We allow ourselves to be disarmed at the polls, - the only place we have a shot at maintaining our democracy! Have we gone mad? Eliminate Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia from having the last word on whether or not our vote is counted. Give us our vote back so we can fire those who are sending our democracy to hell in a hand basket! Our vote is our voice.

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I am a 67 year old lifetime Republican, having voted this ticket for 35 years. Not until I began to search the records of the 2000 and 2004 elections, did I realize that the "naysayer Democrats" were victims of Election Fraud. For the first time, I saw the real face of Florida's Secretary of State Katherine Harris. I met the ruthless Ohio Dictator of State J. Kenneth Blackwell. "We the writers, editors, webmasters and publishers of blacknewsweekly.com hereby make known and affirm the Excommunication of Kenneth Blackwell, that Nigger in Ohio who sold-out the Black vote that ultimately gave Bush the election." www.blacknewsweekly.com. You can't get any worse than this!!

The Help America Vote Act of 2002 goes into affect beginning January 2006. Already, states are in disarray over potential "election fraud" with the implementation of the new DRE (Direct Electronic voting machines) - see www.votersunite.org www.OpEdNews.com .

Welcome to the new world of e-voting, where "Hanging Chads" have been replaced by Invisible Ballots.
"No one votes unassisted on a computer; everyone is assisted by anonymous programmers." ~ Mark Ortiz former candidate for U.S. Representative North Carolina, 8th District

In Gahanna, Ohio precinct B (Franklin County), computerized voting machines gave 4,258 votes to George W. Bush and 260 votes for Kerry. In that county there are 800 registered voters and only 638 showed up to vote. This is one small sample of what went on in Ohio. You don't get numbers like that with hand counted votes. These programmed machines don't care who we are: just show up at the polls, enter your vote - and they will do counting. Joseph Stalin said, "It's not who votes that counts, it's who counts the votes." A blatant dictator would know. Private computer companies (vendors) like Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia are being paid billions of our dollars in order to count our votes. Furthermore, we assure these companies (under the law) that their proprietary software will be protected from public (voter) scrutiny. The Wizard is no longer the little fat man pulling levers behind a curtain, - he now resides as a stowaway inside the voting machines where pre-arranged decisions are known only by programmers.

We quote the Second Amendment with pride and yet we allow ourselves to be disarmed at the polls, - the only place we have a shot at maintaining our democracy! Have we gone mad? Eliminate Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia from having the last word on whether or not our vote is counted. Give us our vote back so we can fire those who are sending our democracy to hell in a hand basket! Our vote is our voice. We must demand open source code in all e-voting elections, - proprietary software be damned!

David J. Davis is a voting activist
In Alaska

Submitter: Joan Brunwasser

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

Submitters 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.