Dobbs: Voting machines put U.S. democracy at risk

[lonestarnot]

09/20/06 10:17 AM, EDT
Democrats and Republicans are desperately trying to nationalize the midterm elections, now only 48 days away.
FULL STORY

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/09/19/Dobbs.Sept20/index.html

[AX10]

1. kick

[BeFree]

17. Here's a transcript

From: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x450101

Dobbs: Voting machines put U.S. democracy at risk

POSTED: 10:17 a.m. EDT, September 20, 2006
by Lou Dobbs, CNN

-snip-

Voters will be deciding whether the promise of challengers or the performance of incumbents merits their votes. The most recent polls reveal a national public mood that is now more supportive of a still unpopular president and about evenly divided over their preferences for, or tolerance of, congressional Republicans and Democrats. In other words, less than seven weeks before we go to the polls, there is every indication that the partisan quest for power on Capitol Hill will be close.

But there is additional uncertainty about the outcome of our elections that is intolerable and inexcusable, and which could make the contested 2000 presidential election look orderly by comparison. As of right now, there is little assurance your vote will count. As we've been reporting almost nightly on my broadcast for more than a year, electronic voting machines are placing our democracy at risk.

Across the nation, eight out of every 10 voters will be casting their ballots this November on electronic voting machines. And these machines time and again have been demonstrated to be extremely vulnerable to tampering and error, and many of them have no voter-verified paper trail.

There is simply no way in which election officials and their staffs of thousands of volunteers with limited experience and often poor training can possibly carry out reliable recounts.

-snip-

[spanone]

2. No shit, Lou. Welcome to the party.

[William769]

3. So is today Lou a good guy?

It's so hard to tell on DU.

Well I'll say what I always say about Lou Dobbs. GO LOU GO!

[bullimiami]

4. took him 6 years to see it? i guess slow is better than never.

[lonestarnot]

5. kick. Somebody please watch this thread. I have to go. Everyone at

DU should read it. Thanks! :grouphug:

[blm]

7. Will kick - imo, it's a crucial advancement for us, press-wise.

.

[lonestarnot]

18. Thanks BLM! I'm back now! Absolutely a crucial advancement press-wise!

[upi402]

6. no shit redux, but the message needs repeating

[blm]

8. issue needs REPORTING and the message needs repeating.

.

[AntiFascist]

15. ditto, its never too late for this story! n/t

[helderheid]

9. MSM finally doing something about this recommend.

[ComerPerro]

10. Lou doesn't care about Diebold machines, though

he started into this subject a few months back when he was told that a small percentage of machines were developed in other countries.

[Jeanette in FL]

13. It was actually when Sequoia was sold to Venezuela

He blew a gasket thinking that Hugo Chavez could possibly be involved and could manipulated with our elections.

I was writing him nightly asking him why didn't he have a problem with the voting machine when an American company owned them and could have very well manipulated the vote in behalf of a party who would be more to their liking.

I am very glad he is on the case, but they don't seem to realize that our votes have been taken away from us, only who knows for how long.

[ComerPerro]

14. couldn't remember the company. Thanks for that

[OhioChick]

11. K & R

:kick:

[texpatriot2004]

12. Duh, I/we have been saying this since before 2004! nm

[lonestarnot]

20. No shit! But should we be criticizing the man for doing us a service?

[texpatriot2004]

22. No, I know what you mean; that wasn't my intention...it's just so

like, duh to me and, I suppose, to others here.

[Stevepol]

16. A great essay. He says he's been singing this song for over a year!!

Dobbs is doing a very very great service to this country. Dobbs is a Republican, but I could vote for him. If Kerry or some other Dem with a lot of public exposure would only focus on this issue as Dobbs has, it might be possible to think about winning seats in the mid-term.

As things now stand, there's absolutely no reason to have the slightest confidence in the results of any election in the US. If the Dems win, I'll be happy in most cases, but there's no reason to suppose that the figures given as the "vote" have any relation whatever to the actual number of votes cast and the actual distribution of the votes among the candidates.

If the Repubs win, I won't like it, but (see above)

We do not have a democracy anymore. This is the core of the problem. Before we talk about any other issue we have to solve this one. I take it back. It's OK to talk about any issue we like, but to expect anything to be done about it, when the representatives charged with the responsibility of passing laws in behalf of the people have not been and are not likely to be in the future actually elected by the vote of the people, is little more than a pipe dream.

[lonestarnot]

19. kick

[lonestarnot]

21. kick

[samsingh]

23. they sure are.