03/25/2008
Something to keep in mind while the media is handicapping the election horse race
Isn't this an exciting time? Every schmuck pundit and self-absorbed talking head acts as if the election is a critical, head-to-head race. According to the media, it's neck and neck right down to the primary finals for the Dems, and then it'll be a dead heat between McCain and whoever.
Well, that sort of "news" coverage certainly delivers viewers to the advertisers. It seems so... American, doesn't it? The Triumph Of Democracy, the Voice Of The People, the ritual of election as it's been enacted in the many years since the founding of our great republic.
It's certainly easy to lose sight that what we're witnessing is a fierce battle between 3 extremely wealthy representatives of various huge corporations, scheming to play on the insecurities and ignorance of the populace by manipulating 3 mammoth public relations efforts. Does that seem too cynical? Why not check the voting records? Find out what the finances of the special interests reveal about the three candidates.
I'll be posting a bit more (ha) about the poisonous effects of corporate money on the political process, but there's actually a larger problem facing all of us right now, one that was summed up quite well by one of G.W. Bush's spritual predecessors, Josef Stalin:
It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.
One of the essential blogs about voting machine errors and manipulation is maintained by a professor at NYU named Mark Crispin Miller. Professor Miller has written several books about american politics; I'd direct you to Loser Take All; Election Fraud And The Subversion Of Democracy, as well as Fooled Again: How The Right Stole The 2004 Election.
The mother church of black box voting sites is run by Bev Harris, whom we have to thank for initially uncovering this travesty.
The NY Times has been covering this as well:
The earliest critiques of digital voting booths came from the fringe - disgruntled citizens and scared-senseless computer geeks - but the fears have now risen to the highest levels of government. One by one, states are renouncing the use of touch-screen voting machines. California and Florida decided to get rid of their electronic voting machines last spring, and last month, Colorado decertified about half of its touch-screen devices. Also last month, Jennifer Brunner, the Ohio secretary of state, released a report in the wake of the Cuyahoga crashes arguing that touch-screens "may jeopardize the integrity of the voting process." She was so worried she is now forcing Cuyahoga to scrap its touch-screen machines and go back to paper-based voting - before the Ohio primary, scheduled for March 4. Senator Bill Nelson, a Democrat of Florida, and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, have even sponsored a bill that would ban the use of touch-screen machines across the country by 2012.
The theft -by digital voting machines - of the 2004 Presidential election in the state of Ohio has also been confirmed, both by the Ohio Secretary Of State (as above), as well as independent journalists:
Jennifer Brunner - and also Debra Bowen, in California, has come to similar conclusions and disqualified the electronic voting machines used there. These secretaries of state, if we're going to have an actual election in 2008 that's going to be even reasonably fair, they're going to have a lot of work to do.
And leave us not forget that every single voting machine and voting software company is run by major-level Republican donors. And thanks to closed-system intellectual-property rulings, it's illegal for any purchaser or user of these machines to evaluate them for accuracy, to examine the machine code, or to modify them for security purposes.
To sum up, the Republicans are hacking democracy. Here's a film about it (9 YouTube segments).
This cautionary documentary exposes the vulnerability of computers - which count approximately 80% of America's votes in county, state and federal elections - suggesting that if our votes aren't safe, then our democracy isn't safe either.
The documentary exposes the dangers of voting machines used during America's mid term and presidential elections. Electronic voting machines count approximately 90% of America's votes in county, state and federal elections. The technology is also increasingly being used across the world, including in Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe and Latin America. Filmed over three years this expose follows the investigations of a team of citizen activists and hackers as they take on the electronic voting industry, targeting the Diebold corporation.
"Hacking Democracy" uncovers incendiary evidence from the trash cans of Texas to the ballot boxes of Ohio, exposing secrecy, votes in the trash, hackable software and election officials rigging the presidential recount.
Ultimately proving our votes can be stolen without a trace "Hacking Democracy" culminates in the famous 'Hursti Hack'; a duel between the Diebold voting machines and a computer hacker from Finland - with America's democracy at stake. The two Ohio election staff who feature in "Hacking Democracy" were sentenced on March 13th 2007 for rigging the 2004 presidential recount. Incriminating footage from the documentary was used in their court case as evidence.
http://www.hackingdemocracy.com/
Regarding YouTube embeds - I've been experiencing some loading problems in posts with these. Please be patient.