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Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Will we let them steal another one?
Posted by Jill | 7:18 AM
As more information comes out about the Justice Department being used to disenfranchise voters through attempts to aggressively prosecute so-called "voter fraud", more Americans are willing to believe that not just the 2000 election, but also the 2004 election, was stolen for George W. Bush.

Between executive orders allowing the president to declare anyone he wants an "unperson" and confiscate all that person's assets simply on his say-so, detention camps being built for unknown reasons, and frightening rumbles of expanded wars in Pakistan Iran, and now Turkey, we are seeing the result of allowing a president who would steal an election to take office.

Now, with the House of Representatives getting ready to go on vacation without acting on electronic voting problems, it seems that even after two elections, technologically ignorant Congresspeople refuse to take seriously just how easy it is to hack the existing voting machines:

Matthew A. Bishop, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Davis, who led the team that tried to compromise the machines, said his group was surprised by how easy it was not only to pick the physical locks on the machines, but also to break through the software defenses meant to block intruders.

Professor Bishop said that all the machines had problems and that one of the biggest was that the manufacturers appeared to have added the security measures after the basic systems had been designed.

By contrast, he said, the best way to create strong defenses is “to build security in from the design, in Phase 1.”


It's clear that the Republican Party in this country decided in 2000 not to trust its ideology and agenda to win elections for it, but instead work the process to its advantage. Democrats allowed themselves to be bamboozled in 2000 and 2004. Only Josh Marshall's noting of a pattern behind the firing of a group of U.S. attorneys thwarted the plan to rig the 2008 election by using the United States Department of Justice to systematically disenfranchise members of groups believed to be Democratic voters -- Latinos, African-Americans, and the elderly.

The Republican way is not to win hearts and minds, but to win by any means necessary. Democrats in Congress are still living in an earlier generation, when Tip O'Neill could fight tooth and nail on the House floor and then go out for collegial drinks with those same antagonists. Those days are gone. These guys play for keeps. It's not enough for them to win, they have to stomp their opponents into the ground.

Do Democrats believe in fair elections or not?

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