REPUBLICAN WAR ON DEMOCRACY

The Republicans have a program that appeals to maybe twenty percent of the population. The only way they can win (and the way they have in the past eight years) is to distort this fact through lies, and to prevent people from voting Democratic:

— before voting, by scrubbing names of likely Democratic voters from the voting rolls, challenging their right to vote because of a name or address mismatch, that they are out of the country on military service, challenging new registrations, providing too few absentee ballots
— on election day, by closing precincts, moving polling places around, by providing too few machines in Democratic precincts, delivering them late, machines so poorly designed that they break down repeatedly, causing such long delays that the wait proves prohibitive for many people
— in the booth, by inserting bogus programming that flips a voter’s choice to the Republican or a third party candidate (very very rarely, if ever, has it ever occurred the other way around), or ones where selecting the straight party vote option registers a vote for President only if you choose Republican, creating an amazing percentage of “undervote”, those who apparently made no choice for President, or by providing poorly designed, confusing ballots
— by providing “provisional ballots” whenever problems arise, leaving the voter with the impression that they have voted, when in fact these ballots are rarely counted
— at the central tabulator, which is programmed to flip the entire election to a given percentage, usually 51—49%, while keeping the same total to conceal the fraud

Theses tactics have been used and are in use now.

They were used in the 2000 election, where Florida made the news, and the over 90,000 disenfranchised were primarily African American and Jewish.

The were used in 2004 when Kerry lost Ohio by 5,988 votes, and the statewide ‘undervote’ was 17,095, and one machine was caught counting backwards for Kerry, attempting to deliver a negative 16,000 votes, and another recorded 4500 votes for Bush, out of 658 cast. He was aware of the fraud, noting on election night that wherever paper ballots were used in New Mexico, the results matched the polls, but where opti-scan machines were used, they were off by exactly the percentage that had predicted his victory— the results had been flipped. He chose not to fight it in order to remain “viable for 2008.”

They were used in 2006 when the Democrats should have won an additional thirty seats in the House, but were so jubilant to have regained the House and a slim majority in the Senate, they chose to remain silent about it.

And they are on display now, in early voting in many states. Machines are flipping votes all over the place.

My question is, where is the media? Outside of Thom Hartmann on Air America and Amy Goodman on Pacifica radio, I hear barely a mention. Everyone is preoccupied with the horserace, and ‘he said—she said,’ not whether the game is fixed.

Where are the Democratic protests? Why are they doing nothing now, eight years into this. I don’t want noble losers, I want fair elections. I want denunciations on the floor of the House and Senate. I want bills criminalizing this behavior with severe penalties. Are you afraid the electorate is fragile, made of glass, easily discouraged from voting if there’s a possibility it won’t count. You’re wrong. The anger is coming, we’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore. This is our democracy—or not.

The documentation is now overwhelming. Under Republican leadership, our elections have been privatized, turned over to Premiere (formerly Diebold), E S & S, and Sequoia / Robis, Republican executives all, who are running it on machines seemingly designed specifically so they could be hacked. Even from where I write here in Los Angeles County, the bluest of the blue states, they are in charge of the running the vote, counting the vote, training the pollworkers, even running the help desk to which complaints are made — now recorded electronically (by Robis), so there is no paper record. They way in which they were awarded these contracts seems highly questionable, along with the Supervisors choice of registrar.

Against this there is an army of election activists who are through exit polling, poll monitoring, video taping, are documenting all phases of the problems. Without anyone willing to enforce either the letter or spirit of justice, where will this lead.

Since many are too lazy to read these days and time is short, check out these links:

http://videothevote.org/player_vtv_onsite
http://videothevote.org/video/reports/

"Hacking Democracy" trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8O43LxV_Xw
"Hacking Democracy" on Youtube;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVlZTWH7u8w

"Uncounted" - The Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nJz09T0HME
Uncounted on Youtube:
"Uncounted" will bring up various chapters, All smoking gun proof of fraud
http://www.uncountedthemovie.com/

"Murder, Spies and Voting Lies"
trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNHhP4JCDhA
putting the ttle into Youtube will bring up longer clips
the film:
http://www.votinglies.com/

"Stealing America, Vote by Vote"
youtube trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyip_5C2E0w
the film:
http://www.stealingamericathemovie.org/

DO SOMETHING!