PRESS RELEASE
Will `Help America Vote Act' Bring Dictatorship?
LaRouche: Stop Cheney Coup,
Stop Computer Voting
Feb. 9, 2004 (EIRNS)—The following release was issued on today by the LaRouche in 2004 campaign committee."Is this an election or a coup?" This is what Democratic Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche is asking about this Fall's elections. With estimates that as many as 56% of the votes cast in November will be cast on computerized voting machines, LaRouche warns that Cheney, Bush, and their friends are planning to steal the November elections—and if you wait until then, there won't be anything you can do about it.
Computer voting must be stopped now, or we won't have any elections, because the results will be meaningless. "Bring back the men, and throw out the machines," LaRouche said.
There are at least three fatal defects of electronic voting:
- With touch-screen voting—otherwise known as DRE (Direct Electronic Recording)—there is no ability to conduct a recount or to verify the results, because there is no ballot card, and no paper trail.
- The computerized tabulation of votes, in either touch-screen or optical-scanning systems, is easily rigged, as recent tests conducted by the State of Maryland demonstrated.
- The major companies that produce electronic voting equipment, and which run the elections, are tied into Republican circles. The most egregious case is that of Diebold Corp., whose chief executive, Wally O'Dell, is a frequent visitor to the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas, and hosted a $600,000 fundraiser for Dick Cheney last June.
Remember the farce of the punch-cards and "hanging chads" in the Florida recount, after the 2000 elections? This will be a thousand times worse—because with touch-screen voting, there is no paper ballots or punch-cards to re-count. It's all inside the "black box"—and your local election officials have no idea what's in there, and can't even look. The software that counts the votes is privately owned by a handful of voting machine companies—and it can be a felony for your local election officials to even try and examine it!
This time, it's not clear the United States will survive the election. Remember, an estimated 56% of the votes this fall are anticipated to be on electronic voting machines. That's why it has to be stopped now!
How did this happen? In 2002, many of your representatives in Congress got suckered into supporting the Help American Vote Act (HAVA), which resulted in the Federal government subsidizing and encouraging the use of these fraud-prone electronic voting systems by the states. Under the pretext of assisting persons with disabilities, by 2006 every polling place used in a Federal election is required to have at least one DRE (direct recording electronic) device, or another device "equipped for individuals with disabilities."
The pretext for HAVA, was to "modernize" the nation's voting system, but in fact, it set up the nation for fascism. Maybe your Congressman is too stupid to realize what he or she was voting for, but there's no excuse.
Under the conditions of global financial collapse that will be hitting full force by this fall, don't underestimate the desperation of Cheney & Company and their financial backers, to take whatever measures they deem necessary to install a fascist dictatorship, rather than giving up power. If they have fraud-prone electronic voting, they'll use it. You might as well give up your right to vote.
Congress must repeal HAVA, and ban computerized voting now. Or else, kiss your Constitutional right to fair elections goodbye.
