Walden W. O’Dell was the chief executive of one of those companies, Diebold Inc. In August 2003, he sent a letter to 100 wealthy friends inviting them to a Republican Party fund-raiser at his home in Columbus, Ohio. He said, "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." It appears that he did.

The 2004 election differed from 2000 in that George Bush may have received a higher percentage of the popular vote; however, it has been proven he should have lost in the Electoral College, except for another fraudulent election, this time in (no surprise) Ohio.

The Ohio Secretary of State, Kenneth Blackwell, served as the chairman of Bush’s Ohio reelection campaign and publicly called Senator Kerry, the Democratic candidate, a "disaster" sure to reap "terrible" and "horrible" results if elected. Not only did Blackwell cause the registrations of Democratic voters to be rejected because they were on the wrong weight of paper, there were too few voting machines allocated to poor (and largely Democratic) precincts.

When combined with a Republican Party program of aggressively issuing personal challenges to voters and the casting of provisional ballots, the vote suppression tactics led to long lines and waits of up to seven hours to vote, primarily in poor neighborhoods. Many people finally gave up and lost their right to vote.

Exit polls across the nation appeared to give Kerry an advantage in the popular vote, up to 3 percent in the swing states of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida. Even before the votes were counted, Blackwell was bragging that he had helped "deliver" Ohio in announcing Bush’s "victory." In just these three states, the odds of the dramatic swing between the exit polls and the final tabulation have been calculated as 250 million to one!

During the joint session of Congress on January 6, 2005 to certify the electoral vote, only one dozen Democratic House members and one Democratic senator stood up to complain about the voting irregularities in Ohio. However, their objections did force a debate about Electoral College results for only the second time since 1877. After a two-hour session, the Senate voted 74-1 and the House voted 267-31 to reject the protest. Can it be said that either party truly had the interests of the voters at heart?

Our democratic republic is founded upon our ability to trust the results of our collective vote. Is there any doubt that the advent of black-box voting, systematic election fraud, and the widespread intimidation of voters dictate that we seize control of the election process before the chance is lost forever?

Each of us must find within us the individual courage and initiative to perform one simple rebellious act – refuse to use the computerized voting machines or any other machine ballot.

Instead of responding like laboratory animals pushing a button in response to the stimulus of the latest ten-second television smear ad, we can each take a little longer to carefully consider the candidates presented on the ballot by the various political parties.

Once we decide, we can demonstrate our literacy and our power by clearly writing in our personal choice for president of the United States, whether or not his or her name is on the ballot!

Presently, half of all voters don’t bother going to the polls and less than one quarter actually elect the president for all of us. Imagine the immense power that would flow to the people if voting truly became universal.

If voter turnout was to dramatically increase, and if only 15 to 25 percent of all voters were to write in their electoral choices, trust that the politicians would be scrambling to ensure that all write-in votes cast for them are legally counted. We would quickly find all of them registering their willingness to accept every write-in vote naming them for any office of public trust.

If we simple voters are smart enough to earn a living and to figure out how to pay our taxes – if we have courage enough to fight the wars started by our government, we are also entitled to collectively establish basic policy to guide our government, and to personally write in the name of whomever we consider most qualified to effectuate our policies.

We, the ordinary voters of every party, must evolt against politics as usual and join in a nonviolent evolution to transform our government.

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