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No Secret Ballot for Military Personnel?
belmolis writes "According to this editorial in today's New York Times, US military personnel for whom regular absentee ballot procedures are inconvenient are being provided with a questionable alternative, the Electronic Transmission Service, run by a private contractor, Omega Technologies. According to the NYT, the secrecy of ballots could be breached when they are faxed or emailed from the field, when they are in the hands of Omega Technologies, or when they are in the hands of local officials. The NYT was unable to obtain any information on security procedures from the company or from the Pentagon. A manual describing the system can be downloaded here [pdf document]. Like Diebold, Omega is far from non-partisan. Omega President and CEO Patricia Williams has donated $6,600 in this election cycle to the National Republican Congressional Committee and is a member of its Business Advisory Council."
First, identify who votes for Bush and who votes against him. Then eliminate the people against and put more people who are pro. Now you have control of the armed forces. Everything else falls in line after that easily.
OK, there are some loony lefties that claim there are international treaties like the Geneva Convention that govern war.
But the last time the US has signed uop to them was probably during the Nürnberg trials of the Nazi leadership.
If you want to see the Guantanamo prison in a favorable light you could even claim it is based on those treaties as these only protect official soldiers and civilians, not terrorists.
But you are in the US military and you have to obey your officers period.
Thus voting against your Commander in Chief *should* get you in court!
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
This is so sad... at least this time around bush and his supporters in the election process can see which ballots to loose or declare unreadable, or invalid. It should be alot more effective than there plan in 2000 (don't let the dark skin people vote).
Better double-check the facts to make sure they're not lying again.
What's the matter, mikey? In a widdle funk over seeing Kerry down by double digits?
You should go be a SCO spokesman, mikey. All your reliance on discredited sources, unproven innuendo and nasty name-calling; you'd fit right in!
"commander in chief" is a silly and basically meaningless title. The president doesn't wear a uniform, doesn't need any military training or background, and in reality is only connected with the military insofar as he can say "go here and do X." Getting all huffy because your "commander in chief" did something that would get you in trouble or dodged the draft is just another way of saying "i am either an idiot who can't figure out that being president isn't a military position and the title "commander in chief" doesn't change that or for political reasons i find it expedient to have such a believe right now."
Here is a break down of just some of the absentee votes that were, but should not have been counted for Bush in Florida 2000... (Source: democrats.com)
- Absentee ballots that could not be read by voting machines, but were illegally "duplicated" by county election officials: 10,000 (60% Bush?)
- Absentee ballots cast in Seminole and Martin counties by Republican voters following the criminal alteration of defective ballot applications by Republican operatives: 5,000 (99% Bush)
- Overseas military ballots that were not legal, but were counted because of massive pressure from the Bush campaign: 680 (71% Bush)
This absentee ballot stuff wasn't a secret at the time - it was reported in real news (well, you wouldn't hear it from Fox or the Washington Times, but thats where sad wackos go to hide from reality) until mid 2001.Here is a CNN article on the Seminole county absentee ballot application form alterations. The Republican operatives were allowed to alter incorrectly filled-out/printed applications (by Reps), but Democrat operatives were not allowed to do the same to applications by Democrats.
If your feeling rich you can purchase this July 2001 NYT article entitled "EXAMINING THE VOTE; How Bush Took Florida: Mining the Overseas Absentee Vote" by D Barstow and Don Van Natta.
Then there is this nice and very recent example of (gasp) Republican cheating with absentee ballots in (gasp) Florida: A fine Greg Palast article.
As others have noted, the military votes heavily Republican and for good reason. Kerry, all too typical of the Democratic elite, voted against the funding to supply our troops in Iraq with ammunition, body armor etc. And that was AFTER voting for the war itself. The only sense you can make of that strange voting is that Kerry doesn't care about the lives of those in the military. Like LBJ during Vietnam, he regards them as disposable commodities.
Compare the NY Time's zeal to publish this allegation with an article, "Editors Grapple with How to Cover Swift Boat Controversy" in the August 24 issue of Editor and Publisher. There Alison Mitchell, deputy national editor for the NY Times is quoted saying, "I'm not sure that in an era of no-cable television, we would have even looked into it."
That embittered editor won't even mention Fox News, whose coverage of the SwiftVets story--along with many websites and blogs--forced the NY Times to cover the story against its will. In the 1960s, it was sometimes remarked that what was "news" in America was what interested Walter Cronkite when he read the NY Times. That is no longer true. A few people in buildings in Manhattan can no longer tell us what the news is. We decide for ourselves. For that we can thank the Internet.
What is fascinating about this tale is how well it illustrates the bias of the Old Media. Bush has never made his National Guard service into the reason he's qualified to be President and has even admitted that he was a bit wild in those days. Yet the Old Media poked and prodded his military files for months, trying to find a scandal, but coming up with nothing worse that his being late getting a medical physical. ("Was he doing drugs?" Gasp, gasp!)
In contrast, Kerry's party convention was a giant celebration of him as a war hero and that claim was the centerpiece of his claim to be qualified for the Presidency. As a number of capable (i.e. not employed by the NY Times) journalists have noted, by the rules of the game, that made his time in Vietnam fair game for critics.
Even when the NY Times was forced to pick up the story, it tried to reduce multiple SwiftVet eyewitness accounts (from those in boats alongside Kerry and the Kerry crewman who served longest with him) to "mostly unsubstantiated accusations." How absurd. Have they ever described what Kerry says that way? You can get the SwiftVet side of the story at:
SwiftVets
And even watch their latest ad.
Alas for the dogmatists at the NY Times, those 'twice brave' SwiftVets are proving quite accurate. The Kerry campaign has now abandoned his oft-repeated "Christmas in Cambodia" remarks and is retreating on whether his first Purple Heart was deserved. If it was the result of Kerry's clumsy use of a grenade launcher, then his trivial wound was a result of 'gross negligence' and thus not qualified for the medal. His third Purple Star faces similar problems, since it seems to have resulted from the clumsy use of a grenade to destroy VietCong rice. That, in turn, raises a serious question. Should we trust our nukes to a guy who can't even handle a grenade carefully?
Kerry's also in trouble for claiming a "V" citation to his Silver Star. There's no such thing.
Finally, behind this attempt by the NY Times to muddy the waters about the voting of those in the military lies the one and only partisan attempt to keep votes from being counted in the close 2000 election in Florida--the Democrats many attempts to keep absentee votes from those in the military from being counted. You can be certain the military has worked to make sure that can't happen again, so the NY Times has been reduced to trying to discredit the vote in advance.
Kerry's friends are also said to be working on their very rich expatriate friends to make sure they vote from their chalets in the south
Look, all this talk about voting machines and absentee ballots is just to distract people from the REAL problem. It doesn't matter how your vote is counted, when HOW YOU VOTE is controlled through the ORBITAL MIND CONTROL SATELLITES. They will have you VOTING FOR BUSHITLER even as you BELIEVE you are casting your ballot for whatsisname who ISN'T BUSHITLER.
The only way to PROTECT YOUR BRAIN is through METAL SHIELDING. That is why BUSHITLER, through the CORPORATE MEDIA, has spent decades making the SO-CALLED "tin foil hat" an object of ridicule. BUT it does not have to be tin - ordinary household ALUMINUM foil will do fine - personally I use a conductive ANTI-STATIC BAG with eye holes. It does not have to be foil either, a sauce pan will do (a metal one, not a corning ware which (NO COINCIDENCE) is made by DOW chemical), or even a metal colander or sieve, as long as the gaps are smaller than the MIND CONTROL wave length of 0.0784 inches.
So PROTECT YOUR BRAIN and REALLY vote for that guy who isn't BUSHITLER BUSHITLER BUSHITLER.