election theft

The notion that electronic voting machines without paper trails are dangerous to democracy is something that’s been talked about before. Now, a General Accountability Office report shows pretty clearly that there were lots of irregularities in the 2004 U.S. elections, connected to the use of electronic voting machines.

Regardless of your political affiliations, regardless of whether you believe that Bush & co stole the elections, it’s important to understand that electronic voting machines without paper trails produce unverifiable results. The simple fact is the actual results of last year’s elections are, inherently, UNKNOWABLE. There is simply no way to know how many people voted, or for which candidates they voted.

This goes beyond the issues of "hanging chads" that vexed us after the 2000 elections; Then, you could at least theorize the existence of a person or device that could divine the intent of the voter with a high degree of precision. With unverifiable electronic voting machines, it’s just a total crapshoot. The GAO report cites several known cases where large numbers of votes went to the wrong candidates, which were supposedly “fixed” afterwards. The problem is, how many unknown, similar cases are there? We’ll just never know.

Again, this is an issue for EVERYONE concerned with the preservation of American democracy, regardless of party ties. This time it may have been criminal, unethical Republican asshats who used some wide-open holes the security of these machines to secure elections for their candidates; Next time it could be criminal, unethical Democratic asshats doing the same! For that matter, it may be that BOTH parties had people trying to fake out the voting machines in 2004, and that the Republicans just did a better job at it. Who knows?