[Vision2020] Conspiracy?

[Dick Schmidt]

Michigan uses electronic voting machines but have a paper backup and I believe they use the same machines statewide. Michigan has lost thousands of jobs and Kerry won in Michigan. Ohio has lost many more jobs than Michigan but Ohio doesn't have paper backup on their voting machines. This causes a very credible concern for the accuracy of the vote in Ohio that caused Bush to win. 

Dick Schmidt
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Joan Opyr 
  To: Vision2020 Moscow 
  Sent: Saturday, November 06, 2004 9:13 AM
  Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Conspiracy?


  Scott writes:

  "Bush's margin of victory was around 4 million in the
  popular vote which puts the issue of voter fraud
  affecting the outcome to rest.  The losing side has a
  nasty habit of accusing the other side of stealing the
  election."


  I don't know that this is necessarily true.  Mr. Bush clearly won the popular vote, but that was largely due to his overwhelming margins in the uncontested red states.  Where the discrepancy between the accuracy of voter exit polls and paper versus electronic ballots is being questioned (and ought to be investigated) is in the swing states like Ohio and Florida, which, popular vote be damned, determined the winner.  We know from 2000 that the popular vote is constitutionally meaningless.

  We also knew before November 2nd that Mr. Bush would win most of the the center of the country and that Mr. Kerry would win the Northeast, the Great Lakes, and the Western coast.  The election hinged on a couple of electoral roller coasters -- Disney World and Cedar Point.  As close as those states were likely to be -- and as inconclusive as the results were four years ago -- all sides should have insisted that a paper trail be generated.

  Voter fraud on both sides might well be inevitable, but why should We the People enable it?  We need to insist on a verifiable vote, on the possibility and feasibility of recounts, and on our democratic will being recorded on something more sophisticated than Diebold's version of Atari Pong.  Why, in other words, have we outsourced the vote to private corporations?  The old paper ballots were generated, counted, and verified by elected public officials.  No matter the propensity for human error, both honest and dishonest, I could live with that because we could (barring Supreme Court interference) investigate it  What I can't live with are electronic voting machines supplied by private companies and separated from the oversight of the body politic.  This is a case, I think, where the Luddites are correct.  My electronic vote might vanish without a trace, but if Katharine Harris burns my ballot, I can call "CSI: Miami" and get them to swab her wicked fingers for traces of burnt chads and lighter fluid.  How, exactly, do I check up on Diebold?  How do I know that the votes in their machines aren't hacked, front-loaded, or otherwise hijacked?  There's no paper trail to match against voter registrations.  This is a problem.  A big one.  But until it bites a Republican or two on the ass, I suspect that nothing will be done. 

  Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment

  PS: If Kennedy really did win in 1960 thanks to the vote of the Chicago dead, then what was the result other than to postpone the inevitable?  We'd only have had to impeach Nixon a decade earlier, thus missing some truly great comedy on "All in the Family."      





   


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