When Did We Stop Being a Free Country
I have a question that has been bugging me. Has America stopped being a free country? Our freedom is defined by our collective ability to shape the course of our nation's history through our electoral process. Presumably, if we do not like the way the country is going, we show our disaffection with our elected officials by voting them out of office if they don't change their act. If we lose this power we are no longer free, instead subject to the whims and wants of our representatives.
In our haste to modernize, we've put the fate of our elections into electronic voting machines that have proven all too easy to manipulate and subvert. You can see just what the fuss is about here:
http://www.engadget.com/search/?q=Election
This popular tech blog chronicles the problems with electronic voting machines that range from being able to access their memory cards with a standard mini-bar key (I wonder if I can get a soda too while I'm at it!), to the machines picking their own candidate for you (troublesome when all the major electronic voting machines have strong political ties), to the ability to hack these babies in 4 minutes flat.
The most worrisome aspect of these inept machines is the aforementioned Republican ties of the companies supplying the machines. Prior to the 2004 presidential election, Walden O’Dell former CEO of Diebold (an e-voting machine manufacturer) said that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." Mark Crispin Miller, an NYU professor, has spoken vocally on the topic of stealing elections. Anyone interested in finding out more can do so by googling Mark Crispin Miller or Diebold's political ties to their heart’s content.
My point, however, is not to rehash old news about election impropriety. It is to offer a pragmatic solution. Engaging in election tomfoolery or outright fraud should constitute treason. Electing our representatives is the fundamental principle underlying the United States of America. If we cease to be “a government for the people, by the people” then the U.S.A. itself ceases to exist. And those who take away this right from Americans are guilty of destroying our Union. Anyone interested in tampering with an election, whether they be a poll worker or a corporate executive, will think twice knowing they can be charged with treason.
Finally, I’d like to leave you with a question and a quote. Election misconduct is an act as old as elections themselves (see Deliver the Vote: A History of Election Fraud, an American Political Tradition-1742-2004 by Tracy Campbell). So my question is, have we ever been free? The quote that I leave you to ponder as you head to the polls tomorrow is:
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." -- Josef Stalin (Attributed to Stalin, but probably never actually uttered by him, a powerful thought nonetheless)
Technocrati tags:Election, Voting , Diebold, Mark Crispin Miller, Tracy Campbell, engadget
In our haste to modernize, we've put the fate of our elections into electronic voting machines that have proven all too easy to manipulate and subvert. You can see just what the fuss is about here:
http://www.engadget.com/search/?q=Election
This popular tech blog chronicles the problems with electronic voting machines that range from being able to access their memory cards with a standard mini-bar key (I wonder if I can get a soda too while I'm at it!), to the machines picking their own candidate for you (troublesome when all the major electronic voting machines have strong political ties), to the ability to hack these babies in 4 minutes flat.
The most worrisome aspect of these inept machines is the aforementioned Republican ties of the companies supplying the machines. Prior to the 2004 presidential election, Walden O’Dell former CEO of Diebold (an e-voting machine manufacturer) said that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." Mark Crispin Miller, an NYU professor, has spoken vocally on the topic of stealing elections. Anyone interested in finding out more can do so by googling Mark Crispin Miller or Diebold's political ties to their heart’s content.
My point, however, is not to rehash old news about election impropriety. It is to offer a pragmatic solution. Engaging in election tomfoolery or outright fraud should constitute treason. Electing our representatives is the fundamental principle underlying the United States of America. If we cease to be “a government for the people, by the people” then the U.S.A. itself ceases to exist. And those who take away this right from Americans are guilty of destroying our Union. Anyone interested in tampering with an election, whether they be a poll worker or a corporate executive, will think twice knowing they can be charged with treason.
Finally, I’d like to leave you with a question and a quote. Election misconduct is an act as old as elections themselves (see Deliver the Vote: A History of Election Fraud, an American Political Tradition-1742-2004 by Tracy Campbell). So my question is, have we ever been free? The quote that I leave you to ponder as you head to the polls tomorrow is:
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." -- Josef Stalin (Attributed to Stalin, but probably never actually uttered by him, a powerful thought nonetheless)
Technocrati tags:Election, Voting , Diebold, Mark Crispin Miller, Tracy Campbell, engadget
posted by Apolitical at 10:53 PM
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