Slashdot Mirror
NY Rejects E-Voting, DOJ Trying to Force the Issue
CompaniaHill writes "Hastily passed in the wake of the 2000 election mess, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) supposedly offered funding to help states update their voting systems. In reality, the short deadlines have been used to push the sale of untested and uncertified new e-voting systems. Many states continue to demonstrate that the new e-voting machines are not reliable. The New York State Board of Elections (NYSBOE) took the time to pass their own voting legislation with additional testing and certification standards which far exceed the HAVA standards. As a result, they missed the HAVA deadlines. In March 2006, the Department of Justice (DOJ) sued New York to comply with HAVA. Now, the DOJ is serving a motion to try to take away New York's right to select and acquire their own voting machine systems — in effect, to force e-voting machines on New York anyway. At the moment it's too soon to say how the NYSBOE will respond."
Giuliani sucks; he's just a Democrat calling himself Republican for the most part. Many conservatives won't want to vote for him because he's pro-choice and anti-gun.
The best candidate on the Republican side is Ron Paul, who's really a Libertarian calling himself Republican for the most part.
But the problem with the whole system, and the reason Hillary will get elected, is because of the way the primaries and caucuses work; in these elections, only registered Party members are allowed to vote for the candidate to represent that party. So what ends up happening is the worst candidate gets picked, because people in the other party, and people in the middle ("swing voters"), don't get any say in the matter. This has a polarizing effect: the most partisan candidate on each side is nominated, and then they run against each other. Instead of moderates in the final election, we get extremists like Bush and Hillary.
The only way to really do anything about this, especially if you don't really like either party too much, is to pick the candidate you like the most in either party, then register yourself right now as a member in that Party. Then you can vote in that party's primary election in a couple of months, and help get a better candidate in. You can always switch to the other party at the next election, and you can also vote for a different candidate in the final general election.
Personally, I don't consider myself Republican because I hate the whole neocon ideology. But I also don't like the Democrats either, because they're anti-gun and pro-big-government, and I really don't like Hillary. I want small, limited government, an end to the Iraq War, and no attack on Iran like we're headed for. My favorite candidate of the bunch is Ron Paul, who won't have much of a chance if the primaries are left to die-hard Republicans. So my wife and I have registered as Republicans this year so we can vote for him and perhaps get him a win in the primary (basically overthrowing the current Republican party). It probably won't work, but it's worth a shot. It's certainly better than sitting back and letting some loser like Giuliani, Romney, or McCain get the nomination without a fight.
For those who lean a little more left but don't like Hillary, I highly encourage you to register Democratic and help Kucinich get the nomination over there. A race between Kucinich and Paul would really shake things up in this country.