[ale] Its over. Maybe

[Jonathan Rickman]

> The real and serious concern of electronic voting is found in 
> a quote from one of the more notorious fans of fraudulent 
> elections, Joseph Stalin:
> 
> "Those who cast the votes decide nothing.
> Those who count the votes decide everything."
> 
> In no uncertain terms, the corporape privatization of our 
> electoral systems through the use of paperless Diebold type 
> DRE machines has ripped the counting of our votes  from the 
> hands of the public.
> 
> The lack of a paper audit trail or other physical, voter 
> verified transaction evidence means that there are no 
> legitimate means by which the public can view, audit or 
> recount the corporate controlled vote tabulations. The closed 
> source, exclusionary, proprietary and interdependent systems, 
> along with the secretive contracting and testing policies of 
> the carpetbagger DRE manufacturers, effectively blockade all 
> free market competition and public access which might 
> otherwise prevent the taxpayers from being corporaped by the 
> voting system suppliers and the politicians who, in complete 
> conflict of interest, promote them.
> 
> The privatized collection and counting of our votes through 
> proprietary systems and software abdicates our democracy to 
> the self serving interests of the election system 
> manufacturers. Stalin would love these paperless DRE machines 
> and the secretive policies of the companies that make them. 
> Thus you can now expect the Federal Election Assistance 
> Commission to move forward with approvals of  paperless DRE 
> systems as the national standard within the next two years, 
> since their entire 15 member appointed board consists of the 
> same DRE company insiders, self serving election officials 
> and sycophantic voting system consultants that have been 
> foisting paperless DRE systems on the public under the NASED 
> banner for nearly a decade.
> 

What he said. What he said. What he said.

What should make our agreement on the matter an eye opener is the fact that
I am a right wing, pro-business, Bush votin', gun totin', bible thumpin',
Reagan lovin' conservative...while Aaron is apparently a pinko commie
leftist. Repeat after me my conservative friends, "This is not a partisan
issue. We ALL should be skeptical. Vote tabulation that is performed
exclusively by using media that is not human readable or verifiable is
stupid. I will NOT be a sheep. I will not support electronic voting without
paper receipts. I will not write this off as a leftist "stolen election
conspiracy theory" despite the fact that the lefties are screaming the
loudest."  

The list of folks against electronic voting (particularly the Diebold
systems) reads like a who's who of computer security research. Practically
everyone that is even slightly reputable has spoken out against it. Yet,
people are still willing to believe government reports written by John
Smith, Joe Brown, and Bob Jones. Who??? Exactly...

--
Jonathan