- Canadian-born author and wit Ashley Brilliant once wrote,
"I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it."
And that seems an apt summary for the 2004 US sElection, two hundred years
after the creation of the Electroal College was inserted into the Constitution,
setting the stage for the conflicts to come.
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- Unfortunately, as much as the Democrats wanted a
cleaner electoral process, to avoid a repeat of Bush 43's flagrant theft
of 2000--surely an Original Win if ever there was one--the fix for 2004
was in as soon as Dubya was first sworn into the office he stole.
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- In 2004, the Repugnants knew they couldn't pull off
the same caper twice, so a more hidden scheme was needed. To ensure it
looked less corrupt, they decided to use two modes of attack, one quite
obvious, the other as invisible as possible. And tonight proved once
again, that in getting it wrongly, they've got it down right, as far as
one can go short of an outright junta.
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- The first, easiest, and most obvious was to fall
back on the Electoral College system. This now archaic device was inserted
into the election process in 1804, by a group of colonial states which
felt disadvantaged by more populous ones, to ensure their state's ballots
went to the candidate that best represented their power interests.
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- As described in The Electoral College Inhibits Democracy,
Editorial by Michael E. McGrath, Founder, electionreform.org,
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- "There are two fundamental aspects of the Electoral
College that cause these problems. The first is that it awards electoral
votes based on a winner-take-all method: the candidate with the highest
number of votes in each state gets all of the state,s electors. This causes
millions of votes to be effectively uncounted. The second is that smaller
states get relatively more electoral votes, effectively giving those states
more voting power."
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- "Originally this winner-take-all method was
justified because the population of each state had similar opinions and
preferences. What was good for the majority of the state was good for the
entire state, and this helped the original states emphasize their rights.
In addition, vote counting was difficult and not very reliable. However,
a lot has changed in the last 200 years. America is no longer rural and
there is more similarity in preferences across the 50 states than there
is within a state. For example, an argument that all Californians have
the same preferences would be difficult to support."
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- The second, more invisible part, is far more problematic
and truly evil (see "Electronic Voting Machine Woes Reported"
at . However, the Repugnants knew they had four years to get wrongdoing
right, and in fact had been working on their Final Solution for a decade
earlier. This was morphed into the federally mandated replacement of paper
ballots with electronic voting machines, or DREs as they are known in the
trade. Only a few firms--Diebold, Sequoia, ES&S are the biggest--make
these, and they were bought out many years ago by long-time Repugnant hacks,
who then replaced key executives with their people, cronies who could be
trusted to follow orders.
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- In one especially notorious case, when neo-con talk
show host Chuck Hagel decided to run in Nebraska for the US Senate in 1996,
he failed to disclose that he was also the head of (and continues to hold
part interest in!), the parent company that owned the company, Election
Services & Software (ES&S), that programmed, installed, and largely
ran the voting machines used by most of Nebraska. ES&S is owned and
operated by a well-known bunch of Nebraskan reactionaries. Oh well, just
another of those remarkable coincidences that create conspiracy advocates!
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- Be sure to read the article "ES&S Project
Manager Resigns Over Voting Machine Problems" at www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1857668)
to see what happens when an ethically concerned employee of ES&S told
Marion County, Indiana officials about ES&S machines problems.
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- Here's how reporter-activist Roz Hill describes "voting
magic":
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- "We need COUNTERS: (B) = Bush; (K) = Kerry;
(V) = Vote; (T) = Tally
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- 1. If V = B, add 1 to B
- 2. If T = 8, add 1 to B; Clear T; Skip 3
- 3. If V = K, add 1 to K; Add 1 to T
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- This extremely simple bit of programming would shift
12% of the vote from Kerry to Bush, it would defy exit polls, and it would
make it look like Bush had a huge popular win. It is time that the software
in these SECRET Republican-owned computers be examined with a deliberate
check for instructions that could modify the vote tally." (rense.com/general59/stel.HTM)
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- There were several notorious early trial runs with
this new tactic, yet it proved successful in getting Repugnants "elected"
where Repugnants had rarely won. Sometimes the outrageous results bordered
on the farcical, such as multiple wins in the same state by candidates
with three identical vote counts! (See Thom Hartmann's excellent summary,
"If You Want to Win an Election, Just Control the Voting Machines",
at
- www.commondreams.org/views03/0131-01.htm, and "Computer
Voting is Open to Easy Fraud, Experts Say", by John Schwartz, NY TIMES,
at www.nytimes.com/2003/07/24/technology/24VOTE.html.
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- In the end, it is now certain that utter cynicism
is only realism, as clearly demonstrated--if not stated as such--in a letter
from John Keller at Jeff Rense's popular website, rense.com, for November
04, 2004: "The Skull & Bones Brothers Tag Team"(http://rense.com/general59/brothers.htm).
- "Can anyone but a fool now believe John Kerry
was not planning to throw this election from the start? Any doubts should
have been ditched Wednesday morning after he stabbed his running mate in
the back, the latter whom boldly promised no concession would be quickly
forthcoming mere hours before.
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- "The thinking and caring American will come
to realize that the System cannot and will not allow effective, meaningful
opposition. Kerry, a long-time fixture of its elite, has utterly smashed
a potential mechanism to oppose the un-American, anti-human crusade of
the current and future "administration.""
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- And that pretty well sums how I felt in August 2004,
when I wrote my earlier article, "A Letter to a Long-Time Friend in
a Time of Perilous Politics". The USSA has been in the unrelenting
grip of corporatism for more than a century, thus it will take a very great
deal to break its death-choke on the body politic. That's why I say that
as much as I loathe him and everything he stands for, the best way to bring
about this renewal is to endure four more years of All 'Murriken Fascism.
Only then is there a chance--only a chance--that the utter bankruptcy
and viciousness of this madness be exposed, implodes, and the self-denial
finally ceases.
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- Yes, it will be painful, for all concerned, no matter
how distant they be from the Abomination on the Hill. Until then we are
all condemned, innocents and guilty alike, to suffer the truly diabolical
outrages and murderous hatreds of these new Anti-Christs, a Kabal whose
self-hating anger turns against one and all outside their snake pit.
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- As for me, a christian pacifist anarchist, it is
time to cultivate my own garden, so that I may feed and care for my family
and friends as best I can. The Creation still has the promise and gift
of Original Blessing for us all.
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- We will think globally, but live and act locally,
to end Dubya's screamingly declared War Against Terra, our weary planet
Earth, the only home we have.
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- As Lyndon Johnston was fond of remarking, "Don't
spit in the soup: we've all got to eat." I sure wish Dubya knew that.
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