I think there is a fairly widespread and growing understanding that in America, we do not actually have a free and democratic press. The Internet and alternative news organizations have shown us just what the corporate media is not telling us.
Today, the situation regarding vote reporting is changing, as election results are now posted more often through the websites of the Secretaries of State. This creates a new architecture for rigging elections, something we saw play out in Ohio in 2004.
If you read my article, "How to Rig an Election" which was the cover story for Harper's Magazine in 2012....
Victoria's breakthrough cover story in Harper's: 'How to Rig an Election', November, 2012
(Image by votescam.org/) Details DMCA
JB: I most certainly did!
VC: ....you'll find a summary of the 2004 rig, which was carried out by Karl Rove with the help of the uber-partisan Ohio Secretary of State, Kenneth Blackwell. He was also the co-chair of the Committee to Re-Elect George W. Bush.
Essentially Rove and top GOP tech-guru Michael Connell set up a parallel computer architecture for Election Day that routed all the electronic vote results to their private server in Chattanooga, TN. The "upset" midnight win of GWB in Ohio came after this network took over on election night, after Kerry had long been considered the victor.
Connell was subpoenaed by Ohio election integrity activists to testify about his role - and Rove's - in controlling election night vote results. But Connell was killed in a suspicious crash of his private Piper Saratoga before he was able to appear in court.
JB: I remember that very well. Convenient timing for the GOP and bad news for Connell. So, that was the end of the story? No more investigation, nothing? How can we ever get to the truth, if we're thwarted at every turn? How can you simultaneously bring readers up to date about the dire condition of our elections, Victoria, while somehow not depressing and totally overwhelming them?
VC: Yes, that is always the challenge! My answer to that is to begin organizing. Action is the antidote to despair.
JB: I'm with you on that.
VC: Since the Harper's article, I started the National Election Integrity Coalition (NEIC). We're in the process of building a new website to reflect the work we're doing now, which is building coalitions among leadership in the movements for Election Integrity, Voting Rights, and Anti-Corruption / Money Out of Politics.
We are particularly reaching out to communities of color, where there is a full awareness of many forms of voter suppression, but less discussion about how our votes can be suppressed through the technology used to count them.
What is the point of our struggle to have access to the ballot, only to find we are once again disenfranchised through election rigging?
What is the point of having clean and accurate elections, when the people we're voting for have been compromised through excessive and corrupt campaign finance laws?
All of these democracy issues are part of the same system, and if one is broken or corrupt, it damages the entire process of self-governance.
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