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USA United States Of America (7159) Electronic Voting (2795) Election-Voting Issues (1973) Election Reform (1028) Election Reform HR 550 (230) Undemocratic (69)
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TWO COMPELLING REASONS TO RESIST THE HOLT BILL: THE HOLT BILL SECURES SECRET VOTE COUNTING AS WELL AS THE AGGRANDIZEMENT OF FEDERAL CONTROL OVER OUR ELECTIONS 1) Our Right to be self-governing cannot be surrendered or compromised: The fundamental right of a democracy is quite simply government by the people, of the people, and for the people. Rights are not negotiable. They are absolute. The democratic experiment was designed to reverse the history of tyranny wherein rulers held rights and people held only privileges granted by those rulers. In this new democracy, the people would hold the rights and the government,servant to the People, would be granted the privileges that could be revoked by the People. The ultimate authority ... resides in the people alone. – James Madison. Our vote is the means by which we exercise that authority over our public servants - the government. The people are masters of both Congress and courts, not to overthrow the constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert it! — Abraham Lincoln It should go without saying that since elections are our mechanism for asserting our authority, the people are the only ones who must have authority over their own elections. Once we permit the servant-government to control the counting of the vote, as we have under HAVA, We the People can no longer insure the integrity of our votes and cannot expect to remain self-governing. The Founders recognized: Even under the best forms [of government] those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny. – Thomas Jefferson. This has now come to pass. We were not asked if we would surrender our right to control the single means by which we preserve our independence, it was decided for us. Our votes are now counted secretly by machines. We can no longer supervise the counting of our votes, the government having handed that function over to private voting machine companies. The government, under HAVA, has stolen our right to control our own elections and hence our ability to hold the government as a servant to the People. The Declaration of Independence provided that our inalienable rights should be secured by the government: The very government which has decided it alone will determine how the votes that elect it are to be counted. We the People are now shut out of the process and have lost the means to effectuate our Declaration of Independence. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. 2) HR 811 authorizes the expansion of executive power: The Holt Bill proposes to make permanent and to fund the scandal-ridden Election Assistance Commission (EAC), which was supposed to sunset under HAVA. For as long as HAVA has forced us to vote on these computerized voting machines, those responsible for the testing and certification of these machines have made sure that accountability for the functioning of the machines would be non-existent. First as members of the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED), charged with control, selection and oversight of the voting machine test labs, as well as members of the Election Center - a group which actively colluded with the voting machine industry to convince the public to accept these machines - Donetta Davidson, now Chair of the EAC, and Thomas Wilkey, now Executive Director of the EAC, have been there creating the appearance that these machines are tested, certified and secure. This is our EAC! See A Return to Sanity – Why We must Eliminate Computerized Control of Our Election System, http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_andi_nov_070225_a_return_to_sanity__96.htm & Halting Holt, http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_andi_nov_070322_halting_holt_thought.htm We should no longer be surprised that people who fail to perform are those who are rewarded and promoted. That is how this Administration perceives the role of government. The question is why does the Holt Bill want to institutionalize the EAC?
www.re-media.org Andi Novick Northeast Citizens for Responsible Media www.re-media.org
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