posted July 14, 2004 02:08 PM            

Convention Day or Election Day Disaster
Joan Swirsky
Wednesday, July 14, 2004

“Lily whites” is not how Attorney General John Ashcroft has described the mass murderers currently being recruited by Muslim terrorists, but that is the term the intelligence community uses to portray the non-Arabic-appearing operatives who are attracted to al-Qaida by a common bond: hatred of America.

Nor is “lily whites” the term Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge used last week to describe the killers who have provided “credible evidence,” he said, of a major terrorist attack on the U.S. that threatens to disrupt either the upcoming Democratic and Republican conventions or November's presidential elections.

Nonetheless, terrorists are in hot pursuit of lily whites, and their ploy is as simple as it is chilling: Find as many angry, hate-filled “white” malcontents as possible and convince them that America – the “Great Satan” of capitalism, corporate greed and “unfair” treatment – is the cause of their problems.

The terrorists’ final step is providing the killers-to-be with the instruction, methodology and tools to exact their revenge and then counting on their allegiance to “the cause.”

It Can’t Happen Here

“Whew!” you may say to yourself when you realize that the terrorism we have all come to know and dread is rarely if ever associated with lily whites.

That is because the terrorists of the last several decades – who murdered the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972; bombed the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983; hijacked the Achille Lauro cruise ship in 1985; hijacked TWA flight 847 in 1985; bombed Pan Am flight 103 in Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988; bombed the World Trade Center in 1993; bombed the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996; bombed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998; bombed the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000; leveled the Twin Towers in New York City and seriously damaged the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., in 2001; and beheaded journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002 and Americans Nick Berg and Paul Johnson Jr. in 2004 – were all Muslim or Palestinian extremists.

In short, “Middle Eastern types.”

Except, that is, for a few oddities such as English “shoe bomber” Richard Reid (caught in December 2001); “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh, captured in January of 2002 (who said he “made a mistake” and was sentenced to only 20 years by the American justice system he reviled); and Jose Padilla, the Chicago thug and al-Qaida operative captured in 2002 on his way to contaminate a U.S. city with a radiological “dirty” bomb.

But if you think that lily whites Reid, Lindh and Padilla are the 21st century’s rare anomalies and that their attraction to al-Qaida is equally rare, and if you are either partisan or uninformed enough to believe that al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein’s murderous regime didn’t conspire to virtually annihilate America as far back as the last decade, think again.

Lily Whites Were Here in the ’90s

The lily whites who are out to kill us first surfaced in a credible way on April 19, 1995, when the federal Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, Okla., was bombed to smithereens by the deadliest terrorist attack – ever – on America.

A young reporter, Jayna Davis, from NBC-affiliate KFOR-TV in Oklahoma City, was assigned to cover the FBI's international manhunt for the perpetrators and the elusive “John Doe 2.”

Davis, www.jaynadavis.com has scrupulously documented her nine-year investigation in a best-selling, must-read book: “The Third Terrorist: The Middle East Connection to the Oklahoma City Bombing.”

This book, by the way, has been mysteriously ignored by our intelligence agencies and especially by the 9/11 Commission panel that has supposedly sought ALL information regarding the intelligence “failures” that led up to Sept. 11.

The commission’s report is due out any day now, but a preliminary report – disputed, significantly, by both chairmen of the commission – denied an Iraqi-al-Qaida link and by so doing questioned one of the current administration’s rationales for going to war against Iraq. Yet Davis was never called to testify, and the overwhelming evidence she compiled regarding this link has been systematically overlooked by the very people who should have made it Exhibit Number One!

On the Trail of the Terrorists

The following is a chronology of Jayna Davis’ investigation, based on her own writing and my first-person interview with her.

Shortly after the April 19 bombing of the Murrah building, a witness told Davis that she had stepped directly into the path of a speeding brown Chevrolet pickup – the same type of truck that matched the FBI's official all-points-bulletin for a getaway vehicle issued immediately after the explosion. This witness subsequently picked out an Iraqi national from a photo lineup.

Two months later, Davis broadcast the story of McVeigh drinking beer with the Iraqi national – the driver of the truck – in an Oklahoma City tavern.

“The broadcast challenged the FBI's publicly espoused theory,” Davis said, “that two right-wing fanatics, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, single-handedly pulled off the crime of the century. But my story featured the steadfast testimonies of witnesses who placed the Iraqi man and McVeigh at a local tavern a few days before the strike on America's heartland.”

After contradicting the FBI’s version, Davis continued her search for “the truth.” She conducted in-depth interviews with 80 witnesses, deeming 22 of them credible because their testimonies were independently corroborated and agreed with the U.S. government's case against lily whites McVeigh and Nichols.

“In detailed affidavits,” Davis said, “my eyewitnesses positively identified eight Middle Eastern men, the majority of whom were former Iraqi soldiers, who colluded with McVeigh and Nichols during various stages of the bombing plot.”

Davis learned, she said, that all of these suspects immigrated to the U.S. after the Gulf War, between 1991 and 1994, ostensibly seeking asylum from Saddam Hussein but actually seeking to establish a stronghold in the U.S., the better, ultimately, to avenge Iraq’s loss (and humiliation) to America in 1991 and to wreak havoc on the “infidels” who lived here, including the 22 innocent children and babies (including three unborn infants) and 149 innocent adults who were murdered by their warped notion of jihad against the Western world.

Through her exhaustive investigation, Davis learned that even more Iraqis moved to Oklahoma City in the fall of 1994 and – six months before the bombing – were hired by a Palestinian expatriate, “a rich real-estate businessman who had eight aliases and funded his multimillion-dollar housing empire through his equally rich siblings in Baghdad, Jerusalem, Dhahran (Saudi Arabia) and Amman, Jordan,” to do maintenance work on some low-income houses.

On the day of the Oklahoma City bombing, the so-called maintenance workers were reported to have rejoiced when they heard over the radio that Islamic extremists had taken responsibility for the attack. The men, eyewitnesses reported, pledged their allegiance to the man they believed was the guiding force behind the bombing: Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein!

Davis learned that most of the Iraqi maintenance workers had colluded with McVeigh and Nichols “in the months, weeks, days and final hours leading up to the mass murder at the Murrah building.”

But the “most incriminating evidence led to one man,” Davis said, “the only man who fit the FBI's physical description for John Doe 2 and was a dead ringer for the official government composite-profile sketch of the man believed to be McVeigh’s accomplice.”

The Plot Thickens

“Eyewitnesses,” Davis said, “had identified [Hussain] Al-Hussaini drinking beer with McVeigh prior to the massacre, seated in the explosives-laden Ryder truck the morning of April 19, descending from that truck in front of the Murrah Building and peeling away from the burning remains of the federal complex in a brown pickup.”

“Yet,” she continued, “for some inexplicable reason, neither the police nor the FBI ever questioned Al-Hussaini.” When she offered the FBI 22 witness statements and hundreds of pages of corroborative documentation implicating Iraqi nationals in the bombing, they refused to accept the information, ostensibly to avoid showing it to McVeigh’s and Nichols’ defense lawyers.

Nevertheless, Davis soldiered on, relentlessly broadcasting Al-Hussaini’s possible implication in the bombing on nighttime TV.

Al-Hussaini was offended. He sued both Davis and KFOR-TV for libel, which gave Davis the opportunity to subpoena his immigration file, from which she learned that his tattoo was emblematic of those etched into the arms of Saddam Hussein's elite fighting forces, the Republican Guard, and that he had most likely been promoted to Unit 999 of the Iraq Intelligence Service.

During Al-Hussaini’s deposition in the fall of 1998, Davis said, “I sat face-to-face with a man I knew had been positively identified by eyewitnesses as a perpetrator of mass murder. …” He “broke down under questioning and unwittingly confessed to self-incriminating details. …”

Two months later, a federal judge dismissed the libel lawsuit, saying that the 50 statements of fact and opinion that implicated Al-Hussaini as the third terrorist in the Oklahoma City bombing were “undisputed.” More significantly, the evidence irrefutably discredited his alibi. The arrogant Al-Hussaini appealed the case, but a three-judge panel unanimously dismissed his appeal.

Was Al-Hussaini prosecuted? Held in detention? Investigated further by the FBI or the CIA?

None of the above!

Please Don’t Throw Me in Dat Briar Patch!

Instead, shortly after the Oklahoma City bombing, Al-Hussaini moved to Boston, where he got a job at Logan Airport (reportedly in food services) and lived with two Iraqi Gulf War veterans who had served in Saddam's army. The men owned a business that provided food services to commercial airlines at Logan – the venue from which terrorists commandeered American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 on Sept. 11, 2001. (It’s worth mentioning this theory: that the box cutters the terrorists used to slit the throats of some passengers might have been planted by food service workers.)

Davis’ claims that Iraqi terrorists were involved in the Oklahoma City bombing are compelling. Equally gripping, her investigation has led to persuasive evidence of a strong Iraqi-al-Qaida connection.

For instance, according to Davis’ investigation:

Timothy McVeigh’s lawyers found evidence that Terry Nichols might have received bomb-making expertise from al Qaida explosives experts in the Philippines, where he often traveled, leaving his Filipino mail-order bride in the U.S.

Court records revealed that in December of 1994, Nichols was in Cebu City (in the Philippines) at the same time as Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center attack and, as Davis has described him, “Osama bin Laden’s chief bomb maker.”

According to the sworn statement of the co-founder of the Muslim terrorist group Abu Sayyaf (a spin-off group of al-Qaida), Terry Nichols and Ramzi Yousef met personally to discuss bomb-making in the early 1990s.

Phone records revealed that Nichols made and received numerous phone calls to a boarding house in Cebu City, which McVeigh's defense lawyers said sheltered students from a university well known for Islamic militancy.

Nichols and McVeigh also made a series of cryptic calls on a phone debit card to untraceable numbers in the Philippines and from public pay phones in Kansas in order to cover their trail.

Bin Laden’s No. 2 man, Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahiri, personally visited Islamic demolitions experts living in OK City in the spring of 1995 to insure the smooth execution of the pending terrorist strike against the Murrah federal complex.

“Was Oklahoma City the ‘silver bullet’ that could have prevented 9-11?” asks Davis. She suspects it was.

Why No Answers?

Davis has repeatedly asked the powers-that-be why these activities were not investigated. “That question has never been addressed or answered by the Department of Justice,” she said.

Even Richard Clarke, President Clinton's counterterrorism chief and official Bush hater, revealed in his recent book, “Against All Enemies,” that “We do know that Nichols' bombs did not work before his Philippine stay and were deadly when he returned." Further, he affirmed that al Qaida operatives attended conventions in Oklahoma City in the early 1990s!

Nevertheless, in 1999, when Davis was helped by a bureau agent to give the FBI the 22 witness affidavits she had amassed, the documents, she said, “simply vanished!”

To this day, Davis asks herself: “Why has the FBI never even questioned Al-Hussaini and his Middle Eastern cohorts?” She said that she is “at a loss to explain” this egregious failure of intelligence. But she believes that it is a question “that should be posed to former members of the Clinton administration and the handful of people there who were responsible for investigating and prosecuting the bombing of the Murrah Building.”

She suspects that the “failure of the Clinton administration to examine Middle Eastern complicity in the Oklahoma City bombing emboldened Islamic terrorists to commit wholesale murder on a scale the world had never seen before September 11, 2001.”

After all, she said, “If the Oklahoma City bombing was orchestrated by an Iraqi hit squad operating under state sponsorship by Iran and Syria, that would undoubtedly constitute an act of war against the United States and, as former FBI director and Clinton appointee Louis Freeh repeatedly testified before the 9-11 Commission, `We were not on a war footing,’ which means that the Clinton administration couldn’t or didn’t want to confront the terrorist threat or do anything about it!”

Davis said, “Given what I discovered about the Iraqi-al-Qaida links to the Oklahoma City bombing, I applaud and salute the United States military under President Bush for its tremendous courage and sacrifice in ousting Saddam Hussein.”

Davis wonders how many more Americans would have been marked for death had the U.S. military not invaded Iraq and overthrown such a bloodthirsty broker of terror?

“I believe,” she said, “that our fallen soldiers have not died in vain to end the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction but that they have saved perhaps millions of Americans from another widespread slaughter of innocents like those who were massacred on April 19 in Oklahoma City.”

Not Kicking the Messenger

Davis has some formidable people asking the same questions and applauding her investigative talent, people like former CIA chief James Woolsey, who said, “[The] burden of proof now is on those who deny any link.”

People like Frank J. Gaffney Jr., president of the Center for Security Policy, who said: “Thanks to [Jayna Davis] … these facts can no longer be ignored or concealed. And those who Ms. Davis reveals have systematically done both for nearly a decade must be called to account.”

People like David Schippers, former chief investigative counsel for the impeachment trial of President Clinton, who said, “Had those investigators taken their duties seriously and followed up on the investigation of that information, it is entirely likely that the Twin Towers would still be standing.”

People like recently-deceased Dr. Constantine C. Menges, former special assistant to President George H.W. Bush for National Security Affairs and former national intelligence officer, Central Intelligence Agency, who said, “[Davis] reveals the facts that the Clinton Administration did not want to confront.”

People like Dan Vogel, retired FBI special agent and former public information officer for the Oklahoma City FBI, who said: “What they [FBI] did was unconscionable. The American people deserved the truth and the Bureau needed to look into this Middle East network here in Oklahoma City. If they had, maybe they would have come upon the network behind the September 11 attacks.”

And people like me – and I think, millions of other Americans – who fervently believe that Davis’ findings are, as she suggested, the “silver bullet” that could have prevented the tragedy of September 11.

Pieces of the Puzzle

Making sense of this jigsaw puzzle is easy. So easy that it should convince every voter in America to vote for President George W. Bush.

Bush has never wavered from his conviction that the nature of Islamic terrorism against our country threatens every second of our very lives. In that regard he has created a visionary and unprecedented strategy to resolve the century-old problems of the violent Middle East: Introduce Democracy and let freedom – however difficult its birth – ring.

In stark contrast, Democrat John Kerry has never wavered from his conviction that dealing with Islamic terrorism involves alliances with the America-hating and deeply corrupt United Nations and with our equally America-hating “allies” like France and Germany and Russia, all of which opted for billions in deals with Saddam Hussein’s regime to line their own pockets and stave off their nations’ bankruptcies.

So uninterested is Kerry in the subject of terrorism – and, by extension, in protecting Americans from potential disaster – that, he disclosed on the Larry King show, he hadn’t “had time” to receive the private briefing offered to him by Homeland Security Secretary Ridge. But he obviously had time to appear on a fluff TV show and attend an orgy of Democratic Bush-bashing at Radio City Music Hall.

And last week, when Kerry announced his running mate, Sen. John Edwards, both of them touted their concept of a “new America” without once uttering the word “terrorism” – as if healthcare or jobs or reduced gas emissions would make any difference to a populace whose death toll from another domestic terrorist attack might be 30,000 or 3 million instead of 3,000.

Putting It All Together

In a recent article for NewsMax.com, ”Kerry & Company’s Homeland Insecurity,” I detailed how Sen. Kerry – who sat on both the Foreign Affairs and Select Intelligence committees – was warned four months before Sept. 11 of a possible terrorist attack at Logan Airport in Boston.

The information was given to him by a recently retired special agent with the Federal Aviation Administration who had spent over 10 years as a risk-management specialist charged with the security of air traffic control facilities throughout New England.

For three months, Kerry did nothing, finally passing the information to the one agency the FAA agent had warned him was the most remiss in addressing terrorist threats: the Department of Transportation.

But Kerry was never called before the self-described “nonpartisan” 9/11 Commission! A commission composed of many members with a deep interest – like Kerry’s – in not turning the spotlight on the real suspects in the Clinton administration who for nearly a decade systematically facilitated the encroaching terrorist threat to our nation.

In fact, it was commission member Jamie Gorelick, Clinton’s deputy attorney general and general counsel of his Defense Department, who effectively created the “wall” that forbade the FBI and CIA from exchanging information. It was Clinton’s secretary of transportation, Norman Mineta (who was bizarrely kept on by Bush), who forbade the kind of “racial profiling” that might have prevented groups of “Middle East types” from boarding planes. It was Clinton’s FAA that failed to prohibit knives with blades less than four inches long from being taken aboard commercial airliners.

And it was Clinton and his minions who treated terrorism as a “law enforcement” problem and consistently ignored its virulent metastasis in our own country – including the Iraqi-al-Qaida connection in Oklahoma City that Jayna Davis says “emboldened Islamic terrorists to commit wholesale murder on a scale the world had never seen before September 11, 2001.”

Crucial Questions

A few days ago, the Senate Intelligence Committee released its “Report on Pre-War Intelligence on Iraq,” which unanimously found no evidence that the Bush administration pressured CIA analysts to modify their judgments of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction but which also found that intelligence officials relied too heavily on information about WMD from the United Nations and that the CIA conveyed faulty pre-war intelligence about WMD in Iraq.

Ostensibly, reports like this and others seek to answer the crucial question that Bush critics hope will determine the outcome of the election in their favor: Was the war in Iraq justified?

They say no. But can their judgment – can Kerry’s – be trusted?

The U.N. spent a decade doing nothing while Saddam Hussein sneeringly flouted their directives to rid Iraq of the WMD they knew he had and had watched him use to murder multiple thousands of his Kurdish population. Only when President Bush threatened to do the U.N.’s job – and spare Americans the Kurds’ fate – did the U.N. agree to address the matter.

But the road to war proved surprisingly bumpy when our “allies” France, Germany and Russia balked, finally refusing to support America’s effort.

The whole debate took months, months in which these fair-weather friends – who we now know were “bought” by the Iraqi madman – allowed and probably advised Saddam or his military to secret the WMD out of Iraq to places where numerous military and intelligence analysts say they now are stashed: Syria, Iran and Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.

“Bush lied – no WMD!” his critics never tire of bleating, pointedly ignoring not only evidence of the transfer of Iraq’s WMD from Israeli intelligence, defectors’ accounts and satellite photos, but also the president’s spectacular accomplishments in ridding the world of a murderous dictator, freeing 25 million Iraqis and putting all of our enemies on alert that America will never tolerate – as it did during the Clinton years – attack after attack on our safety and way of life.

Will Kerry do the same?

During the Clinton administration, U.S. military strength was cut drastically. This included 709,000 active duty personnel, 293,000 reserve troops, eight standing army divisions, 20 Air Force and Navy air wings with 2,000 combat aircraft, 232 strategic bombers, 19 strategic ballistic missile submarines with 3,114 nuclear warheads on 232 missiles, 500 ICBMs with 1,950 warheads, four aircraft carriers and 121 surface combat ships and submarines, plus all the support bases, shipyards and logistical assets needed to sustain such a naval force.

Kerry voted for every cut!

“Actions have consequences,” said journalist Karen Pittman in a recent article, http://www.opinioneditorials.com/freedomwriters/kpittman_20040711.html “The CIA's Plaster Disaster: How Kerry Crippled Intelligence”.

“As night follows day,” she wrote, “effect follows cause. You vote [for] Kerry, you get a stripped down CIA. You get a stripped down CIA, you get 9/11. You water down plaster, you get mud.”

On September 11th, she added, “we paid in blood for the bad choices made under Carter and Clinton, with Kerry’s encouragement. And now he wants you to absolve him. He wants you to pretend you didn't see him do it.”

Nevertheless, Kerry and other Bush haters have become nimble in deflecting attention away from their own egregious records by “floating the balloon” they hope will stick. To wit, the other crucial question they hope will prove that “Bush lied”: Was there an Iraq-al-Qaida relationship?

The evidence of this connection is overwhelming, as documented not only by Jayna Davis regarding the Oklahoma City bombing and Laurie Mylroie regarding both bombings of the World Trade Center (in 1993 and 2001), but also by numerous law enforcement and intelligence officials and two quite formidable “experts” in such matters, Vladimir Putin and the interim president of Iraq, Iyad Allawi.

It is a connection that liberal Kerry doesn’t want to hear about, the better for him to keep voting – as he did – against the funds to support the heroic efforts of our military in Iraq!

Convention Alert – Election Alert

In another recent article for NewsMax.com, http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/7/2/105813.shtml Political Passion Counts – But Your Vote for Bush Might Not!, I warned of potential Election Day sabotage by domestic or foreign terrorists with the sophistication and wherewithal to manipulate electronic voting machines and by George Soros, the billionaire fanatic and Bush loather who has successfully engineered the outcomes of elections around the world.

But I omitted the “major attack” – which Tom Ridge warned about the other day – that may come from the by-now-seasoned Iraqi-al-Qaida collaborators who live and flourish among us.

And who can rule out the alleged “third terrorist” in the Oklahoma City bombing, Hussain Al-Hussaini, who has lived in Boston for the past seven years?

To guess about the nature of that attack is as pointless as having asked Americans before Sept. 11 if they could imagine four commercial airliners filled with innocent travelers crashing into our country’s most symbolic landmarks.

But it’s impossible to ignore the chatter on radio and TV stations around the country about a horrifying but plausible scenario – in which as many as 20 dirty bombs will be placed by Al Qaeda in 20 American cities, to be detonated simultaneously – that is based on the new book, “Osama's Revenge: THE NEXT 9/11: What the Media and the Government Haven't Told You” by investigative reporter Paul L. Williams, a former consultant for the FBI on organized crime and international terrorism.

Is this the deathblow that Tom Ridge isn’t telling us about and why the White House recently floated the idea of postponing the presidential election?

We don’t have to guess about our enemies’ motives or intentions. Fueled by malignant hatred, they want to threaten our way of life, panic our population and intimidate us into electing a weak leader like Kerry.

After all, terrorists read newspapers too. They know that after the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, Kerry voted to cut $1 billion from the counterterrorism budget, just as in 1995 he proposed a $1.5 billion cut in intelligence funding. And they know that he has also voted against every weapons system that is currently defending our country against the terrorists whose most passionate goal is to destroy us.

“The question before us is simple,” Pittman states. “Having made obviously wrong choices in the nineties, will we make them again in 2004?”

I say the choice is clear: John F. Kerry – the terrorists’ dream candidate. George W. Bush – their worst nightmare.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/7/14/92015.shtml

posted July 15, 2004 10:56 AM            

OK 26T, let's get to the bottom line that naturally arises from your contention. If voters are wasting their time voting for candidates they think will effect the changes they want in our society and are deluding themselves, what course of action is left for the citizens of America?

posted July 15, 2004 03:38 PM              

Having said that, I do agree with what I think you probably meant, 26T, which is that whichever "Republicrat" (Bush or Kerry) we vote for, we'll still end up with the same corporate agenda running the game, perhaps with some differences in "style" but without any real difference in substance or direction. That's sad.

However, one of the main reasons that the situation has come to this pass is that the leaders of both parties have been able to count on the assumption that Americans are for the most part "comfortably numb," and can be counted on to vote along party lines as usual. And those who ARE aware enough to realize that there's no real choice there, can be counted on NOT to vote, because "why bother?" As a result, the election is sewed up ... and the winner: the corporate party! Surprise, surprise!

But if this happens ... with half the eligible voters not even showing up at the polls ... it just reinforces the belief of the corporte powers that be that they can proceed with impunity to run our country for their own benefit, because Americans are too apathetic to do anything to change it! That's not a messsage I want to send.

There are alternatives to the Republicrats: if you lean to the liberal in your foundational views, there is Ralph Nader; if you lean to the conservative, there is Libertarian Michael Badnarik. As different as these two candidates are in their underlying political philosophies, they are both outspoken opponents of the corporate stranglehold on government, and are willing to stand against it vocally and on principal.

Is there any real chance that either of these candidates can be elected? Probably not, at least not yet. But if either of them ... or BOTH ... were to actually capture a significant percentage of voters in the upcoming election, it would shake the world! Politicians and populations would sit up and take notice: "hey, maybe Americans CAN think for themselves ... maybe they're NOT just sheep hypnotized by comfortable lifestyles to think and believe whatever their leaders tell them." The mass media would be forced to cover alternative viewpoints that their corporate owners now feel safe to ignore or pooh-pooh. The ruling elite would find it MUCH harder to push their agendas through unopposed, knowing that there is a large critical contituency out there watching ... and voting. And with all these changes, by the NEXT election, we might actually have a real choice! At the very least, it's a step in the right direction, which is better than no step at all.

Of course, it may already be too late. The "paperless" electronic voting machines (all owned by major Repubican-supporting corporations) which will count and report the votes using "trade secret" software without an audit trail of any kind, may make our votes completely moot. Or, the next elections may be "postponed" or canceled entirely, as the current administration has already set in motion the legal procedures for. We don't know. But that doesn't mean we should lie down and play dead. Hey, it's our country, our world, and we DO have a voice in it ... yes, the cards are stacked against us, but ANY odds can be surmounted in time by dedicated folks who know what they are working toward and why. There are no gurantees ... EXCEPT that if we DON'T stand up and speak out, with our votes as well as our words and actions ... we don't have a CHANCE of affecting anything. I'm not quite ready to roll over yet.

posted July 16, 2004 01:10 AM              

This isnt an "unfocused whine that offers no solutions." I have posted some fabulous articles and sites that back up my findings on this. But of course you havent read them or checked any of it out on your own. But I'll post them again since you want to know where I'm coming from.

I've tried to explain to you before - why I take the stand that I do on this issue. I won't waste my time again posting out my beliefs. I'm not trying to change your mind. Okay? I'm just voicing my opinion, that's all! I know where you are coming from and it's only fair to let you know where I am coming from. So once again....

Here we go!!! Ready?!! (I suggest reading it this time, so we don't waste anymore.)
____________________________________________
THE COMMON GOOD AND THE VOTER'S PARADOX

by Leon Felkins and Mack Tanner
"If voting could change anything, it would be illegal." --Graffiti

How many times has someone told you that everyone would be happy, healthy and content if only people would forget their selfish desires and work for the common good? By serving the common good, don't we also serve our own enlightened self interests because the common good guarantees the maximum benefit for every individual? Wasn't the me generation a tragic mistake? Isn't it time we returned to the ideal that each individual puts the community interests above his own selfish interest?

Does working for the common good give a person greater benefits than working for one's own selfish behavior?

If the answer is yes, then we should to be able to demonstrate that an individual sacrifice has a real effect on the common good. If my single, personal sacrifice can alter the final result, then I can say that my sacrifice produces more in rewards than my personal costs. But if my sacrifice makes no difference to the final result, why should I make it, especially if I receive the benefits of the sacrifice of others even if I make no personal sacrifice?

The truth is that an individual sacrifice for the common good never produces a personal reward equal to the cost of the sacrifice. Let's look at some examples to demonstrate what we are talking about.

Almost everyone will agree that voting is an important civil duty. Moreover, it's a duty that requires little personal sacrifice in our society. For most of us, it takes no more than a few minutes of time. Polling places are easy to find, almost always near the place where we live, registration is simple, the process is painless and most of us have pretty definite opinions about whom we want to elect. So how come only about half the eligible voters actually get to the polls?

Let's say that on election day you find yourself 150 miles away from home on a two day meeting. (The meeting was scheduled after the final date for requesting an absentee ballot.) Your have a choice: you could do your duty, drive home, vote and drive back. Or, you could just forget the whole thing. Most likely you will chose the option of forgetting about it--this time. Your reasoning is sound. The cost for you to vote is substantial while the return is, for all practical purposes, zero. Why is that so? Because your vote will not actually make a difference in the results of the election! While you may have other reasons for voting or not voting, as far as the election process itself is altered, your vote is just not significant.

You won't be alone in deciding not to bother to vote. As many as half the voters will not only decide voting is not worth the sacrifice of driving two hundred miles, they'll decide it's not worth the sacrifice of the risk of getting rained on, missing a favorite TV show, being late for dinner, or driving six blocks out of the way on the way home from work.

Let us look at the voting situation more carefully and examine some of the counter arguments often made for why you should vote.

What if the election resulted in a tie? Would not my vote count then?

Sure, if that ever happened. But ties don't ever occur in large elections and if they did there would be a re-count. Your vote would still get obliterated!

But I like to vote. I really don't care whether my vote does any good or not - I get an internal feeling of having done my duty. And, if the candidate I vote for wins, I can brag about how I help him get elected.

This is the real reason why most people do vote. They have bought into a group of myths that make them think that their single vote really does count. Because they believe those myths, voting makes them feel good. If voting gives you a good feeling, by all means do it, if it doesn't cost you a lot of time or money. But what if you don't like any of the candidates, you know they are all crooks and that not one of them will do what he or she is promising they will do? Do you really feel good when you are forced to choose between Slick Willy, Read My Lips, or a rich Texas shrimp?

What about the possibility that my employer may reward me for voting and/or there are other rewards for being a registered voter?

If the reward exceeds the cost of voting, then vote. That is rational. But how often does that actually happen? The question is not why do so few people vote, but why does anyone bothers to vote at all. Voting may be a fun and pleasurable experience but it doesn't make rational sense as a way of getting a payoff for the effort and sacrifice.

If my voting will do nothing, what can I do to help get my candidate elected?

Simple: get other people to vote, lots of them. If you can get 10,000 people to vote the way you want and your personal reward for doing that exceeds the cost of your doing it then, rationally, you should do it. It doesn't pay to vote, but it does pay to donate a great deal of money to a political candidate which is then used to con less intelligent and less rational people into voting for the candidate who will promptly ignore the desires of those who voted from him but do everything he can to serve the desires of those who made big contributions to his campaign.

That is why it's so easy to buy elections. The thinking voter gets no real, tangible rewards for voting; the bought voter gets whatever pay-off he/she is offered.

But if a single vote makes no difference to the outcome, what about the other things our leaders ask us to do as a civic duty? Let's look at another example of civic duty, one in which we could argue that the personal sacrifice has a much greater impact on the public good than the simple act of voting. Suppose you live in a California city that happens to be running out of water. The mayor declares - among other things - that the residents are to take baths only two days a week. Although this is not your day to bathe, you have just finished making a plumbing repair in the basement and you are feeling really grungy. The desire to take a bath weighs heavy on your mind.

You consider the options. They can best be stated by the following "payoff matrix".

| Direct Impact |Member of Community Impact
----------------------------------------------------------------
Take Bath | Great | - negligible
----------------------------------------------------------------
Don't Take Bath | Awful | + negligible
----------------------------------------------------------------
(The '-' means slightly negative; the '+' means slightly positive)

When I take any action that uses community resources, it impacts me in two ways. I am impacted directly by my action and I am impacted as a member of the community.

With regard to the bath water example, the pay off matrix would provide enough evidence to a rational person to conclude that the net pay off is heavily in favor of taking a bath. The loss that he/she would get from cheating as a member of the community is insignificantly small.

Both of these scenarios present examples of a situation sometime referred to as "The Voter's Paradox". Basically that paradox states that the return to an individual from a group contribution that is beneficial to the group will be less than the direct cost to the individual. The paradox results from the fact that while the individual may have a positive personal gain in not voting, if everyone declines to vote, or to conserve water resources, we have a disaster on our hands.

The two scenarios actually present two classes of the problem.

With regard to the voting dilemma, the problem is that there is no return at all to balance the voter's cost of voting. The reason why this is so is because elections are a binary (to use a term from the computer world) event. Your candidate is either elected or not. We do not put 55% of candidate A in office and 45% of candidate B. It is all or nothing, which means that one less vote simply has no impact on the final result. The very improbable case of a tie vote is statistically insignificant.

The second example of a water shortage is not binary in that every little bit of water in the reservoir does help, even if the actual difference one bath may make is down in the noise ( to borrow another term from electronics). But one always gets a significant reward for cheating, i.e. instant cleanliness. Yet, if half the population does as I do, the impact is disastrous.

What if everyone did that?

Experience tells us that everyone won't. We can be pretty sure that a significant segment of any human population will believe the myths and do their duty. Like the sheep they are, they will vote, conserve water, and offer every sacrifice for the common good that the preacher, teacher, or politician tells them to make.

But we are not writing this for the sheep who do what they are told to do. We're addressing this to those who think and act rationally in their own self interests. The rational individual is first concerned with the results of his/her actions as it impacts on his/her own happiness and well being. Such a person may decide to make a sacrifice in the common good, but will do so only if he or she is certain that the personal sacrifice will produce a common good result that is at least equal to or, hopefully, greater than the value of the personal sacrifice.

What we are arguing is that such a situation almost never occurs. Most of the time, a personal sacrifice never produces an impact on the common good that would justify the personal cost.

The final paradox is that if everybody did as I contemplate doing, then it would me even less sense for me not to cheat. The more people who cheat, the less rational it becomes to be one of those sacrificing personal good for the common good. The more rational, self directed, selfish people there are in a community, the less likely that appeals that everyone should work for the common good will produce results.

This dilemma is sometimes called The Tragedy of the Commons which refers to the early New England practice of establishing a grazing commons used by everyone in the village. The commons pasture was a limited resource which all members of the village could use for grazing their milk cows and horses. The assumption was that the good citizens of the community will each limit their use of the commons to a fair share that would insure that the grass was not overgrazed. It never happened that way. In every case the commons was overgrazed into a dust patch. The reason was simple. Too many people recognized that as the grass was a limited resource, they had to get the maximum amount into their cows before some one else did. The expectation was always that if one didn't take more than his or her fair share, the next fellow would.

The Tragedy of the Commons poses an extremely serious dilemma to those who would try to design a society based on the assumption that individuals will contribute to the group's well being rather than looking out for their own selfish interests. If we recognize that individuals are driven by selfish desires and we are looking for a rational basis for voluntarily contributing to community welfare, we are in serious trouble.

Faced with the reality of the Tragedy of the Commons, society usually opts for one of two different methods for insuring the common good as well as the preservation of community resources. These two methods are not complimentary, but contradictory.

One of these is the pay-as-you go method, that is, the free market. In the free market approach, every common resource, whether managed by private owners or by a community government, is sold to the public at a price high enough to insure that the resource is not depleted. If there is a water shortage, then the price of water is jacked up until people have no choice but to limit the amount of water they use for bathing. This not only has the advantage of insuring that water consumption goes down, it also gathers capital that can be used to increase the supply of water through the creation of new sources.

But the modern advocate of socially responsible government objects to the market place approach because it results in an unfair situation in which the rich wash their cars while the poor can't take a bath at all. Such advocates of the common good claim that the only way to fairly distribute a common necessity is by regulation. That means that you jail people who take baths on the wrong day and the only fair way to gather capital to finance new public projects is by taxation. You not only have to collect enough tax to pay for the water system, but you must also collect enough to hire the water cops, pay the judges, and to build the jails where you will put both water and tax cheats.

But does such government action really solve the voter's paradox or the tragedy of the commons, or does it simple create a new commons, a public treasury, that then becomes the target of plunder for selfish people who will always put their own selfish interest above the common good?

If we look at recent political history, it is obvious that the tragedy of the commons could also be called the tragedy of the public treasury. No matter how much we collect for the public treasury, it will never be enough to meet the demands of those who claim a right to use the money from the treasury.

It is not remarkable that each individual describes the public good as those things that are in his own best interest. The elderly want more social security and medical benefits, the trucker better roads, the farmer crop subsidies, the investor bank guarantees, and the politician every single benefit that will result in more votes for him at election time. The inevitable result is that the government never spends the revenue in the public good, but only for the benefit of those clever enough to manipulate the system to their own benefit.

We can see the result in America today. The entire political process has degenerated into a mad scramble over what should be financed with public funds as our politicians spend us into national bankruptcy.

This paradox affects our lives in a variety of ways every day. A few more examples are provided for your amusement and to further illustrate the general nature of the problem:

The congressman votes for more spending and higher taxes because his direct reward is greater than the small loss to himself of having to pay higher taxes. Further, the electorate of each district continues to encourage the congressman to spend for the benefit of their area, while complaining about the ever increasing national debt!

Even though free trade would benefit all nations and most consumers, I, as an auto worker or textile mill owner, will personally benefit more if I can elect politicians who will set high tariffs and limit competitive imports.

The ecology of the earth will not be measurably affected by my actions. The destruction of the mahogany forests does not really depend on whether I buy this mahogany table or not. In any case, not much is likely to happen in my lifetime.

If I somehow know that a chemical company stock is about to gain $5, and I decide not to buy because the company makes chemicals that end up in toxic dumps, two things happen: I lose a chance to make $5 for every share I could afford to purchase and the chemical company will feel absolutely no additional pressure to abandon the production of these chemicals. In fact there will be no impact on the company, nor their policies, whatever I decide to do.

Currently the government is encouraging all of us to buy all we can in order to stimulate the economy. It makes much more sense for me to cut my spending and pay off my credit bills. If everyone does that, the recession becomes a depression.

Young people who want to use their credit cards demand that the government lower interest rates even though that cuts the income of the elderly who are living on the interest off their savings.

Should I contribute to Public Television? Not only will my $25 contribution not impact whether the station stays on the air or not, but my use of their service costs them nothing more than what they already spend. Rationally, I use but don't pay.

Consider the situation of a bank near possible failure. Suppose that you know that the bank's situation is precarious and that if several people suddenly withdraw their deposits, it will have to close. You have $5000 in deposit. What should you do? The bank will not close because of your individual action so your withdrawal will not hurt other people. But if there is a "run" on the bank, you lose $5000.

If the above arguments are correct, we can only conclude that a rational and selfish individual will not voluntarily contribute to community welfare even though he/she would share in that welfare. We could even suggest that the only people who do voluntarily sacrifice personal rewards for the public good are nothing but patsies. The person who refuses to contribute to the common good gets a double reward. He or she gets the immediate reward of the money or effort saved, and the long term reward of collecting whatever public good the patsies created.
But doesn't altruism have it's own rewards?

There are very convincing arguments that living human beings are rarely altruistic. It is easier to believe that positive civic actions by individuals result from stupidity, intimidation, bribes, or the success of propaganda campaigns rather than true altruism!

But can't we educate our children through the school system about the importance of working toward the common good? We have been trying to do that ever since the beginning of this century. Education hasn't converted children into altruistic adults in this country and it certainly didn't work in the Soviet Union where the school system tried desperately to create the new socialist man who would always work for the common good. Indeed, it seems that just the opposite happens, the more educated a person is, the more he/she is likely to take rational actions and less likely to be easily convinced to sacrifice his own good for the common good.

What is the solution to this dilemma? Do those of us wise enough to recognize the mythologies and the bull **** that priest and politicians hand out decide that we have no choice but to go along with the program of inducing guilt, intimidating the ignorant, propagandizing the uneducated, and bribing the electorate as it has been practiced by the churches, governments, and teachers for thousands of years?

Or, do we shout out the truth? Do we admit to ourselves, and tell anyone who wants to listen that sacrificing for the common good makes no rational sense, that the only way to achieve the common good is to make every thing a pay-as-you-go proposition with the free market place determining what the price of every commodity and benefit will be? Moreover, do we make a rational decision to take every legal advantage of the common good and the common treasure for as long as others are willing to believe in the myths that teach it is better to serve the common good rather than look out for one's own selfish interests?

Indeed, do we dare examine the very concept that there even is such a thing as the common good? Or is that idea as mythical as the morality that claims humans must put aside their own interest in order to serve the interest of the community?

In reality, society is always a chaotic mixture of competing needs in which the needs and wants of no two individuals ever match. No matter how much you may want tax supported public schools, I'll remain convinced that public schools are a failed social experiment that should be junked. Some argue that the war on drugs does more damage to society than drug addiction could ever do. Do agricultural subsidies really serve the common good of the consumer who must pay higher prices at the food counter?

There is not a single major political issue in modern America in which there is anything approaching a consensus agreement about what action must be taken in the common good.

Would a society in which no one gave a damn about the common good, be such a bad place to live?

Such a society would not put the butcher, the baker, or the farmer out of business. We all must count on other people, but the best way to make sure that someone does what we want them to do is to return the favor by performing for them what they perceive to be an equal favor. That's what the free market is all about.

If you really think about it, we already live in a society in which every individual is really looking out for their own self interest. It's just that we've allowed too many people to glibly lie that they were supporting the common good when all they are really interested in is their own selfish rewards. They lie about their love for the common good because they want to take advantage of our gullibility to get what they want out of the system. That includes every person who now holds political office and every person who is trying to get elected. Throwing the current bunch out and replacing them is not going to solve the problem.

But what about the voter's paradox? How do we solve that problem?

Why bother? If we give up the idea that people should sacrifice for the common good, we take away most of the justification for the politician. In a free society, voting shouldn't count for much. If people take full responsibility for their own lives, that leaves nothing for politicians to do. It's only when we allow the politician to make us slaves of the common good that we have to worry about whom we elect.

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Check these fabulous articles out too! http://www.magnolia.net/~leonf/ratlife.html

"A Rational Life"

Politics or The Art of Manipulating the Masses for Fun and Profit

Whatever Happened to Common Sense?
___________________________________________

"Don't vote. You'll only encourage them." -- Graffiti at Oxford

posted July 16, 2004 03:41 AM            

Nevermind. My time would be better spent talking to a wall.

posted July 16, 2004 04:19 AM            

Sheesh.

I don't feel hate, just derision. There's a difference. I wish some of you were what you profess to be and then, despite our differences of opinion, I could respect you.

Oh, another difference. I don't constantly profess to be a pillar of love and light then post words that indicate contrary to that. Some here do. It's just false, stop it already. You hate Bush, it's obvious in your words, no debate needed, all anyone needs to do is read your posts to see the truth of that statement.

I have no need for falseties. People don't have to like me, and I don't have to like them. The world is full of all sorts of people, you can't possibly be expected to like everyone. Don't pretend that you do. It's only false, and anyone w/ two brain cells to rub together can see right through it. The only obligation is to be cordial; nicey niceness to people you obviously don't like it just plain false. Life's too short for BS.

posted July 16, 2004 04:34 AM              

I am not trying to prove anything to you. I am just being me and posting what is on my mind. Read into it what you will. Why are you so angry at what you percieve as falseness in others?

Not everyone will like everyone else. My goal in life is not going around proving myself to others that have their narrow minds made up. We are all percieving things from our respective viewpoints. It doesnt mean any one of us is WRONG.

OKAY! You think I'm putting on a front and I show "falseness". Good for you! How many times will you repeat this. It's old now.
To you I am. To others I'm not. Who's right or wrong?? WHO CARES. Can we move on now. Honestly, your opinion of me means nothing to me. So if it makes you happy to act this way - okay. Do it.

But this is not good for you, you know. It's not good to hold such negative thoughts and anger within, and for such a silly reason.

Let it go! Everything's going to be okay. You are good. I am bad.

posted July 16, 2004 04:50 AM            

quote:

---

It's not good to hold such negative thoughts and anger within, and for such a silly reason.

---

Can we just stop now, so that the convo can go back to how one's vote does make a difference? Or are you going to continue to be false and condescending, while I continue to deride you and provide scathing personal insights that make me look as bitchy for saying them as they show you to be false?

The vote - I believe it does count. Some don't. We all have our reasons. I wouldn't categorize not voting neccessarily as lazy and unintelligent (although I do know some who don't vote who I would consider to be both). I think it's misguided and I'm sad that people have such little faith in democracy, and that some so misunderstand the purpose of the electoral system that they view it with scorn and suspicion. But to each his own, those same folks would prob view me as misguided for voting, so hey, watcha gonna do? I'll keep voting.

posted July 16, 2004 05:11 AM              

When I read your comment that "talking to a wall would be time better spent" I thought it was funny and agreed with you. You are right! Your time trying to convince me of my erroneous ways would be better off spent talking to a wall.

Sorry we don't agree. WHO CARES?!! Don't get so BENT about it.

You shouldnt bother telling me how you think I am wrong. And I don't bother with telling you. In our own eyes we are both right. Really no one is right or wrong. We are all just seeing things from our own respective points of view.

There's no need to get ANGRY about it!

And give up on me "giving it up". I am me. You don't like it. I dont care. Percieve of me what you will. But please, try and be a little more civil???

It's okay that we disagree!!!

That doesnt mean I'm being false when I wish the best for you on your path, and send you love and light. I can disagree with people and still love them. I'm sorry you are upset that you are wrong about this.

And I don't try to portray myself as a saint. If that's how I come across to you, oh well. You are right sometimes I will "spew negativity". Good girl. I'm human. I do the best I can. Most of the time I'm nice sometimes I'm not. OOooohhh, I'm soooo false now. Come on!!

Yours "falsely",
26

posted July 16, 2004 12:38 PM            

With 26T, I am annoyed at what I percieve to be a true fakeness, not only in regards to Bush and conservatives, but also towards me. She denies it, I still believe it to be true.

That's unfortunate you are, "not particularly fond of me" - I would probably say that of few here, however as I said in a prev post, in such a diverse world, I suppose we can't expect everyone to 'be fond' of us anymore than we can be expected to be fond of everyone else.

posted July 16, 2004 01:45 PM              

And what's funny is you think this is what I'm trying to do to you. I am not.

I'm sure you are a great person. I don't EVEN KNOW YOU, but I can see this. I know we have different opionions. Big deal. I don't percieve you as a mean person either, even after your postings of your thoughts on me. This is just me. I do love humanity as a whole - every single person on the planet. But this is not something I need to prove to you. It just is.

Just curious. Are you a Scorpio? You seem a little paranoid that I'm out to get you or trap you into looking like a b***h. This is not the case.

I am simply posting how I feel and if to you, this comes across as being fake, than that is your problem - your choice. Nothing I can do OR want to do about it. You own this, not I.

to you.

posted July 16, 2004 01:47 PM            

Yes I'm a Scorpio - and I am not 'concerned' you are trying to make me look like a b@tch. I said, "my personal insights about you may make me look like a b@tch ...". ie; if anyone makes me look like a b@tch , it's me. I can live with that.

And as a Scorp (many planets incl. Merc), my cut to the core, direct, pull no punches communication style is often difficult to hear. And as a Scorp you should know that above much else, falseness I find offensive.

OZ is our resident paranoid Scorp.

*edit* oh, and I never accused you of being mean and evil. Just hypocritical - there's a difference.

posted July 16, 2004 02:01 PM              

A Scorpio. I knew it! (BTW I'm not laughing AT you Isis)
Isis, almost all of my friends are Scorpio's. I know and (usually ) get along with this sign very well. But your sign can get really paranoid and see things in people that arent there. They easily see what they percieve to be negativity in others. Yes, a percepive sign. But not always right in thier perceptions. Their emotions get in the way alot.

Your communication style is NOT difficult for me to hear. It is yours. I don't dislike you for it. It is you. You are a beautiful unique soul, just like all the rest of us.

Okay....come on...let 'er rip. I can almost here you screaming at me through the computer screen. I know you think I'm being fake.

Well I'm not that's all I can say.

26

posted July 17, 2004 04:30 PM              

WE ARE THE REPUBLICANS

By Mick Youther

One thing we learned from the 2000 election is that our voting system is a mess. Have things gotten any better? The government seems to think that the answer to all our voting problems is paperless electronic voting machines, and it is using our tax dollars to entice states to buy these new machines. So far, things are not looking too good.

* [In Boone County, Ind.], an electronic system initially recorded more than 144,000 votes in an election with fewer than 19,000 registered voters--NY Times, 1/31/04

* In the 2002 election, brand new computer voting systems used in Florida lost over 100,000 votes due to a software error. Errors and irregularities were also reported in New Jersey, Missouri, Georgia, Texas, and at least 10 other states.-- Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ), press release, January, 2003

* Incorrect software programming has now been identified in over 100 elections, often flipping the race to the wrong candidate, even when the election was not close. No one knows how many elections have actually been misprogrammed, and as we eliminate paper ballots, no one will ever know --Bev Harris, author of Black Box Voting: Ballot-Tampering in the 21st Century, BuzzFlash Interview, 10/1/03

Electronic voting machines breaking down or making random mistakes is bad enough, but there is something even more ominous about this rush to paperless, electronic voting.

*There is a long history of election irregularities that suggests that vote fraud using voting machines has been occurring. Republicans appear to be the main beneficiaries. In the 2002 election 74% of upset elections went to Republicans by as much as 9-14% outside of the margin of error, according to reporter Alastair Thompson of Scoop.-- The Baltimore Chronicle, 8/15/03

* It appears that voting technology is a topic that the Republican leadership wants to tightly control. It is without doubt that Republicans own most of the companies that manufacture, sell, and service voting machines. And President Bush and the Republican Congress appear determined to control and limit oversight of the elections industry. -- Lynn Landes, dissidentvoice.org, 4/13/04

* in 2004, most votes will be 'counted' by paperless, unverifiable, eminently hackable computer systems, privately owned and secretly programmed by Bush supporters from the Religious Right and the military-intelligence complex.-- Chris Floyd, Moscow Times, 9/12/03

* The 2004 election rests in the private hands of the Urosevich brothers [Bob and Todd], who are financed by the far-out right wing and top donors to the Republican Party.--Lynn Landes, EcoTalk.org, 4/27/04 (Their companies, Diebold and ES&S, will count about 80% of all votes cast in the upcoming U.S. presidential election.)

* The voting industry is spending literally millions of dollars, and going through amazing feats of contorted logic that can best be described as marketing gymnastics, to convince us that we should discontinue proper auditing. They want us to eliminate the ballot which you verify, and trust the secret system instead.-- Bev Harris, author of Black Box Voting: Ballot-Tampering in the 21st Century, BuzzFlash Interview, 10/1/03

* Using these machines is tantamount to handing complete control of vote counting to a private company, with no independent checks or audits. These machines represent a serious threat to democracy.-- Professor David Dill, Stanford University, [infernalpress.com], 6/20/03

Would Republicans really stoop to rigging voting machines to win? Judging from what they did in Florida's 2000 election, the answer is yes Absolutely. The Republicans learned that, no matter how many laws and rules they have to break to win an election, once they've won, it's all over but the crying. Nobody will do anything about it. President Bush is their proof of that.

There are Democratic bills in Congress trying to assure a verifiable election, but they are being held up by you-know-who. Let your Congressperson know what you think about casting your vote on Republican machines with no verifiable record, and visit these sites to see what else you can do to assure a fair election.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation

Verified Voting

Working for Change

Black Box Voting

Here are the links to the sites above....very good sites!
http://action.eff.org/action/index.asp?step=2&item=2821
http://www.verifiedvoting.org/
http://www.workingforchange.com/activism/petition.cfm?itemid=14993
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/cleanvote.html

Retrofitting paperless machines with printers is expensive and would probably cause more problems than it solves; but there is already a simple solution to our problem;hand-marked paper ballots counted by human beings. It has been found to be the most accurate system available (MIT study--Voting Technology and Uncounted Votes in the United States, 9/25/02), and it could easily be adopted by every precinct in the United States in time for the November election.

Do you want it fast, or do you want it right? This may be our last chance to get it right.

Posted July 11, 2004

Mick Youther is retired and lives in beautiful Southern Illinois. You can email your comments to Mick@interventionmag.com

Posted Sunday, July 12, 2004