Why should we care about any particular piece of history? We have so much we need to know about what's happening now. But Votescam is actually more relevant today than ever before. It has just been republished as part of the Forbidden Bookshelf series by Open Road Publications, chosen not just for its historical value and status as "underground classic," but because it continues to impact our lives, government, our futures.

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Interview with progressive activist, Victoria Collier

My guest is progressive writer and activist, Victoria Collier "with a focus on the intersect between democracy, justice and sustainability." I like that! Welcome back to OpEdNews, Victoria.

JB: We haven't talked in quite a while*. Your father and uncle wrote Votescam: The Stealing of America back in 1992. The world changes so fast these days. Why would we be interested in their findings now, in the 21st century?

VC: A fair question, particularly in these days of information overload. Why should we care about any particular piece of history? We have so much we need to know about what's happening now. But Votescam is actually more relevant today than ever before. It has just been republished as part of the Forbidden Bookshelf series by Open Road Publications, chosen not just for its historical value and status as "underground classic," but because its story continues to impact our lives and our government, and our futures.

The Votescam investigation was the first to expose the modern-day corruption in our elections systems, particularly the riggable computer technology used to count our votes. American elections are no safer, no more verifiably accurate, and no less corrupt than they were in 1970 when Jim and Ken began their work, which spanned over 25 years. If anything the situation has deteriorated appreciably.

And the question is, why? Why has American democracy taken a nose dive? This is where Votescam is such a vital book. It answers that question by exposing the corruption of key players in the elections system, some of them still in power, like Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who had been helping to rig elections long before he handed the stolen presidency to George W. Bush in 2000, and then dealt the death-blow to democracy through Citizens United in 2010.

The story of the Collier brother's life-changing struggle to bring the truth to light exposes the central role of the corrupt corporate media, who have been aggressively censoring the subject of insider election fraud for decades. This is why so few Americans know that their voting system has been privatized and outsourced to a handful of corporations with criminal pasts and partisan interests.

Nothing has changed, and nothing is getting better - it's getting worse. We have to understand why. Until we know our history, we can't change our futures.

JB: Agreed, Victoria. You've put a lot on the table. Hmmmm, let's start with my colleagues in the mainstream media. Why isn't this the story of the century? Of this century and the last one, for that matter? After all, if elections are not sacrosanct and so much is riding on them, how can we be confident that our leaders were actually elected in the first place? Why hasn't the press been all over this?

VC: You can ask that question about many important issues regularly censored by the corporate press. The problem of press corruption and control goes deep, and I don't think we can delve into it here. If you want to simplify it in the terms of the Occupy movement, the mainstream media is controlled by the "1%" and we will hear what they allow us to hear, through their networks.

Today, however, we have the Internet, which Jim and Ken did not have. This changes the game entirely.

But to answer your question more specifically; in the case of Votescam, the media had a uniquely personal reason to censor the information. Jim and Ken had exposed the direct role of the media networks in rigging the 1970 election in Dade County, Florida, by reporting phony results to the public.

In later years, the Colliers discovered the existence of a little-known and extremely shady organization called News Election Services (NES). A consortium of the major news networks created in 1964, in every national election NES was given the right to aggregate all state votes by computer and then report final results to all the networks, who continued to pretend they were competing for earliest data. Jim and Ken feared that this small media cabal in its locked-down secret headquarters had the capability of rigging votes on a national scale, top of the ticket races, including the presidency.

Obviously, this isn't a story the networks had any interest in promoting.

And to be honest, for years after their deaths, I did not talk about NES when I spoke publicly on Votescam, because I didn't feel a lot of people were ready to swallow the possibility of this level of corruption.

I think there is a fairly widespread and growing understanding that in America, we do not actually have a free and democratic press. The Internet and alternative news organizations have shown us just what the corporate media is not telling us.

Today, the situation regarding vote reporting is changing, as election results are now posted more often through the websites of the Secretaries of State. This creates a new architecture for rigging elections, something we saw play out in Ohio in 2004.

If you read my article, "How to Rig an Election" which was the cover story for Harper's Magazine in 2012....

JB: I most certainly did!

VC: ....you'll find a summary of the 2004 rig, which was carried out by Karl Rove with the help of the uber-partisan Ohio Secretary of State, Kenneth Blackwell. He was also the co-chair of the Committee to Re-Elect George W. Bush.

Essentially Rove and top GOP tech-guru Michael Connell set up a parallel computer architecture for Election Day that routed all the electronic vote results to their private server in Chattanooga, TN. The "upset" midnight win of GWB in Ohio came after this network took over on election night, after Kerry had long been considered the victor.

Connell was subpoenaed by Ohio election integrity activists to testify about his role - and Rove's - in controlling election night vote results. But Connell was killed in a suspicious crash of his private Piper Saratoga before he was able to appear in court.

JB: I remember that very well. Convenient timing for the GOP and bad news for Connell. So, that was the end of the story? No more investigation, nothing? How can we ever get to the truth, if we're thwarted at every turn? How can you simultaneously bring readers up to date about the dire condition of our elections, Victoria, while somehow not depressing and totally overwhelming them?

VC: Yes, that is always the challenge! My answer to that is to begin organizing. Action is the antidote to despair.

JB: I'm with you on that.

VC: Since the Harper's article, I started the National Election Integrity Coalition (NEIC). We're in the process of building a new website to reflect the work we're doing now, which is building coalitions among leadership in the movements for Election Integrity, Voting Rights, and Anti-Corruption / Money Out of Politics.

We are particularly reaching out to communities of color, where there is a full awareness of many forms of voter suppression, but less discussion about how our votes can be suppressed through the technology used to count them.

What is the point of our struggle to have access to the ballot, only to find we are once again disenfranchised through election rigging?

What is the point of having clean and accurate elections, when the people we're voting for have been compromised through excessive and corrupt campaign finance laws?

All of these democracy issues are part of the same system, and if one is broken or corrupt, it damages the entire process of self-governance.

The NEIC is working to break out of the "issue silo" mentality where democracy activists waste time and derail success by fighting the pointless "my issue is most important" war. It's time to end that. All of these issues matter intrinsically, and there is no reason we should not be standing together to repair our entire system.

We are working to change the mentality of activists, and to grow the awareness of the problem in the general public. At the same time, we are working with ethical elections administrators around the country to develop a set of best practices that we can advance legislatively.

But we will never win at the legislative level without a certain level of public awareness and support, so we are working on all fronts at once.

JB: A big, admirable and very positive agenda. How does the book figure into the mix with your current work, Victoria? Or doesn't it?

VC: Votescam is part of the education work. And it's especially valuable because it tells a unique story that sheds light on what happened in the past fifty years since the great people's movements reached their culmination in the 1960s. Vote rigging was part of the organized backlash against those progressive movements. Jim and Ken's personal journey stemmed from the activism of the 1960s. They were old-school idealists who really believed in the American potential for transformation toward ever greater justice.

I think we have a responsibility to explain to younger generations where everything went wrong. Why are we in this dire condition today? What system of governance are we handing them? Why is it broken, and how can it be repaired?

In order to answer those questions we have to do our research, our homework. The answers are there. The solutions are also there, waiting for us to care enough to implement them.

JB: I love that "can do" attitude! What haven't we talked about yet that you'd like to?

VC: I'd like to mention another organization I'm involved with, called the Justice Action Mobilization Network (JAMN). It's a new network of activist leadership from many different issue areas. We are focused on building a fusion political movement that catalyzes around Climate Justice. Fusion means that we are bringing together many justice movements - social, economic, democratic - to form a united front. Our priority is diversity, and we are being led by people of color and many within the faith community. We recognize that climate change is going to overwhelm all of us if we don't organize effectively to change our society and priorities now. The NEIC is present in this network to bring the message that our democratic process is being rigged on multiple levels by the fossil fuel industry in order to prevent meaningful action to invest in renewable energy.

The good news is that the solutions to climate chaos are also solutions to poverty and injustice - the issues are inextricably entwined.

Again, we are moving beyond the "issue silos" that have proven to be so destructive to real social change. Our world is interconnected, and our activism must reflect that.

The first JAMN Town Hall is happening in North Carolina on October 3rd. http://www.jamnetwork.org

JB: This all sounds encouraging. Anything you'd like to add before we wrap this up?

VC: No, just a thank you for the chance to spread the information. Long live OpEdNews and alternative media!

JB: Amen to that! And thanks so much for talking with me, Victoria. Please keep us in the loop. You're doing important democracy-building work.

***

Votescam website

*my previous interview with Victoria:

Election Integrity's Victoria Collier Speaks Up 12.16.2011

Authors Website: http://www.opednews.com/author/author79.html

Authors Bio:

Joan Brunwasser is a co-founder of Citizens for Election Reform (CER) which since 2005 existed for the sole purpose of raising the public awareness of the critical need for election reform. Our goal: to restore fair, accurate, transparent, secure elections where votes are cast in private and counted in public. Because the problems with electronic (computerized) voting systems include a lack of transparency and the ability to accurately check and authenticate the vote cast, these systems can alter election results and therefore are simply antithetical to democratic principles and functioning.



Since the pivotal 2004 Presidential election, Joan has come to see the connection between a broken election system, a dysfunctional, corporate media and a total lack of campaign finance reform. This has led her to enlarge the parameters of her writing to include interviews with whistle-blowers and articulate others who give a view quite different from that presented by the mainstream media. She also turns the spotlight on activists and ordinary folks who are striving to make a difference, to clean up and improve their corner of the world. By focusing on these intrepid individuals, she gives hope and inspiration to those who might otherwise be turned off and alienated. She also interviews people in the arts in all their variations - authors, journalists, filmmakers, actors, playwrights, and artists. Why? The bottom line: without art and inspiration, we lose one of the best parts of ourselves. And we're all in this together. If Joan can keep even one of her fellow citizens going another day, she considers her job well done.


When Joan hit one million page views, OEN Managing Editor, Meryl Ann Butler interviewed her, turning interviewer briefly into interviewee. Read the interview here.

While the news is often quite depressing, Joan nevertheless strives to maintain her mantra: "Grab life now in an exuberant embrace!"


Joan has been Election Integrity Editor for OpEdNews since December, 2005. Her articles also appear at Huffington Post, RepublicMedia.TV and Scoop.co.nz.