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Here it is in a nutshell: Two far rightwing Bushite corporations gained control of the tabulation of our votes, during the 2001 to 2004 period, by selling electronic voting systems to the states, run on SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code, and, in many cases, with not even the merest "paper trail" for recounts and audits (let alone a real paper ballot).
The contracts that our stupid or corrupt election officials signed with these companies PERMITTED "TRADE SECRET," PROPRIETARY VOTE TABULATION.
You almost don't need to know anything else.
The election system is fraudulent on its face. No one but no one should have secret control of the vote tabulation.
People understand the ATM argument--that if an ATM machine routinely provides a receipt, why can't a voting machine generate a paper trail?--and they will immediately agree with that (though they might need explanations re: a real paper ballot, vs. a mere paper trail). But what we need to tell them--and what they need to understand--is that this condition (verification of the vote count) was NOT PRESENT IN THE 2004 ELECTION (nor in several of the 2002 elections, notably Georgia). This condition INVALIDATED those elections--and it was no innocent set of circumstances that brought this condition about.
But how the system got put in place is irrelevant to people understanding that there is no transparency (--although it's not irrelevant to solving the problem). Our elections have become completely non-transparent and unverifiable. And, actually, WHO is counting our votes with secret formulae is also irrelevant to this point: that the system is NON-TRANSPARENT. It is hidden. It is behind closed doors. It is behind the curtain. We really and truly DO NOT KNOW and CANNOT know who won the 2004 election (except for external evidence, all of which points to a Kerry win).
And it wouldn't matter if it was the other way around--if it was George Soros owning and controlling the vote tabulation. That wouldn't be right either!
How did it happen? Using the opportunity of the notorious 2000 election, and with the excuse of replacing the old "hanging chad" punchcard voting machines with something better, Congress proceeded to create a $4 billion dollar electronic voting boondoggle (the so-called "Help America Vote Act"--HAVA), with no controls on "trade secret" vote tabulation, no "paper trail" requirement (Tom Delay's doing), and such lax controls on quality that Diebold, ES&S and other corporations began by selling outright lemons to the states--extremely unreliable machines that constantly break down.
These machines are still breaking down--and producing weird results, and doing weird things like counting backwards and erasing thousands of votes--and are also easily hackable, with some machines containing horribly insecure additions, such as internal modems that private parties at private corporations can dial up and access.
The breakdowns require company personnel to be onsight during elections, fiddling with the machines, and with access to voting data. And these very expensive systems also require expensive servicing and upgrading contracts, creating even more insecurity.
It's just nuts!
But the most alarming item is the sheer speed and invisibility with which thousands of votes can be changed, leaving no trace. In times past, yes, there was some vote stealing and election fraud. But at least the perps were catchable. It all happened at human speed, accessible to human eyes and hands. Nothing like this!
In this election system, massive fraud can occur, instantly, merely by a few pre-programmed, self-erasing lines of computer code, that can change a thousand, or a thousand and four, or five hundred and sixty seven Kerry votes to Bush votes, wherever the perps so desire (and using whatever algorithm they need to provide an appearance of randomness), or, say, to shift random 1%-2%'s of Kerry votes to third party candidates in all precincts in the central tabulators.
The potential for fraud is immense. And..
AND...the people who control this software are BUSH PARTISANS. And...
AND... all the external evidence of the 2004 election contradicts the Bush win.
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People DO want to know HOW this happened, and they need and deserve answers. But the basic facts about the SYSTEM's fraudulence--its non-transparency, and unverifiability--are incontestable.
And the rightwing associations of Diebold and ES&S are also incontestable. (Wally O'Dell of Diebold was the Bush-Cheney campaign chair and a major Bush-Cheney fundraiser in Ohio, for godssakes! And ES&S was funded by well-known rightwing billionaires.)
When you're talking to a Republican, say, "How would YOU feel if George Soros controlled the vote count with 'trade secret' software? Would you trust that outcome?
I KNOW that most Americans would object to this if they knew. In fact, I strongly suspect that many, many REPUBLICAN votes for Kerry were changed to Bush. Republican voters may have been the biggest victims of the 2004 election fraud. Republican precincts would have been the easiest places to steal votes without anyone suspecting.
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So that's "Part One" of the story. The election system has become egregiously non-transparent, unverifiable and unfair.
"Part Two" is: Why didn't the Democrats object? (See my post below.) (--partly venal but widespread corruption connected to the billion dollar electronic voting boondoggle; partly pro-war Democratic Party leaders who didn't want to win, because it would have meant working with a president who was beholden to a big antiwar grass roots constituency--the people who elected Kerry and had the election stolen from them).
Part Three is what the TV networks did to their exit polls on election night--a critically important piece of information that explains why everybody THOUGHT Bush won, and that there was little or no evidence to the contrary.
Late on election day, the TV networks ALTERED their own exit poll data (Kerry won) to "fit" the "official result" derived by Diebold's and ES&S's secret formulae (Bush won), thus depriving the American people of major evidence of election fraud, and squelching protests and calls for investigation.
In a non-transparent election system, exit polls are the best evidence you can have of whether or not the outcome is correct. These are scientifically-designed polls of people who actually voted (just after they voted). They are used routinely in other countries to verify ALL elections and check for fraud.
Not here. Here, they were DOCTORED to hide evidence of a Kerry win. Why? Because the network heads and decision-makers are all Bushites and war profiteers, and DIDN'T WANT there to be any questioning of Diebold's and ES&S's secret vote tabulation. (The real result--Kerry won by a 3% margin--was obtained by alert bloggers who took screen shots of the early exit poll numbers; the pollsters then later admitted the truth.)
So that's the story:
1. A fraudulent election system that any real American should find appalling.
2. The corrupt, collusive and/or fearful Democrats, who let this system be put in place without one word of objection.
3. The war profiteering corporate news monopolies who endorsed Diebold's and ES&S's secret vote tabulation and FALSIFIED their own evidence to the contrary, to keep Americans ignorant of it.
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It is a sorry and shocking tale. We are being ruled by war profiteers and people who have no belief in democracy. The evidence of it grows heavier--and more compellingly obvious--every day, with every death in Iraq, with every bloated corpse in New Orleans, with every new effort to rob the poor and loot the U.S. treasury, with every torture photo, with every incoherent, pre-programmed half-sentence that comes out of Bush's mouth. Americans did not re-elect this idiot, and they voted to oust him and the Oil Cartel that pulls his strings.
But the people who like the war and all the boodle thought otherwise, and had devised for themselves the means of having THEIR will done, in opposition to the voters.
And the fact that it cannot be proven with finality, one way or another, means that we are no longer living in a democracy, where transparent elections are the bottom line. They are the very definition of democracy.
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