STOP the MADNESS! Verifiable, accountable Voting IS Affordable... why do Democrats COWER from this VITAL issue??

STOP the MADNESS! Verifiable, accountable Voting IS Affordable... why do Democrats COWER from this VITAL issue??

As with the "can't loose" Murray Amendment (to fund $2.7 billion for Iraq war veteran's rehab, thereby ACTUALLY "Supporting the Troops", and effectively portraying Repuglicans as LYING about "supporting the troops"), the Democratic Party leadership has made a CONSCIOUS DECISION: they would RATHER COWER... they would RATHER BE COWARDS...than take a "can't loose" issue to the American public, FORCE the media to CONFRONT the injustice and lies of the Diebold-ES&S-Sequoia voting system, and DEMAND that Republicans explain why they think a cozy nest of crony corruption should sit at the very heart of American democracy, funded by millions in unsupervised or verified taxpayer dollars at that.

There is no middle-muddle room on this: the DLC "centrist" Democrats, the Senate Democrats, and especially Senator John Kerry and his pathetic muddle of a 2004 campaign PREFER NOT TO ADDRESS Diebold Vote Fraud, and the stake-in-the-heart of American democracy that is fixed, rigged, and easily hacked voting systems.

In all the thousands of excellent web pages on DIEBOLD VOTE FRAUD and ELECTRONIC VOTING FRAUD; this page gets to the heart of the matter:

<< Maryland is BEING FED BAD INFORMATION and Maryland taxpayers will have to foot the bill if these Senators have their way.
Senate President Mike Miller (pictured at right) and some members of the Senate Committee, where the bill was referred, are DETERMINED TO STAND IN THE WAY OF VERIFIABLE ELECTIONS - no matter what the cost. They voted to use the money intended for accurate, auditable, and accessible equipment and spend it on electronic poll books instead, and they're using inflated prices to defeat the move to paper ballots. >>


Let's take Mr. George W. Bush and his Repuglicans at their word... Senator John Kerry and the Democratic ticket "ONLY" won 48% of the vote in America's 2004 presidential election, and that Bush only won the critical, president-making "swing state" of Ohio by some 100,000 votes. Ohio's election-night returns were rife with suspicious news, including one county where the election supervisor threw the press out of the supervisor's office, claiming an FBI "terror alert" that the FBI vehemently denied ever making! And of course Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, a former Democrat turned Republican, had joined with Deibold corporation's Chairman and CEO Wally O'Dell in doing "everything it takes to deliver the state of Ohio to Bush." Mr. Blackwell just happened to choose DIEBOLD voting machines for Ohio, a company chaired by Wally O'Dell, who also happened to be the cochairman of the Ohio 'Republicans for Bush' reelection campaign.

We have a company receiving millions in state and federal voting machine contracts; producing UNVERIFIABLE or auditable voting machines; that company's Chairman and CEO is ALSO the Chairman of the Bush-Republican Campaign Committee!

This is a situation RIFE with conflict of interest and potential corruption. JOHN KERRY is the very FACE OF DEMOCRATS who inflict "SECOND CLASS status" on their supporters, for we all know that there is no way in hell that Republicans would sit quiet, trusting, and accepting if the vote totals for the nation's crucial swing state were decided on machines built by a Democratic-aligned company, purchased and installed with no oversight or security inspections by the doings of a Democratic Secretary of state, and on election night the whole election was decided by some 50,000 votes (half of the so called "victory margin") with a NO VERIFICATION - "TRUST US- we wouldn't lie to you" dismissive arrogance.

Sad to say, despite COWERING from this VITAL ISSUE, John Kerry is once again in the running for the Democratic 2008 presidential nomination. What with over HALF of the papers that ENDORSED Mr. Bush in 2000, having SWITCHED THEIR ENDORSEMENT, or withheld that endorsement, in 2004, it must be stated: JOHN KERRY WAS THE BEST ELECTION ALLY or aid that George W. Bush could have hoped for in 2004!

Clueless Kerry ALLOWED the Bush-Rove-Blackwell (et al.) campaign team to SWITCH the topic of debate from Bush's failed leadership (and "AWOL" status during the Vietnam war) to JOHN KERRY's record from the Vietnam war, and anemic (not to say "flip-flopping") Senate record from 2000 on!

Mr. Kerry is A THREAT to Democratic voters: he is a complicit participant to Republican VOTE FRAUD LIES, making a conscious decision to throw a WET BLANKET on this vital Democratic Party issue, just as former Senator Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.) helped throw a WET BLANKET on the 9-11 Commission investigations.

IN REFUSING TO MAKE VERIFIABLE VOTING a prominent issue... in FAILING to DEMAND that the press/media address the glaring errors and potential for fraud that is unverifiable voting... JOHN KERRY THREATENS DEMOCRACY, and MAKES THIS WEB SITE NECESSARY.

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Maryland Is Being Misled - Verified Voting IS Affordable
By Warren Stewart, VoteTrustUSA   
March 19, 2006
http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1072&Itemid=113

Stop the Madness! Contact Maryland State Senator Mike Miller and Senator Paula Hollinger and tell them you want verifiable elections in Maryland!  Send emails to Senator Miller thomas.v.mike.miller@senate.state, Senator Hollinger paula.colodny.hollinger@senate.state and the members of the Senate Committee on Education, Health and Environmental Affairs and then call Senator Miller 1-800-492-7122, ext. 3700 and Senator Hollinger (410) 841-3131. Contact information for the entire committee is available here.

According to a Washington Post article, Maryland Governor Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) is seeking $21.8 million to lease 6000 voting machines for the coming election as part of a $400 million supplemental budget he submitted to the General Assembly on Wednesday.
  
But wait! Maryland doesn’t need 6000 voting machines! $21.8 Million is more than the cost of purchasing all the equipment Maryland needs. Simple math reveals that Maryland could buy the verifiable paper based optical scan system that the Governor wants for 2006 and years to come for $21.8 million and save millions more every year in maintenance costs.

With momentum building to require a voter verified paper record and her dogged defense of the security of Diebold's flawed touchscreens getting ever more difficult to sustain, state election director Linda Lamone is now arguing that the state's Diebold TS-R6 touchscreens could not be retrofitted with printers in time for this year's elections. The House of Delegates countered by unanimously passing an amendment that called on the state to lease optical scan machines for one year.
 
Senate President Mike Miller (pictured at right) and some members of the Senate Committee, where the bill was referred, are determined to stand in the way of verifiable elections - no matter what the cost. They voted to use the money intended for accurate, auditable, and accessible equipment and spend it on electronic poll books instead and they're using inflated prices to defeat the move to paper ballots.

Maryland is being fed bad information and Maryland taxpayers will have to foot the bill if these Senators have their way. In a phone conversation with Ehrlich’s office it was reported that Jim Dickson, of AAPD, had told the Governor that Maryland had to purchase four Automark ballot-marking devices per polling place. This is false.  The Help America Vote Act HAVA requires that each polling place provide one voting machine that allows disabled voters to vote privately and independently - not four.

With the paper ballot optical scan system that the Governor is advocating and the House of Delegates voted for unanimously there would only need to be one optical scanner per precinct. Maryland had just over 1,600 polling places for it's 2.8 million voters in 2004, or approximately 1,700 voters per polling place. That's registered voters - they don't all vote of course. The ES&S M100 precinct based optical scanner that the state is considering leasing can handle 3000 ballot, nearly twice the average number of voters per precinct in Maryland - even if they had 100% turnout.

Based on the prices ES&S is charging for their equipment in North Carolina, each M100 precinct based optical scanner costs $4,995 and each Automark costs $4,950. That’s about $10,000 per precinct. In North Carolina, the state provided counties $12,000 per polling place to cover equipment, software and other costs. It is prudent of course to purchase 10% more equipment than needed in case of breakdowns, so let’s figure the cost for 1,800 polling places. That would be $21.6 million to PURCHASE the equipment that Maryland is talking about LEASING for $21.8 million. Can you imagine being offered a deal to lease a car for the same price you could buy one? That's just what Maryland taxpayers are being asked to do!


Then again this is the state that spent $60 million on Diebold touchscreens for which they initially budgeted $35 million. And the maintenance costs for these machines have risen 1000% in three years. By continuing to cling to touchscreen voting Maryland legislators will saddle taxpayers with ever-increasing election administration bills.

A recent article in a the Columbus Dispatch described the “sticker shock” of Ohio county officials who were finding out now how much they would have to pay vendors for ongoing maintenance of their touchscreens. In one example cited, the commissioners in Fairfield County, Ohio, home to roughly 93,000 voters were told that the $714,000 they had given their election board this year is only half what they need.

Over a year ago, the incoming Supervisor of Elections in Miami-Dade County reported on that county’s experience since sinking $23 million into paperless touchscreens after the 2000 election. He came to the conclusion that the county would be better off discarding the touchscreens and spending another $13 million on optical scanners because he would recoup the additional money in three years. Another Florida study comparing the actual costs of election administration in counties using optical scans and counties using DREs found that running elections with touchscreens cost counties twice as much. A study in North Carolina came to the same conclusion.

The Governor and state legislators owe it to the taxpayers in Maryland to establish an independent review of the true costs of upgrading to voting systems that have a paper ballot. They should not rely on the estimates or advice from the Board of Elections. It is clear that the Maryland Board of Elections is too invested in their prior support of the Diebold machines to face the clear and obvious security flaws and cost issues inherent in these systems.