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U.S. Elections: Will the Dead Vote and Voting Machines Be Hacked?
by Paul Craig Roberts
Trends Journal
Recently by Paul Craig Roberts: The Virtual Recovery
“He who casts a vote decides nothing. He who counts the vote decides everything.” ~ Joseph Stalin
Whether or not he said it, Stalin’s quote has entered into folklore. For a vote to mean anything, those counting the ballots must have a greater respect for the integrity of democracy than they have lust for power.
Since Stalin’s time, the technology has changed. With electronic voting machines, which leave no paper trail and are programmed with proprietary software, the count can be decided before the vote. Those who control the electronics can simply program voting machines to elect the candidate they want to win. Electronic voting is not transparent. When you vote electronically, you do not know for whom you are voting. Only the machine knows.
According to most polls, the race for the White House is too-close-to-call. History has shown that when an election is close and there’s no expectation of a clear winner, these are the easiest ones to steal. Even more important, the divergence between exit polls, perhaps indicating the real winner, and the stolen result, if not overdone, can be very small. Those who stole the election can easily put enough experts on TV to explain that the divergence between the exit polls and the vote count is not statistically significant or is it because women or racial minorities or members of one party were disproportionately questioned in exit polls.
There have been recent reports that, because of costs, exit polls in the 2012 presidential election will no longer be conducted on the usual comprehensive basis. If the reports are correct, no check remains on election theft.
Digital Votes
In a fascinating article in Harper’s Magazine (October 26, 2012) Victoria Collier notes that in the old technology, election theft depended on the power of machine politicians, such as Louisiana Senator Huey Long, to prevent exposure.
