government run by a small group of faceless people who don't care about us and cannot be held accountable by us.

You might remember that in the 2000 presidential election the major media's exit polls showed Gore winning the state of Florida by a nice margin, but when the final votes were "counted" (I should say "almost counted") Bush won by a few hundred votes.

This type of highly questionable elections activities could easily spread to other states as these new paperless voting machines replace the old punch card machines, thus removing the ability of anyone to question the results because a recount the votes will be impossible.

The solution to fixing this new paperless voting machine problem is actually very simple and would only increase cost slightly. The best solution is to require these new touchscreen voting machines to generate two pieces of paper for each voter. One piece of paper is for the voter to keep and the other one goes into a voting box. The paper receipts are never counted unless there is a need for a vote recount, or as an audit count to ensure the computers are operating correctly.

Every ATM money machine generates a paper receipt for every transaction, and most of these ATM machines are built by Diebold, so why not require every voting machine to generate a paper receipt? Personally, I hold onto my ATM paper receipts and I use them to balance my check book and audit my bank statements. I am always surprised when I see someone make a ATM withdraw and then immediately throw away their paper receipt. These people either have very good memories, or they are very trusting of their banks. I have no such trust for my bank's computers, or for the Republican Party.

The corporations that make these voting machines, and some of the leaders in the Republican Party, oppose the need for paper voting receipts. They claim that the cost would be to high, problems might develop with the printers during voting, and that a paper receipt is not necessary because the technology is so good. However, common sense, and some recent test of these systems, contradict their claims that the technology is fool proof.

In the 2000 presidential election poll workers in Volusia county Florida said at one point the vote totals for Gore were actually going down, and this is of course impossible. Diebold blamed the bizarre computer error on a "faulty memory chip". Another recent test showed vulnerabilities from computer hackers, software bugs, and hardware failures.

In summary, because of the clear conflict of interest, and the potential for program errors, hardware failures, or computer hackers all voting machines should generate a paper audit trail in order to ensure voter confidence, political party confidence, and foreign government confidence in our system of democracy. The GOP is opposed to these corrections, not for technical reasons as they would have us believe, but because they are in control and they intend to stay in control.

Therefore, we should all contact our elected representatives in Congress and lobby them to support legislation, like the bills Senators Graham and Clinton have already introduced, that will require a paper receipt be generated for every voter at all polling locations to ensure a audit trail that can be used, if necessary, to validate the election results.

Don't hold your breath waiting for a response.

A Special Note For The Democrats In Congress:

Putting aside conspiracy theories the real issue for Democrats is about partisan politics and getting enough co-sponsors and votes in the Senate and the House to get Senator Graham's bill, companion to H.R. 2239 passed, or Senator Clinton's bill passed. If you can't pass this legislation before the election in November of 2004 do you really think that you will ever have enough votes to be able to change it in the future? If Republican opposition prevents passage of this legislation I recommend that you take the following actions:

• Call for hearings on why the IEEE standards group cannot reach agreement on standards for electronic voting machines because of a cabal of industry insiders who are subverting the IEEE's goals for their own partisan objectives. Such as, why they are demanding that there is no need for a paper audit trail on these devices.

• Call for hearings about the need for open-source software on voting machines. The current secret proprietary software, "black box", is not encouraging to voters and the recent history of last minute software changes by Diebold is troubling.

• Call for hearings about the security issues involving paperless touchscreen voting systems. Let the American people know that their right to have their votes counted correctly is vulnerable, and election mischief and technology problems have already occurred in the past two elections.

• Create and push legislation that addresses each part of the broader legislation, but in individual pieces. Make speeches, call for citizen participation, and keep the pressure on the Republicans until they fold. Re-introduce the legislation at every opportunity so you can make another speech in an attempt of ignite enough public outrage that the Republicans will be forced to relent, or pay the price. I mean "pay the price" by losing elections, but if someone already has the election systems rigged public pressure won't be worth a damn.

• Finally, if all else fails, buy a bunch of TV media time just before the election and tell the voters about the potential for fraud and ask them all to vote using absentee ballots rather than the paperless touchscreen systems. Tell them to make two copies of their absentee ballot, and mail one of those copies to a independent group that you will create. The purpose of this independent group is to help prevent a fraudulent election, whether intentional or unintentional, by avoiding a paperless vote. Paper is a good thing for honest elections and voter confidence.

If President Eisenhower were alive today he might say it to the American people like this:

"We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence by the corporate controlled computerized voting technology complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exist and will persist".