EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: Christopher Hitchens Says Votes Won’t Count ‘As Long As There Are Machines’

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Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

The one George W. Bush supporter who spoke up against the debacle of Ohio’s 2004 election in a March, 2005, Vanity Fair article titled, “Ohio’s Odd Numbers,” told The BRAD BLOG at a book signing last Tuesday in Santa Monica that E-votng is a “racket and fraud” which “should never have been allowed to happen.” The outspoken controversialist told us that although he recently became an American citizen he has no plans to vote, believing that his vote would not count in any case “as long as there are machines.”

Hitchens, who found the 2004 Ohio results “impossible to swallow,” says during the short video-taped encounter that “there has to be a paper ballot.” In his 2005 Vanity Fair piece detailing the many problems discovered during Ohio’s presidential election, he contended that without reforms to the system Americans will continue to be “treated like serfs or extras when they present themselves to exercise their franchise.”

The short video-taped encounter with Hitchens follows in full below…

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EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: Christopher Hitchens Says Votes Won’t Count ‘As Long As There Are Machines’

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  1. 1)
    nikto said on 6/11/2007 @ 10:07pm PT: [Permalink]

    I have bitterly disagreed with Hitchens on Iraq, but on the election fraud issue he is spot-on.

    Good for you on this one, Hitch!

  2. 2)
    Floridiot said on 6/12/2007 @ 6:26am PT: [Permalink]

    Hey Allen, where was that signing ?
    Out on the street outside the LA mission ?
    The winos down there are too good for the likes of him IMO.
    Don’t worry , he’ll get crocked tomorrow and say somthing stupid.

  3. 3)
    Dredd said on 6/12/2007 @ 6:50am PT: [Permalink]

    He only said it because one of his mentors, Stalin, was 100% in favor of paper ballots and hand counting.

    Hitches should quote Stalin who said: “It is not who votes that counts, but who counts the votes”.

    Yep, if paper ballots are good enough for Hitchens, they are good enough for Stalin.

    These simplistic types are not spot on they are full of blind spots.

  4. 4)
    Dredd said on 6/12/2007 @ 7:08am PT: [Permalink]

    All election systems, whether machine based or paper ballots only, depend upon the integrity of those managing them.

    Give me officials who are honest above all, and I will allow them to use machines, machines and paper ballots, or paper ballot only systems.

    Give me officials who are corrupt and I really am not going to waste my time trying to fix the machines or the color and shape of the ballots:

    Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or else make the tree corrupt and its fruit corrupt; for the tree is known by its fruit.

    (Mat 12:33). A corrupt system will never work with or without machines.

  5. 5)
    big dan said on 6/14/2007 @ 11:33am PT: [Permalink]

    Hitchens is right-on about e-vote machines, and his smoking out religious fraud, too. I used to hate him, but he makes sense on these 2 issues.

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