The franchise

Guest View

Kat L'Estrange  The Augusta Free Press   27 April 2005

It's been shown that electronic-voting machines favor Republicans (especially apparent in the last presidential election and the California recall in 2003). UniLect machines have just been discovered to spit out different results depending on how they're programmed. Leave it to the CEO of UniLect to make that clear to elections officials in Pennsylvania.

State consultants were "confused," he said. Evidently when these analysts decertified the machines (computers), they didn't have the correct software to program them to count all the votes as required to pass the inspection, but the CEO did!

If one party (with the support of e-voting corporations) wants their side to win, the voting computers will be programmed to count more votes (read some, ignore others) for the candidate of choice. What a creative way to hold onto power. At first glance, all may appear to be going well for voters given the opportunity to cast their votes on computers, not to mention the ease it creates for county elections officials, too! They don't have to count votes, or even maintain voter-registration lists - let the private voting companies do it, and with only minimal public oversight, at best.

Trouble is, eventually it's going to become apparent to people that our leaders, supposedly elected by majority, in Congress and in the White House have very unpopular positions and policies; yet they continue to win elections. Used to be unpopular leaders were voted out of office; imagine not being able to do that anymore? Do we continue to trust these leaders, that we're not sure we elected, or do we trust the people? How valuable is a representative government or the U.S. Constitution, for that matter? Forget about the U.N. Would hiring a board of directors and CEO make more sense, as all that's going on is a massive giveaway of the public trust and treasury to private corporations for profit anyway?

Democracy requires our immediate attention and for citizens to take a stand for fair and honorable elections. Please help stop the privatization of our public voting system. Take a stand against electronic-voting machines (computers) owned and operated by private partisan corporations.

Our right to vote and to have our votes counted as intended is worth the extra effort.