As I have said before, when a hacker rigs the vote so that both Dems and GOP candidates get 0 votes, that is perhaps the only circumstance that will compel our legislators to admit there is a problem and act (if it turns out even that it is not too late for them to do anything).

The pity of this is national media is just warming up to the trainwreck as the sexier sex scandal is about to explode all over the same media pages.

Contacted my local election authorities to ask for a ballot to vote absentee.. Said I would be out of town please send it to my home. Was told the ballot could only be sent to my away from home address or to an address out of my local county (?)
I responded that ballots sent to my home prior to leaving would be less apt to be suspicious, (I thought) rather than to another county !

Contacted Austin and they were as surprised as I was but said locals make the rules.
Oh and my county official said "there had been NO problems during the Primary vote in March."

Yet I found on the internet where Austin election officials sent out letters saying that "due to the problems with the machines, paper ballots should be available to the voters."

Is it just Texas or are they trying to make it so difficult no one votes ?

I don't feel like I can safely vote absentee only to be tallied on an optically scannable form programmed by a private company - that is, if and when and where and under whose supervision it ever even gets fed into the scanner.

I don't feel I can safely vote on any e-vote machine, paper receipt or no. I SAW my vote change from Kerry to Bush when I pressed for Kerry. What if I hadn't paid attention? And I had to toggle - press for Bush again - in order to un-do the Bush vote. I was scared to death to do that because when the vote flipped the first time I automatically lost trust. Whose to say the receipt would match?

I've never regained that trust. Fool me once. Just forget anything that has to go into a programmable machine. Forget it. I'd rather my vote be known to the entire public that to have this level of secrecy. I belive in my vote and I don't care who knows it.

First let me sing my praises for Andrew Kantor, and express my thanks for his helpful piece. But, not to complain, but can anyone find out how Kantor came to be aware and write about this issue, and like, what took so long?

On the general topic of why we should not trust election results from DRE machines in general and particularly from Dieebold:

I keep wondering when there will be some update on the lawsuit that the Democratic Party has against Diebold in Alaska, where there was a 40% discrepancy between officially reported results and the totals from the local Diebold machines, back in 2004. Not likely that there will be any further coverage of that before this next election, but I keep hoping, because it's such a blatant story.

Just now while I was searching google for any recent news on the Alaska story, I came across this fabulous interview with Steve F. Freeman, which is so powerful, that I just wish he would get interviewed on 60 minutes or something, instead of in op-ed news on the web

http://www.opednews.com/...terview_3a_professor.htm

My favorite quote from the interview:

"It would not be difficult to devise a secure paper-based voting system. The obstacles are not technological, but political. There are many systems incomparably superior to extant ones. Indeed, it's hard to imagine a worse system than what we have, unless one's intent is to control the outcome of elections."

There were some details in the interview about the Washington race between Gregoire and Rossi, concerning how discrepant the DRE vote counts were from paper-ballot counts, in Snohomish county. Eye popping details. Go read it. Smoking-gun stuff.

But isn't there some way to get things rolling in Alaska?

One more last thought or question for all of you here. Freeman mentions the reuluctance of Democrats to contest questionable election results. Does anyone have any idea where this reluctance comes from? Why do they just quietly bow their heads and put up with this crap? Is it because doing so would get them labelled as undermining our democracy, and supporting the terrorists, and so thereby being heinous traitors who should be beheaded for such disloyalty to our fuehrer? Or what?

Apologies for hijacking this thread like this, but methinks it's not too far off to talk about Freeman and Alaska in the general context of reasons not to trust election results from Diebold machines.

Would it do any good to call or write to my congressman and ask them to please sponsor emergency legislation to request a team of international observers to come and monitor elections here, since we want to set an example for the world on how to run free and fair elections?

We need exit-polling big-time. We need people to use their cell-phone cameras to record their votes off the screen, and make digital video records, making sure to focus both on the screen, and also on the paper record as it slides by, (if there is one). I think all it would take would be for a handful of people to generate a video record of their vote getting flipped, to start a firestorm, especially if people started uploading these damning video records to You-Tube, in addition to making them available to their local election officials...

I really don't understand why elections are not reported in this country with local reporting at the precinct level happening FIRST, and with totals given for every machine. Those totals should be made public on the door of the precinct for people to photograph and witness. All counties should similarly report their totals on the internet before sending a COPY of those totals on to the state. Then the state should make the state-wide totals available, including all the subtotals from all the counties. It would be great if the counting could be postponed everywhere until the polls were closed everywhere--Yes, people on the east coast would have to wait until late into the night, but it would be worth it.

Why is it so hard for people to understand that to rig exit poll results to be wrong or discrepant violates many laws of mathematics, and requires a massive conspiracy, whereas flipping an electronic election requires a couple people with access and know-how?

This next time out, I think the stakes are now too high, and that the Democrats will not retake either house. The Republicans are just acting way too smug and complacent about it all, and they are not doing enough sucking up to the voters, as I have seen them do in years past in similar situations, many years ago.

All this "stay the course" nonsense--it amounts to "stick with us, the fix is in--all will be well." All it will take is just a bit more than the usual amount of vote manipulation made much easier now that there are so many DRE machines out there, plusa few plane crashes or one big terrorist act, and some plausible way to dismiss those notoriously unreliable election exit polls, or some attention-grabbing story, that will galvanize the country and cause us all to vote for Republicans in droves, (just like cattle, in fact). Maybe we catch Osama finally, and we find out how it was all because of the helpful NSA and we should all love big brother Jeb Bush.

Bumper sticker ideas: "What democracy?"

Why does everyone blame the POLITICIANS and MSM for the TOTAL LACK OF COVERAGE of these issues - OUR BIGGEST PROBLEM IS THAT PROGRESSIVE AND LIBERAL POLITICS HAVE BEEN STOLEN BY A FEW SUPERBLOGS THAT WORK TOGETHER TO PROMOTE THEMSELVES AND FLAME, DELETE, AND BAN ANY DIALOG ABOUT REAL LIBERAL ISSUES!!!

Thanks GWN

ahhh calmer now.

Texas Lady - Angry doesn't even come close to how I feel, not only about the voting issues, but about the vote to allow torture and the 100-0 vote to spend another $480 billion on wars and war toys!

Charlie

Stand up and take a bow for not closing tags, and take back what you said to Czaragorn in your # 11 'cause if you get him upset he won't offer to buy the beer when we all go to visit him in Prague...

Bluebear2 #17

There isn't a word for the way I feel about that torture vote. Demoralizing isn't even close. How could this happen? Two more years of Republican rule, and we're going to be having public beheading's of Democrats. Not that it would be much worse then throwing our country into the 12th century.

The administration, initiated by Cheney I think, might use a One Percent Doctrine to decide if someone or some organization is a threat, but when it comes to our elections they can see 100% problems and still not feel compelled to change anything. This indicates rather clearly that they want the situation to be as it is, not to fix it. They're all criminals.

Foley was chair of a committee on exploited children? How amazingly farcical and bizarre.

BTW, I've been away for a few weeks because of computer problems. I still don't have my e-mail back, but at long last (and after changing computer 3 times and installing 3 new modems and a new power line) I'm back. Not that y'all noticed. ahem

Keep up the great work Brad and BBloggers.

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