- The Techno-Voting Nightmare; Digital Vote
Corruption-- First California-- then the 2004 Elections.
- by Rob Kall, OpEdNews.COM
Comments from readers follow the
article
- Imagine that a rogue programmer gets access to a few networks
of computers in the California special gubernatorial election. The
programmer manipulates the software to count wrong, making sure
that Darrell Issa or
whoever is running on the Republican ticket gets 10% more
votes than the voters really gave him. This software "fix" will do
it's work then delete itself. The program can be made to randomize
the bogus numbers so they are a little different percentage at
each voting location.
-
- Now imagine that this is not some independently acting rogue
programmer. What if he works for the company and the company is
currying favor for or selling power to the candidate or even to
unidentified backers-- like some of the wealthy oil people who
have funded attack ads for George Bush in the past. This is no
far-fetched scenario. There are a lot of us who believe it has
already happened.
-
- As a businessman with experience with software design,
creation and support, I know how easy it is to change the numbers
a program supplies-- the results-- by manipulating underlying
aspects of the software. It's easy to do it so no end user would
realize it. It's easy to do it so the evidence of manipulations,
like the old Mission Impossible tape recorder, destroy themselves
and disappear.
-
- Of course there are other ways to fix elections, Jeb Bush and
Katherine Harris showed us that in Florida, with Greg Palast's and
Michael Moore's books spelling out the details of their vote
corruption. So we need to be careful about a plethora of means the
far right can and probably will use to corrupt future elections.
-
- The first place we need to fear it is in California. There is
every reason to believe that the forces there will use every
cheating means possible to take over the number one electoral
votes state. With Tom DeLay running the Republican dirty tricks
operations, it is highly likely that if there is a way to use
computerized voting systems to corrupt the vote, it will happen.
It is less likely that pruging of voter lists will occur, since
the Dems are in power there. But this is also something for which
vigilance is required. Once a republican puppet is digitally
elected, DeLay will take his Texas Gerrymandering approach to
California. Before we know it, California could become another
take-over victim of corrupt computerized voting and Republican
far-right extremism.
-
- This is why it is essential that at a state level, at least,
Computerized voting laws must be enacted. Congressman Rush Holt of
NJ has introduced the Voter Confidence
and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003. If it, or
something like it is not enacted, then there is not doubt in my
mind that there is zero chance of George Bush being defeated in
2004, zero chance of the Democrats holding onto the CA
governorship, and zero chance of unseating the Republican majority
in the House and Senate.
-
- Already, some state laws have been corrupted by the
special interests, making it impossible to go after computerized
voting companies. Wherever possible this should be reversed or
laws should be passed which require full cooperation by these
companies.
-
- Ideally, any federal computerized voting bill should
retroactively require all elections, or at least those affecting
federal issues, like senate and congressional elections, to be
reviewed. In the past, privately held computerized voting
companies have refused to cooperate. This amounts to refusing to
allow vote recounts. This is a horrible, almost criminal
situation. Any company that is less than fully compliant and
cooperative should be banned from providing service for any public
election. The vote is too important, too sacrosanct an element of
American Democracy.
-
- Republicans, particularly far right extremists, who are often
very well funded, do not hesitate to play nasty hardball, using
the courts, law enforcement agencies, the Homeland Defense act,
the Patriot act.... to further their political aims or just out of
meanness. Without being mean, but with tough resolution,
progressives, democrats, liberals should be using the same legal
resources to go after right wingers, after corporations that do
not cooperate in vote recounting, after state officials like
Katherine Harris o Florida.
-
- The left needs a counterpart to the far right's legal attack
dog, Judicial Watch.
That org was behind the incessant hectoring of the Clinton White
House and most recently has revived harassment against Hillary
Clinton. With the help of mail Order Maven Richard Viguerie,
Judicial Watch has an annual budget of over $25 million a year.
It's a part of the right wing "think tank" war machine. You might
want to compare, on the left, the ACLU, but they're not the same.
Judicial watch is used as a partisan political attack tool. It was
amazingly effective in keeping Bill Clinton distracted with dozens
of lawsuits. The left needs to build one of these. Yes it's nasty.
Yes they play dirty-- using the legal system for inappropriate
reasons. Yes, those on the far right are just as vulnerable,
perhaps more so, as their hubris blooms, to similar strategies of
engagement, distraction and harassment if the left were to employ
them .
-
-
- When I was a kid, I was taught not to get into fight, to do
what I could to avoid them. But my father also taught me that if
I found myself in a fight, that I should protect myself. Don't
punch the other guy in the arm when he's trying to bloody your
nose. Punch in the face. And that's what we need to do-- get
right into the far right's faces and let them know we don't like
to fight, but since they've started it, we're not going to hold
back. We're going to protect ourselves and teach them that they
run the risk of being bloodied themselves.
-
- A lot of us think, or are sure that besides the stolen
Presidential election, there have been a number of other crooked
elections. We need to go after the people involved in them. We
need to include in the election laws extremely severe
punishments for tampering with elections. But more important, we
need to build laws that prevent or massively reduce the risk of
them being tampered with in the first place. The laws as they
exist now are irresponsible, dangerous slaps in the face of
democracy.
-
An essential resource for issues relating to
computerized voting is: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/
Rob Kall rob@opednews.com
is the editor/publisher of OpEdNews.com, a
progessive news and opinion website, and organizer of cutting
edge meetings that bring together world leaders, such as the Winter Brain Meeting and
the StoryCon Summit Meeting
on the Art, Science and Application of Story.
This article is copyright by Rob Kall, but
permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web
media so long as this credit is attached. If your publication pays
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