Inadequate Holt bill shored up by supporters. WTF?
You cannot possibly be serious about your support for the incomplete, misshapen, uneven, fundamentally flawed and regrettable Holt Voting System reform bill, HR 811--perhaps it should be HR "911" (a.k.a. "Elections System Reform Trojan Horse" or "HAVA II"). While this legislation is, in many ways, an improvement on the treasonous, anti-democratic HAVA I, and that should be acknowledged, there are many absurd flaws which appear to persist from HAVA I. Two cases in point follow. First, Holt's language supports the continued use of DRE's, the very machines many, including Black Box Voting, Velvet Revolution, Brad Blog and the states of California, Ohio, Florida and New Mexico implicate in the wholesale theft and manipulation of millions of votes over the past four election cycles (2000, 2002, 2004, 2006). Second, and bizarrely, the bill makes do with DRE-printed receipts, pretending that these are reliable facsimiles of paper ballots, that voters will bother to carefully peruse them before turning them in, that the machines using them won't chew them up as they did so often in 2004 and 2006. In fact, there is no mandate for an authentic, tamper-proof paper ballot which voters fill out, from which voters keep a unique identification number stub matching the one identifying the otherwise anonymous ballot, and which cannot be faked or destroyed without the voter's ultimate knowledge.
Are you misinformed, intimidated by the opposition, or are you laboring under some anxious fantasy that, if Holt does not pass, there won't be another chance to enact comprehensive reform until 2008? Huh? Last I heard, WE STILL LIVE IN A DEMOCRACY, one in which the Democrats control both houses of Congress. We--you know, the people whose issues you claim to champion until push comes to shove--can demand a better bill than this piece of less than half decent dross, then work to get it passed. What's going on here? Are you all abdicating your assertive, pro-Democracy stance in favor of supporting a misguided attempt at group consensus? Are you essentially submitting to establishment Democrats', the whining election officials' and corporate voting machine manufacturers' when we most need you to stand independently? Does someone need to shake you all the hell awake?! And you call yourselves Americans? How very sad for those of U.S. who have no direct voice in this inner circle debate, but whose lives will follow the trajectory of the democratic process we either revive, or allow to continue fading into oblivion.
We are in an all-out contest for ultimate empire being waged by the Bush cabal and their puppetmasters. Those of you not able to reconcile yourselves to this fact need only consult the political history of the past 5 years for proof. Perhaps you're reading the wrong sources. Let me offer a suggestion: Greg Palast's columns, as well as his recent books, are a good start. Seems he believes in an arcane concept known as authentic investigative journalism. He has shown, time and time again, and at great personal and professional risk, that the people controlling our politics (e.g., the wealthiest twenty or so families, and mega-corporations like Disney, GE and Viacom) have no interest whatsoever in preserving a democratic process that favors the interests of the less fortunate, less influential majority. Do you not see this because you have developed a convenient case of Beltway Myopia, or are you afraid of antagonizing one or more of the foundations that funnel you the financial pablum on which you survive? Where's your collective backbone, genuine patriotic courage, and moral integrity? Out there blowing whichever way the wind does, it seems.
Why not take the sort of principled, courageous stand typified by a Harriet Tubman, an Abraham Lincoln, a Robert F. Kennedy, a Martin Luther King, Jr.? These people put their lives on the line for real democracy, in which the rights of the people would be genuinely secured, not just paid earnest lip service. Mindful of the situation in which thousands of American servicemen and women find themselves because no one has effectively stood up to Bush/Cheney on Iraq, you might take the risk of being called "obstructionist", "wrong-headed", etc, swallow your pride, and stand against an incomplete, and therefore pernicious, half-assed solution to one of the few most pressing issues we face at this crossroads of our collective democratic future. C'mon. We're all in this together. Were all your efforts to inform Americans about pervasive, third-world dictatorship-style voting system fraud and manipulation and to protect citizens' voting rights during the 2004 and 2006 election cycles mere posturing? That's how it'll look to most of us in 2008, if DRE's remain in place, authentic, tamperproof paper ballots aren't implemented, and other key needed fixes aren't included in comprehensive election systems reform.
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