If people's votes are not all fairly counted, democracy is a sham period.

People get disenfranchised for no reason and everyone suffers including the independents.

ALL the votes need to be counted period, so that democracy sustains itself and is a transparent process. Otherwise nobody is EVER sure of if their vote counted and if things are correct in our government.

Such a thing means there is no democracy.

Doug E.

Brad, the thing that is so frustrating about the internet is that you can't hug anybody in cyberspace! I love you for what you are doing. I mean, I LOVE YOU. Thank you.

Agent99 - I accept your virtual hug with open virtual arms, and send it right back atcha. Virtually.

For Kathleen & others:

My suggestion to slow down the ridiculous HAVA deadline is this:

Prove like New Mexico is proving that none of the machines meet the disabled requirements and therefore VIOLATE HAVA. This would allow for an extension or replacement.

If the HAVA act is violated, the state must choose a different voting machine or extend the deadline to comply with HAVA. Only AutoMark so far really meets all standards so put that one in, take the rest out.

Doug

I firmly believe that, without Bev Harris, Brad Friedman, and others too numerous to mention (and yet not numerous enough, though it's growing), that these "cracks" in the Diebold,et al, "armor", would not be starting to get reported in the traditional media, as they now finally are. Thank you, thank you, thank you, ALL!

As Leonard Cohen said, "There is a crack in everything; That's how the light gets in"...

When 'right' is wrong, you are what's 'left'.

I take it National Journal serves as a kind of traffic cop for "ugly news" that mainstream papers would rather avoid, like crooked elections in the United States (as distinct from Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Venezuela, etc.). Or, presumably, what really happened on 9/11, Halliburton's no-bid contracts, and the missing $9 billion in Iraq.

As noted, the Times has already delivered its sermonette on Diebold (last Sunday's editorial), but without any news context before or after. Scott Shane will have a tough time getting any story past the Most Reverend Monsignor Bill Keller, high priest of news worthiness for the fourth estate.

Thanks, Brad. You absolutely deserve the lion's share of credit for Diebold's compromised position.

Bob, I love that saying - "When 'right' is wrong, you are what's 'left'. Excellent!

I still say no other blog has come close to the quality or amount of coverage about our stolen and illegal election process than Bradblog. No other blog that I've seen has had the host out there hands on like Brad has been, rather than just posting links to news about it.

There is no hope for fixing anything in this world unless honest elections are obtained. I join the list of thank you's, Brad. I'm not holding my breath for MSN articles to follow, but hoping )

They'll all wake up someday too late and then wonder why nobody reads/watches them anymore. Not sure they'll ever regain our respect. Those Americans who don't have the internet and have been lied to and uninformed so badly for these past few years are gonna be pisssssssssssed when they find out.....and they will find out someday, hopefully in time to stop being the damn 1/3 still approving things in polls.

Bob, I love that saying - "When 'right' is wrong, you are what's 'left'. Excellent!

I still say no other blog has come close to the quality or amount of coverage about our stolen and illegal election process than Bradblog. No other blog that I've seen has had the host out there hands on like Brad has been, rather than just posting links to news about it.

There is no hope for fixing anything in this world unless honest elections are obtained. I join the list of thank you's, Brad. I'm not holding my breath for MSN articles to follow, but hoping )

They'll all wake up someday too late and then wonder why nobody reads/watches them anymore. Not sure they'll ever regain our respect. Those Americans who don't have the internet and have been lied to and uninformed so badly for these past few years are gonna be pisssssssssssed when they find out.....and they will find out someday, hopefully in time to stop being the damn 1/3 still approving things in polls.

I think we all know from experience, that these GOP thugs are always one step ahead. We should be thinking like them. Right now, they are planning contingencies for when DIEBOLD falls. While the Dems were fat and happy when they controlled congress, the GOP was busy taking over the media. While DIEBOLD is falling, believe me, they ALREADY have a contingency plan.

WHAT IS IT???

Never forget, they are always a step ahead.

I have to say, BRAD BLOG is the best internet news site. Great work, BRAD. Don't change. You see it all the time...success ruins things if you don't keep your head on straight. The only entitiy that I can think of that wasn't ruined by success was The Beatles.

Hey! Brad is The Beatles of internet news sites!

...and ricky & crew are the Southerners burning Beatles albums...

Lets all remember fellow bloggers, as the crew at BBV painfully knows, it ain't over til its over.

We are in a scenario like what would happen if the president was impeached. The Dick would take over.

Here we have Diebold being impeached in what appears to be a growing avalanche.

That leaves other corrupt companies to pick up where they left off.

So lets take the other corrupt voting machine companies down too.

America deserves a hell of a lot better than what it is getting.

PS: Like I say what I discussed about HAVA needs to be implemented...

HAVA law has been violated in numerous ways in re: to disabled provisions, as shown in New Mexico.
Permanently stalling the HAVA deadline so that Sequoia can also be rejected; would put the AutoMark solution into place long enough for the other voting machines to be completely tested and hacked every-which way from sunday.

Finally most state scan then choose secure reliable machines (AutoMark), Paper Ballots, or new companies like Liberty Systems which can use the VotoScope audit tools.

Doug E.

DREDD: Let's put this disgrace in perspective. The greatest country in the history of the world, let corrupt Corporate America take over their voting rights. These machines did not pass vote security, and yet were installed all over the country. Who is responsible for this disgusting act?

We all have to be aware of our votes being protected and counting, and it probably should begin in school, where no attention is paid whatsoever to educating America's youth about voting. And the importance of voting and every citizen's vote counting should be a topic of discussion in families, which it never is.

I am proud of all the people who are concerned about voting, there's more than I thought. And thanks Brad, Bev Harris, et al...and Conyers...no thanks to John Kerry, Edwards, and all the Dems who are saying nothing about this. You'd think they'd be in the forefront of this fight.

Watch developments in the class-action suits against Diebold for a clue as to how all this will play out. Possible scenarios:

1) Diebold settles for X millions of dollars without admitting to wrongdoing, "...to put this behind us." Continues to produce voting machines to sell to those states that haven't yet decertified Diebold.

ALMOST CERTAINLY WON'T WORK. ANY STATE THAT BOUGHT A DIEBOLD MACHINE AFTER THE SETTLEMENT WOULD FACE A FLOOD OF LAWSUITS.
STOCK WILL GO DOWN OR STAY WHERE IT IS.

2) Diebold settles, admits it knew machines were hackable, blames O'Dell and unnamed others for misleading the public and stockholders. Denies the 2004 election was impacted in any way, but says it will exit the voting-machine business nonetheless.

STOCK WILL GO UP, BECAUSE WALL STREET WILL ASSUME DIEBOLD'S PROBLEMS ARE OVER. THEY PROBABLY ARE, BUT DIEBOLD'S ADMISSION AND WITHDRAWAL FROM THE VOTING-MACHINES BUSINESS MEANS BLACKWELL'S PROBLEMS (AND BUSH'S) ARE ONLY BEGINNING.

3) Diebold fights the case in court. Says 10/22/03 statement was not false and misleading. Discovery process reveals tangential information about electoral procedures in Ohio that might help Diebold's cause as an "innocent bystander," might even help them win the suit if the jury were to find the 10/22/ statement was an honest mistake, but would certainly bring the mainstream media in and expose the 2004 election as a fraud at last.

DIEBOLD WINS SUIT, BUT OHIO, BLACKWELL, AND BUSH LOSE BECAUSE OF DISCOVERY...OR DIEBOLD LOSES, AND THE SHIT REALLY HITS THE FAN.

Best bet? Scenario # 2.

To all --- DREDD is seeing things clearly.

DREDD: Let's put this disgrace in perspective. The greatest country in the history of the world, let corrupt Corporate America take over their voting rights. These machines did not pass vote security, and yet were installed all over the country. Who is responsible for this disgusting act?

Two camps are developing in the voting integrity movement (what else is new: fracture the movement and you win more battles). One camp believes that this battle must be fought quietly and politely behind the scenes, with secret tests and handshake negotiations with public officials, finding a scapegoat to blame for the installation of these faulty machines.

The other camp --- which Black Box Voting is in, and from his public face on this matter, it looks like Brad is in as well though I don't want to put words in his mouth --- is the camp that believes sunlight is the best disinfectant.

The current thinking among group #1 is to scapegoat the ITAs. No doubt about it, they are guilty as can be, but let's look at the way the current spin is going. First, a few prominent people are coming out two years late pointing firmly at the ITAs. That was already exposed in 2002 by the courageous Dan Spillane, a senior test engineer for a touch-screen voting machine company; by Jim March and I in 2003 in separate postings and discoveries, and by Susan Pynchon earlier in 2005.

The reasoning behind the "group I" activists (above) focusing NOW on the ITAs is that the group II activists made this problem UNDENIABLE. It had to hit the news. The current focus on the ITAs as scapegoats, while it gets further down towards the root of the problem, it really an attempt at damage control.

The reasoning is that public officials will never admit they made a mistake, so if we blame the ITAs while working secretly and privately with them on handshake deals to minimize their own role, we'll (supposedly) get farther. Also, this approach allows some of the prominent scientists to sidestep their roles in failing to blow the whistle on illegal software. The ITAs are guilty, but they are now being made the sacrificial lamb, bringing up the question of who stands to benefit by that.

DREDD is also right when he points out that the powers that be anticipated what's going on now with Diebold and they have already prepared the next tactics.

The reason we have to throw the net over the ENTIRE pool of people who let this happen is that without that, we never get to the root of the problem and we will keep reacting to the next tactics. This is a moving target. Our job is to aim the gun at the moving target, not just to shoot at the sitting ducks.

Woops. Did I misattribute? Looks like Big Dan said what I attributed to DREDD. I'm in a hurry this morning, husband is telling me it's time to go to the office.

Bye. --- Bev

obla de obla da life goes on

Thanks again 1,000 times over Brad and you too Bev!

Brad,
Now I know why I read your blog. This has come to be a daily addiction. I think you have finally struck paydirt, which will unleash the dogs of war about the whole stolen election thing (pardon the mixed metaphor.)
By the way, I wrote an OpEd piece for the New Haven Register about a trial run of voting machines which included a Diebold touch screen, and they haven't run it (they've always run my OpEds before.) Want to see it? I think somebody should read it.

I'm pretty sure that the Brad camp and the BBV camp are together on this, wanting to shine the light on every dirty little secret that our elected officials have been hiding. That's what burns me up the most about politics - backroom deals that serve to bolster the ruling elite while leaving the majority of Americans fumbling trying to pay their medical and energy bills. We've elected these people for what? How many of them are just some degree or variation of Duke Cunningham? Too damn many, that's for sure.

2006, and every election from this day forward needs to stand as a message that corruption will not be tolerated. Those in Bev's Camp#1 do not want the corruption, writ large, to end, because they are part of it.

I got my first degree in PoliSci at the UW and initially had the intention of going tinto politics to serve my country. By the time I got my degree, the youthful naivete that I had surrounding our political institutions had been washed away, and I found myself arguing against status quo on 90% of the issues I was studying. I realized that there was no way I could survive a career in politics and maintain my integrity - and so I went back to school and got a teaching degree, and I serve my country through the education system (a system that is unfortunately tainted by corrupt politics also..what isn't?)

My point is that I'm sure there are many folks in politics who start serving with a good heart and the best of intentions. But the system is so black and rotten that eventually they succumb. Shining the light on the elections is only the beginning - but it is a vital fist step.

Like Yoda said: "Once you start down the path to the Dark Side, forever will it dominate your destiny."

Cyteria #20...post it, I'd like to read.

Awesome.

I wrote a letter to my local elections official here in El Paso County, CO. I referred to several items you guys posted. But he seems pretty happy with Diebold:

Mr. Troublemaker,

Having an interest in Elections and Election processes, you are probably already aware of certain requirements regarding certification of election equipment. If anything, those requirements will become even more severe in the coming years. And this is good.

With regard to Diebold, we have confidence in the accuracy of the equipment used in El Paso County for all elections up to and including November 2005.

To be noted is the thorough (and redundant) testing which occurs with this equipment throughout the year- before, during, and after elections. This is done with very strict guidelines and with oversight by our professional election staff, the information systems staff, AND independent, objective observers...with no involvement by any equipment manufacturers.

With your continued interest along with ours, to ensure that all elections in El Paso County are conducted in a fair and honest manner and all election results are totally accurate, we feel confident that all equipment used in every election (past and future) is completely reliable.

Thank you for your ongoing interest.

Bob Balink

RobertBalink@elpasoco.com

Assuming Mr. Balink is on the level, it proves only that the Diebold machines used in Colorado passed only those tests that Colorado officials performed on them.

Which really proves nothing about the 2004 election, because the tests might have been inadequate to reveal hackability. If Colorado had been concerned with meeting HAVA guidelines,
for example, its tests could have shown only that blind people were able to vote on them, or that they performed well when not hacked. "Strict guidelines" doesn't equate with "All possible tests to expose hacking."

Another possibility is that Diebold somehow inserted patches (or enabled their use) only in machines sent to certain bellweather states like Ohio and Florida, and sent "clean machines" to other states. Bev Harris and other experts might weigh in on this.

How does one become part of the "Public" when it comes to viewing the vote count?

It would be interesting to perform this function in the coming election.

My ballot for the boobengrabers special election went into a thing that for all the world looked like a paper shredder never to be seen again - all I got was a flag sticker saying I voted.

Big Dan #14

Good points.

There is a time in war when one must choose the battles to be fought, because at that time some of them are too big to be won. So the correct strategy is to pick the right battles. Wars are won one battle at a time.

It is obvious that by taking on the individual companies battles can be won. It is happening. Taking on "Kerry won" is not the proper battle. It is a no show in the MSM and even with the politicians.

However this tactic of taking down the companies of fraud, one battle state at a time is working. We have a clear record on that, and it is free of speculation. At least the direction is looking good.

Do not change a winning game, but always change a loosing game.

I would say, however, as momentum builds we should shift at least a reasonable amount of the focus to the federal certification process, because as Bev, Jim, and the BBV crew have shown, it is a very, very sucky process, and is a fraud.

That is a central certification zone that would, if cleaned up, have an impact on all the fraudy machines being put into the public arena.

And once again, it is time to consider the shouts of all the people making a lot of sense, that is, leave voting machines out and use only paper ballots until the mess is cleared up.

Easy to say. Hard to do.

#23 Is your election official, Bob Balink, an honest man, or is he like many of those Republican election officials, such as Blackwell of Ohio, lying out their ass to give everyone the impression that everything is "above board" while they steal our votes right under our noses?

Big Dan (#14), some excellent points. Corporate America has insidiously grabbed power from the hypnotized masses (None less than Dwight D. Eisenhower predicted that we needed to be on guard for this, and we weren't).

I saw The Ukraine take to the streets when their election was stolen from them, and they reversed the results of the crime.

In America, it's like swimming through mud getting anywhere with straightening this similar mess out.

Like I said before, without great activists like Bev Harris and Brad Friedman, these crooked elections would likely have been swept under the rug forever.

Thanks to them, and folks like them, the light is starting to come through the cracks.

Cyteria #20

For sure we wanna see the OpEd you wrote ... you are one of the 6 of 7, aka 6 or 7.

Soul Rebel #21

Diebold's crack up is a microcosm of the crack up of the neoCon regime.

You said "But the system is so black and rotten that eventually they succumb" and quoted Yoda "Once you start down the path to the Dark Side, forever will it dominate your destiny."

America is not the dark side of the force and I know that you know it. But politicians do behave as if they had been taken over by the force.

It was our forefathers and foremothers, after all, who told us that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts us absolutely. However, they did not think that power was not to be used.

And they gave us a formula, a constitution, and said use this and you can eventually build mechanisms using it that will give you the victory over the corruption, the toxicity, the corruption that is in power on this planet. And then you can use it to benefit all humanity.

Well, I can believe in that notion. And I can also say that at times I become unsure of the status, even to I am not at all ever unsure of the formula.

The status is clear, we have fascists firmly in control of a government that can fool some of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time.

The current reality is that this fascist government finds itself surrounded by democratic people, courageous people, knowing people, and they have decided to bring these fascists to justice. It will be done.

Just don't give up now.

I was thinking about something today. If the house cleaning actually got started before '08 and impeachment came to be.....how deep would it go and who would be left as prez and vice prez?

Cyteria, I'm with Dredd, would love to read your OpEd somehow.

BREAKING NEWS

From Black Box Voting.org
http://www.bbvforums.org...amp;post=15464#POST15464

BREAKING: The Associated Press --- Errors lead California officials to warn voting-machine

California election officials have told one of the country's largest manufacturers of voting machines to repair its software after problems with vote counts and verification surfaced during California's November special election.

In a letter obtained by The Associated Press, Assistant Secretary of State for Elections Bradley J. Clark threatened to start the process of decertifying Election Systems and Software machines for use in California if senior officials didn't address the concerns immediately.

"The California Secretary of State is deeply concerned about problems experienced by counties utilizing ES&S voting equipment and software," Clark wrote in a letter addressed to company president Aldo Tesi nine days after the Nov. 8 election.

Software problems included incorrect counting of turnout figures, a malfunction that prevented voters from verifying that their choices were registered accurately and one machine recording the wrong vote during a test, according to the letter.

Eleven California counties used the company's voting machines during the special election. Election Systems and Software equipment also is used in 45 other states.

The problems in California are similar to ones the company has experienced elsewhere. During a 2004 primary election in Hawaii, glitches with the company's optical scanners led to a miscount of about 6,000 votes.

It is the second time this week that questions have arisen about electronic voting systems in California. The secretary of state's office also warned 17 counties that machines made by Diebold Election Systems must pass more rigorous security tests to be available for use in 2006.

At issue with those machines is the computer language that secures ballot entries and instructs election officials on how to access and tally the votes.

The state's letter to Election Systems and Software said it was imperative that company representatives "take corrective action as soon as possible."

Ken Fields, a spokesman for the Omaha, Neb.-based company, said officials have since met with the secretary of state's office.

"We listened carefully to the issues that they raised, and we've been working to address each of the issues," he said.

Fields said some of the problems outlined in the letter were caused by operator error or misunderstandings about how the software was supposed to be used. None of the problems caused any incorrect votes to be recorded or in any way affected the election results, Fields said.

A spokeswoman for Secretary of State Bruce McPherson declined to elaborate further on the Election Day mishaps, the problems discussed in the letter or the company's assertion that state officials are pleased with its proposed solutions.

"We've met with them, and they have agreed to address our concerns," spokeswoman Ashley Snee Giovannettone said.

Clark's letter said that on Nov. 8 a state monitoring team "experienced an alarming error on the iVotronic system in Merced County, where a voter chose one candidate but the vote was recorded for another candidate. This error is documented on videotape and demonstrates that it was not an operator error, but was, rather, an error in the system."

The problem arose on the company's touch screen machine, which was used only in Merced County. The other counties used optical scan machines that read ballots.

...

Black Box Voting, a nonprofit group that has been critical of electronic voting systems, said the problems experienced with Election Systems and Software equipment, like those with other companies, result from a lack of federal oversight.

"The biggest problem right now is that we can't check the testing labs," said Black Box Voting investigator Jim March.

He said federal certification testing is performed by just two private labs in Hunstville, Ala.

"If we can't trust the labs, how can we trust the products that come out of the labs?" he said.
According to the secretary of state's letter, other problems discovered in California Nov. 8 include:

_ The company's software incorrectly counting the total turnout figures for counties that used multiple ballot cards: "This problem was a recurrence of a problem experienced by your customers in November 2004; you have had a year to correct this known problem, and have not done so," the letter stated.

Fields said the problem resulted from incorrect coding on ballots that were more than one page. The coding caused the optical scanner to count each page as a separate voter. But he said the problem was detected and did not affect the outcome of any votes.

_ The touch-screen machine used in Merced County did not properly display the summary of votes, "making it impossible for voters to confirm their vote choices in those contests," the letter stated.

Fields said the visual on the computer screen was designed to show only how many votes the voter had cast and in which races, not summarize their vote.

"Someone assumed that screen was supposed to list all of a voter's selections, and that's not what that screen was designed to do," he said. "Other versions of the equipment are designed to do that."

http://www.sanluisobispo...obispo/news/13475849.htm

So now ES&S is also in deep shit in CA.

Maybe CA will wake and realize that paper ballots, hand-counted in the polling place, are easier to supervise responsibly, less expensive to administer and give faster and more accurate election results than the untested, non-compliant electronic toys they've been buying for voters.

you can never have "human oversight" on election systems that rely on sub-atomic particles to function.
computers should only "record" the results never generate them.
if your home computer crashes you lose time and maybe some information ,if the electal system crashes you lose everything America has stood for for over two hundred years.

they had no contingency plan for the internet ...thankfully

Catherine

That's great news, now what can we do to just de-certify them and get AutoMark in use everywhere?

AutoMark is the best and only solution for now until real problems are addressed.

Doug

Doug #35

Tell your friends in the media. Make sure they know. Do a GalFromCal and contact your local radio stations and local papers. Hand out flyers in parking lots. Do whatever works for you to get the word out.

It's not just Diebold. It's not just ES&S. It's not just the ITAs.

It's the whole pattern that must be exposed.

And in case it's not obvious yet--

It's not any one political party.

The problems are greater than any single political party or any particular corporation.

The system is broken at a far deeper level than most people suspect--including most election reform activists. This is why it is so important to be non-partisan and to help others wake up.

You guys are right on. Shine the light on these PEOPLE and force AMERICANS TO SEE THE CORPORATE TAKEOVER OF THEIR VOTE THAT HAS OCCURED. IF YOU EXPOSE THE WHOLE SYSTEM, THEN THE HUMAN BEINGS RESPONSIBLE CANNOT BE OVER LOOKED. Note: I said HUMANS not ANIMALS or ALIENS from a different country or another world for that matter. BIG DAN - WAY TO THINK ONE STEP AHEAD. On behalf of THE BEATLES i WOULD LIKE TO BEAR HUG U ALL!

Right you are, Catherine. Both parties go along to get along where election fraud is concerned. "We both do it, therefore neither of us has a right to complain" has become the prevailing ethic. Which is nothing more or less than crookedness disguised as bi-partisanship.

Republicans are just better at it at the moment.

As we all know, if someone wants to commit a crime, they will, regardless of how many safeguards are in place. Here is Florida, we had paper ballots and they made them a challenge to read and mark, they ended up in trash collectors, etc. As we see in the opening of the website, it's not the votes, but the counters that determine an election. Regardless of what system is in place, people who have access to the counters, whether machine or manual, should be non partisan, background screened and honest!

MUGZI #40

And to state the obvious, the "counters" should be people instead of machines. With observers representing all candidates and the general public.

Like I say, both parties and literally all their splinter cells have been taken over by neocons.

The neoliberalcons evidently OWN the voting machines and there is proof of that, so why the hell are they supplying these machines to everyone!??!??

Diebold happens to be the king of the heap and that's where all this criminal court proceeding needs to first take place!!!!!!

HOW DID DIEBOLD HIRE HARRY HURSTI TO HACK ITS MACHINES IN PRIVATE?

Doug

Dredd: no giving up here. I've talked about the fascists, early and often, and as you've probably read on previous posts of mine our current gang emulate Mussolini's original writings on the fascist state almost to the letter. People refuse to believe, accept, consider the possibility even, but I continue to express it out in public, at the risk (nay the certainty) of being labeled a loon. One of the reasons I have latched on to the Brad Blog is that in this world full of the despair wrought by BushCo, I am truly able to hold out hope that we will reach a turning point, and that it is not too far distant.

I am reading the new biography of Thomas Paine by Harvey Kaye (The Promise of America). We are reliving those revolutionary times. We are facing the element that wants to remain loyal to the Monarchy, only the Monarchy is now the corporate world. But it is motivated by much the same sentiments - greed, power, authority, classism, racism. Kaye notes that one of the elements that caused some people to resist the revolution was the risk of losing their own wealth. That is certainly a factor in today's "turning a blind eye"...but Paine eventually convinced those resisters that true republican representative democracy was beneficial and profitable to all. I believe that is the role that Brad, Bev, Al Franken and other progressive radio hosts and writers, Michael Moore, and numerous others are playing - it is vital to return to the roots of our vision of representative democracy. Our balance of powers has been lost, our Constitution has been tossed aside - but the revolutionary spirit remains, the same revolutionary spirit that Paine cultivated - once it has taken root it never dies. It may experience a period of dormancy - in times when the pleasures of creature comforts and material wealth overshadow the vigilance the Jefferson claimed was required - but it will forever return anew.

No Paine, no gain.

Catherine A (#37), and RM (#39): While reading your posts I was reminded of a quote by Gore Vidal, which I never really agreed with, but now I'm having second thoughts:

“It makes no difference who you vote for - the two parties are really one party representing four percent of the people”.

And one by Vidal I always did agree with:

"As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: 'you liberate a city by destroying it'. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests" (Plenty of this has taken place in the last six years).

And, one last one: "By the time a man gets to be presidential material, he's been bought ten times over".

Bob Bilse #44

These are great quotes. They reflect my views as well.

That's why we need to get the money out of the election campaign process, particularly the corporate money.

Maine has done it, and it changed their election results immediately. Arizona has improved their laws, too.

On a newer thread here someone has posted about questionable things in Kerry's background that for some reason are only surfacing now. Things about him shredding crucial documents and being something of a stooge for Bush (Sr. I think).

No surprise there; Kerry has something like a perfect voting record for supporting corporate interests, and he is or was chair of the committee that dealt with corporate/commercial affairs; and also there have been questions raised about the validity of the election machine results which handed him the primary election victory.

That's just one reason why jumping onto a partisan band wagon is not going to move the election reform wagon train forward at all. The partison band wagon is one of the biggest impediments to getting real election reform put in place.

And no one in office can afford to jeopardize their major sources of campaign funds--corporations and vested interests.

For Bob Bilse: Barrack Obama has been getting a lot of favorable press. He's a good speech-maker and has an inspiring personal story.

He had just been sworn in as a Senator when Barbara Boxer challenged the certification of the 2004 election on Jan. 6, 2005. Asked if he had considered supporting Boxer, he snarled, "Get real!
There was fraud on both sides." I saw this quote at several places, so I'm sure it's accurate.

It had taken Obama exactly six days to learn what Congress is all about. Smart man, he, to pick up on how they think that quickly. Any wrongdoing that might reflect badly on both parties (a perfect historical example is the Savings & Loan scandal) is off the table. Bush stole Ohio in 2004 (and probably several other states), he stole Florida in 2000, and is thus an illegitimate president. But we can't say that, if at the same time Democrats were trying to steal votes at the same time (and might have stolen Wisconsin for Kerry).

As long as both sides cheat, the side that cheats the most, or the most effectively, becomes the winner. And 99 out of 100 Senators didn't give a damn that democracy became the loser.

Good points, RLM. One thing I've always made note of (and found quite disturbing) is how relatively minor the Democratic Party powers-that-be's protests have been over these voting irregularities. They act INVOLVED, not wronged.

For Bob Bilse: I think you might be giving the Democrats too much credit. Here's a summary of quotes from various Democratic sources.

Bill Clinton: "Bush won fair and square." (gulp)

Chris Dodd: "I've checked the rumors out. There's nothing to them." (then got angry at Kerry for saying there was a problem with voting machines).

Barrack Obama: "Get real. There was fraud on both sides." (translation: to complain about election fraud is unreal).

John Kerry (through a spokesperson, naturally): "I never told Mark Crispin Miller that I knew I'd been robbed." (oh, yes you did).

Teresa Kerry: "The whole thing looks fishy." (yep)

Howard Dean: No comments about 2004 election.

Democratic National Committee: "There was voter disenfranchisement in Ohio, but it didn't cost Kerry the state."

Jimmy Carter about 2004: "We still have a lot of work to do to get things right."

Jimmy Carter about 2000: "There's no doubt Gore won the election." (meaning Kerry can't complain, because he wouldn't have been nominated in 2004).

Bill Richardson (New Mexico governor): No public comments, but shut down recount that might have revealed that Kerry won the state.

Maureen Dowd (liberal New York Times columnist):
No mention of election fraud since November 2004.
Obviously not allowed to write about it.

Bob Herbert (liberal New York Times columnist):
Ditto.

Paul Krugman (liberal New York Times columnist):
Ditto.