FOLKS! DON'T GIVE UP!
Whether you are a candidate or a voter, whether you won or lost, we all must keep fighting for our right to vote on a paper ballot and to have those ballots counted properly. Audit the Vote, sue in court, demonstrate in the streets, organize your community, just do something!
We will never really know who won this or any other election until we COUNT THE BALLOTS! Voting is the linchpin of democracy. And democracy demands transparency, not trust.
Yet, in America today there is no transparency to our elections. That's because 95% of all votes (including paper ballots) are computer-counted. And 50% of all voting is early or absentee. It is an open door to undetectable election fraud and massive miscounts.
We need to give poll watchers something to watch on Election Day. If not, all bets are off as to who gets to vote and whose votes get counted.
Neither federal nor state oversight can safeguard an inherently unobservable voting system. Worse yet, America’s public voting system has been privatized and outsourced to a handful of domestic, foreign, and multi-national corporations.
In fact, just two companies (ES&S and Diebold), started by two brothers (Bob and Todd Urosevich), computer-count 80% of all America’s votes (using touch screen machines and ballot scanners).
It is virtually impossible for poll watchers to detect election fraud when the software is routinely updated and annually re-programmed for each election by company officials. Even if the computer systems were government-controlled and the software was ‘open source’, it is still non-transparent.
News media exit polls, government-controlled audits, and post election recounts are neither sufficiently transparent to detect election fraud nor constitutional substitutes for the right to have votes counted properly in the first place.
Things weren't always this way. Voting was a completely transparent process in America before the Civil War (even though it was restricted to white males). It was only after the Civil War, as the right to vote extended to African-Americans and eventually to women, that election officials began to restrict direct access to a paper ballot and destroy meaningful public oversight of the voting process. It started with the introduction of absentee voting in the 1870’s, secret ballots in the 1880’s, and voting machines in the 1890’s. Today, our voting system is virtually invisible.
CountTheBallots.org is fighting for our constitutional right to vote and to have our votes counted properly. To fully enforce this right, citizens must have direct access to a paper ballot and meaningful public oversight of the voting process.
We support paper ballots and hand counts at the polls on Election Day. We are opposed to voting machines, ballot counting machines, central counting locations, and early voting. We also suggest that absentee voting be limited to presidential elections and Americans living or based abroad; voting and vote counting could be conducted at polls at U.S. embassies, consulates, overseas military bases and military ships.
Voting is the linchpin of democracy. And democracy demands transparency, not trust. Join the movement. Count The Ballots!
