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The Magic of America. America is magic. An uncommon event in mankind’s woeful history of failed civilizations. But Americas magic may be coming to an end. Not that America will end, there’s too much money involved for the real estate that we call America to end. But the magic will end, and ironically it will end because of magic. To believe that preamble you must be a purist. You must believe in the original intent of American Democracy. If you’re an anarchist, communist, socialist, or some other hybrid political entity, then this will fall on deaf ears. But, if you are a true believer in American Democracy it is painfully easy to envision the demise of America’s democratic magic. Why? How? How soon? The why is easy. Amongst a long list of enemies to America, leading the list is ourselves. It truly is the old adage, “we have met the enemy and it is us“. However, in defense of us, we are involved in a war for survival that is unprecedented in our history. Never before have we faced so many evils from within. And never before have be been so poorly prepared to defend against such a pervasive enemy. If nothing changes, all too soon the vote of each individual American will no longer be verifiable. That means that the process by which you cast your vote is one that cannot be backtracked. If left to become fully compliant with the provisions of the Help America Vote Act of 2002, the purity of American Democracy will be something discussed as an abstraction in political science classes. Or worse, no longer discussed at all. How this all came to be is in itself a prime example of how Americans have become so busy just trying to make ends meet that they have little time to watch who’s minding the store. The Help American Vote Act was a reflexive response to the election of 2000. While America was eating vast quantities of fast food and watching the Super Bowl, corporations and lobbyists were busy influencing the thinking of those people assigned the responsibility of developing a alternative system of voting than that system which screwed the 2000 election. You remember the “hanging chads” in Florida? The solution, said the lobbyists for the computer based elections systems manufacturers, is to make the possibility of hanging chads a moot point. Make the hanging chads go away by using computers. Using computers makes it all sound so simple, so neat and easy, so leading edge. In reality, computers are another form of science based magic. Few computer users have any real appreciation of the magic of the logic cards that live within the computers brain, and have zero idea how the esoteric software makes it all work. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with magic. I like David Copperfield as much as the next guy, but like with all creations of mankind, magic can be used for good or for its opposite. By accident or design, the magic of computer voting is working against the American democratic process. Voting into a computer requires that the voter endorse the concept of blind trust. Long ago, like day one, mankind realized that blind trust does not work. There must be a way to check the process of any system devised by man so that in balance all sides are receiving true intent information. If a system is designed to accommodate the purpose of true intent, a predictable result can be expected. However, if a system is poorly designed, or designed to deceive, then you have the voting crisis of 2008, also known as black box magic. Or, as like to call it, the Copperfield Effect. Voting into a black box into which all votes are cast to never be seen again in the original format reveals that we have painted ourselves into a very difficult corner. A corner that because of the provisions of the Help America Vote Act, and because of HAVA’s totalitarian offspring the Elections Assistance Commission, leaves very little room and time to maneuver. [Arguing the relative merits of computer based voting has reached the point of absurdity.] Anyone with at least a double digit IQ intuitively understands the fatally flawed rationale in the decision that forced us to vote into a magical black box. It is time, it is well past time to stop arguing the obvious. It is time to direct the limited forces of the grassroots directly at the Queen Bee. As long as the Help America Vote Act is law, as long as the Election Assistance Commission has authority, then the Queen Bee that they represent will continue to spawn worker drones in the form of compromised bureaucrats, lobbyists for manufacturers of computer based voting machines, and other subterranean types that work in unison to destroy Americas fundamental underpinnings. And they do such for their own selfish short term profit. It is important to appreciate that the flaw in the system is believing that computer based voting can ever be compatible with the guiding star of voting transparency. The voting process should be one that the average literate English speaking American voter can understand from beginning to end. The inner workings of computer based voting is no more understandable to the average American, that is quantum physics or brain surgery. Even rocket surgeons are sometimes unsure of how to interact with the “simplified” computer voting systems. Voting via computer, via US postal, or via any method that does not permit for over all transparency, chain of custody, traceability, verification, validation, tabulation by an average American is a process that will destroy voter confidence and will render the process invalid. Bottom line…Don’t fear the machines because they are flawed, their flaws produce a circumstance of involuntary transparency. They produce so many mistakes that we are forced to investigate why and to what degree. The reason to fear the computer based voting machines is that at some point in the future they will work to a degree of accuracy that no practical logical argument will be able to defeat. It is at that moment in time where beginning to end voting transparency has disappeared forever, and it is at that point in time where you could mark your calendar as the end of original intent American democracy. If you don’t want the magic that is America to end, and end far sooner than any of us would like, then it is time to let them (your elected officials) know in no uncertain terms that voting via any computer based system is unacceptable, intolerable, and career ending for those politicians that lack the intelligence and wisdom to fix the system.
Host of "American Voices" radio-Wednesdays 7-8PM Eastern & Co-Host of popular "Strait & Kall"radio programming- Thursdays 8-9PM Eastern, airing on WNJC1360 in the Philadelphia Pennsylvania radio market(live internet stream www.wnjc1360.com); Frequent guest/co-host on "Voice of the Voters" radio. Most importantly, a concerned and involved American.
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