Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Hacking Democracy

I almost never watch TV because I find it immbolizes me into an idiotic stupor, which in turn makes me ornery and depressed. I don't know how you people can stand to watch so much crap.
Yesterday night, however, I was ornery and depressed already so I decided to channel surf from Channel 2 to channel Fourhundredandwhatever to see what I would find.
Now I know why I don't watch TV, except for Jon Stewart and the Colbert Report and Rescue Me, when I can find it. (I also like The Sopranos, Entourage, Big Love and Weeds, but those are not really TV).
In any case, some of my findings included an inane and shockingly vulgar reality show about mega-expensive real estate, 90210 M.D. an appalling "reality" show about brainless, clueless ditzes who want to have plastic surgery and the creepy doctors who oblige; House, which according to the critics is a marvel but to me it is no better than any other stupid hospital show on TV where they throw medical jargon at you with quizzical looks until you are dizzy, (poor Hugh Laurie who is crying all the way to the bank while seriously underusing his talent). And then I caught this chilling documentary on HBO called Hacking Democracy about the horrific, fraudulent way in which elections are conducted in this country.
People, you have to see this film. It will make the hairs on the back of your head stand on end.
Basically, the people who decide the machines that are used are the vendors who provide the machines, and who in turn contribute campaign donations to the running parties. This should not be kosher, right? Well, nobody cares. Worse of all, Diebold, who provided both machines and contributions to the elections in Ohio that were stolen by Bush in 2000, apparently manufactures memory cards that can be accessed and manipulated, so the results are false.
Now, I have never understood why elections aren't federally supervised, which would mean that the entire country has to adopt the same voting machines everywhere. In my opinion, these should be paper ballots or something that leaves a hard copy trace that can be manually counted. It is absurd, dangerous and insane that some states have chits, and others levers and others evil Hal 2000 spawn miscounting votes.
Why are certain things that seem obvious to the people, so difficult to reform?
Reform campaign contribution laws. Get rid of the electoral college. Standardize voting machines. Is this too much to ask? New Congress? Huh?

2 comments:

  1. Hola Judy! Soy el Niño. Recibiste mi mail? Te lo mando de vuelta. Great Blog, serious stuff. Un gran saludo!

    www.elninorodriguez.com

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  2. Lots of money needs to be sent to that wonderful lady who runs Black Box Voting. They have a website, blackboxvoting.org and they accept donations.

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