First, I would like to personally thank all of the people who have been working so hard on this issue, and especially Bobby Kennedy,Jr, who wrote the article for Rolling Stone.. But we still have a huge problem. Most states have done nothing about fixing anything. We have, conceivably, the most important election in my 57 years coming up in November. Here is the question that keep me up nights: What are we going to do, if it looks like the Rethugs have done it again. I cannot imagine a more serious civil crime than election tampering in a Democracy. We cannot just sit here and do nothing, waiting for the Democrats to cry foul. By the time they have all of the hard evidence they think they need to raise questions about this election, we will be busy with 2008. That's how it works. I believe that it is up to the people. We can either draw a line in the sand now, and let it be known that we will not tolarate anymore election tampering, if we have to bring this country to a stand still, for days or weeks on end. Or we can live in a twisted, plutocratiic Theocracy of some kind. Or we can pack up and move to a Democracy, because we do not have one here, now.

by wintefire6 (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 89 comments [1 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, Jul 23, 2006 at 3:38:13 PM

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I agree with you that it's urgent to wake people up. I just got an email from someone to whom I had sent a copy of "Invisible Ballots". He mentioned that he had learned a lot from it. When I pressed him about spreading the word, his response was that everyone he knew is apathetic. That may be a very accurate reflection; however, I agree with you completely. If we don't wake up from our apathy, we will find ourselves too late out of the gate to save the democracy we claim to hold so dear. This will not be an easy fight. But it has to start with people emerging from their stupor and seeing what is at stake. After that, we must all do what we can to spread the word, from the bottom up, demanding change. Nothing else will do. It's as simple as that.

by Joan Brunwasser (206 articles, 3757 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 751 comments [4 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, Jul 23, 2006 at 8:18:31 PM

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Voting does not matter. Neither does the 1st Amendment which is violated when the gov't detains peaceful protestors and pressures Amazon to drop the book "America Deceived" by E.A. Blayre III. The 4th Amendment is gutted as the administration wire-taps phones without a warrant. The entire Constitution is ignored as the gov't starts 2 illegals wars based on lies and a false flag operation known as 9/11. Final link (before Google Books caves to pressure): America Deceived - Book

by Lorring II (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 87 comments) on Monday, Jul 24, 2006 at 4:17:15 PM

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Quote from article, *The Diebold Bombsell* : *Without voter-verified paper records of all the votes, and without routine spot audits of these records, no currently available voting system can be trusted. With such records, even when machines do not function correctly, each voter can make sure that his or her vote has been correctly recorded on paper.* So my vote was correctly recorded on paper -- why should that make me feel secure? Would someone please tell me why everyone is fixating on *voter-verified paper receipts* and believing that as long as we have that, and routine sample audits, we can relax and feel assured that our vote results are reliable? It seems to me that is FALSE SECURITY. Yes, we need paper receipts, but it seems to me that our vote results are still far from safe or reliable until we look beyond paper receipts and start focusing laser-like attention on the SECURITY OF THE MEMORY CARDS which TABULATE the votes in the voting machines (both the DRE machines AND the optical scanners which tabulate paper ballots). [Hari Hursti was able to gain access to the memory card in an OPTICAL SCANNER, and within a few minutes I believe he was able to introduce programming code which manipulated the VOTE TABULATION DATA for the entire precinct.] The biggest vulnerability for those memory cards is during the period leading up to the opening of the polls on election day, and the period following the close of the polls. You can have all the paper receipts and poll watchers you want on Election Day itself and it won't do anything to safeguard the period of real vulnerability for the memory cards. We need strict chain of command security controls for the life time of every memory card from the day it is delivered to the Registrar's office to the point when its tabulation results are fed into the central tabulator, and citizens groups need to be demanding access to those security log books to ensure that those security measures are being strictly enforced. In cases where security lapses are found, we need to demand a full recount of the votes from that particular machine, rather than an audit of randomly selected precincts.

by my2cents (0 articles, 5 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 30 comments) on Tuesday, Aug 1, 2006 at 2:06:32 PM

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