by Colin Donoghue
Daily Lobo columnist
Earlier this week, I went to the early-voting location in Downtown Albuquerque and cast my vote for mayor, the minimum wage and the financing of elections, among other ballot measures.
When leaving the polling booth, I noticed on the back of the electronic vote-tabulating machines there was a label that said "Modem Equipped." I asked the head poll worker why they were modem equipped and whether that would compromise the security of the vote. He did not know why the machines had modem capability, but assured me these machines were not actually connected to a phone line, and that they only did that in bigger cities.
Oh, good. The possibility of the voting machines being hacked into and their vote tally changed only exists in bigger cities, where the consequences are even greater. Was that supposed to make me feel better?
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Across the country, there have been reports of serious irregularities in the vote counts of the new electronic vote-tabulating machines. According to the Albuquerque-based group Voter Action, in the 2004 presidential election, precincts in nearly half the counties in New Mexico reported more votes than people who voted. These extra votes consistently went to President Bush. Even with record-breaking new voter registration of Democrats prior to the 2004 election and exit polls showing a Kerry win, somehow Bush and Cheney were declared winners.
New Mexico has traditionally been a blue state, with the majority of its citizens being registered Democrats, but now is called a red state, even though registered Republicans remain fewer in number than Democrats.
If your immediate reaction to any talk of possible vote-rigging is that it's a conspiracy theory by sore losers, I implore you to look into the matter more carefully. A good place to start would be the Conyers Report on the 2004 Presidential Election, the official testimony taken by the Democratic Members of the House Judiciary Committee, presided over by Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, the Ranking Member.
Bush campaign supporters and large donors own Diebold, the corporation that makes most of the new electronic voting machines. Amazingly, the software and hardware for the electronic voting machines is proprietary - state and county officials are prohibited from examining it, even in the face of massive reports of malfunctions, including machines that selected Bush on screen when the voter chose Kerry.
The integrity of American votes has been greatly reduced since the 2000 presidential election, according to the Conyers report. Why is that? Perhaps it's because of the considerable amount of legal votes not being officially recorded and the illegal disenfranchisement of voters prior to the 2000 election - mostly minorities and mostly Democrats.
In Florida, this disenfranchisement took place under the leadership of Gov. Jeb Bush, clearly working in the interest of his brother. Yet even with the countless Florida voters illegally barred from voting, Gore still got more votes. The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 vote, effectively installed Bush as president of the United States by stopping the counting in Florida. Gore received more votes than Bush, yet the votes were ignored and Bush was declared the winner.
Voter confidence was diminished even more after the 2004 election. The odds of the exit polls - which showed Kerry as the clear winner in the 2004 election - being so wrong, have been reported as astronomically high. Kerry was clearly leading in Ohio, New Mexico and other states just prior to the election, states he later lost. With nationwide exit polls after midnight on Election Day showing a Kerry win, the voting machines came up with a statistically unfeasible win of 3 million votes for Bush.
Why do we use voting machines that can't be audited and are controlled by partisan corporations? Why do we vote on a workday, making it difficult for so many to vote instead of voting on a weekend like many other nations do? Why do we keep an antiquated Electoral College that can deny the presidency to the candidate with the most votes? Why don't we have instant run-off voting, so that other political parties can have the representation they deserve, or have Election Day voter registration?
The answer seems to be that there are those in power who don't want a more democratic America because it will lead to their removal from power.
Isn't there a name for those that purposely undermine democracy for their own benefit?
