Ed
Wood
Well
of course they are. That's a foregone conclusion; not even a fit subject for
intelligent debate any more. Oh, it's a little more sophisticated now than in
the days of the old Tennessee custom of a Mason jar of moonshine, or the
Chicago precinct captain's distribution of "walking around money."
But the practice is alive and well, and more pervasive than ever. The evidence
is everywhere if we choose to look.
Why
do you think there is such a push to eliminate citizenship ID as a requirement
to vote? Why do you think there is such a push to grant voting rights to
illegal aliens? Why do you think voting machines that leave a paper trail have
been eliminated in favor of electronic tabulation, far away from where the
votes are actually cast? Why do you think that in the 2012 Presidential
Election there were many reports of voter fraud, or intimidation, but no
reports of conviction? Remember the 158.85% voter turnout in St. Lucie County
Florida, the highest voter turnout in the Country? Of course it contributed heavily
to the defeat of Republican Congressional incumbent, Colonel Alan West. And yes
Colonel West did ask for a recount, but it was not granted.
Remember
the uniformed members of the New Black Panthers, wielding billyclubs and
blocking entry to the Philadelphia polling places? Charges were made but
subsequently dropped by the Obama Justice Department. And I won't even get into
the unchallenged Acorn voter registration frauds.
Of
course, there is a pattern here that favors one political party over the other,
but these are rather insignificant isolated instances compared to the big
picture that is beginning to emerge. I believe it was Joseph Stalin who said,
"It's not the people who vote that counts. It's the people who count the
votes." That advice has been taken to heart by our current crop of
politicians.
Is
political tampering new? Of course not. In 1915 mass indictments for voter
fraud were handed down in Terre Haute, IN, in which the incumbent sheriff, and
the local judge, and the Terre Haute mayor were all sentenced to the pokey. By
1932 Louisiana senator Huey "Kingfish" Long had polished the process
to the point that he won unanimously in sixteen New Orleans precincts and
tallied identical votes in 28 others. New York's Tammany Hall political machine
bought off judges, politicians, ward captains, and controlled Democrat Party
nominations for more than a century. What is new is the size and scope of
election tampering now made possible with current electronic monitoring and
tabulation.
Mass
corruption began in earnest in 2002 with the passage of another of those laws
with the cutsie little name of the "Help Americans Vote Act," which
gave states $3.9 BILLION if they would to do away with balloting that left a
paper trail, and substituted what was termed "Direct Recording
Electronic" (DRE) voting machines. This took vote counting away from local
communities and transferred it to centralized voting centers with political
interests in the outcome. (Please remember the aforementioned Joseph Stalin
quotation.)
A
number of hardware manufacturers got into the act with no electronic
experience, but lots of political connections. None worse than Diebolt, a
producer of wall safes. Their voting machine subsidiary was so dysfunctional
that its collection of ballots was easily hacked, remotely or on-site, using
any off-the-shelf version of the Microsoft "Access" program. The US
Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory issued a report that the
outcome of an entire election could be arranged by anyone with $26 in parts and
an 8th grade science education. Diebolt's reputation was so bad that they
eventually changed their name to "Premier Election Solutions." But by
then the damage was done, so Diebolt got out of the election business
altogether, selling out to "Election Systems and Software"
(ES&S).
This
story has so many ins-and-outs, and involves too many interconnecting
politicians and entities, I will follow only one. The aforementioned Election
Systems and Software (ES&S).
The
date: 1996. The location: Nebraska. The event: A senate race. From out of
nowhere, a virtually unknown millionaire named Chuck Hagel staged an amazing
upset victory over the popular Democrat Governor Ben Nelson, who had been
elected in a landslide only two years previously. It was little known at the
time, but two weeks before announcing his candidacy, Chuck Hagel had stepped
down as CEO of ES&S, the firm that would soon count his own senate votes.
He won, of course.
In
2002 Hagel was challenged by Democrat Charlie Natulka. The votes were again
electronically tabulated by ES&S, and this time Hagel won 83% of the vote,
the largest margin of victory ever recorded in Nebraska history!
Matulka's
request for an investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee was denied. Would
not have mattered though since Nebraska law states that recounts must be
conducted using the same "vote-counting device" used in the actual
election, which, of course, would be the same ES&S machine.
There
are many, many, other facets to this voter corruption scandal. I have only
scratched the surface with this one, and I am already running out of space, but
let me conclude this one part by asking that you please keep in mind that this
is the same Chuck Hagel, who after serving two terms in the United States
Senate, is now the Obama administration's recently appointed Secretary of
Defense.
Who
says that crime doesn't pay? Depends on the game, I guess.
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