Despite The Reality That Electronic Voting Grows Ever Less Accurate, Even More Insecure, Checks and Balances Get Nixed

Before I get into the story from the wires on Monday (yesterday), let me give you some background about the corrupt backdrop under which this refusal to protect the vote by the same people who are charged with upholding the U.S. Constitution and the will of the American voters.

I've posted before that just because the November 7th mid-term elections appear to have worked just satisfactorily enough to allow some non-Krazy Konservatives to win, we saw far more rather than less problems with electronic voting. No less than 12 states - and some reports put this at much higher, perhaps 75-80% - reported failures and oddities that placed into serious question where the announced winners were in fact the victors given the degree of uncertainty.

From a technical standpoint, we should be seeing a reduction in such problems with each election where these machines are used. Instead, we're seeing a phenomenal increase which makes no sense from a logical perspective but certainly seems convenient to those who might want to rig the voting results.

After all, considering how well these massive problems have worked to the advantage of the Bushies, they certainly have no desire to make such electronic voting work better. In fact, Bush signed into law the Help America Vote Act which, if it did anything whatsoever, guaranteed that the insecurity and validity of electronic votes pretty much violates the notion that a registered voter who casts his or her ballet can expect to have that vote counted accurately, if it gets counted at all.

Bear in mind also that we have now experienced two (2) presidential elections in which there is strong cause to believe that the "winner" who took office was NOT the one who received the majority of the votes. In both cases, Bush assumed office when it was mighty clear that something really rotten was going on, so rotten in fact that a large number of Americans (Dems, GOPers, and Indies) believe today that it is very likely Mr. Bush did not carry the majority of the votes in either case.

Now, with this in mind, read this stunning bit of information on how our government at the federal level is working very hard to protect not the integrity of our elections OR the Constitution OR the right of every voter to have his vote counted fairly and accurately - instead, they choose to protect cheaters, thieves, and yes, traitors (and yes, there is good reason why this text appears in blood red):

A federal advisory panel on Monday rejected a recommendation that states use only voting machines whose results could be independently verified.

The panel drafting voting guidelines for the U.S. Election Assistance Commission voted 6-6 not to adopt a proposal that would have required electronic machines used by millions of voters to produce a paper record or other independent means of checking election results. Eight votes were needed to pass it.

The failed resolution, proposed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology computer scientist and panel member Ronald Rivest, closely mirrored a report released last week that warned that paperless electronic voting machines are vulnerable to errors and fraud and cannot be made secure.

How fortuitous that in both 2000 and 2004, the biggest problems occurred in Florida (2000) and Ohio (2004); in both cases, the person in charge at the state level to certify the elections just happened to be a Republican Secretary of State (Katherine Harris in Florida, Ken Blackwell in Ohio) who also just happened to be coordinating and promoting the campaign for the Republican presidential candidate.