Guard your vote’s integrity

The economic crisis at hand calls for sober thinking when it comes to casting our ballots for the next president. If we cannot afford to pay our bills at home, we certainly can’t afford to sustain a war abroad.

The war in the Middle East is very real. The economic turmoil in banks and investment houses around the world has not been lost on Islamic terrorists, who are probably thanking Allah for answering their prayers.

The days ahead will challenge us to our utmost because we must balance the need for a sustained economic recovery with the cold, hard fact that the threat of Islamic terrorism is not going to fade into the woodwork because the world is suffering from an economic meltdown. If anything, it will intensify. The opportune moment to strike an enemy is when they are weak, and America has been badly compromised by the economic crisis here at home.

For this reason, it is critical that the upcoming election have the full confidence of the American people. They must know for a certainty that is was conducted fairly. Only with a fair election can the people of our nation avoid the bitterness that comes from being steamrolled by a political machine that preaches one thing and does another.

There is striking evidence that that is exactly what happened not only in the 2000 presidential election, but also in 2004, and in a number of mid term elections in 2006. In the award winning documentary, “Uncounted,” producer David Earnhardt uncovers the systematic overturning of legitimate votes in these three elections and goes on to document exactly how the vote was stolen.

In several states, voting sites opened a few hours late, thereby preventing a significant number of people from voting before going to work. In many other places the waits were intolerable, sometimes stretching 12 to 14 hours waiting in line to vote. Other polling sites had electrical outages, rendering the electrically run voting machines useless.

In some instances, what is called an undervote by poll workers affected the election results in an entire state. An undervote is defined as a ballot that has been cast but shows no selection in a particular race or referendum. In other words, the voter does not select any candidate for a certain office on the ballot.

It’s normal to have somewhere between a 1 to 2 percent undervote in an election. But in recent elections, undervotes in several key battleground states have run as high as 40 to more than 60 percent in some precincts. If those votes were legitimate, that means that between 40 to 60 percent of the voters who took the time to vote in a presidential election did not bother to mark their choice for president on the ballot.

Obviously, something is very, very wrong. It is an insult to the intelligence of the American people to think that in a presidential election year, almost half of the voters in various precincts around the country simply didn’t bother to vote for a presidential candidate.

This becomes especially alarming when you learn the undervote in New Mexico in 2004 ran as high as 25 percent in some precincts. In other words, 1 in 4 voters supposedly didn’t bother to vote for a presidential candidate. In 2004 George Bush won New Mexico by a margin of only 5,988 votes while the number of undervotes was a startling 21,084.

Had the remaining 15,000 votes been counted, might Kerry have won? The undervoting in New Mexico happened in Native American and Hispanic areas where the vote was expected to run heavily in favor of the Democratic Party and Sen.Kerry.

In Pennsylvania, the undervote in certain precincts of Westmoreland County was as high as 42, 70 and 80 percent. Again, Bush won Pennsylvania by a razor thin margin.

These are far from the only abuses that have been perpetrated on the American electoral system. In Florida, a computer software program was specifically designed to “flip” votes from one party to another, by computers located in vehicles parked across the street from voting locations. Which state held the key to the 2000 election?

The list goes on and on. It might be helpful to be able to pin all of the abuses on one party, but that is not the case. In the elections of 2000 and 2004, there is strong evidence that the outcome of the entire election was altered in favor of the Republican Party. But the election of 2006 showed that Democrats are not above the same kind of game playing.

The point is, the American people deserve better. It is an outrage to think that the people of our own nation can have votes altered and elections stolen by an administration which has demanded that we fight a war to enable citizens of the Middle East the chance to vote democratically.

One woman who appeared in “Uncounted” offered a smart suggestion. When you vote, take a cell phone in the booth with you. Put your driver’s license on the bottom ledge of the screen (it’s tilted so it will stay in place), and take a picture of each part of your vote. You will then have documented proof of your vote.

If there is a close tie in the coming election, as there was in the last two, the voters of the United States owe it to themselves and the process of democracy to demand a fair recount and settle for nothing less until exit polls match voting machine counts.

We owe it to ourselves and our children to get this right. Freedom is too precious a thing to lose to manipulation, fraud and cheap politicking.