Monday, October 23, 2006

The Computer Ate My Democracy

Republican democracy is an Enlightenment child birthed beneath candlelight and quill pens. Its death may come at the hands of touch screen computers and ruthlessly partisan CEOs. Ever since the hanging chads of 2000, computer companies have been taking over the mechanics of counting votes. But the accuracy and speed the vendors promise comes with an appalling lack of transparency, reliability and security. The problem is so serious, that Democratic members of Congress attempted to rush a bill through before the mid-term recess mandating paper ballots be made available to voters. Of course, the bill got nowhere thanks to Republican gate keepers. The CEO of Diebold, you may remember, promised to "deliver" Ohio to the GOP. He was good on his word.
Touch screen voting machines, know as DREs to the trade, are the most problematic. They are literally designed with failure in mind. No electronic voting machine currently sold in the US meets audit standards currently in use in the private and public sectors. In other words, an ATM machine is more reliable and transparent than a voting machine. There have been demonstrations of altering vote counts using wireless electronic devices or by opening the machine housing and flipping a switch. That should strike you at the very least as odd since hacked voting machines can literally determine who sits in the Oval Office. And that person could send you to Guatanamo Bay or Iraq.
We have had election fraud since the foundation of our republic, but the means for stealing elections, as probably occurred in Ohio in 2004, has never been so powerful or insidious. This blog is written to bring your attention to significant issues and facts affecting your life. Nothing represents a greater threat to the survival of our democracy than computerized vote fraud. This is true despite what propaganda The Decider is spewing forth about his failed war. So watch the HBO documentary titled "Hacking Democracy". And then demand your Congress member do something about it. When writing, you don't have to use a quill pen.

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