Video link to interview of man who successfully sued to end e-voting and counting in Germany

[clear eye]

and discussion with two highly respected U.S. election integrity activists.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cx1RGmYZyIc&feature=PlayList&p=809040671AAEAD83&index=0&playnext=1

This is a long radio program broken into 12 parts. The first two parts are boring intro which I recommend skipping. (You can click on part 3 on the page's Playlist, and start there.) Parts 3 through 9 offer wonderful clarity on what's at stake, and how Dr. Wiesner focused his case on the right to transparency of elections for individual citizens as the difference between a 'real' democracy and a 'pretend' one. The U.S. guests describe their journey to awareness that delegating validity to "experts" is abandoning democracy, and explain why. They also touch on Internet voting and mail-in voting. There's not much to recommend parts 10 - 12, so it's safe to skip those, too.

One caveat--please be prepared to withstand a couple of sentences early on by the nudnick host of the show denying global warming. Fortunately he doesn't talk much.

[Peace Patriot]

1. Thank for posting this!

Unfortunately, our democracy is so far gone that neither our judges nor our congresscritters nor our president, apparently, nor anyone else in officialdom, gives a goddamn about transparent vote counting. In FLA-13 (2006), an election in which ES&S voting machines 'disappeared' 15,000 votes in Democratic areas, and which the Puke 'won' by only 350 or so votes, when the lawyers for the Democrat (Christine Jennings) took the matter to court, and asked to review ES&S's 'TRADE SECRET' tabulation code--to try to figure out what happened to those 15,000 votes--ES&S argued that their "right" to profit from our elections with 'TRADE SECRET' code trumps the right of the voters to know how their votes were counted--and the judge agreed with ES&S!

Further, when Jennings took the matter to Congress--the final arbiter in disputed elections--the Democrats buried the matter six feet deep.

It was the Anthrax Congress that did this to us--fast-tracked these 'TRADE SECRET' code voting systems all over the country, with a $3.9 billion e-voting boondoggle, which succeeded in corrupting election officials in virtually every state. ES&S, by the way, just bought out Diebold, and now has a monopoly on voting systems in the US--and, believe me, ES&S is worse than Diebold as to its hair-raising rightwing connections.

Pukes we can figure prefer fascist government and 'TRADE SECRET' code elections controlled by fascist corporations. But what of the Democrats? We need to ask that until we get the answer.

The only route to changing this, in my opinion, is pressure on local/state officials. The power over voting systems still resides with them, and they are closer to home. Ordinary people have more potential influence at this level. And until we get rid of these machines--or render their rigging power useless by a substantial audit--our democracy does not really exist. It is just one more frothy or vicious bit of media hype and delusion.

[clear eye]

2. "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance."

I think someone already said that. ;) And demanding our rights when we see ourselves being disempowered. As confused as the public may be, government by the governed still beats government by the elite and a return to serfdom.

[loudsue]

3. The fight for fair elections has been ignored since the Dems took some seats.

Even our own relatively well-informed DUers and Huffingpost members and DKos members do not see the bigger picture of what is going on. Boys in baloons and the health care bill seem to be so much more important than the fact that we do not have ANY say in who is elected.

As long as the voting machines are in the hands of the corporatist/fascist corporations, we DO NOT have a democracy. But the corporatists have pacified the activists by throwing a few elections our way. But do you notice how the corporatist dems are STILL holding us back from any progress that the people really THOUGHT they voted for? That was not a mistake or the result of "activism". It was a well-devised plan by those who have the power to program tens of thousands of votes at the stroke of a key in their favor.

[Stevepol]

4. The right-wing network doing this report makes me think that in the end

it may be the Republicans or the Libertarians who are able to remove this plague of electronic voting. The Democrats often agree with the premises but do nothing to remedy the problem. But if the premises are wrong, you don't have a democracy.

[clear eye]

5. They're definitely not Republicans.

Though some of the hosts of their shows like Ron Paul, I don't think they're affiliated w/ the Libertarian Party either. They seem to do stories on whatever falls under the heading of conspiracy. Anything from obvious, overt conspiracies (like the control by certain companies of e-voting w/ minimal oversight/proprietary software) to imagined ones like the "invention" of global warming. One of their shows this year was an interview of David Ray Griffin, for instance. A number of videos by and about Sibel Edmonds are hosted on their site. Basically, you have to know the guest's credibility before you listen, b/c they mix shows w/ very conscientious people who painstakingly have verified everything they report w/ interviews of people who make things up as they go along. And everything in between.

Unfortunately they don't represent any group that's going to do the job of taking back elections for us.

The guests on the show I posted are heads of legitimate election reform groups, and the German physicist most distinctly did not claim any sort of conspiracy, which I'm sure disappointed the host. In fact, he assumed that the members of gov't who resisted eliminating the e-voting machines, simply did not see things the way he did or believe him when he explained the problems since there were always other "experts" saying that e-voting was honky-dory. He never doubted that they were trying to do what was best.

It's pitiful that such an important, newsworthy story has to go there for coverage.

[kster]

6. Link up...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6811324