"The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.” - Stalin
Who counts the votes in America? Machines.
In Alaska, and probably most other states, poll workers are not allowed to hand count the votes to verify the machine totalled them up correctly. Let me reiterate- Humans are not allowed to verify the machine results.
Sure, supposedly the Division of Elections checks a few precincts... but that's like asking the fox to check the henhouse. What's needed is local poll workers at every precinct verifying the machine results- it's not that hard. At the state level, too many ballots- that'd be hard, but at the local level it could be done.
But instead of an open, public vote count, we're expected to trust Diebold, the company whose CEO promised to deliver Ohio to Bush. Diebold manufactures many of the precinct level voting machines as well as the central tabulator [1] software- that runs on a windows PC- ie, easy to hack.
The election workers verify the total ballots cast, but the machines count the votes. And talking with the poll workers, they didn't see this as problematic. They "swore an oath" to follow orders, which is their rationalization for conducting the secret, unverified machine count.
Who could possibly think that this system of secret ballots counted only by computers is good for democracy? 92% of Americans think the vote count should be open to public scrutiny [2]- but those who make the laws don't- why not?
Stalin's quote applies perfectly to 21st century America. We live in a sham democracy where the votes are 80% of America's votes are counted by machines made by two companies- 'coincidentally' run by brothers [3].
Here's a few questions that every American ought to deeply consider:
- Why did our Congress give our election systems to private corporations?
- Why is the central tabulator hooked up to a modem?! Poll workers could just call in the results. It might take a little more time, but there would be no possibility for the central tabulator to be hacked during election night.
- Why aren't DC Democrats fighting for transparent elections?
- And with this system in place, can we really vote our way back to a true democracy? Open voting advocate and independent journalist Lynn Landes suggests we abandon the secret ballot and make our votes public. [4]