Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning
This November, after all that we’ve learned over so many years, twenty percent of the nation will still engage in blind-faith voting on DREs that are 100% unverifiable, with or without a so-called “Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail” (VVPAT). Elsewhere, the vast majority of Americans will feed paper ballots into easily hacked optical scan systems and then quietly accept the results that the machines spew out without demanding a hand count of the paper ballots.
The corporate media will dutifully publish the reported “results” without so much as mentioning that in most jurisdictions not a single ballot will have been counted by a human being.
With Brad Friedman and Desi Doyen off enjoying some much needed R & R, I thought some levity was in order, courtesy of this hilarious, if somewhat dated, Onion video.
Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early
UPDATE FROM BRAD 9/6/10: Now that I’m almost back on the grid, a quick addition here to note that we ran this same video back on February 25, 2008. That it still has resonance and meaning today — after all that we’ve learned about the 100% unverifiable nature of such systems — says a great deal, since we’re still foolishly using these things all across the country, as Ernie pointed out. Also related from The Onion, as we ran in November of 2008, there’s this: “Sequoia Touch-Screen Elected 44th President”.
Thank you, Ernest. To make it seem funny, the Onion selected as “winner” the candidate of the political party that was getting fewer corporation donations, whereas everyone following the campaign knew it was the candidate whose party was getting the most corporate donations who would win.
Since they were both pro-war and pro-bailout, and had virtually identical Senate voting records during Obama’s Senate term, it really didn’t make much difference who won. I don’t think Democrats expected Obama to expand the Bush agenda as much as he has, but the rest of us knew it would be more of the same.
As an election boycott advocate who has been begging people for years to stop casting meaningless votes in sham elections for candidates they can’t hold accountable, the rest of the Onion video didn’t seem funny to me.
As long as approximately 50% of Americans continue to mistake tyranny-with-a-vote for a democratic system, nothing is going to change.
But of course a lot of Americans fear democracy, which they call “mob rule” or rule by the poor, more than they fear plutocracy or rule by the rich. That’s not likely to change until the economy gets so bad that more than 90% of Americans are desperately poor. At the current pace, that could take a few more years yet.
Unless we attack Iran or Venezuela, in which case it could happen overnight.
With all due respect, Mark Smith, your “boycott elections” approach is an exercise in self-inflicted, political impotence.
Yes, the differences between Obama and McCain were negligible. Yes, Obama has not only betrayed “change we can believe in” but has actually expanded upon the Bush/Cheney lawless “war on terror” to the point that I believe he should be impeached.
Now, I know that it may come as a shock to you, Mark, but there were and are other choices and issues that one can vote on beyond the “Obama vs. Mc Cain” question.
In my state, during the last election, one could have voted for a Green Party candidate, or for Cynthia McKinney for President.
During the primaries, a better informed public would have voted consistent with their issue preference, in which case Dennis Kucinich would now be President.
Here, in CA in the upcoming Nov. election, there is Prop. 19 which would “make it legal for anyone 21 or older to possess, share or transport up to an ounce of marijuana for personal use and to grow up to 25 square feet per residence or parcel” that a true progressive could vote for. And there is the oil industry-backed Prop 23, which would suspend The Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, eliminating current CA emissions standards, to vote against.
Do you really propose that voters stay home and allow the oil companies to poison the atmosphere because you are distressed by Obama’s betrayal?
The solution, Mark, lies in finding a way to pierce the corporate media’s electronic curtain and educate the public on issues that truly matter.
The solution is to end e-voting and replace it with paper ballots and a transparent count.
An election boycott is nothing more than a cynical, petulant, self-defeating form of protest offered up by a defeatist who is so taken by his or her own self-pity that he or she can’t see the forest for the trees.
Sorry for such a harsh assessment, Mark, but you’ve been playing those out-of-tune dissonant notes for so long, that it was time someone recorded them and played them back so you could hear what others are hearing.
Ron Paul was on the ballot in my state, and I felt completely justified, and pleased to vote for him.
The 22,000 other people who voted for him must have felt likewise.
Now if we could just get transparent elections and 99% of the other voters to vote for the candidate they WANT instead of the lesser of two evils. Sadly, that wouldn’t have changed the 2008 election (Obama did talk a good talk, but he sure as hell isn’t walking the walk), but I think it would have changed the 2004 election, and maybe even the 2000 election.
Hi All,
It gets worse. There is the potential for a “new level of election attack, better know as “man in the middle attack”.
Remember the Presidential Election in 2004 “¦ Ohio results shipped to a server in Tennessee? Now servers are located overseas, coming to a registrar near you. Lets look at S. Carolina.
As we know, in South Carolina, in the Democratic Senate primary, a complete unknown candidate won….using election machines without verification.
However, with a man in the middle attach, the results may have change oversea.
S. Carolina used SOE software to report the results.
Google
“soe man in the middle attack” south carolina”
To get:
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpoin...dem_candid.php
And looking at Brad Blog for additional comments:
https://bradblog.com/?p=7894
Lets go look at the servers. For S. Carolina results from an SOE server:
http://www.enr-scvotes.org/SC/1...318/en/vt.html
and the European Server location:
http://toolbar.netcraft.com/sit...318/en/vt.html
For another example, here is the Contra Costa California Primary Results: URL
http://results.enr.clarityelect...n/reports.html
And the european server
http://toolbar.netcraft.com/sit...n/reports.html
I have found over several counties in the US using this software and certainly one state.
Stay tuned.
Skeptic94505