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No More Elections ??
Why 1996 May Have Been the Last Mostly Free Election in US History
by Dr. Robert M. Bowman
We may have to appeal to Cuba or the United Nations to send observers to monitor future elections in the US. Unfortunately, they probably will be unable to do anything, because the cheating wll be invisible. Free elections in this country may be a thing of the past. Oh, sure, there has always been a certain amount of vote fraud. JFK may in fact owe his victory over Richard Nixon to the late Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago for arranging the votes of a few thousand dead people to be counted in Kennedy's column. But in the past, such incidents were relatively isolated and could only make a difference in extremely close elections.
No more. The advent of touch-screen voting and computerized counting has made massive fraud simple and undetectable. The counting is performed by proprietary software owned by private corporations, some foreign. Neither the public nor the government is allowed to inspect the software.
There is evidence that in the 2002 election at least three senatorial races (Minnesota, Georgia, and Nebraska) were rigged to give the Republican candidate the victory even though polls indicated that the Democratic candidates actually got the most votes. The software company counting the votes in Nebraska was owned by the victorious Republican candidate, former conservative talk-show host Chuck Hagel. (Hagel won the seat in 1996 against a popular sitting Democratic governor. In that election, the voting machines built, operated, and programmed by the company Hagel owned even showed him winning black districts that had never ever voted Republican. Hagel failed to inform the FEC of his stake in the voting machine company. He still owns a large stake in the company that makes the machines used by 80% of Nebraska’s voters.)
In Georgia, popular Vietnam war hero Senator Max Cleland (who lost three limbs in combat) was challenged in 2002 by Saxby Chambliss (who used a medical deferment to avoid service in Vietnam). Chambliss ran on a claim to be more patriotic than Cleland. Cleland was expected to win easily, but the touch-screen voting system declared Chambliss the winner.
As a result, the Republicans narrowly took over the Senate. Did Hagel and Chambliss really win, or was it computer tweaking? We’ll never know, because recounts are impossible. There are no ballots to count.
Since then, even more states and counties have switched to computerized touch-screen voting with no paper ballots and no possibility of a recount.
The threat to what’s left of our democracy is so great that Dr. Bowman has modified his “State of the Union Address” to highlight it. His paragraph on electoral reform now reads as follows:
“Electoral reform requires the participation of Congress and the States. The most important reform is the adoption of Instant Runoff Voting at all levels. I ask the States to adopt IRV for all statewide elections, including that for President of the United States. The second is Proportional Representation. I ask the States to consider PR for electing their Congressional delegations. I also ask them to follow the lead of Florida and eliminate burdensome petition requirements for qualifying third party and independent candidates for the ballot. Of course, electoral reform is meaningless if we lose the ability to make sure our ballots are accurately counted. Every vote must result in a paper ballot that can be counted, recounted, and audited as necessary. Finally, I ask Congress to enact true campaign finance reform, banning the use of corporate, union, or other organizational funds completely, and funding campaigns with public money. Corporations are not people, and money is not speech. Whatever it takes, we must once and for all sever the connection between big money and political power.”
We should take a look at other countries. Canada uses paper ballots, and they don’t seem to have any problem getting the votes counted in a timely manner. What’s wrong with us?
The massive problems in Florida in 2000 with the butterfly ballot and hanging chads alerted our citizenry to the need for modern voting machines. Unfortunately, unscrupulous individuals greedy for power have exploited the situation to sell states and counties these nefarious touch-screen systems.
Every voter in America needs to be aware of the threat and scream bloody murder until their county uses voting machines that produce recountable paper ballots. A good example is the Optical Scan system. In this system, you the voter get a paper ballot where you fill in a circle. If you make a mistake, you return the ballot which is shredded immediately and you are given a new one. Once you are satisfied with your ballot, you turn it in. It is fed into an optical scanner which reads and records your votes. But the original paper ballot is retained for recounts and audits as necessary. The system is simple, and if the ballot is properly designed, it is easy to use. Such a system should be used in every precinct in the country. Touch screens should be outlawed!
Stalin said, “It doesn’t matter who votes. It only matters who counts the votes.” How true that is.
President Jimmy Carter, you have monitored elections all over the world. Now we need you here. But hurry, it’s almost too late.
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