Diary: This is one piece of monkey business nobody ever explained

I don't remember where I read the following but I think it is Federal Election Officials who say that the laws governing voting machines and paper trails, i.e., fixing defective voting machines and the loopholes that still allow them to be used, can't be amended or fixed until at least 2012, despite the fact that there have been alarm bells all over the place by even computer experts and others familiar with the problem---which I am aware varies state by state and even country by county---but the mess with voting machine integrity which they've known that there were serious questions about, somehow, for unstated reasons, can't be changed until at least the year 2012.

Why is that? Now we hear about a new glitch in the (formerly Diebold) machines whereby time outs in the machines (if nobody uses the machine for a certain length of time) can and/or will drop votes that have been cast on that machine. I'm not sure exactly how that is supposed to happen, but it has been in the news at BlackBox.org. And with the voting machines being easily hackable, and there being NO paper trail in a lot of them...this really severely compromises the integrity of the vote. Add to that the fact that varying voting districts have different systems in place, with the poorer, minority areas often "conveniently" having more problems with voting machine integrity because they can't afford to get better machines...So, in essence, what has been known for a long time has resulting in (I think deliberately by Republicans who have had power a lot of the time since 2004 and still have veto-sustaining power in the Senate)..resulting in NOTHING being done or will be done about it until AT LEAST four years from now.

How convenient.

So, in effect, we can't be sure of the integrity of the upcoming election vote. Dropped votes, machines being taken home in some precincts by local election officials...and then all the shennanigans going on with "caging" (destroying voter eligiblity for whatever reason--- such as not having the same address if your house was foreclosed on unless the voter files for a new election voter registration card processed in time for the elections)...What can or will be done about this stuff in time for the most important presidential election, possibly since the days of FDR? With all the shennanigans going on with, as the article published here in Op-Ed News mentioned, voting irregularities, exit poll manipulation, national polling information being skewed and A MAINSTREAM MEDIA whose claims of candidate parity in the polls can't be fact-checked for accuracy. The media can and does manipulate information, I believe, in order to create a 'horse race' if there isn't enough of one for their ratings. And this can contribute to a false sense of security, and/or insecurity among voters who think their cause is lost if phony polls are put out all the time on tv news.

What a MESS! And no way to sort it out. Democrats need to stop rolling over and letting the Republicans get away with all this monkey shine...they/we need to stand firm and do like they did in Mexico a couple of years ago and refuse to concede and refuse to stand aside until every last vote is verified or else a new election is called if there is no way to verify the votes.

In 2000 the Supreme Court was WAY out of its jurisdiction intervening in the voting dispute in Florida. The US Supreme Court has NO constitutional authority to have done what it did and that was completely unconstitutional and the 'justices' involved should be impeached or somehow called into question on what they did in 2000. That whole thing may be too late now to fix, but the truth ought to come out on it...

I know...good luck. The Republicans will cry "sore loser" and "partisan" and "sour grapes" like the lady here in the comments did. That is what Republicans always do to cover their wrongdoing. I don't know why Democrats wont' stand up and create a civil war and/or constitutional crisis if there's a big question like there was in 2000. What good is rolling over like the leadership of the Democrats still does in Congress? Rolling over..all it did was put George W. Bush in office with all the attendant disaster and now it is letting Bush and the Republicans still call all the major shots in congressional legislation because Democats wont stand up and just cut funding in the House for the war in Iraq. I don't buy the line that our continuing to be there is going to make that big of a difference. Even the generals are saying the place could still blow up again (Iraq) and in the meantime the Taliban/Al Qaeda in Afghanistan are winning their jihad against our under-manned troops there. Where is the accountability in any of this? Will we just go on letting the Republicans rip us off forever? Now Obama is running a stupid, losing campaign and handing the national dialog to McCain.