My First Time Voting Since The 2004 Rip Off

A quote form the Seattle Post Intelligencer today (and yes it's also a Drudge headline):

snip

COUNTING THE VOTES: Heinz Kerry is openly skeptical about results from November's election, particularly in sections of the country where optical scanners were used to record votes.

"Two brothers own 80 percent of the machines used in the United States," Heinz Kerry said. She identified both as "hard-right" Republicans. She argued that it is "very easy to hack into the mother machines."

***

I voted today for Mayor and a few other assorted things in a primary here in L.A.  I didn't really want to bother but I overcame the resistance and headed down to the polling place which is a senior center within walking distance of our house.

I cannot tell you the FURY I felt walking into the polling place.

 It caught my by surprise. I was upending tables in my mind. I was filled with rage at the three Seniors who had nobly volunteered their time to perform their civic duty. They didn't deserve my outrage, but then I didn't express it.

A man ahead of me was not on the list and the Woman behind the table took a long time to try and figure out where he should go to vote. I'm sure it was entirely legitimate, but my head was filled with the outrages of the last election, of all the people who were disenfrachized with every cheap dirty trick in the book beginning with too few machines.

I voted. I stabbed my choices in the punch mark machine. Once again flooded with memories of all the machines which read Bush when you pressed Kerry, all the votes that didn't count and weren't counted, or were turned from Kerry to Bush with the stroke of a key.

I handed in my voting card in it's demure little folder which preserved my right to a secret ballot and watched as Senior number three reached and with some effort deposited my paper ballot in the box.  Once again images of democratic registration forms thrown away, ballot boxes stashed on trucks with Bush stickers on the back in the dead of night in Ohio.

I walked out of my little American polling place with my I voted sticker and my ballot stub and I didn't feel happy as I always have in the past when I voted. I felt what people in dictatorships all around the world have always felt, a mixture of helplessness and smothered rage.  Well who knows? Maybe they'll count them this time. Yeah, right. Only if it doesn't matter.

***

Teresa continues:

"We in the United States are not a banana republic," added Heinz Kerry. She argued that Democrats should insist on "accountability and transparency" in how votes are tabulated.

"I fear for '06," she said. "I don't trust it the way it is right now."

I agree with Teresa.

If we lose a few more Congressman and a few more Senators in 06 because they steal 'em then we're on a runaway train.