...The predator politicians love hack-o-matic vote counting, because it is such a sure thing. No democracy to worry about. Just spew the campaign lies on lies in lies and wait for your friendly neighborhood goosesteppers to adjust the vote totals -- not too much, just enough to win. It's computer hacking for fun, profit, and power.
There's no chance of our electing the impeachment and removal Congress that we need until the hack-o-matic privatization of our electoral system is dead and buried. Peer-reviewed "open source" code must be put into place, so that we can see that the vote counting is secure and that there are no backdoors through which the vote count can be altered...
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Part Three of a Four-Part Series
Impeachments and Criminal Prosecutions
© 2006 Stephen Neitzke
Here's Job 2 in our countdown. This is were we legally remove Bush-Cheney and as many criminal minions as we can catch in our legal hammermills. Objectives are impeachment and removal and, separately, criminally prosecuting and imprisoning them.
The first tangle we have to vaporize is the hack-o-matic vote counting systems from Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia. In Election 2004, they counted about 80 percent of all votes cast. The percentage will probably be higher in Election 2006.
The predator politicians love hack-o-matic vote counting, because it is such a sure thing. No democracy to worry about. Just spew the campaign lies on lies in lies and wait for your friendly neighborhood goosesteppers to adjust the vote totals -- not too much, just enough to win. It's computer hacking for fun, profit, and power.
There's no chance of our electing the impeachment and removal Congress that we need until the hack-o-matic privatization of our electoral system is dead and buried. Peer-reviewed "open source" code must be put into place, so that we can see that the vote counting is secure and that there are no backdoors through which the vote count can be altered.
You might have noticed. While many small citizen groups were trying to get rid of Hack-O-Matic I from Election 2004, the fascist rat-bastard predators were scurrying around making Hack-O-Matic II for Election 2006.
Diebold has installed what one of the world's leading computer security experts, Dr. Avi Rubin at Johns Hopkins University's "Information Security Institute", calls the "nuclear bomb" of electronic vote-counting systems. It's a Mack-truck sized back door into which anybody can load any software before, during, or after the voting day. The add-on software can do whatever it is designed to do, communicating with whatever remote computers it is designed to communicate with, and adjusting vote totals any which way. It can then be deleted, leaving no trace whatever of its ever having been there.
Oh, pooh-pooh, say Diebold reps and the predator politicians. The backdoors are design features. Backdoors are good. They make the machines more functional. After all, the machines will always be kept in secure places, safe from dirty evil-doers.
Lies on lies in lies
Dr. Rubin's study of this new democracy-ending tool from Diebold made headlines a few days ago. If this instance is anything like Dr. Rubin's study of Diebold's Hack-O-Matic I (my term, not his), February 2004, money-power's parasitic media will have Hack-O-Matic II in their black hole by now. Look for coverage on your favorite techie, alt media, and blog sites.
What will it take to squash the hack-o-matic systems? We don't know. We've never had to do anything similar -- certainly not against the vice grip of the dual-party, three-branch, Bush-Cheney fascist machine. I suspect, though, that it will take huge numbers of people in every county using the hack-o-matic vote-counting software -- also installed in non-touch-screen machines, you know -- to barge around, demanding that the software be scrapped.
Note that this has to be resolved by November, this year. Six short, tiny months. No time to waste. Do something now, please. Don't stop till you've got a proven, sound, vote-counting system -- with paper trail.
Don't be satisfied when some toothy predator smiles and says, "Oh, we're very happy with our vote-counting system". Their happiness has nothing to do with fair elections. Sitting on our hands, waiting for government to save us, is the wrong thing to do. This is on us.
Power politics required -- brute-force, blunt-force-trauma politics. Do not give the slimeballs a chance.
Note that the predators -- Repub fascists and Demo co-fascists -- will win anywhere, in any county and state, where government rams hack-o-matics down the electoral system's throat.
This, when the fascist Republican party should be so diselected as to cease to exist. And when any co-fascist Democrat -- like the 19 Senatorial Demofascists who gleefully helped the Republifascists shut down Samuel Alito's SCOTUS nomination filibuster before it could get started -- should never again hold any public office, anywhere. Can't find their names? Email me.
Yes, there's the intelligent approach. We can target the 15 Republican party Senate seats up for re-election. We can make sure that no county in any of those states uses a hack-o-matic to count any category of votes, including absentee. At the same time, we can do a voter-registration drive in all of those states aimed at the previously unregistered voters.
Nationwide, there are over 100 million. There are more withdrawn, unregistered voters than there are registered voters. We need them now. Get 'em off their butts, into registration, and then to the polls on voting day. You snooze, we all lose. Do something now, please. Don't stop until Election 2006 is won.
Coming in Part 4: Prosecutions Timing & Flowing Civics Lessons
Written by Stephen Neitzke [send him email], who is the founder of the Direct Democracy League. He is the author of "The State of the Republic, 1776-2004" as well as a number of other works, which can be found at www.ddleague-usa.net and on his blog at http://ddrevived.blogspot.com. Stephen is a featured columnist at www.populistamerica.com