THE CASE FOR TOTAL TRANSPARENCY IN VOTING - OPEN VOTING

[kster]

The Landes Report ...

What is Open Voting? Paper ballots that are marked, signed, and cast by the voters, then counted by hand in full public view at your local poll on Election Day.

VOTING 101: (watch 2-minute video in Windows or RealMedia)

Voting is the linchpin of democracy. And democracy demands transparency, not trust. Yet, there is no real transparency to the way Americans vote today. While our politicians are required to vote publicly and openly, we citizens are held to a different standard - a lower standard. We vote remotely, privately and anonymously by machine, absentee, early, and secret ballot. It's an invitation to massive and undetectable vote fraud.

Things weren't always this way. Before the Civil War, voting was a completely transparent process for white men. It was only after the Civil War, as the right to vote expanded to African Americans, that the voting process itself began to recede from public view and meaningful oversight. It started with absentee voting in the 1870’s, secret ballots in the 1880’s, and voting machines in the 1890’s.

Today in America, 30% of all voting is by absentee or early, 95% of all votes are machine-processed, and 100% of all ballots are secret and anonymous. For the sake of convenience and alleged voter protection, Congress has destroyed the transparency, verifiability, and integrity of America’s voting process. Making matters worse, our public voting system has been privatized and outsourced to a handful of domestic, foreign, and multi-national corporations. Just two companies, ES&S and Diebold, electronically process 80% of all votes using touchscreen machines or optical scanners. Their employees are in a perfect position to rig elections nation-wide. These two companies have close ties to the Republican Party. And evidence is mounting that elections in America have been computer programmed to prefer conservative candidates.

What can you do? Ask your state and federal representatives to support total transparency in voting - Open Voting. That means paper ballots which are marked, signed, and cast by the voters, then hand counted in full public view at your local poll on Election Day. What can candidates do in the meanwhile? Don't concede an election until you've conducted a Citizen Audit. Ask your supporters to go public with their votes. Ask your supporters to sign up and be counted. Learn more below & read Lynn's Report To Congress

http://www.thelandesreport.com/VotingSecurity.htm

[GreenInNC]

1. Sorry

I don't want my vote read out to the public.

[drm604]

2. Not good.

You would have things like vote buying, employer pressure, etc.

[Peace Patriot]

3. I support 100% transparency--hand-counted paper ballots...

but non-secret ballots just make it too easy for intimidation and punishment--coercion by the majority, or by bullies. We have to protect those who are in the minority, as to their political views, in their families, communities, workplaces and precincts. The only way to do that is the secret ballot.

A non-secret ballot might work in small communities of people who all trust and respect each other. Do those conditions exist today everywhere in the USA? They certainly do not. I can see all manner of abuse being perpetrated.

We have to stick with the secret ballot--but we MUST restore vote counting that everyone can see and understand. That is Priority no. 1. No secret code. No electronics--until all ballots have been counted and their results posted. And all of it must occur in full public view. Secondly, we need to purge our system of all manner of unfair restrictions on voting and vote suppression of every kind. If we can accomplish this, then we are back on the road to democracy, and other reforms will be possible.

[Peace Patriot]

4. Note: I think it's great to go back in history, and see how things were done, and to

propose unusual ideas--new ideas, or ideas that have worked before. And I respect Lynn Landes as one of the earliest whistleblowers on stolen elections--a very courageous and intelligent investigator and reporter. But I do think this non-secret ballot idea is a side-road. We have a huge crisis in our election system, that needs all our energy and attention to correct--this incredibly fraudulent system of vote "counting" using 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations. We MUST get rid of this, or our democracy is over. We cannot restore democracy when there is a 5% to 10% "thumb on the scales" (my guestimate) in favor of Bushites, warmongers and corporatists. This has to be Priority no. 1. If we want to have discussions of an unusual idea like this--later, when we have the luxury of a functioning democracy again--fine. Right now, it's a distraction.

[BeFree]

5. Good idea

I've been thinking along those lines myself - that I would sign my paper ballot and dare them to destroy it.

Imagine if everyone did that... it would put a real crimp in the cheaters by making it almost impossible to stuff ballot boxes. Heck, you can tell everyone how you voted anyway.