4 - The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, October 5, 2004 OPINION + a+ +420 MAYNARD STREET ANN ARBOR, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigcndaily.cr m EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN SINCE 1890 JORDAN SCHRADER Editor in Chief JASON Z. PESICK Editorial Page Editor Unless otherwise noted, unsigned editorials reflect the opinion of the majority of the Daily's editorial board. All other pieces do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Michigan Daily. NOTABLE QUOTABLE All of the benefits that I'd been promised during those 26 years have been erased by corporate American greed." - United Airlines pilot, speaking anony- mously, in response to the airline's statement that it would most likely default on its pension plan payments, as reported yesterday by the Christian Science Monitor. COLN DALY i " ThE PR~sbE- R1G-T~tr W>PAWAYS FO R PREAPTIV v TR' 2 "114E BEST WAY -M DEPV; "HEM IS -ro NFve w&v&R, ID Bc-QTR(wrA... To CONSTANT Y ,STAY oN -c- -t E4 0'F EN SINE." is .- Th11E CREATURES oursF io& 'EtbFpRM GC ae 1,C IV mH ,Atb MM OHN TO 170GEoRGE., RNI) POM CGEQRCE 'oV zoHN iNN; - POOWESTS - loRGE.oRWE-- Voting machines and the men who love them STEVE COTNER RK E i-ALT 6 n Jan.2,2004, God told Pat Robertson that George W. Bush would be re-elected. Or rather, that was the day Robertson announced the communique. Since 1998, newspapers have published stories on the "aura of inevi- tability" that surrounds Bush, as if he really is "The Chosen One," as his mother has called him. And Bush himself has clearly stated that he will be elected once again. He is not so much an incumbent as an incarnation. What could possibly make Republicans so confident about themselves? It begins with the 2000 selection, which was pulled off without too much trouble. In that year, we know from Greg Palast's reporting in the Guanian and Salon that Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida "moved to purge 57,700 people from the voter rolls, supposedly crimi- nals not allowed to vote. Most were innocent of crimes, but the majority were guilty of being Black." That's what made the vote so close - not any hanging chads, pregnant chads, sadomasochist chads, etc. But even with this ethnic cleansing, the vote was not delivered for Bush. So, as the Florida Supreme Court became dangerously close to a Gore victory, the U.S. Supreme Court stole it out of its jurisdiction and invoked the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection clause - a protection for minorities that the 5-to-4 Republican majority ordinarily avoids like the plague - in order to say that some 60,000 "undervotes" should be thrown out in order to protect the "fundamental right to vote." Vin- cent Bugliosi's account in The Nation and the book that came of it, "The Betrayal of America," survive as the unchallenged documentation of this crime against democracy. So with that, Bush completed his quiet coup d'etat, mostly undetected, while our reporters were busy laughing at punch-card terminology. Now he has promised to do it again, and we have no reason to doubt him. The 2002 Help America Vote Act has has done two things for Republicans: first, it requires all states to follow a Florida-style computerization of voter files, and then empowers Secretaries of state to purge "suspect" voters. Second, it provides a half billion dollars to move states into computer- ized voting machines, and three companies have stepped in to help us wayward voters. All of them Election Systems & Software, Diebold, and Sequoia - have strong ties with the Bush administration and other Republicans, along with the major defense contractors Northrup-Grumman, Lockheed-Mar- tin, Electronic Data Systems and Accenture. ES&S and Diebold are owned by brothers Bob and Todd Urosevich, who will be counting about 80 percent of the votes cast in 2004. Bob, the CEO of Diebold, is a Bush fundraising pioneer and has promised publicly to deliver the vote for Bush in 2004. How could he do that? The Diebold method is much cleaner than dealing with felon lists and Supreme Court decisions. In the 2000 election, Diebold simply added and subtracted where it liked. In Volusia County, Fla., 4,000 erroneous votes appeared for Bush, and 10,000 votes went to the Socialist Workers Party (half of their nationwide total), while Al Gore actually received negative 16,022 votes. Yes, negative. Bev Harris documents this and nearly every other voter machine fraud since 1980 in her book"Black Box Voting," which is freely available online. OK, then, some people want to rig our elections. Whatls new? As Harris points out, we've been con- ducting elections for more than adozen centuries, and at one time or another, every system ever designed has been rigged. But today the whole country is in the hands of a few men and their army of program- mers who hide from public inquiry under proprietary contracts to protect "trade secrets." Our own desires are incidental to those of the election industry. A company programmer can install a backdoor hit- and-run code set to activate itself on Nov. 2, change the original votes and then destroy itself. Every step of the transaction is vulnerable to fraud. Whole ballot boxes hang on for life in tiny memory cards, easily lost and replaced without a trace. This is not some vague complaint about new technology. It is about the very specific group of men behind it, who now have the power to simulate democracy undetected. Even if Kerry is elected, the system is still the same. We cannot wait to be out- raged when a dictator takes power The trap has already been laid. The radical historian Howard Zinn likes to say that elections are not the most important thing, that social activist movements are what forced abolition and civil rights. But at a time when our votes are being rewritten by the right-wing's pet com- puter algorithms, a lost election takes on a whole new meaning. It no longer means the pendulum is swing- ing this way or that. It means it has stopped. We are entering an age where democracy will no longer be a grassroots thing. It will be completely underground. Cotner can be reached at coners@umich.edu q I LETTERS TO THE EDITOR MoveOn concert was a glorified campaign ad TO THE DAILY: Monday's front page story From Detroit to K-Zoo, anti-Bush concerts rock Mich. (10/04/04) about Sunday night's concert contained the type of factual inaccuracy that continually gives the Daily a bad rep. The concerts were, in fact, as politically charged as they could have been. MoveOn is a 501 organization, a supposedly nonparti- san advocacy group that is forbidden by law to endorse a candidate. MoveOn is of course as non-partisan as the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth are, which is the underling prob- lem with 501 groups. While campaign finance reform may have outlawed political parties' spending unchecked sums of money to support a can- didate or cause, 501s have stepped in to bas- tardize the election process in their place. Voters need to understand that by attending the MoveOn concerts or donating to many other "advocacy" groups, they are not sup- porting Sen.. John Kerry or President Bush Instead, they are perpetuating a political system ruled by whomever can raise the most money. Of course, I too would gladly sacrifice my ideals for a chance to see the Boss. Dan Goshorn LSA senior Gay marriage ban will likely cause more harm than good TO THE DAILY: I am writing to you regarding a recent story, Polls: Michigan likely to vote for gay marriage ban (09/30/04). Supporters of Pro- posal 2 state that it would ban gay marriage, but according to the Coalition for a Fair Michigan, "Several federal and state laws already ban same-sex marriage in Michi- gan," including the 1996 Defense of Mar- riage Act, which defines marriage between one man and one woman. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, "States have traditionally recognized mar- riages solemnized in other states, even those that go against the marriage laws of "It's not worth taking health care away from even one child." Although a federal constitutional amend- ment banning same-sex marriage did not pass, this is still on the ballot for Nov.. 2. I urge voters in the state of Michigan to consider the far-reaching implications of this proposal and to vote against formaliz- ing further discrimination against same-sex couples and their dependents. Same-sex marriage is already illegal; why take away the only health care cover- age some people have with an unnecessary proposal? Andi Charlton The letter writer is a student in the School of Public Health and the School of Social Work Political pandering not unique to John Kerry TO THE DAILY: I am writing in response to Sravya Chi- rumamilla's disturbing column My litmus test reads more acidic than alkaline 9/22/04. In it, Chirumamilla calls Kerry a "pander- er" whose policies are "misguided." Such beliefs are the product of overexposure to Bush propaganda (Chirumamilla recom- mends that readers educate themselves at www.georgewbush.com) and too little expo- sure to valid information concerning Ker- ry's policies. Kerry's plan to convene an international summit will result in stronger international relations and distribution of the Iraqi burden. Kerry also plans to elimi- nate tax loopholes that make it profitable for American businesses to outsource. These and other Kerry policies are not "misguided;" they are precisely what Amer- ica needs. Concerning pandering, Bush has changed his political stances as much as, if not more than Kerry. The following is but one example of Bush "flip-flopping" and pandering: In the spring of 2004, Bush, contrary to his former position, allowed Condoleeza Rice to testify in front of the 9/11 commission (a commission to which the president was initially opposed). Kerry and Bush are politicians. All politicians change their stances. However, most are not as intelligent as Kerry, and few have as good an idea as he of the proper direction in which America should be led. The past four years of incompetent leadership and Thurs- political views. This inflammatory headline reduced Carl Pope's visit to a mudslinging event between Democrats and Republicans. While it is true that controversy sells, report- ing the news is a responsibility that cannot be taken lightly. Undeniably, Pope does not approve of the current administration's environmental record; yet it is also true that Pope did not come to the University of Michigan to talk about "liberals" and "con- servatives." His lecture focused on issues of professional concern for those of us who have dedicated our careers to environmental conservation and preservation. Scott Foley, the undergraduate quoted in the article, questioned Pope's credibility based on the Sierra Club's endorsement of Democratic presidential candidates. Foley remarked, "I wouldn't take anything from the Sierra Club as fact." Although comments such as these are understandable given the slant of Pope's discussion, what Foley fails to recognize is that such claims constrict the avenue of debate along partisan lines to the point of near suffocation. Intelligent leaders like Pope, Foley, and edi- tors at the Daily should strive to raise the level of debate in this election season, not stifle it. Casting broad political labels only serves to reduce the debate into inflammatory rhetoric that is largely devoid of value. As voters, we depend on the media for sound information upon which political choices can be made. All evidence suggests that the current administra- tion has worked against 30 years of bipartisan efforts to improve environmental quality in the United States. This is not a partisan issue; it is mere observation. We thus contend that both Foley and the Daily missed the point. Elijah Davidian Kobi Platt School of Natural Resources and Environment LETTERS POLICY The Michigan Daily welcomes letters from all of its readers. Letters from University students, faculty, staff and administrators will be given priority over others. Letters should includethe writer's name, college and school year or other Uni- versity affiliation. The Daily will not print any letter containing statements that can- not be verified. Letters should be kept to approxi- mael Inn-~ ~ wnr. ~The MVicb i n~n Dily 4 a I A