United States of JesusLand; Time's Black Tuesday; Images from the FWD Void; E-Voter Fraud Abundant

A friend just forwarded this to me. I don't know where these images came from or if they've spread across the internet/email world yet or not, but I think they certainly represent a common feeling among 49% of Americans right now. A feeling of "Isn't it ha-ha laugh-out-loud-funny that we're gonna be screwed this bad for at least four more years?"

(Actually, I think the "Jesusland" graphic is old -- at least, I remember seeing something similar after the 2000 elections. And a couple of other websites have also posted this uncredited image since I first posted this here, including MichaelMoore.com.)

Lately I've been feeling such personal schadenfreude -- a strange delight not just in the misfortune of others, but in the misfortune experienced by the entire country. Because you get what you vote for. And as we sink deeper into debt, eventually people are going to realize exactly what it is their vote got 'em, and it ain't good. (When the debt collectors come calling, will Bush simply blow them up? Is that his true plan for erasing the national debt?)

Unlike the images above, the Daily Mirror cover below is very real:




Of course, not everyone believes that this many Americans voted for Bush. Wired Magazine has set up a special E-Vote news section to report the various malfunctions and potential (and proven) problems associated with the new computer-voting technology. The latest news is that at least 4,500 votes were lost in North Carolina thanks to UniLect overestimating (lying about?) the storage capacity of their machines.

And BlackBoxVoting.org (the Bev Harris site) is trying to uncover what it believes to be massive fraud in the 2004 elections: "We are working now to compile the proof, based not on soft evidence -- red flags, exit polls -- but core documents obtained by Black Box Voting in the most massive Freedom of Information action in history."

And Greg Palast at TomPaine.com has written a captivating piece about why he believes Kerry won Ohio, New Mexico, and the presidency itself.

Some of this may simply be sour grapes, but many of the facts are frightening. It's curious that Kerry and Edwards didn't stick to their promise to "fight for every vote," and instead conceded the race and wandered off into the sunset, leaving faulty voting machines free to damage future races. Once more, the Democratic establishment fails to live up to expectations, and limps lamely away from the battle -- it may be 2000 and poor, pathetic Al Gore all over again.

And this just in from the Associated Press:

"An error with an electronic voting system gave President Bush 3,893 extra votes in suburban Columbus [Ohio], elections officials said. Franklin County's unofficial results had Bush receiving 4,258 votes to Democrat John Kerry's 260 votes in a precinct in Gahanna.

Records show only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct. Bush's total should have been recorded as 365. "

This may have been nothing more than an innocent technical error that was quickly corrected. But one can't help but be suspicious when this took place in a state where Wally O'Dell -- the CEO of the Diebold touch-screen voting system -- infamously promised last year (in writing) that "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president..."

And the list of Vote Fraud Links keeps growing with every passing day, despite the media staying mostly timid about the issue. Even Ralph "the Spoiler" Nader has jumped into the fray, asking for a recount in (at the very least) New Hampshire because "reports of irregularities in the vote reported on the AccuVote Diebold Machines in comparison to exit polls and trends in voting in New Hampshire. These irregularities favor President George W. Bush by 5% to 15% over what was expected."

Although Kerry won N.H., a recount would presumably give both Kerry and Nader a larger portion of the popular vote, while also exposing the more vital problem of how ridiculously inaccurate the current vote-count systems truly are. Nader is also taking issue with the electronic-voting-machines' lack of a paper trail. Now, there's little chance of a recount helping Bush, since he's already won the presidency -- and Nader obviously can't win the election -- so it looks like Nader is once again taking a stand for the liberal half of America (and not secretly working for the Repubs, as some Dems have suggested) while the Democratic establishment hides in a bunker, waiting for 2008.

Still, it's doubtful that Nader will ever again have the following he once had, as he burned so many bridges this time around.

In the long run, there's almost no chance of a full recount in Ohio and Florida or any other state, and some liberals will continue to accuse Bush of stealing this election for the next four years, while both Democrats and Republicans accuse each other of voter fraud on the local level (some county-wide recounts around the U.S. may actually have an impact on the winners of local posts). But what's really important here -- and the reason why the mainstream media and the general public need to pay attention to the voter-fraud issue -- is the idea that greater oversight and accuracy are needed.

I've heard a few Republicans imply that even though Bush may have accidentally gotten a few thousand extra (illegal) votes here and there, it's perfectly copacetic because they believe old-school Democrats JFK and LBJ rigged votes in the 1960s and may have had dead people voting for them, so, hey, all is fair in love and war.... As if the sins of the past instantly atone for the sins of the present.

After the 2000 debacle, the hanging-chad, absentee ballot, and provisional ballot problems should no longer have been issues -- but once again thousands of votes didn't get counted or may have been counted incorrectly for exactly the same reasons as last time. And paperless electronic machines (proven to be hackable and prone to frequent malfunctions) should not have been used without all the kinks and security issues being worked out. But they were.... oh, they were.