Reply #14: Take it from the horse's mouth--the crook who designed our election system,

[Peace Patriot]

who, with that other major crook in the Anthrax Congress, Bob Ney (abetted by as-yet-uncaught crooks like Christopher Dodd), spread $3.9 billion and a lot of lavish lobbying all over the country, to fast-track untested, insecure, and extremely insider hackable electronic voting systems, run on TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by corporations with very close ties to the Bush regime (Diebold) and to far rightwing causes (ES&S). Goal #1: to manufacture a Bush win in 2004, and a lapdog Congress, to keep the hogpen of Iraq going. Goal #2: to limit the country's reaction in 2006, to modest Democratic gains, hampered by a number of Bushite Democrats (didn't entirely succeed--the people outvoted the machines). Goal #3: to choose the Democratic Party candidate for president in 2008, in the primaries--a pro-war, pro-corporate Democrat, who will tear the party to pieces. Goal #4: to put Jeb Bush in the White House.

With the amount of shit that is going to hit the fan, because of the Bush Junta ($10 TRILLION deficit, our name becoming mud in the Middle East, etc.), they may not want to proceed just yet in Goal #4, and may do an interim thing, put Hillary in White House, heap blame on her for all that the Bush Junta has done, and THEN put Jeb in. They can count on Hillary not to investigate them very much, in the interim. And she gets to deal with the food riots, and the vets' peace marches, and the Draft, and the "Gulf of Tonkin" with Iran, and all the rest. Heh-heh.

Tom Delay & Co. designed it. Diebold and ES&S are implementing it. And, if we don't evict these Bushite corporations from our election system, we get to watch it happen.

The only thing I can think of, that might change this scenario--besides a 100% handcount of all the votes--is a Gore landslide that will sweep past the machine programming (--be so big they can't steal it). That's why I favor Gore, and hope he enters the primaries. I think he has the magic, the resume, the steadiness and the vision to inspire a huge win. But, I'll tell you, my perspective on leaders and leadership has changed quite a lot since I was 16 and worked in JFK's campaign. We, the people, ARE this democracy. There is no leader who can save us, and none that cannot be take from us before his or her time. Democracy is from the grass roots up. That's what they've realized in South America, and why they have accomplished this amazing, peaceful, democratic, leftist (majorityist) revolution that has spread over the whole continent: Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador. It's not about the leaders. It's about the people--and their long hard work on grass roots organization and transparent elections.