I was observing a hearing at the New Jersey Senate State House Annex yesterday regarding several proposed bills offered by Senator Gill, and it suddenly occurred to me, what a brilliant scam the Help America Vote Act has been. Here we are, more than 4 years after the 2000 election was stolen, after up to 2 BILLION of taxpayer dollars have been spent or allocated, and we're still arguing bitterly about how to fix defective, ill-conceived voting machines.
It was a stroke of true genius for the Republicans to railroad that legislation through their recently hijacked Congress. Is it truly possible for the DC Dems to be so TERMINALY clueless and stupid as to allow this to pass after such a total buttfucking as the post-Florida circus? I really have to admit I can't understand it. Maybe I'm just too suspicious by nature. It was remarkably fortunate for the Republicans that EVERY company involved in making electronic voting machines was led by a CEO and most senior executives who were FUCKING BUSH PIONEERS!
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Of course, there was one exception. There was a machine demonstrated by Athan Gibbs, inventor of the Tru-vote system, which allowed a voter to observe a paper ballot printed out and, after being verified by the voter, dumped it in a lock box and printed a second receipt for the voter. In a remarkable stroke of luck for the scamsters, he got run over by an 18-wheeler shortly after demonstrating his machine. As a caveat, the only sources of this story I found in a quick search of the web, were all written by Bob Fritakis of the Free Press in Columbus.
After that, there was no competition for the billions mandated by HAVA. The fierce secrecy and astonishing incompetence demonstrated by the programmers of the thousands of machines since purchased by harried Boards of elections around the country does make one wonder why the entire nation had to go out and buy worthless and very expensive voting machines with a decade long history of major software failures, extremely dubious employee behavior and glaring conflicts of interest. I mean, this ain't rocket science. Optical scan systems cost a fraction of these computerized one-arm bandits. Of course, the results of those voting machines are tabulated by, you guessed it, the same companies that love Georgie Bush. In an obscene fashion, I have to admire the chutzpah of these pirates.