A Paper Ballot, a Newspaper, and a Polaroid Camera

 

by Allen Snyder

 

OpEdNews.Com

 

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‘May I have a paper ballot, please?’

 

If you’re any kind of concerned, informed, and registered American voter, fearful and distrustful of the current system’s multiple shortcomings, worried about how whacko neo-conservatives from the GOP’s right-wing have corrupted it almost beyond recognition with their myriad dirty tricks and Nixonian ratfucking, these will be the first words out of your mouth when you go to the polls in November to cast your vote against Bush.

 

Why?  Mainly because I had the living crap scared out of me by a mind-boggling article written by Bob Fitrakis and published recently at Common Dreams.

 

Here’s the link: http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm.

 

When you’re done dry heaving, wipe your mouth, brush your teeth, pop an Altoids (the cinnamon ones are really good), and ask yourself why this hasn’t been creating similar huge tidal waves of disgust anywhere but on the progressive Internet and in ‘fringe’ left-wing publications.  Sure, CNN and its docile brethren have been doing periodic stories, but they’ve amounted mostly to various talking heads superficially bemoaning the issue one way or the other, with many details conveniently left out (guess we’re on a need-to-know basis here).  Either the machines suck to high heaven and shouldn’t be used at all without some major overhaul (preferably a different manufacturer) or they’re more wonderful than Atkins-brand low-carb sliced bread and should be used everywhere without question (guess what position the neo-conservative jerk-offs are taking?), and of course, the new political buzz-phrase, ‘paper trail’, ‘paper trail’, ‘paper trail’.

 

You’d think after the fixed/stolen 2000 election sham, decided by the Supreme Embarrassment, voters would be warier than ever of pushing those big green, red, orange, or whatever color buttons there are on their computer voting machine’s touch screens.  In 2000, thousands of Gore votes were lost, misplaced, mislaid, deleted, destroyed, purged, ignored, or just plain not counted.  And that was just in Florida .

 

While the machines are touted as a panacea to all that ails the American voting process (heaven forbid they do something about apathy), their compromised genesis should actually exacerbate one’s qualms about fairness and accuracy in computer or electronic voting.

 

Suspicious activities have been noted in some Democratic state primaries, particularly in Georgia and Florida (not again!).  So when James Carville says we need to make sure Jeb, George, and Diebold don’t steal this election, too, the possibility they actually might sounds more like SOP for the GOP, not some nutty left-wing conspiracy theory like their hair-brained scheme to get rid of the Clintons (oh, wait, that was a conspiracy).

 

When 80% of these machines are manufactured, programmed, ‘repaired’, and controlled by a company full of super-wealthy GOP shills, admittedly laboring nonstop to make sure Dubya really, truly wins this election, the November fix may already be in.  Skilled computer hackers can alter the machines, their contents, and their results at will, controlling the results of entire elections.

 

Diebold’s willful refusal to provide for a paper trail to verify votes are actually being counted (and for whom they’re being cast) smacks of the worst kind of Stalinism (as in ‘Joe Stalin announced today he’s just been unanimously re-elected dictator of Russia ’).  If I didn’t know better, I’d say it looked as though Diebold wants to put the kibosh on any paper trail so they’re free to screw with the machines they need to screw with to get their buddy Dubya elected (What?  You mean a right-wing conspiracy?  Never!).

 

When my wife and I voted in the Tennessee Democratic primary on February 10^th, we asked a poll worker about getting a paper ballot instead of using the machines come November.  She patiently explained (as if she’d been asked this before) that the machines were virtually infallible and there exists plenty of evidence we were there; including the signatures we gave, the cards we filled out, the ID we showed to get the cards, etc.  How she knows all this remains a mystery.  Later, we both realized that everything she cited was merely evidence we showed up, not evidence that we voted.  Further, there was no record at all kept of who we actually voted for.

 

Maybe our only recourse is to provide our own evidence and verification.  We’ll both adopt our best Lee Harvey Oswald poses, hold up our paper ballots (with the Kerry square clearly marked), the day’s front page from the Knoxville News-Sentinel and have a poll worker take Polaroids of us.  That way, if there are any problems November 3^rd, at least we’ll be ready for a recount.