Our vote is the means by which we exercise that consent. It should go without saying that since elections are our mechanism for asserting our authority over our public servants - the government, the people are the only ones who should have authority over their own elections. Once we permit our public servants to decide that someone other than the people shall control the counting of our votes, as they have under HAVA, We the People can no longer ensure the integrity of our votes. As has been often quoted these days, but not often enough:
The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery, for slavery consists in being subject to the will of another, and he that has not a vote in the election of representatives is in this case. – Thomas Paine
Every citizen has the responsibility to every other citizen to protect the integrity of the ballot. Each of us must strive to insure that all citizens are entitled to vote and that every vote is counted as cast. This is our civic duty. It is the ultimate obligation the individual assumes as the price of freedom in a democracy. This charge is oft repeated, but not heeded. If citizens assumed this responsibility the government would not have been able to undermine the will of the people. They can only do this so long as we stay collectively silent, as evidenced by how much power and control the government has taken from us right now.
Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories. –Thomas Jefferson
HAVA has caused every state, except New York, to allow these corruptible and vulnerable machines to run their elections. The Legislature, whether well intentioned at the time or not, has proscribed the exercise of the most fundamental of our constitutional rights- "the primary right by which other rights are protected" – the ability of the People to observe and retain control over the counting of our votes.
When a legislature undertakes to proscribe the exercise of a citizen's constitutional rights it acts lawlessly and the citizen can take matters into his own hands and proceed on the basis that such a law is no law at all. – William O. Douglas, Justice of the Supreme Court, 1939 - 1975
Citizens across the country need to take back their elections: remove the corporate dominion that voting machines have given to private corporations. HAVA has not yet prohibited our right to choose to not have a computer count our votes. Under HAVA we must provide for disability access, but that does not mean we have to choose these computerized machines to count our votes. Since we already know that there is no such thing as tamper-proof software why would we, as citizens who cherish freedom, agree to submit the counting of our vote to the hidden corruptible workings of a computer?
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
