It's My Fault (Voting Machines)

“It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting.” (Tom Stoppard)

Several years ago, I was dating a very bright and interesting woman. Unfortunately, our personalities didn’t mesh well, but at least we managed to part amicably. We still maintain a platonic friendship, and I consider her one of the most powerful and passionate intellects I have ever encountered. She recently revealed that she is still very much in love with me (who can blame her?), but she knows, even without my saying so, that I am not interested in rekindling any old relationships. I have moved on.

Sharon and I were both strong, vocal advocates for computerized voting systems long before they became the norm. We thought that computers would be more efficient, more accessible, and ultimately a more cost effective way to count and tabulate votes, especially in a country of 280 million people and growing. Computer voting would also be relatively tamper-proof and reliable. After all, computers were then starting to do everything from accounting to engineering, so why not voting? It seemed perfectly logical.

What appears as logical at one juncture becomes absolute stupidity at another. Since Sharon and I supported the idea of computer voting many, many things have changed. For example, in 1992, internet connections were still primitive by today’s standards, and voting machines, like other computers would most likely have been ‘stand-alone’ units or small networks that could not be hacked via remote user. The multiplicity of codes wasn’t around then either, and we assumed, falsely so, that no one would try to complicate matters by introducing various codes into what should be the easiest program to write.

The greatest error in our judgment came from the mistaken notion that somehow, someway honesty and principle would govern this process. We lived under the mistaken and childishly naïve assumption that each and every vote mattered as much to the politicians and the corporations that would supply the technology as those votes mattered to us. The perfect idea became subverted by the perfect conspiracy; a scheme so pervasive and bold that very few would believe possible, and with even fewer willing to admit to its implementation in spite of the mass of evidence coming forth on a daily basis.

The American voting system has been bamboozled and usurped by money-hungry corporations in league with partisan political operatives. At times, they are the same persons, operating under blatant conflicts of interest; holding public office, demanding the use of particular machines, owning stock in the companies that produce the machines, and refusing any lawful efforts to have the vote tallies or the machines in question rechecked by objective third-party overseers. We also have our Legislators in Washington D.C. marketing and targeting specific bills and laws designed to encourage the use of these machines under the guise of expanding access to voting, yet the evidence shows the results do not match the promises made. To make matters worse, the owners of certain voting machine companies made public pronouncements to ‘deliver’ elections to particular candidates.

I would like apologize to the American people for advocating computerized voting systems. I did not count on those in charge of our systems being so intrinsically corrupt and partisan. I did not factor in greed and bribery, nor did I imagine my fellow Americans, entrusted with the most noble of functions, to be willing to pervert and subvert that precious cause to selfishness and ruthless political gain. I wish now that every letter and e-mail that I authored on behalf of computerized voting systems could now, retroactively, be deleted from history.

I won’t ever forget this hard-learned lesson. I am so sorry.

(For a comprehensive list of articles and new clips on machine voter fraud, please visit Brad Friedman’s “BradBlog”. He provides detailed links and news accounts from persons intimately involved in election supervision and voter machine programming. You will not see things the same after weighing the evidence presented there. Please donate to his blog if you can.)

“Every citizen of this country should be guaranteed that their vote matters, that their vote is counted, and that in the voting booth, their vote has a much weight as that of any CEO, any member of Congress, or any President.” (Barbara Boxer)