After casting her ballot for Barack Obama, Amanda Jones said simply, "I feel good about voting for him." Ms. Jones, of Cedar Creek, Texas (a town just south of Austin), is African-American, and what gives her vote some historic punch is that she's 109 years old. Her father was a slave. Her mother was born right after Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. She's been through it all--Jim Crow segregation, women's suffrage, the Great Depression, the poll tax, FDR, the civil-rights movement, desegregation, 13 years of George W (five as guv, eight as prez), and now: Barack Obama. This last change fills her with joy, she says.
Sign up for email alerts, from breaking news to weekly commentary:
Find more content in these topics: Elections
Visit Hightower's General Store, to buy high-power Hightower books and other goodies like that.
Home | Contact | RSS | Privacy policy | Copyright Public Intelligence, Inc., all rights reserved 2003-2007
Diebold banned in calif vote
"Despicable" is not a word that major corporate executiives are used to having hurled at them by high elected officials, but that's what California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley called the honchos of Diebold, whose electronic voting machines made a mess of his state's primary elections last March. Just one of many glitches: Thousands in San Diego couldn't vote because Diebold machines malfunctioned.
A panel of California experts found that this company—the second largest purveyor of touchscreen voting machines in the country—had violated state law by installing untested and uncertified software in its machines then lied about it. "Their performance, their behavior, is despicable," Shelley bluntly said. Then he banned the use of more than 14,000 Diebold machines in this November's election, saying that the machines are not secure and reliable. He has recommended that criminal charges be filed for what he called "fraudulent actions by Diebold."
Shelley had earlier ruled that by 2006, touch-screen voting machines in California must produce a paper receipt so voters can verify the electoral choices they make on these corruptible computers. Now he's exploring ways to speed up this requirement.
Meanwhile, in Maryland, a voters group has filed suit to block the use of all 16,000 of Diebold's virtual voting machines in their state unless a paper-verification system is installed on each of them. It's all a part of the growing grassroots rebellion to prevent the electronic theft of our elections. To join the fight, go to www.verifiedvoting. org.