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Vote fraud is a cancer that can destroy a free country from within and leave little or no trace of its spread. A voting method must be found that will make vote fraud doubly impossible, and a severe penalty must await any who defeat the safeguards and alter the vote. If we were counting money, would it be done with secret count? Never; all who touch money must sign for it. There are checks and cross checks, an audit is done and an outside auditor is called in as a check against inside corruption. Do you think for a moment that all this expensive auditing is done to find honest mistakes? No, it is done to detect and catch white collar thieves and embezzlers! Undetected, they can easily drive a company bankrupt, so it is imperative that an audit net is spread to catch this type of thief. Even so, almost daily an embezzler is uncovered; how many escape detection?
Our freedom is more important than our money, yet where are the safeguards against vote fraud? Where is the outside auditor? Where are the checks and balances? Where voting is done in secret and counted out of sight, who knows the extent of fraud? If the average taxpayer pays $5000 in taxes yearly, then his vote is worth at least $5000. Does any company carry around boxes filled with $5000 bills uncounted and unaudited? If someone robs a Brinks truck, there is an exact record of everything it was carrying! Money is NEVER moved without a count. Money never changes hands without someone signing for an exact amount. The receipts not only say who received it from whom, but the exact amount, and a listing of cash, checks, bonds, etc. Have you ever seen a businessman look into the cash register at closing and say �my employees must be honest, there is still cash here�? No, they ALWAYS check the cash against the register tape. Many years ago the cash box was abandoned in favor of the cash register just because a small number of employees were dishonest.
To apply this to voting, no real audit is possible with a secret ballot. All stages of voting must be open to view and recorded. This means a ballot with your name on it, as well as the name of the poll worker who verifies your identity. These votes must be counted before they are moved. They must be recorded and published for all to see and cross check. If a listing (both printed and computer file) is available, everyone can see that their vote is correctly listed. This is the equivalent of a cash register tape. Without this audit tape, ballot boxes can be stuffed, switched, etc. Banks hire people to defeat their security just to find where the holes are. We need to hire people to find ways to cheat at voting so we can fix the holes.
At this point, the astute reader will object that a free vote is not possible unless it is secret. The claim will be heard that a man might be fired from his job if the boss disagreed with his vote. All kinds of implausible discrimination might happen if votes were public. This is disinformation. The only people working for that slimy a boss are government workers, and they should never be allowed to vote anyway. Even if a company were inclined to punish a worker for how he voted, the company would be much more inclined to punish him for his bumper sticker since it influences more people.
In any case, a single vote means little to a large company; only a large block of votes would get their interest. A large company can today easily close down a branch located in a voting district that votes �wrong� and reopen it in another voting district that votes �right�. The secret ballot is no protection. This is actually done, but not by private enterprise. The US government often closes military bases in districts that vote �wrong� and lavish contracts where the vote pleases them. The secret vote is no protection here either. The only ones protected are the politicians
Isn�t a secret ballot the hallmark of a free society? NO! New England has always had town meetings, even today. You vote by standing up and being counted. No secret vote, but fraud is difficult because your neighbors recognize you. I have never heard of anyone being punished for his vote. If you are so unsure of yourself that you demand to vote in secret, maybe you shouldn�t vote at all. Personally, you can see how I vote by reading my bumper. It is bumper stickers, not secret ballots, that is the hallmark of a free society. In point of fact, the secret ballot was unknown in America for the first hundred years of our history; our Founding Fathers never used it or even thought of it. Such an idea would have been considered subversive and corruptable in a country where everyone freely spoke his piece.
If a secret ballot is really necessary, the ballot box should be chained down and never moved until the votes are counted at the local precinct. The vote totals should be closely checked against the actual number of voters, and the list of voters should be published by street address and sent to all interested parties. It would help if the Ballot Box were made of transparent plastic.
Once you have made fraud near impossible at the local voting booth by dropping the secret ballot, the rest becomes a lot easier. Votes must be counted at the local polling place by local people. As long as the vote is open and published, it could even be done by computer with little opening for a fix. In like manner, all vote totals for all polling places would be published so anyone could check them (again, both printed and computer data file). The source code for any computer program used to process voting data must be made availiable to the public. Even so, any type of vote processing not done by hand under watchfull eyes must be considered suspect. All computer work should be done in parallel by different computers from different organizations. Even a tiny personal computer is fully capable of doing all vote counting. It could be audited by anyone with a PC.
All aspects of voting and vote counting should be open to public view and public videotaping. Such videotaping would be the basis of prosecution for vote tampering. Any type of mechanical voting machine should be encased in clear plastic so all the inner workings are visible. Most important, the actual ballot space for each party and/or candidate MUST be determined by lot at each polling place AFTER the voting machines are delivered. This would negate any fix in the machine that depended on candidates being in a particular order. All types of voting machines should be tested at random by various parties before use. There is no advantage to having the machines start at '000', it just increases the opportunities to cheat. It would be better to give all candidates 2 votes, starting at '002', to verify machine operation. In addition, after all votes are counted and recorded, give all candidates another 3 votes and verify that the tally comes out. If this sounds like a lot of checks, look at what is done with money.
The potential voter would be identified, sign in and thumb print the register, and have his picture taken as if he were cashing a check. Anyone fraudulently attempting to vote could be instantly convicted with this evidence. The voter is then issued a punch card with a secret code number under a tear off tab containing the same number. The voter takes the card to a computer and takes the literacy test; the computer punches the score into the card. Next the voter goes to the firing range inside the polling place, and shoots the target(s); his score and time are also punched into the card. The voter then punches in his election choices, and verifies everything punched into the card by inserting it into a card reader. If he is satisfied, he tears off the code tab, verifies that its number matches his card, and drops the card into the ballot box.
If anything went wrong, say he punched the wrong hole in error, he can go back and get a new card by destroying the old one. The new card would be pre-punched with his literacy and arms score; he would not be allowed to take either test over.
The votes could be safely counted by computer as long as the card reader were incapable of changing the cards. Note that the cards are never touched b y human hands after they leave the voter. The computer could be tested by having it tally a test set of cards, and anyone with a card reader could recount the votes at any time. The cards would be kept at least as long as the elected person stayed in office.
A conviction for vote fraud would be punished with loss of citizenship. Few would risk it. The voter at any time could ask for his vote to be recounted by presenting his secret code number. �he computer would then print out how his vote was recorded. The newspaper could even print out how everyone voted by their code number, so you could look up your vote in the paper. The papers could also list the names of all the voters, which should add to the exact same total as the number of votes cast.
The computer would calculate everyone�s literacy and weapons score, and disallow the votes from the bottom 5% (or whatever). All this would be a matter of public record, so you could know if you were disenfranchised by low score and why. For example, if the arms proficiency test required you to hit 2 targets in 15 seconds, and your gun jammed without any hits, your arms score would be zero. You would know that your vote would be disallowed unless more than 5% also got zero.
Nick Hull, < [email protected] >
Secretary, Committees of Correspondence
2702 Kimbrell Road, Lenoir City, Tennessee 37772
865-856-6185
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