Poem - Touchscreen voting machines are illegal.

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Touchscreen voting machines

with no paper trail of accountability

are unreliable, unverifiable,

making recount an impossibility.

Secretly programmed,

equipped with accessible modems,

able to be manipulated

by satellite, computer and telephone.

The privately-owned, patented software

is not open to scrutiny

by election officials, computer experts

or members of the community.

A computerized vote count is a secret count.

And that's against the law!

Elections are required to be

open and accessible to all.

A public vote count is history

when we use touchscreen computers,

making every future American election

subject to being looted.

Two companies control

80% of vote count in the U.S. -

Diebold Voting Systems

and E. S. & S.

That a company would even make

a ballot-less voting machine

should cause enough alarm

to make Congress intervene.

Diebold's Chairman,

in a 2003 fundraising letter,

said he was "committed

to helping Ohio deliver

its electoral votes for the president."

Doesn't that fact make you shiver?!

And having raised more than a hundred thousand

for the George W. Bush re-election,

do you even wonder

if he got his Pioneer medallion?

Every vote is in dispute when counted

by a secretly-programmed computer,

ensuring no one will ever be able

to prove vote fraud in America's future.

"The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which all other rights are protected.  To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery." - Thomas Paine

"Those who cast the votes decide nothing.  Those who count the votes decide everything." - Joseph Stalin

Authors Bio:
Vi's works appear widely both in print and online. She conducts Poetry Workshops and gives readings in Central New York. Her latest chapbook is "Sine Qua Non Antiques (an Arcanum of History, Geography and Treachery).