........should be separated from political interests and put into an autonomimous federal organisation; its officers must be banned from joining political parties and participating in political activities. This sytem works in Britain and Australia, so ought to work in the USA.
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Won't happen here in the States. Elections are won in the US largely through the amount of money spent by candidates and the influence of the news media, especially presidential elections (Get used to saying President John McCain from now. I started two years ago). Exit polling showed that Republican political corruption was mentioned slightly MORE than Iraq as the reason for voting for the Democrats. That reason was largely ommitted by the news media. For example:

CNN (who the easily brainwashed call "liberal") the morning after the election asked their senior political analyst Bill Schneider about the exit polls:

Here is some what he had to say at around 6:00 AM

S. O'BRIEN: You look at the exit polling and corruption and ethics under what was important to voters was THE TOP OF THE LIST at 42 percent, Iraq at 37 percent, the bottom of that short part of the list. I would have thought it would have been flipped.

SCHNEIDER: Well, if you look at those numbers, they're very similar. They're not very far apart, 37/42 percent is a very narrow range. What the voters were saying is, all of those issues were important. Corruption, that worked for Democrats, rather. Iraq, of course, paid off for Democrats. Terrorism was supposed to be the Republicans' issue, but actually voters who cited terrorism were about equally divided between Republicans and Democrats. So Republicans lost their issue.




By evening when the majority of viewers are home from work "catching the news" the exit polls were intentionally being distorted. Gone was the biggest reason (because it made the entire Republican party look really bad and goes against news media attempts at painting BOTH PARTIES as corrupt to help defray Republican criticism) leaving the Iraq war as the main reason (which can conveniently be blamed more on George Bush - who the media had ALREADY elected as President in 2000 and 2004 so now it is fairly "safe" to blame him because of his low approval ratings and the fact that he can't legally run again in 2008).


CNN: The Situation Room at around 6:00 PM:

SCHNEIDER: The voters' views were clear in our national exit poll. A clear majority of voters said they disapprove of the war in Iraq. Those numbers closely match people's views of President Bush, suggesting that the Iraq war now defines the president. But did it affect the vote? Yes.

Fifty-nine percent of voters who disapproved of the war in Iraq said they voted to oppose President Bush. "

Until there is media reform in the United States, you can sit there in other countries and scratch your heads wondering why you all have to suffer because of America's missteps. This time, the Democrats won DESPITE the news media's best efforts only because the local elections can only be nationalized to a reasonably limited degree. In 2008 they will once again pick our president through a thorough public brainwashing and unless McCain dies of old age before then, they will elect him as President of the US which unfortunately also means President of the World.


John

From down here this article is kind of interesting.

The great danger is that Bush created a War on Terrorism and it looks like he's going to loose it, for all of us. This gives credence to the bad guys, something in which none of us should rejoice. One analysis I read was that the mess in Iraq and the most probable way the USA will exit the situation will probably destabilise several other countries and give a great boost to the aspirations of extremists.

From down here this article is kind of interesting.

The great danger is that Bush created a War on Terrorism and it looks like he's going to loose it, for all of us. This gives credence to the bad guys, something in which none of us should rejoice. One analysis I read was that the mess in Iraq and the most probable way the USA will exit the situation will probably destabilise several other countries and give a great boost to the aspirations of extremists.
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Bob,

Those people mentioned in that article are all part of the same group that pre-planned the invasion of Iraq since the nineties. THEY have been the ones calling the shots. Bush is and has always been an incompetent who doesn't make decisions. He has all to do to struggle with the English language despite the media's best efforts to edit out his verbal mistakes. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Frum, Abrams, Cohen, Armitage, Bolton, Woolsey, Bill Bennett, are all part of that neocon group that pre-planned the war and had such confidence in the news media helping them sell it and covering up for them, they never even took down the website. The news media in the UK and other countries talks about the Project For A New American Century group, yet the American news media NEVER mentions it especially on national television. PNAC's attempts at creating a big honey pot in Iraq for the flies that make up American Corporations at the expense of the Iraqi economy, and the Iraqi and Colation force's lives hasn't worked as planned. THAT is what those creeps in that article are annoyed with and the fact that Iraq was supposed to be the first step in creating a Pax America plan to make the rest of the world subservient to America's "needs" and to create a "New Middle East". Richard Perle is a hypocrite. Read his article on that website called Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century. It spells out his REAL intentions. It is their OWN writings that anyone (including the news media) could have found that turned me off to this pre-planned invasion from before we went. Saying that to people before we invaded was interpreted as "treason" because the American news media had already sold this war to the public without even a caveat.

Be thankful you live in a country that has freedom of the press and a diversified educational system. All of our history books teach us how America is good and so have been all of our leaders. They teach us that the world should be thankful for our policies because none of them know what is best for them but we do.

You may also find it interesting that David Frum who was part of that article is a ranking member of the American Enterprise Institute. Another neo-conservative think tank organization. Guess who is also a resident fellow there?
Bill Schneider the CNN senior political analyst I mentioned above that intentionally distorted the exit poll results for the evening news viewers on "liberal" CNN in order to favor Republicans.

And don't think that Americans are insensitive when it comes to feeling for people who suffer from things this country does or persecutorial nations we support just because you watch your televisions in Austrailia, the UK, and other countries and see little dead Arab children lying under their bicycles or in the clutches of a dead mother in a pile of rubble. We WOULD if we saw that stuff here in the US. They not only DON'T show us those images, they BLOCK virtually all foreign programming from the airwaves in the US. We aren't insensitive. The news is filtered. The only time you MIGHT see those images is in the middle of the night. OCCASIONALLY they show them at that hour so that they can answer critics like myself, by saying: "Sure we show them - look at this footage" not revealing that it was shown ONCE at 3:00 AM. I can find foreign video newsfeeds on the internet though. However that "loophole" will be closed in the future if Republicans get their way in revising the "Net Neutrality" law. The Media Corporations that have been buying up internet websites have already begun the systematic brainwashing of the American public through paid commercials telling all of us how Net Neutrality is "bad" for us. With a little reinforcement from their news media programs the public will probably fall for it.

John

It is interesting to note that in the Land of the Free, it is a federal offense to watch a foreign satellite channel without first acquiring a special federal license.

No consumer has ever been granted this license to watch unfiltered news and programming from other countries.

Some Americans just want to watch Canadian hockey and of course get an alternative take on what is happening in the world, but they have to do it in secret just like in the good old days behind the Iron Curtain.

>>>Won't happen here in the States. Elections are won in the US largely through the amount of money spent by candidates and the influence of the news media<<<

Getting the electorial system independent of political and party influences doesn't include providing funding for candidates (although that has been discussed). Parties, media and candidates are free to raise funds and spend them on promotion, just as in the USA. Fortunately we haven't yet got to confusing the election process with a halloween party. But candidates and parties cannot recruit voters, because that's out of their hands. They can kiss babies, shake all the hands, tell untruths, and provide transportation to the polling booth (as I believe is common in the UK) and hope that their nice gesture yields their desired result. But here mostly people do not belong to any party organisation, usually do not reveal honestly how they vote, so you're as likely as not to be carrying an opposition voter to the poll.

Yep, those rigged Diebold machines worked great for the Republicans this year, didn't they?
Or have the Democrats fallen into another trap set by evil genius Karl Rove?

By the way Craftech, I used a 2 yr old article for the Diebold issue because it pinpoints where the Diebold Conspiracy got started. Later articles show that O'Dell is no longer with Diebold. So the evil conspirator has left the building!

My point about the paper trail still stands. Why do you trust the lever machines when they have no paper trail?

With lever machines "The results are then hand written by the precinct officer at the conclusion of voting." Sounds like it only takes ONE PERSON per precinct to mess with the vote tally.

I'm all for a paper trail on the electronic voting machines. But people are being led to believe that all the old methods have a paper trail. They don't. That was my point. Comprende?

Yep, those rigged Diebold machines worked great for the Republicans this year, didn't they?
Or have the Democrats fallen into another trap set by evil genius Karl Rove?
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Your logic - The Democrats won therefore there couldn't have been any voting machine irregularities - makes absolutely no sense.
Here are the known malfunctions so far since election day.
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I'm all for a paper trail on the electronic voting machines. But people are being led to believe that all the old methods have a paper trail. They don't. That was my point. Comprende?
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I wasn't sure if you were arguing AGAINST a paper trail for e-voting machines. It's good to know you are in favor of what is a logical way to deal with potential problems in assuring voting accuracy in using machines that have NOT been thoroughly tested and independently verified.

You still haven't answered the question as to why Republicans have been so much against it though. The machines weren't thorougly tested and there have been suspicious activities reported within that industry:

"When the ITAs find a serious problem, it is relayed, confidentially to the vendor, and the only thing that the public ever learns is that a machine was certified. If a machine is not certified, nobody ever learns about it."

The Republicans enacted legislation that strangles precincts that want to keep the lever machines. The states will have to repay the federal government in an amount proportional to the number of noncompliant precincts.

So WHY are the Republicans against a verifyable paper trail for the e-voting machines? No one is answering that simple question.

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With lever machines "The results are then hand written by the precinct officer at the conclusion of voting." Sounds like it only takes ONE PERSON per precinct to mess with the vote tally.

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Another false assumption.

One of our closest friends has worked at the local voting place for the past 30 years. ALL of them are required to stay there while the election officer counts the vote. They often take turns and double check. Then they have to stay there while she hand writes them. It would take a widespread conspiracy and quite a bit of time to change the results. There hasn't been a single mechanical breakdown in those machines in THIS precinct in those 30 years. There have been in SOME other districts and unfortunately the votes can be lost if that happens. However, if an e-voting machine has a problem only "authorized" vendor service people can "fix them". It has been demonstrated several times that in a matter of seconds that person can and absolutely no one would know unless an ongoing continuous paper trail were being generated at the same time as the voting was taking place - which (as you all know) Republicans are against.

John