JackRiddler
JackRiddler's JournalOf course this is only meaningful if you can see who you voted for.
I've got no problem with it in theory, except that it would then lead to vote-selling and bosses or religious leaders or family patriarchs demanding proof from their underlings.
Besides, how would this allow challenges? If you discovered that your vote was flipped, what would you do? "Hey, this says I voted for X but I voted for Y!" How would you prove that the mistake was not your own? What would prevent a few unscrupulous partisans from intentionally voting the wrong way, claiming their vote had been flipped and the election was fixed? (A handful with a lot of media wouldn't affect a result but could cause a lot of bad will.)
Also, if the election is close enough (which the big ones usually are, by design of the media and other factors), how would this verify anything? Why couldn't the software correctly show YOU how you voted but still produce a false vote count? I suppose everyone would have to literally verify their vote online (infeasible) to produce a second total online that checks the total counted at the polling stations.
I can't see that there is a simple solution. Paper should be the way, no matter what.
I think at this point Capriles is more fair to Chavez...
than a few posters on DU. Some cannot accept the reality that this is the duly elected, democratic government of Venezuela. The VZ government is popular because it has served and improved the lives of the vast majority of the people. The Chavista coalition has now won many fair and free elections in the last 14 years.
And, as some here have pointed out, it's not very socialist. The nationalizations that have prompted such hysteria among capitalists have been limited, and always come with "market price" compensation for the owners.
Let's face it, US militarism and empire need bogeymen, and they've made one out of Chavez even while the same US empire has helped create charnel houses in Mexico, and next door in Colombia, with its insane drug policy (a vital tool of empire).
And you know Chavez is coming up again at these so-called debates. As if Chavez is any kind of big issue to US voters. (He's not!) As if Romney wins any votes by adding to the right-wing hysteria. Sadly it's too much to hope that Obama will call nonsense on the demonization of the Venezuelan majority. Even though there's nothing to lose by it. Because all these politicians want to look strong against "our enemies."
Chavez is not an enemy to the people of the United States. He is a friend, if we accept him. Those among Americans who call him an enemy are the real enemies to our own country, to democracy and peace.
Are you frustrated because you can't repeat right-wing points about Obama here?
No problem! Just change "United States" to Venezuela and for Obama, write "Chavez." Then you can talk right-wing trash all day!
Well Romney should fit in well with the anti-Chavez faction...
who put up the Chavez Hate Story of the Day every day on the DU "Latest Breaking News" forum.
Honestly, how is this distinguishable...
from the same bullshit said on Freeperville?
Jimmy Carter said that of the 92 elections monitored so far by the Carter Center, Venezuela has the fairest of all. Fancy that.
Too bad the oligarchical opposition that wants to send VZ back to the bad old days is going to get a fairly high share of the votes, thanks to control of most of the media (contrary to the other bullshit you will hear here), and the money, and the hate propaganda against Chavez...
Today is also a crucial period.
Samaras and ND are leading the charge on the next round of austerity as ordered by the Troika, despite the disastrous results of the first two rounds, with a shrinking economy making it ever more impossible that Greece can get out of the hole. Austerity in the midst of 50% unemployment for those under 30! All this is delaying the inevitable - default and drachma. Adopting a Golden Dawn-style position on immigrants and refugees doesn't endear ND to me, either. ND also assented to the brief bankers' junta earlier this year.
ND is historically responsible for the least productive and most odious parts of the debt -- those accumulated at higher interest rates under the swap deals with GS and JPM Chase so as to falsify actual public debt levels. For that alone this party should no longer exist. They have weathered political rejection better than PASOK only because Papandreou refused the historic opportunity to do the right thing immediately in 2009, and fucked up throughout the next three years of crisis. He should have defaulted on ND's secret deals as soon as these were revealed. He should have also gone ahead with the referendum idea earlier this year. Instead his incompetence (presumably intentional) opened the way for ND's return. Both of the traditional ruling parties must and will go. The longer it takes for an anti-austerity, anti-troika government to come to power from the left, the more popular Golden Dawn is going to get.
Hope from a distance is cheap, but right now mine is vested in Spain and Portugal. If the governments there fall and anti-austerity governments come to power, it may sweep the rest of the austerity regimes out in a 1989-style wave.
That is correct. "On many issues."
That doesn't mean there aren't other reasons to choose one over the other. I care because it's clear that one side has the support of the racists and yahoos while the other has women, immigrants, African Americans, Latinos, organized labor, gays and liberals. I want to discourage racists and yahoos. I care about the Supreme Court picks and the popular psychology -- when Republicans win, the people tend to believe that the majority is Republican, and it's harder going for social change movements. (People need to recall 2001-2002, before the left was revived by Bush pissing off the entire planet with the plan for Iraq.)
Also, the chances of an insane unprovoked preventive war on Iran will be pretty low under Obama, and very high under Romney. Nevertheless...
Unfortunately, there is a bipartisan consensus on war as a general solution to international problems, on capitalism, drug war and the prison-industrial complex, on the legitimacy of the enormous spook state, and in general on the idea that private capital should rule the world.
Unfortunately, there are private or semi-public centers of power outside the constitutional arrangement that neither candidate will ever challenge - the Pentagon, the spook state, Wall Street (possibly if it fails again), the central bank, etc.
Unfortunately, the destruction of the ecological basis for human life on earth has once again been no issue in the election. Even though we're about to see the lowest US harvest in many years due to drought, and therefore another food crisis worldwide.
Unfortunately, neither is going to take real steps to end dependency on fossil fuels.
Unfortunately, Bush and then Obama rescued the big criminal banks and none of the major perpetrators have had to fear either prosecution or claw back.
Unfortunately, Obama rescued the Bush regime criminals from prosecution.
Only movements will change these conditions. So vote, but don't pretend you've accomplished anything by doing so. Get out there and work for change, because the best thing you're going to get out of an election (Obama) merely means the corporate status quo, as opposed to the corporate extremism (and right-wing social program) of Romney.
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