Monday, April 12, 2010

Will the Election Be Stolen?

(Or “How the Voting Process Really Works”)
H. L. Mencken once said, “Democracy is based on the idea that the voters know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.” H. L. Mencken was an optimist.
I say that because Mencken’s remark is based on the idea that voters actually get what they want. That’s probably the most common misconception concerning the voting process.
First of all, just because a majority of the voters are favor of a given candidate, that doesn’t mean that a majority of the voters will vote for him. A candidate doesn’t get a majority of the votes unless a majority of the people who show up to vote cast their ballots for him.
I’m not saying this to shame anyone into voting. If a person has to be shamed into voting, he’s probably someone who has never cared enough to keep himself informed on the candidates or the issues. The last thing we need is another uninformed voter.
I’m simply stressing the importance of voter identification and, on Election Day, getting supporters to go to the polls to vote. Some are likely to be shut-ins. That’s all the more reason to identify them early, get them registered to vote, and find the means of getting them to the polls.
Although everything in this article falls under the idea of “How the Voting Process Really Works,” nothing I’ve said so far has anything to do with elections being stolen. This brings us to another popular misconception: the foolish notion that stealing elections is confined to countries where people have brown or black skin and speak strange languages.
The truth is, presidential elections in the United States have been stolen at least as early as the Hayes-Tilden election of 1876. Congressional elections were probably stolen much earlier than that. It’s still happening. I’m writing this article to warn everyone who reads it of the importance of paper ballots that leave paper trails and human ballot counters who can be held accountable.
In many wards and precincts across America, paper ballots are counted by Diebold vote-counting machines, which are inaccurate 5% of the time. Since most elections are won or lost within a range of 3%, shift of only 1.5% is enough to alter the outcome of most elections. Thus, in most elections, Diebold vote-counting machines are utterly worthless. At best, they’re the equivalent of deciding the outcome of an election by flipping a coin.
There are other problems with Diebold machines. I’ll get into them later in this article.
In many other wards and precincts across America, no physical ballots are used at all. Touch-screen machines, which leave no paper trail, are used.
Each state has its laws concerning ballot recounts. In South Carolina, for example, if there’s a spread of less than ½% a percentage point between the winner and the second place candidate, a recount is always ordered. The trouble here is you can’t recount electrons. With touch-screen voting, there’s nothing to recount. I’m surprised that there hasn’t been a legal challenge to the use of touch-screen voting machines.
The trouble with touch-screen voting goes beyond electoral accountability. The trouble with Diebold vote-counting machines goes beyond the inaccuracy of the count, even as serious as that issue is. The trouble with both systems is, they can easily be rigged.
A You Tube video shows how quick and easy it is to rig a Diebold vote count. (Click here.) Another You Tube video shows how quick and easy it is to pry open the back of a touch-screen voting machine and change the count. (Click here.)
Even after we establish that this kind of voter fraud can happen, we’re left with the question, “Will it happen?” There are strong indications that it has happened already. If it has happened already, it will probably happen again, unless wards and precincts return to using real paper ballots and real human vote counters.
In the 2008 Republican Party presidential primary in New Hampshire, Congressman Ron Paul was the clear front runner. Never mind that the corporate-controlled news media was telling us that he was a long-shot candidate. By primary day, he was the front runner.
Pre-election polls are often disastrously wrong. Exit polls—surveys in which people, just as they are leaving the polling places, are asked how they voted—have always proven highly accurate. Most polls have a 95% confidence level. Exit polls projections have a 99.5% confidence level. (Click here.) Exit polls in the New Hampshire presidential primary indicated that Ron Paul was the clear winner.
The rationale for using Diebold vote-counting machines is that they’re faster than human vote counters. With Diebold vote-counting machines, the count is supposed to be completed in just a few minutes. In the New Hampshire presidential primary of 2008, however, the results from the Diebold counters were not submitted until four hours after the polls had closed.
By that time, almost all the wards and precincts using human vote counters had submitted their results. Ron Paul was in first place; John McCain was in last place. When the Diebold-counted ballots were submitted, the election results were completely reversed: John McCain came in first; Ron Paul came in last. To give one example of Diebold's lack of credibility, in the town of Sutton (population 1,544), Diebold counters said that Paul had received no votes at all. Eight voters quickly swore that they had voted for him. (Click here.)
Where were the Diebold ballots for those four missing hours? Republican officials in charge of the Diebold vote-counting machines still haven’t explained this suspicious chain of events.
Reports also showed a suspicious chain of events indicating that Obama was also deprived of an election victory in New Hampshire. Somehow, a 13-point lead evaporated into a 3-point deficit. (Click here.)
Maybe you don’t like Ron Paul or his supporters, or Barack Obama or his supporters. Maybe you do. Well, that doesn’t really matter because neither Ron Paul nor Barack Obama are running for election in all 435 congressional districts. Maybe you voted for Al Gore in 2000 or John Kerry in 2004. How honest was the vote count in those two elections?
The 2000 and 2004 presidential elections may not have been stolen by means of Diebold vote miscounters or touch-screen con jobs, but they were stolen nonetheless. Corrupt officials will use any means available to further their ends. The purpose of this article is to urge concerned citizens to take a major means of voter fraud from the hands of corrupt officials.
Now, what about your congressional district? Do wards and precincts in your district use Diebold (a.k.a. “Lie Boldly”) machines to “count” votes? Do wards and precincts in your district use touch-screen voting machines that leave no paper trail and offer no accountability to the voters?
It may not be too late to make whatever legal or legislative challenges are necessary to switch back to paper ballots and human counters in time for the November 2 election. This isn’t about liberals versus conservatives; it’s about honest representation. Let’s work on this together.


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