FAITH-BASED VOTING; Yet where's the Reverence for the Voting Process???

[Land Shark]

I'm severely embarrassed to be posting this my self, but I will get over it. Soon.

Here's the latest column by Chicago Tribune Network Services reporter Robert Koehler. www.commonwonders.com is his personal website where his syndicated columns are posted. This out today....

==============================================

Faith-Based Voting
'Without procedural integrity, you have nothing'

By ROBERT C. KOEHLER
Tribune Media Services

March 30, 2006

Oh, those glitches!

For some reason we tolerate them a lot more in an election — that is to say, in the mechanics of democracy, something we affect to believe in so fervently we're willing to go to war to make sure other countries have it — than we would in, let's say, our banking system.

{snip}

Most infuriating was the scattershot use of the trivializing, blame-avoidance word "glitch," which reduces disenfranchisement to oh well, gosh, just one of those things. The media can live with glitches. They still get their numbers to report. They still get "results," which, in our world of breathless headlines and two-second sound bites, are all that matter. Voting - democracy — is the booster engine that produces winners, then quietly disappears.

{snip}

This, of course, is preposterous; every line of code in a voting program was written by a human. Our vote is hostage to a flawed, secret system of counting that almost no one understands.

{snip}

Nor, as Ion Sancho, election supervisor of Leon County, Fla., learned, do the companies even tolerate having their equipment tested. (Sancho demonstrated that you can modify an election without leaving evidence, which Lehto called "the nuclear bomb of election fraud.")

"In the suit, I'm saying if you hide the ball from the public, the contract is void," Lehto said.

{important snip, MUST reading at www.commonwonders.com }

"Without procedural integrity, you have nothing," Lehto said. What's missing in faith-based democracy is a sense of reverence for the process.


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

full article at www.commonwonders.com

[EFerrari]

1. Get over it and thank you.

:kick:

[Amaryllis]

2. Hey LS! Did you see I posted it four minutes before you did? So you

woudldnt have had to be embarrassed! But you will live thorough it and it's a good enough column that it deserves two threads! so go K and R the one I just posted. OR at least R it.

[Land Shark]

8. Done, but you might change yours to show snips and where the rest is....

[mdmc]

3. r/k

:patriot:

[rodeodance]

4. te he, when i read the subject line, I thought the RW was pushing a

thing called faith based voting. te he.

[rucky]

14. Tell them they can pray their votes in & God will count them.

no need to go to the polls & put up with those pesky machines.

[Land Shark]

15. now that's truly faith based voting!

[understandinglife]

5. #5.

"Not One Line of Software Between a Voter and a Valid Election" - B Robert Franza MD

[Land Shark]

6. Or, nothing comes between B. Robert Franza MD and his ballot

if you're a fan of Blue Lagoon and movies like that (or Lee jeans commercials)

[understandinglife]

10. ROFL!

:rofl:

Cheers :toast:

[Land Shark]

19. ROFL? that's probably why you're ballot sticks to you like glue

[MelissaB]

11. Well, I'm in the double digits.

Way to go, Land Shark! :applause:

[IndyOp]

7. Yes! Great job, Landshark! Thank you for posting this... ;-)

:applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause:

[Land Shark]

20. those clappers above should get into synchronized swimming

[Stevepol]

9. A wonderful article that states the issue as clearly as it can be stated.

The issue is really this: do we want a democracy or not?

If the vote is counted by private companies using secret software that the companies and the courts guarantee will remain secret, and if there's no real way to verify the results of the vote counting, you cannot have a democracy. It's as simple as that.

[BeFree]

21. Or, you could say....

Since the vote is counted by private companies using secret software that the companies and the courts guarantee will remain secret, and because there's no real way to verify the results of the vote counting, you do not have a democracy. It's as simple as that.

Our whole democracy starts with the vote. All the elections and all the laws passed by those elected gain their basis from the vote. Take away the power of the vote from the people and there remains not one shred of democracy.

[Land Shark]

22. and there remains not one shred of democracy OR LEGITIMACY

[BeFree]

23. Not a shred

And yet, most of DU goes on pretending that their support for this candidate or that, is palying a part in democracy without a realization that private companies using secret software to count their vote have killed democracy before they even cast their votes!

[Land Shark]

24. Well, i think we should make them take away our votes, not give them up

I think it's kind of like the Whos in Whoville still gathering around the (missing) Christmas tree (stolen by the Grinch) and singing Dahvu Doray Dahvu Doray ...

The right to vote can be Denied,
But it cannot be taken away

So even if you're in a jurisdiction where you think it will be stolen, it's civil disobedience to force them to steal it

[Amaryllis]

29. Huh? Can you clarify that, please? civil disobediecne to force them to

steal it?

[Land Shark]

30. don't just lose your vote by not voting, make 'em steal it (if that's what

will occur)

[Amaryllis]

28. Excellent point. We already don't have it...

[bleever]

12. "Our vote is hostage to a flawed, secret system of counting..."

Man, this guy is good!

:)

[Land Shark]

13. Yes, Koehler has quite a way with words, and to make things clear

[bleever]

16. Of course I remember the flack he got right after the election for

questioning the results.

Seems like years ago, doesn't it?

:thumbsup:

[Land Shark]

17. Now he has a comeback after the local Chicago E-fiasco of last week

[Land Shark]

25. Always certified, rarely without flaws

[FogerRox]

18. Kn R

[Time for change]

26. Thank you so much for pursuing that suit

I don't understand why, in a so-called "democracy", this should be an issue. If they get away with this permanently we can kiss the last of our democracy good bye.

[glitch]

27. Beautiful!

"What's missing in faith-based democracy is a sense of reverence for the process." K & R

[Land Shark]

31. Glad you remark on that line, it really struck me as well.

the faith requested is not in the integrity of the process, but in something else

[Amaryllis]

32. The faith requested is the trust that you wrote about in your trust thread

YOu should link to that here.

[Zan_of_Texas]

33. I got to meet Bob Koehler.

As some of you did too!

Hey, I've tried to email Bob, using the email posted at his common wonders site. It always bounces back.

Does anyone else have this problem? Or, an alternate email address?

If you have a better address, would you PM me?

[Land Shark]

34. i PM'd you an email address