Another socialist blog

Brilliant at Breakfast has awarded today’s worst person in the world award to T. Boone Pickens, who created the campaign of “Switf Boar” lies against John Kerrey. Pickens offered $1 million to anyone who could disprove a single charge made by the so-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. So Kerry and his sympathizers disproved several. And Pickens won’t pay. What a surprise, a liar got caught in another lie.

According to the New York Times,

Extensive media accounts undermined the Swift Boat charges in 2004, pointing out that some of the Swift Boat critics had written statements during Vietnam lauding Mr. Kerry for extraordinary bravery in the incidents they later said he made up. (One accuser in particular had become upset by his portrayal in a Kerry biography in 2004.) One critic had himself received a medal for heroism during a hail of gunfire he later claimed Mr. Kerry had concocted to win his third purple heart.

A lot of people opposed to capitalism in general, and the Bush administration in particular, have pointed out that those now in power have no particular love of democracy. Some of us have even made wild allegations that the Bush regime is simply fascist, and looking to dismantle what little democracy we presently enjoy in the U.S., and have been dismissed as hysterical for our trouble. Hold that thought.

Enter Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. Ridge follows the administration party line, unsupported by any evidence, that the September 11th attacks were motivated by hatred of democracy (as opposed to anger with American foreign policy). Ridge now asserts, again without presenting any evidence, that al Qaeda plans a terrorist attack to disrupt the U.S. elections this November. The political convenience of this claim is obvious: more terrorism fear is good for Bush, and if al Qaeda’s supposed target is the electoral process itself, then the terror will increase right up until election day.

But why stop at that? If they can postpone the election, they can prolong the terror, and just such a postponement is being openly contemplated. Bush may be permitted to put off the election until the time of his own choosing—i.e., whenever his propagandists have managed to turn around his poll numbers.

Let’s do the math together now: we are assured that the threat of terrorism is unending, therefore the so-called “War on Terror” is unending, which means the threat to disrupt the elections is ongoing, so therefore we may have to postpone the election for a long, long time. We’ll get back to you on that.

I’ve taken up the topic of electronic voting security on several previous occasions. Now The Register presents a well-thought-out article on getting electronic voting security right. The main point is not the obvious one:

[T]he paper trail remains security fool’s gold, made popular merely because it’s easily grasped. What’s needed instead are commonsense security protocols to make e-voting systems resistant to tampering, to make it evident when tampering has occurred, and to make it possible to stage a reliable recount.

From Slashdot: Diebold admitted today that ‘thousands’ of voters were turned away from the polls during the “Super Tuesday” Democratic primary, because of flaws in Diebold voting machines.

Among other things, Diebold knowingly used uncertified software in California elections in violation of California election law. This means that Diebold’s assertions that their software is dependable, never mind secure, are without basis in fact.

I’ve mentioned here before how Diebold attempted to censor leaked company memos that point to the lack of security in their products.

There are serious security problems with Diebold voting machines, both theoretical and confirmed by observation in the field. Here is another first-hand report, this time detailing the performance of Diebold voting machines in the San Diego primary. Two of the six voting machines at the writer’s precinct failed and had to be closed.

[O]ur Inspector called the troubleshooter hotline. There were supposedly one hundred Diebold employees and some county troubleshooters covering about 1,200 precincts, which seems generous to me, but they didn’t dispatch anyone. Our problems were apparently minor compared to those at many of the other precincts….

We had another technical problem later in the day, when a voter reported that his summary screen (the last step before casting the ballot) was blank. I confirmed that it was; everything else seemed normal, and the boxes were checked next to each candidate on the ballot, but there wasn’t anything on the screen where the votes should have been listed. I moved the voter to another station, chalking it up to a card programming error, and kept checking on that station. Another voter had the same problem shortly afterwards, and I closed the station. It appeared to have recorded all of the votes properly, but I can’t be 100% certain. If it hadn’t recorded some data, there wouldn’t have been anything that we could do. Again, the troubleshooter hotline didn’t send anyone out….

In a dirty-trick scandal that ought to remind everyone of Watergate, Republicans have been caught breaking into the computer system of Senate Democrats. The Boston Globe reports that a Republican staffer discovered a security flaw in the Democrats’ computer network, and used it to read the Democrats’ internal memos and strategy documents from spring 2002 to at least April 2003. The confidential information was leaked to their friends in the conservative media, allegedly including right-wing pundit Robert Novak.

One hopes that such a serious violation of federal law as this will result in an investigation by a Special Prosecutor. But with John Ashcroft in charge I’m not holding my breath.

John Ashcroft ran for the U.S. Senate in 2000, and lost. (to a dead man). Before his defeat he was given a mailing list worth &/036;1.7 million by the Spirit of America political action committee. Turns out he failed to comply with federal election law by concealing the gift from the PAC. The National Voting Rights Institute and Public Citizen have called for a investigation by a special prosecutor.

Internal memos leaked from the Diebold corporation are proving a continuing embarrassment to the company. So much so that they are using the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) to censor the documents.

According to Why War?, “These memos indicate that Diebold, which counts the votes in 37 states, knowingly created an electronic system which allows anyone with access to the machines to add and delete votes without detection.” My favorite excerpt:

I need some answers! Our department is being audited by the County. I have been waiting for someone to give me an explanation as to why Precinct 216 gave Al Gore a minus 16022 when it was uploaded. Will someone please explain this so that I have the information to give the auditor instead of standing here “looking dumb”.

The Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal challenging a restrictive Georgia election law that creates special hurdles for third party candidates. Richard Winger, a long-time ballot access activist, had this to say to the Court.

Dear Justice Kennedy, the Court’s refusal to hear Cartwright v Perdue, 02-1082, is shameful. In that case, the 11th circuit had upheld Georgia’s ballot access requirement for minor party and independent candidates, a petition signed by 5% of the number of registered voters. 304 F 3d 1138 (2002).

You said on page one of your concurrence in Cook v Gralike, 531 US 510, “A state lacks the power to impose any conditions on the election of Senators or Representatives, save neutral provisions as to the time, place, and manner of elections”. Georgia’s law is not neutral. Any Republican or Democrat can run for Congress simply by paying a filing fee. In the November 2002 election, no Republican ran in the 2nd and 5th districts, and no Democrat ran in the 10th district. Any Georgia registered voter age 25 and above could have appeared on the general election ballot as a candidate for congress, if he or she had paid the fee to run in any of those three districts. Victory in the primary in any of those three districts would have been automatic, since in actuality, no one ran for those nominations.

Yet a Libertarian or a Green couldn’t place his or her name on the general election ballot in Georgia, without fulfilling a task that is so difficult, no one has ever done it in any state. How obvious can it be that Georgia’s procedures are not “neutral” as to political party?

Sadly, the justices have already shown themselves unable to feel shame.

In an interview with NPR, Al Gore makes clear that the Democratic Party doesn’t stand for anything, something Socialists have been saying for decades. About 6 minutes 17 seconds into the interview, he is asked “What does it mean to be a Democrat?” His answer:

Well, I can tell you what I think it means to be a Democrat, but in the Presidential election of 2004, we will pick a nominee, and that person will define, for many, what it means to be a Democrat.

There you have it. The standard-bearer of the Democratic Party says there’s nothing that defines what the Democratic Party is all about, except whatever their next candidate says the party is about.