The fact that we have to fight with bureaucrats to get a vote count, one that might not even include all the African Americans who wanted to vote, is unconstitutional. Instead of trying to threaten gays with ridiculous amendments, and instead of loading up the budget vote with billiions in known pork ("earmarks"), the Congress should authorize a few hundred millions to give us voting machines and a voting system that is accurate and unbiased and works down to every last vote.
If we can spend billions to put a rocket in space and men on the moon, we can spend a few hundred million to make sure we are electing the candidates we are actually voting for. The inconsistencies in our election are so glaring, and the results so incredible, that anyone with a head on their shoulders cannot say with 100 percent certainty that the right man is about to take the oath of office for the presidency. This is NOT science fiction, it is not conspiracy theory. Exit polls do not lie, computers do not favor one candidate over another when they are working right, and touch screens do not light up for one candidate rather than another when they are working right. Nor is a ballot accurate when anyone with half a brain can change the tally at will.
What astonishes me the most is that Congress, the White House and the Supreme Court - our government - actually believe we are going to sit back and let them continue this way, when a solution is so simple to come by. That they wait for us to take action is a sure sign of how un-democratic they are. Lobbyists for drug companies are getting more attention than the machinery that makes democracy work: voting booths.
If we can’t get good equipement, plenty of it, and some security for voting - in every precinct in every state - we may as well just stop trying to be a democracy at all. This is kids’ stuff, and it can be corrected as easily as homework. Why our representatives aren’t steaming mad about this is amazing. \
We deserve, have paid for with our tax dollars, fair, accurate, honest, trustwrorthy elections - NOT approximations. There should be an auditable record for every vote, and redundancies that insure accurate tallies, and a system that we all trust. It’s so basic. We can and must make this change, and we should do it now. Why it wasn’t done after the stolen election of 2000 is a mystery, too. To let it go another election is to ask for a brand new form of democracy - one that we could call voluntary corrupt tyranny. If the current administration had been at all interested in fairness, they’d have taken care of this problem during their first four years in office. Don’t count on them coming to the aid of the people, justice and our voting system voluntarily.
You are not a radical to ask for an immediate recount and an immediate solution to this voting scandal. It is insane to spend millions upon millions trying to persuade people to vote one way or the other and then not know what the real outcome was. And by "real" I mean accurate. If the Republicans won by 10,000 votes and not 135,000 votes in Ohio, that means something to me. I voted thinking I would know whether it was a win, a rout, a tie or a loss, in my state, and every other state.
Would you let your bank approximate how much money you have spent and how much is left in your account? Don’t you think there are about a billion more transactions every day in banks than there are in a single election? How is it that the machinery of finance is so accurate and yet the machinery with which we count votes just never seems to work right? We have to get this fixed, and the sooner the better.
It’s not revolutionary or crazy or sour grapes to ask for voting machines that work and fair practices in the assessment of every individual’s right to vote. That there were Republican operatives out there intimidating Democratic voters in Ohio and Florida, that there is a Republican in charge of counting votes in a state that could turn the outcome, all these things which taint the results need to be challenged and corrected. If ours is not going to be a government of, by and for the people, then we don’t need to fix the voting process at all. But if we’re going to lay claim to the Constitution and the history we say we value so much, then getting the votes counted fairly and accurately in every election has got to be made mission critical. I’d be happy to know that George Bush really did win the election, regardless of my politics. But at this point, I am unhappy to know that Kerry "lost" because science and math are telling me that chances are very good some quantity of votes for Kerry was stolen. And that’s just not fair, not to the country, and not to anyone who voted. This seems so basic. It’s an outrage that we have to recontruct the American dream from the ground up - but perhaps it’s a big lesson in that regard: Democracy is not a given; it’s a fragile, living thing that can be dismantled when unethical, partisan efforts, for whatever reason, outpace the energies of the people.
The fact that we have to fight with bureaucrats to get a vote count, one that might not even include all the African Americans who wanted to vote, is unconstitutional. Instead of trying to threaten gays with ridiculous amendments, and instead of loading up the budget vote with billiions in known pork ("earmarks"), the Congress should authorize a few hundred millions to give us voting machines and a voting system that is accurate and unbiased and works down to every last vote.
If we can spend billions to put a rocket in space and men on the moon, we can spend a few hundred million to make sure we are electing the candidates we are actually voting for. The inconsistencies in our election are so glaring, and the results so incredible, that anyone with a head on their shoulders cannot say with 100 percent certainty that the right man is about to take the oath of office for the presidency. This is NOT science fiction, it is not conspiracy theory. Exit polls do not lie, computers do not favor one candidate over another when they are working right, and touch screens do not light up for one candidate rather than another when they are working right. Nor is a ballot accurate when anyone with half a brain can change the tally at will.
What astonishes me the most is that Congress, the White House and the Supreme Court - our government - actually believe we are going to sit back and let them continue this way, when a solution is so simple to come by. That they wait for us to take action is a sure sign of how un-democratic they are. Lobbyists for drug companies are getting more attention than the machinery that makes democracy work: voting booths.
If we can’t get good equipement, plenty of it, and some security for voting - in every precinct in every state - we may as well just stop trying to be a democracy at all. This is kids’ stuff, and it can be corrected as easily as homework. Why our representatives aren’t steaming mad about this is amazing. \
We deserve, have paid for with our tax dollars, fair, accurate, honest, trustwrorthy elections - NOT approximations. There should be an auditable record for every vote, and redundancies that insure accurate tallies, and a system that we all trust. It’s so basic. We can and must make this change, and we should do it now. Why it wasn’t done after the stolen election of 2000 is a mystery, too. To let it go another election is to ask for a brand new form of democracy - one that we could call voluntary corrupt tyranny. If the current administration had been at all interested in fairness, they’d have taken care of this problem during their first four years in office. Don’t count on them coming to the aid of the people, justice and our voting system voluntarily.
You are not a radical to ask for an immediate recount and an immediate solution to this voting scandal. It is insane to spend millions upon millions trying to persuade people to vote one way or the other and then not know what the real outcome was. And by "real" I mean accurate. If the Republicans won by 10,000 votes and not 135,000 votes in Ohio, that means something to me. I voted thinking I would know whether it was a win, a rout, a tie or a loss, in my state, and every other state.
Would you let your bank approximate how much money you have spent and how much is left in your account? Don’t you think there are about a billion more transactions every day in banks than there are in a single election? How is it that the machinery of finance is so accurate and yet the machinery with which we count votes just never seems to work right? We have to get this fixed, and the sooner the better.
It’s not revolutionary or crazy or sour grapes to ask for voting machines that work and fair practices in the assessment of every individual’s right to vote. That there were Republican operatives out there intimidating Democratic voters in Ohio and Florida, that there is a Republican in charge of counting votes in a state that could turn the outcome, all these things which taint the results need to be challenged and corrected. If ours is not going to be a government of, by and for the people, then we don’t need to fix the voting process at all. But if we’re going to lay claim to the Constitution and the history we say we value so much, then getting the votes counted fairly and accurately in every election has got to be made mission critical. I’d be happy to know that George Bush really did win the election, regardless of my politics. But at this point, I am unhappy to know that Kerry "lost" because science and math are telling me that chances are very good some quantity of votes for Kerry was stolen. And that’s just not fair, not to the country, and not to anyone who voted. This seems so basic. It’s an outrage that we have to recontruct the American dream from the ground up - but perhaps it’s a big lesson in that regard: Democracy is not a given; it’s a fragile, living thing that can be dismantled when unethical, partisan efforts, for whatever reason, outpace the energies of the people.