QUESTIONS:
~Why were election workers in San Diego, at the last Presidential "election", ordered to take the computers home for an overnight jammy party, to their own private homes? Is this not partisanship at work?
~Should we be trusting paid-off computer programmers, only a precious few who can even read the secret election coding, or should we be relying on public transparency? As Greg Palast brilliantly wrote:
"The scenarios generated by computerized voting would make one yearn for hanging chads" (and erasures, and all the other things which the Christian Science Monitor moans about).
WHAT IS THE SOLUTION? LET's GET TO THIS: THAT's THE IMPORTANT PART!
A) To prevent hand-counted paper ballots from being corrupted, ballot-counting should be filmed on TV and broadcasted.
B) Citizens summoned at random for the civic duty of vote counting, just like with jury duty, should do the counting. Other citizens should stand as witnesses to the counting. No citizen voter should ever be turned away from standing as witness.
C) Very important: Votes are historically stolen at the centralized levels---County, State and Federal, where there is no oversight. While at the precinct levels votes are snatched in small bits, by two or three percent here or there----it is at these central levels, where computer programmers may steal votes in good earnest, because there is no oversight.
Thus, it becomes centrally important that citizens themselves tally the centralized votes----county-wide, state-wide and nation-wide figures-----on public camera. No more paid-off computer programmers behind the curtain and broadcasting the “results” like the Wizard of Oz, please!
D) To prevent ballot boxes from being tossed out (because they often are), the thing to do is to film the entire precinct and the transporting of the boxes, from point A to point B.
At least, with paper ballots, there is visible proof when something has gone amiss. Unlike with Satellite-programmed "poufs", where not a trace remains.
E) How can this be financed? As easily as buying expensive machines, if not more so. As easily as paying jurors for jury duty. Much easier than paying for a war based on a lie. You get the picture.
If we have to even argue about whether or not we can afford to uphold one of the central pillars of democracy, namely voting, then we had better re-evaluate our priorities, and fast too.
F) Because the media has collaborated for decades to steal elections, using dirty coordinated tricks like saying some machine had "Broken down" and "projecting" vote figures which, coincidentally, had been used for eight years in a row (see Truthout article above).... a key part of the plan must be that once again, it is the citizens and not the media who are the reporters.
Citizens should post results of the precinct-wide, county-wide, state-wide and federal tallies (with a separate panel of citizens working at each level, to keep the job manageable). Thus, with figures posted to the Internet, citizens can add up the facts and figure out the legitimacy of the matter. Transparency would be assured.
The key and very important thing here is this: The posting to the Internet, by citizen vote counters chosen at random for the civic duty of vote counting, must absolutely be done *prior to* the media's announcing of the "facts". In fact, the media's figures must be based on the citizen figures, not on its own corporate hijacking.
