Lies & replies re venezuela & us voting systems

shock

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Apr 9, 2009
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LIES & REPLIES RE VENEZUELA & US VOTING SYSTEMS
Published on Thursday, October 4, 2012 by The Guardian by Mark Weisbrot

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"On 30 May, Dan Rather, one of America's best-known journalists, announced that Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez would die "in a couple of months at most". Four months later Chávez is not only alive and campaigning but widely expected to win re-election on Sunday.




Such is the state of misrepresentation of Venezuela – it is probably the most lied-about country in the world – that a journalist can say almost anything about Chávez or his government and it is unlikely to be challenged, so long as it is negative. Even worse, Rather referred to Chávez as "the dictator" – a term that few, if any, political scientists familiar with the country would countenance.

Here is what Jimmy Carter said about Venezuela's "dictatorship" a few weeks ago: "As a matter of fact, of the 92 elections that we've monitored, I would say that the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world."

Carter won a Nobel prize for his work through the election-monitoring Carter Center, which has observed and certified past Venezuelan elections. But because Washington has sought for more than a decade to delegitimise Venezuela's government, his viewpoint is only rarely reported. His latest comments went unreported in almost all of the US media.


In Venezuela, voters touch a computer screen to cast their vote and then receive a paper receipt, which they verify and deposit in a ballot box. Most of the paper ballots are compared with the electronic tally. This system makes vote-rigging nearly impossible: to steal the vote would require hacking the computers and then stuffing the ballot boxes to match the rigged vote.

Unlike in the US, where in a close vote we really have no idea who won (see Bush v Gore), Venezuelans can be sure that their vote counts. And also unlike the US, where as many as 90 million eligible voters will not vote in November, the government in Venezuela has done everything to increase voter registration (now at a record of about 97%) and participation.

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Something IS gaining on us and we are running out of time.
We need to commence to reform our government, starting with a constitutional initiative and referendum provision that would enable the people to control the process of reform.

SHOCKLEY

(I hope my efforts to comply with the posting requirements of the Moderator are acceptable. I do value the privilege of posting on this board and I am happyt to accept correction and advice as to how to comply.)
 
I am all for ensuring accuracy in our voting process.

While the system of electronic votes with paper ballot backup is good, it's best to have a lot of people overseeing the counting. It's been said that those who count the votes have the real power and that is true.

While making sure the votes themselves each count, I would prefer that we have a way of ensuring that only valid voters cast those ballots.

States each have voter rolls and seems every time they want to update them and verify the names, some liberal lawyer or Holder himself is quick to sue to stop the process.

In this day and age, verifying the identity of people should be easy. And accurately counting the votes of those valid voters should be a no-brainer.
 

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