Stealing
a US election? Nothing’s easier!
The
US prides itself on a free and fair election system. It’s the main
hallmark of democracy. But as RT’s Anastasia Churkina reports,
stealing an election in America is easier than 1,2,3.
7
October, 2012
The
US prides itself on a free and fair election system. It’s the main
hallmark of democracy. But as RT’s Anastasia Churkina reports,
stealing an election in America is easier than 1,2,3.
The
U.S. – a beacon of democracy, and an example to be followed by the
rest of the world. One big source of pride is its' fundamental
concept of free and fair elections.
“American
elections are a disgrace. It's like looking into a kitchen of a
world-class restaurant and losing your appetite at what you see,
because we have an election system, a voting system that is
completely non-transparent,” said Mark Crispin Miller, Professor at
NYU and author of “Fooled Again, How the Right Stole the 2004
Elections.”
This
is an opinion shared by many political experts and educators.
“If
you were to hand your vote to a man in a magician's suit who then
went behind a curtain and came out having first shredded the ballots,
to tell you who won – would you trust that process?” said the
co-founder and director of the Election Defense Alliance Jonathan,
Simon.
The
process largely to blame is the out-dated electronic voting system.
“In
the states where all they have is electronic voting – it could be a
real problem. If you don't have some kind of back up source to verify
the vote count – it could be a problem,”said Jeanne Mirer of the
National Lawyers Guild.
Brad
Friedman is an independent award-winning blogger who has covered the
U.S. election system for years. Speaking to RT, he said the problem
is actually a pandemic, and change is long overdue.
“Every
single state in the union uses electronic voting. A third of the
voters this year will vote on 100 percent unverifiable touch screen
voting systems. The rest of the country, by and large, will vote on
paper ballots, but those paper ballots are also counted by electronic
systems. Unless you can see inside a computer, there is no way to
know if those computers have tallied those ballots correctly,” said
Friedman.
Several
experiments conducted on electronic voting machines have proven that
simple key strokes and some knowledge of science and computers could
flip results. Experts say the accuracy of the vote count – even
with paper trail – is a myth.
“In
99 plus percent of the cases, those ballots never see the light of
day – they are never examined, never recounted. Basically American
elections at this point have virtually zero claim on public
confidence and legitimacy,” said Jonathan Simon.
The
rules and specifications of how elections are held vary locally, and
state by state.
“Four-thousand
different counties, each of them use a different system, a different
type of voting system, each of them have different flaws, different
vulnerabilities,” said Brad Friedman.
One
particular company that makes electronic voting machines in the U.S.
has earned a dubious reputation for unverifiable results, as records
vanish into thin air.
“I
go to an ATM, and there is a Diebold machine, I get a confirmation
slip – and I go around the corner to vote – and there is no
record,” said author, social critic and political activist Naomi
Wolf.
Meantime,
Diebold and other voter machine production companies are known to
have strong partisan affiliations.
“They
are not accountable to any voters. They are not just private, but
private and extreme in their political sympathies. Democrats don't
actually win that many elections. To be precise, democrats almost
never win close elections. And the trick there, is to see to it, that
a race looks or is close,” said Mark Crispin Miller.
Improving
the election process in this digital age doesn’t appear to be on
anyone’s agenda, including Barack Obama’s.
“Our
President…who won't ever talk about election fraud and denies that
it has ever happened, even when members of his own party have been
the victims of it,” said Miller.
While
the number of reported flaws grows with each passing election.
“Over
the past decade, since 2000, when Congress was pretending to want to
make things better, what has happened is things have gotten much,
much worse,” said Brad Friedman.
It
appears stealing an election in the U.S. may be a candidate’s
certain way to secure a win.
In
this digital age of smart phones, tablets and satellite navigation
systems, American voters will head to the polls this November to cast
their ballots using antiquated and unreliable voting machines,
machines that will ultimately determine who will lead this nation in
much need of its own repairs.
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