Dear editor:
I am a former member of SAVEDemocracy, an on-line think tank devoted to the
subject of election reform. Two of our members were computer programmers, and
one of these programmers is also an election official.
Here is what they both had to say, about so-called paper trails: That it is "easy" to rig the election computers to fool you into thinking that you have voted for so-and-so, yet internally, to record a vote for someone else. By simply misaligning the pushbuttons with the computer's internal mechanism, computer programmers can arrange for Candidate A to be voted into office, when you press the button for Candidate B. Yet, the receipt would reflect that you did actually vote for Candidate B.
We think that a recount would be accurate: Are we kidding ourselves? After the Florida and Ohio election messes, WAS there ever a recount? WHO are we trusting to accurately report these recounts, anyway? Paper "Trails" provide the public with false security, at best: If there even was to be a recount, with a paper receipt in hand, the public would be all the less likely to challenge the claims made by computer programmers responsible for accurately (?) reporting our votes.
A paper receipt will only serve to
back the historically falsified claims.And this is far from the public assumption,
that a paper receipt would challenge falsified figures! A) The only safe and
trustworthy way to elect an official is to hand-count paper ballots. B) The
way to prevent falsification of the figures is to televise the hand-counting
C) Just as importantly, it should be American citizens, not hand-picked individuals,
who do the counting. Those conducting the hand-counts should be chosen at random,
like with jury duty, and it should be a public duty ,also like jury duty. D)
Citizen tallying of the figures MUST occur not only at the local precincts,
but very importantly, at the state and federal levels. It is at these two levels
that much of the falsification secretly occurs. E) YEIKS!! Recording Democratic
and Republican votes on separate ballots just may be one more way to single
out which ballots to toss out! THIS PRACTICE MUST BE DONE AWAY WITH! F) Should
it turn out that citizens are acting based on their own agenda, then a second
panel of citizens summoned by random drawing should re-count the votes.
FACT: Canada hand-counts its paper ballots within four hours, with very few
mistakes. America has at least as many citizens per square mile as Canada. Therefore,
we can just as efficiently use paper ballots as Canada. FACT: ELECTION COMPUTERS
CONTAIN TOP-SECRET SOFTWARE CODING. ONLY A SMALL HANDFULL OF SPECIALLY TRAINED
COMPUTER PROGRAMMERS CAN "CRACK" THE SECRET CODE. Even most computer
programmers cannot read this top secret coding, let alone the ordinary public.
FACT: Even if the election computers contained mainstream computer coding, the
lack of transparency to the ordinary public would be a disturbing concern for
the sake of fair and Democratic vote-counting processes.
FACT: We are relying on computer programmers using top secret programming, to
honestly and accurately report our votes! Who are we really trusting with the
integrity of our votes? Why not let American citizens do the work of counting
the figures? This is what American citizens should "plug" for: Summons
for the civic duty of tallying the voting figures. Please send out group e-mails
asking your friends to call their local Senators and Representatives, and their
State Assemblyman, calling for this civic duty to be penned into law. Please
also ask them to post this requested legislature to blogs, forums, send it to
their local newspapers, etc.
--Drina Brooke, concerned citizen, Novato
* * * * *
Enough is Enough!
William Shaw say’s enough is enough when are the
American people going to wake up and support
McGovern RE 4232 Stop the Iraq War petition.php or http://pdamerica.org/petition/mcgovern-petition.php
William Shaw
PDA National Ally Coordinator
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/07/1452228