DIALING 911 FOR DEMOCRACY AND REALLY SCREWING IT UP

See the methods and the means via the RNC server originating the results November 3rd, 2004.

We do not concede.

http://neocon-panic-attacks.blogspot.com/2007/04/gops-cyber-election-hit-squad-from.html

Once again we ask for your input dignifying our existence in this country as a
citizen and a responsible voter. Please ask for the rejection of the Holt bill HR811!
Send a letter to your congress people! Here!

http://www.usalone.com/cgi-bin/petition.cgi?pnum=638

DIALING 911 FOR DEMOCRACY AND REALLY SCREWING IT UP
by Paul R Lehto
June 14, 2007

I don't know anybody who thinks a post-HR 811 (Holt bill) world is secure against insider fraud. That alone is a fatal flaw for both freedom and democracy, as explained more below.

In fact, it's absurd to think that an election insider could not find 59 seconds to swap out the chips in an e-voting machine, as demonstrated in this 59 second demonstration video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EowKalRT3lc

I'm not really all that concerned about "voter fraud" (by citizens) because that is far more difficult. Yet that is what HR 811 concentrates its efforts against by shutting down Internet connectivity, etc.

HR 811 (the Holt bill) does essentially nothing against insider fraud, because it CAN'T: Voting machines can't be made secure against insiders any more than your own personal computer can be made secure against YOU .

Elections uniquely require a kind of 2-way security that doesn't exist: Computer security inherently gives some insider trusted Admin-level access to everything, while keeping out those nasty outsiders. But with elections, it is the insider government officials who have the most to gain or lose: Every ounce of their power and money comes directly or indirectly from elections.

In the end, one can only raise the cost of penetrating a computer system, one can't make it "secure." Once we've raise the cost sufficiently high, only large corporations, governments, and CIA/KGB type organizations can manipulate elections: but those are precisely the ones we are concerned about the most from the beginning.

Thus, as long as there is admin level access to computerized voting systems with trade secret counts, we've got no security at all. We are powerless to kick out criminal cheating insiders, yet that is exactly when we need our voting rights most of all !

And if we the people can't be guaranteed that we can kick out a criminal cheating insider, we are not a free people.

This is not really anything to "compromise" on. At least not if you believe in our country's founding principles, and believe that some vigilance, even eternal vigilance, is the price of maintaining Liberty.

Nothing less than Freedom, Democracy is at risk, and Half Freedom, and Half Democracy is not freedom or democracy at all. And even Peace is at risk (because if we can't change governments peacefully, then there's only the method of 1776). Because these are inalienable rights, they are to be defended, not compromised. A compromise of a right is simply a violation of that right.

The government has no excuse for lecturing us that HR 811 is the only "realistic" option, the government in the USA was "instituted to secure these Rights" per the Declaration of Independence. Moreover, under HR 811, not only is the government failing to secure our rights, it is going so far as to vote itself secret vote counting in THEIR OWN ELECTIONS, in effect claiming the absurdity that We the People want to keep vote counting secrets FROM OURSELVES. In fact, an August 2006 Zogby poll suggests precisely the opposite: Up to 92% of the American public prefers observable vote counting and the public's right to obtain information about vote counting. http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1163

"The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them . . ." --Patrick Henry

"Give me Liberty, or Give me Death." ---Patrick Henry

In a nutshell, HR 811 is totally out of touch with the American public today (the Zogby poll) as well as the principles this country was founded upon. Who in their right mind wants to compromise Democracy, compromise Freedom? Why would ANY government fail to secure this basic right for us? Inquiring American minds want to know.

I mean millions, literally, of Americans have worked their lives and died for democracy. And we should accept the word of some unnamed people in Congress that anything less than corrupt secret vote counting is "unrealistic" for the greatest democracy in the world? Before we give up this experiment in freedom called the USA, they ought to at least tell us to our faces that the government is more trustworthy than We the People. This is much worse than a bad joke on the American people. This is basically treason against democracy, because the indispensable characteristic of democracy is not elections, but the reality that all power comes from the people, and that the people are sovereign and in control when they select THEIR governmental servants/representatives.

In light of the above, here is HR 811 defined: Dialing 911 for Democracy and really screwing it up. And I don't think it's very funny.

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(Permission granted to forward freely in whole (and post, blog, etc.), and with attribution preserved)
Paul R Lehto, Juris Doctor
lehtolawyer@gmail.com
425-422-1387