The Republican Jihad on the American Voting Process

Guestblogger: McFly with Ridor

In the June 2005 article of The Sun, Crimes Against Democracy, Jim Guinness interviews author Thom Hartmann. Multi-talented Hartmann is an author of 14 books, including What Would Jefferson Do? and We the People: A Call to Take Back America. This interview left half of our brain matter on the walls. CSI was not successful in collecting all of our brain matter.

Hartmann grew up in a working class, conservative community in Lansing, Michigan. As a 13 year old boy, he campaigned door-to-door for the Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater.

Basically, this interview discusses voting irregularities in this country. Guinness asked Hartmann if he agreed with a number of, apparently, unbiased commentators who reported that the polls do not work. Hartmann nodded and said for more than 50 years, the polls have been 'fine-tuned'.

Hartmann went on to say there are aggressive disinformation machines in this country; right wing talk radio shows, the Murdoch media empire, the Moonie media of The Washington Times, United Press International and right-wing think tanks as well as the mainstream media that are fighting for survival?who holds the strings and the puppets? Republican owned Congress.

Voting machines/booths are designed, and operated by private corporations. These very companies mentioned that we as democratic voters, do not have the right (despite our constitution being founded on the principal of rights) to question or investigate how their computers program the voting process. In a nutshell, there is no proof to see whether if one votes for Cindy goes for Cindy-Does-Dallas, not McCock.

Who in their right of mind approved these private companies to molest the voting system? Our esteemed government approved the privatization of the voting system. Thomas Jefferson is rolling in his grave and upsetting the dirt.

Does this raise an alarm among Americans. Only 'certain' Americans.

Is this new? Not really. This has been an ongoing situation for the past 15 years to the point that Hartmann was deeply unsettled over the fact there is no concrete paper trail in the voting process. You can hack the system and alter the votes to fool the mass. No amount of Preparation-H is going to soothe this nasty rash.

Moving on...

Guinness asked if these private companies that are operated the voting machines are affiliated with Republicans. Hartmann responded, "not all of them, but certain high-visibility ones are." He cited one Republican Congressman Check Hagel, who ran a company that handles the voting machines. Hagel wont 83% of the vote which is unheard of in 2002. Oy vey.

Something stinks high heaven here. Republicans has the need to control not only through the media but with the voting machines and through the government, in turn successfully manipulating the mass to do their biddings.

For years, FDR (for those who were stoned during history class, Franklin Delano Roosevelt) knew he had to do something to empower the middle class out of its poverty by giving them leeway to unionize and set up social security. Today, the Bush Administration wants to water down the laws that strengthened the nation; weakening Social Security, trampling on the Americans with Disabilities Act, and quietly disabling the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and the Wagner Act of 1935. Honest man Karl Rove has publicity admired the McKinley Administration which was known for neglecting the working class, leaving them to mire in a quicksand. Hartmann: "The conservative agenda is about creating a similar, desperate, terrified, powerless, politically impotent working class that won't put up much of a fight and don?t have the time to become educated about politics."

Ho-hum, really!? *rimshot*

Hartmann: "Over the last twenty-five years, the conservatives have pulled off one of the greatest con jobs in the history of the United States. They?ve done it very methodically, with their money and their think tanks and their right wing talk radio machines."

In a different publication, we uncovered an interview with John Brakey, member of Americans United for Democracy Integrity & Transparency in Elections & Media. Brakey admits he was a Democratic Party poll watcher (in Pima County, Arizona) and was escorted from his own precinct. Brakey has stacks of election documents in which he has entered all of the data into a computer that allows him to track the voters. Brakey: "The county looks at numbers, but I looked at names. No way this was a gross error."

Guess what boys and girls!? The names and numbers didn't match and were not consistent!

To ensure an unbiased perspective, Brakey contacted David Griscom, an employee of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. Reviewing the precinct results, Griscom found the statistics and data to be consistent with Brakey's suspicions. There were four Republicans and three Democrats working at the polling place.

Griscom insisted there was fraud after trying to mathematically reconstruct what had occurred at the polling place. Griscom: "I think the poll workers arbitrarily picked some innocent people and were in cahoots with other voters." Griscom states, "It was methodically planned out. But if it was a gross error, we have a pretty bad system, and your vote is a joke."

This crooked voting process has destroyed one of the most ancient and fundamental rights of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence, habeas corpus, which requires, in the words of the Magna Carta, of 1215, that "no free man shall be taken or imprisoned..except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land."

We are prisoners and hostages of the Republican machine and the Republican jihad. The American lesson remains the same: We decide, you obey.