The Ultimate Felony Against Democracy

By Thom Hartmann for Common Dreams.

The hot story in the Blogosphere is that the "erroneous" exit polls that
showed Kerry carrying Florida and Ohio (among other states) weren't
erroneous at all - it was the numbers produced by paperless voting
machines that were wrong, and Kerry actually won. As more and more
analysis is done of what may (or may not) be the most massive election
fraud in the history of the world, however, it's critical that we keep the
largest issue at the forefront at all time: Why are We The People allowing
private, for-profit corporations, answerable only to their officers and
boards of directors, and loyal only to agendas and politicians that will
enhance their profitability, to handle our votes?

Maybe Florida went for Kerry, maybe for Bush. Over time - and through the
efforts of some very motivated investigative reporters - we may well find
out (Bev Harris of www.blackboxvoting.org just filed what may be the
largest Freedom of Information Act [FOIA} filing in history), and bloggers
and investigative reporters are discovering an odd discrepancy in exit
polls being largely accurate in paper-ballot states and oddly inaccurate
in touch-screen electronic voting states Even raw voter analyses are
showing extreme oddities in touch-screen-run Florida, and eagle-eyed
bloggers are finding that news organizations are retroactively altering
their exit polls to coincide with what the machines ultimately said.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1104-38.htm

Published on Thursday, November 4, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
The Ultimate Felony Against Democracy
by Thom Hartmann

The hot story in the Blogosphere is that the "erroneous" exit polls that
showed Kerry carrying Florida and Ohio (among other states) weren't
erroneous at all - it was the numbers produced by paperless voting
machines that were wrong, and Kerry actually won. As more and more
analysis is done of what may (or may not) be the most massive election
fraud in the history of the world, however, it's critical that we keep the
largest issue at the forefront at all time: Why are We The People allowing
private, for-profit corporations, answerable only to their officers and
boards of directors, and loyal only to agendas and politicians that will
enhance their profitability, to handle our votes?

Maybe Florida went for Kerry, maybe for Bush. Over time - and through the
efforts of some very motivated investigative reporters - we may well find
out (Bev Harris of www.blackboxvoting.org just filed what may be the
largest Freedom of Information Act [FOIA} filing in history), and bloggers
and investigative reporters are discovering an odd discrepancy in exit
polls being largely accurate in paper-ballot states and oddly inaccurate
in touch-screen electronic voting states Even raw voter analyses are
showing extreme oddities in touch-screen-run Florida, and eagle-eyed
bloggers are finding that news organizations are retroactively altering
their exit polls to coincide with what the machines ultimately said.

But in all the discussion about voting machines, let's never forget the
concept of the commons, because this usurpation is the ultimate felony
committed by conservatives this year.

At the founding of this nation, we decided that there were important
places to invest our tax (then tariff) dollars, and those were the things
that had to do with the overall "life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness" of all of us. Over time, these commons - in which we all make
tax investments and for which we all hold ultimate responsibility - have
come to include our police and fire services; our military and defense;
our roads and skyways; our air, waters and national parks; and the safety
of our food and drugs.

But the most important of all the commons in which we've invested our
hard-earned tax dollars is our government itself. It's owned by us, run by
us (through our elected representatives), answerable to us, and most
directly responsible for stewardship of our commons.

And the commons through which we regulate the commons of our government is
our vote.

About two years ago, I wrote a story for these pages, "If You Want To Win
An Election, Just Control The Voting Machines," that exposed how Senator
Chuck Hagel had, before stepping down and running for the U.S. Senate in
Nebraska, been the head of the voting machine company (now ES&S) that had
just computerized Nebraska's vote. The Washington Post (1/13/1997) said
Hagel's "Senate victory against an incumbent Democratic governor was the
major Republican upset in the November election." According to Bev Harris,
Hagel won virtually every demographic group, including many largely black
communities that had never before voted Republican. Hagel was the first
Republican in 24 years to win a Senate seat in Nebraska, nearly all on
unauditable machines he had just sold the state. And in all probability,
Hagel run for President in 2008.

In another, later article I wrote at the request of MoveOn.org and which
they mailed to their millions of members, I noted that in Georgia -
another state that went all-electronic - "USA Today reported on Nov. 3,
2002, 'In Georgia, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll shows Democratic
Sen. Max Cleland with a 49-44 lead over Republican Rep. Saxby Chambliss.
'Cox News Service, based in Atlanta, reported just after the election
(Nov. 7) that, "Pollsters may have goofed" because 'Republican Rep. Saxby
Chambliss defeated incumbent Democratic Sen. Max Cleland by a margin of 53
to 46 percent. The Hotline, a political news service, recalled a series of
polls Wednesday showing that Chambliss had been ahead in none of them.'"
Nearly every vote in the state was on an electronic machine with no audit
trail.

In the years since those first articles appeared, Bev Harris has published
her book on the subject ("Black Box Voting"), including the revelation of
her finding the notorious "Rob Georgia" folder on Diebold's FTP site just
after Cleland's loss there; Lynn Landes has done some groundbreaking
research, particularly her new investigation of the Associated Press, as
have Rebecca Mercuri and David Dill. There's a new video out on the topic,
Votergate, available at www.votergate.tv.

Congressman Rush Holt introduced a bill into Congress requiring a
voter-verified paper ballot be produced by all electronic voting machines,
and it's been co-sponsored by a majority of the members of the House of
Representatives. The two-year battle fought by Dennis Hastert and Tom
DeLay to keep it from coming to a vote, thus insuring that there will be
no possible audit of the votes of about a third of the 2004 electorate,
has fueled the flames of conspiracy theorists convinced Republican
ideologues - now known to be willing to lie in television advertising -
would extend their "ends justifies the means" morality to stealing the
vote "for the better good of the country" they think single-party
Republican rule will bring.

Most important, though, the rallying cry of the emerging "honest vote"
movement must become: Get Corporations Out Of Our Vote!

Why have we let corporations into our polling places, locations so sacred
to democracy that in many states even international election monitors and
reporters are banned? Why are we allowing corporations to exclusively
handle our vote, in a secret and totally invisible way? Particularly a
private corporation founded, in one case, by a family that believes the
Bible should replace the Constitution; in another case run by one of
Ohio's top Republicans; and in another case partly owned by Saudi
investors?

Of all the violations of the commons - all of the crimes against We The
People and against democracy in our great and historic republic - this is
the greatest. Our vote is too important to outsource to private
corporations.

It's time that the USA - like most of the rest of the world - returns to
paper ballots, counted by hand by civil servants (our employees) under the
watchful eye of the party faithful. Even if it takes two weeks to count
the vote, and we have to just go, until then, with the exit polls of the
news agencies. It worked just fine for nearly 200 years in the USA, and it
can work again.

When I lived in Germany, they took the vote the same way most of the world
does - people fill in hand-marked ballots, which are hand-counted by civil
servants taking a week off from their regular jobs, watched over by
volunteer representatives of the political parties. It's totally clean,
and easily audited. And even though it takes a week or more to count the
vote (and costs nothing more than a bit of overtime pay for civil
servants), the German people know the election results the night the polls
close because the news media's exit polls, for two generations, have never
been more than a tenth of a percent off.

We could have saved billions that have instead been handed over to ES&S,
Diebold, and other private corporations.

Or, if we must have machines, let's have them owned by local governments,
maintained and programmed by civil servants answerable to We The People,
using open-source code and disconnected from modems, that produce a
voter-verified printed ballot, with all results published on a
precinct-by-precinct basis.

As Thomas Paine wrote at this nation's founding, "The right of voting for
representatives is the primary right by which all other rights are
protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery."

Only when We The People reclaim the commons of our vote can we again be
confident in the integrity of our electoral process in the world's oldest
and most powerful democratic republic.

Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is a Project Censored
Award-winning best-selling author and host of a nationally syndicated
daily progressive talk show. www.thomhartmann .com His most recent books
are "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight," "Unequal Protection: The Rise of
Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights," "We The People: A Call
To Take Back America," and "What Would Jefferson Do?: A Return To
Democracy."