Dear Friends,

The way in which a sovereign people retain their freedom is to have control over the process by which they select those they choose to represent them. Were they to lose control then those once free people would become subjects of the government or the rulers who no longer need to be elected.

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Americans have lost much of this control as we are districted in such a way that one of two parties is guaranteed to win; as money in politics eliminates the possibility that many whom we might desire to represent us could ever compete; as the media fails to bring us the information we need so that our choices are no longer informed. We need great change to reclaim our democracy. But if all of the above changed tomorrow we would still be enslaved if voting was just an illusion.

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When software counts your vote- how do you know your vote was counted? It really is that basic. People, if you ask them this question, will tell you that they assume the software is tested or someone is making sure that the machines are doing what we're being told they're supposed to be doing- which is to count our votes accurately. We know that's not true. The evidence is all there, but is being ignored. It reminds me of the way the evidence of cancer was also there with regard to cigarette smoking, but it took a long time before enough of us paid attention.

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Once you became a smoker, you really didn't want to hear about the cancer connection. Denial is an effective inhibitor. This is what we have seen in every state in the nation as the cancer of failed and rigged voting software sucks the life out of our democracy.

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Americans are not as stupid as their behavior of recent years would suggest. Americans don't return such failed politicians to office once they've demonstrated how corrupt and incompetent they are. And yet those same bankrupt human beings stay in power. How is that possible? You can choose to ignore the connection between the continued success of such an extremely corrupt faction of republicans and the vote stealing by software, just as we chose to ignore the connection between cancer and cigarette smoke. Eventually it will kill us.

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Re-media has just created a blog to keep you informed of efforts to stop New York State from buying those cigarettes in the way of software driven computerized vote counting machines. Once New York spends our tax dollars on the computers it will be hooked, like the rest of the nation, like the cigarette addict and then our chances of stopping the cancer will be that much harder.

Please bookmark our blog and make it a regular part of your web browsing. In addition to keeping you apprised of developments in New York State and how you can help to protect our democracy by protecting the integrity of our vote, we will be posting links to what we believe to be the best of and most relevant of writing, analysis and video from other national voting activists.

Thanks

andi novick and joanne lukacher