Article: Meet the New Boss; Same as the Old Boss. But alas, we got fooled again!

Is it possible that Florida was out-of-step with the rest of the country in leaning left last November? An outstanding online article by Wayne Madsen, "Election Post-Mortem; We Could Have Done Better, Much Better" (www.opednews.com) suggests that no anti-Iraq war or pro-truth candidates (governmental oversight, election integrity or 9/11 truth) were allowed to win in the 2006 Election. Whistleblowers ran in races all over the country, and none of them won. Howard Dean's vision to support all candidates in all 50 states was not the game that was played by DCCC chairman Rahm Emanuel.

Established interests (industry and commerce) have the control. The fact that people engage in the election "dance" each cycle is just an illusion of "the American Way."

For the environment, that means that candidates who are fighting for renewable energy independence, supporting bio-diesel, can not win even if they are the better candidates.

The puppet-masters are corrupt. They are insidious. They are like a mold that grows, creeping along, going deep into the crevices. And they are on both sides of the aisle.

And as all things are connected, power-grabs are happening in the minutia of things. Case in point is the outcome of Proposed Amendment #3 on the November 2006 ballot and its connected implications. First, a little history.

To their dismay, developers and lawmakers learned about Florida Hometown Democracy's petition. Its 2006 citizen initiative sought to curb development by making the public the final voter given that policymakers were not doing such a swell job. They rubberstamp every scheme, cutting corners when developers bellyached to make more profits.

Even as FHD received each rejection by the Florida Supreme Court to accept the specific language of their petition, the largely Republican Floridian law-making body started writing the "language" on Proposed Amendment #3 which "allegedly" passed with a YES vote in November. Prop #3 moved the win percentage on all initiatives to change the Florida Constitution (regardless if by citizen or legislation,) from 50%+1 to a super majority of 60%+1. Ironically, Prop #3 "allegedly" passed with a 57.8% vote, which in effect means that this measure would have failed given this new criterion.

As E-Voting machines move in on our "global" voting territory, less proof is available of what actually happened on election day. Our democracy is in jeopardy. The world is sorting out this same demon. It's not who votes, but who counts the votes. He who controls the machines controls the power.

So, is all hope lost? Have we now screwed up our chances of passing Florida Hometown Democracy in 2008 because of the YES vote on Prop #3 in 2006?

News from 2006 Congressional Candidate Clint Curtis (D) staff is that he has not conceded yet, and is scrutinizing three races:
" Gubernatorial race (Crist/Davis);
" District 24 House Congressional Race (Curtis/Feeney);
" Proposed Amendment #3.

Beside polls before the election that projected a possible Curtis win, one reporter's version of the totals rolling in post-7pm election night showed a leap from 58% Curtis to 58% Feeney from one computer blink to another.

As a computer programmer and e-voting integrity advocate and expert who has been fighting for transparent elections for five years, Curtis is currently crunching numbers of Independents and Democrats in small precincts to measure the leaning for Tom Feeney at 16%. In an interview with Curtis, he said that he was looking for a computer number flip that was larger than 2% or 4% "because 16% is easy" to prove.

His preliminary figures show: Miami-Dade: 12,000 more voters than votes; District 15-Over 1,400 more votes than voters; in Curtis' District 24 (Brevard) - 100 more phantom votes than voters in one Democratic precinct which caused it to go Republican.

So where does that put Curtis right now? "We've come a long way. We're winning," he said. He plans to bring his findings to the new Democratic Congress in January. Finally, a sensible man who is unwavering in his fight for the people to ensure that the voter's rights are heard.

We can just keep wondering if Prop 3 was a YES vote in 2006, and hope FHD passes in 2008. We must continue this work!