The Purpose of Elections in America

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Fri, 5 Aug 2005 23:47:08 -0500

Fw: submission- The Purpose of Elections in America

 

 

Stephen of Democratic Talk Radio sends his articles for my web sites

and other distribution so feel free to share.

 

 

The Purpose of Elections in America

 

 

 

It is time for all Americans to look at the role of elections in our

American nation. Are elections a way of determining public opinion and

transferring those opinions to government policies? Alternatively, are

elections a way of minority power groups to achieve power by

exploiting technicalities or by manipulating voter rolls and voting

systems? This writer believes that the answer to these questions

essentially determine if we have a real Democracy or not.

 

 

 

Recent Supreme Court rulings seem to indicate that Americans have

Constitutional voting rights but no Constitutionally guaranteed right

to have those votes actually counted. No politicians seem to be as

deeply offended by this ridiculous interpretation of voting rights as

the average citizen. Votes that go uncounted are in reality not votes!

 

 

 

Electronic voting machines in America count more than enough votes to

change election outcomes if they are hacked or intentionally

manipulated. The machines are made and controlled by large

corporations often with close partisan political connections. Often

these corporations seem to have selfish political agendas of their

own. The computer codes that control the vote counting are not

standard or generally available to the public. They are instead the

private property of those large corporations and secret. Voting and

vote counting should be never be privatized.

 

 

 

Republican politicians have used legislative processes to deny huge

numbers of voters their voting rights by treating former felons as

permanent second-class citizens. Residency requirements are often used

to deny many college students the opportunity to vote where they live.

 

 

 

In many states, Republican officeholders have abused their offices to

control the distribution of voting machines, kick legal voters off the

voting rolls and to keep citizens from registering to vote. Florida in

2000 and Ohio in 2004 had Republican officeholders acting as the top

government official controlling the election process and as

Bush-Cheney campaign officials.

 

 

 

Bev Harris in her book Black Box Voting and investigative reporter

Greg Palast in his book Best Democracy Money Can Buy have documented

numerous problems with our current voting systems. Democratic Talk

Radio has collected hundreds of articles on our message board under

the Stolen Election topic thread

http://66.39.111.188/cgi-bin/UltraBoard/UltraBoard.cgi?action=Read & BID=1 & TID=850\

0 & SID=231

concerning the 2004 Election. Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman have

published dozens of articles on Free Press.org

http://www.freepress.org documenting voting irregularities in Ohio

during 2004.

 

 

 

We need a national commitment to reform our system of elections to

make voting universally clean, accurate and public. Any politician

from any Party who seeks political advantage from tampering with voter

rolls, voting systems or voting rights should be shamed out of

politics. We should look at severely criminalizing behaviors of

officeholders that seek partisan political advantage from manipulating

voting systems and procedures. Vote tampering should be a serious

felony and the only felony that permanently denies voting rights in

America.

 

 

 

 

 

Written by Stephen Crockett (co-host, Democratic Talk Radio

http://www.DemocraticTalkRadio.com ). Mail:

 

7A Planville Drive,

 

Fayetteville, Tennessee 37334.

 

Email: midsouthcm .