Although personally I had chosen not to vote - appalled as I have become, since returning to my home country after some 35 years away, at all the horror stories about voting procedures going on, and still going on, in this country, that I have read about, and seen videos about, on the Internet - I decided to go to my polling place on Voting Day today and check out the procedures 'on the ground' in my area.
I was not relieved of my concerns.
As Stalin said, in words to the effect that it doesn't matter who votes so much as who - or what - counts the votes: Although the people at the 'booths'/simple separations (hopefully citizens all; but you can't even be sure of that. Read on) were filling out paper ballot cards, those cards were then going into a machine, that would 'decipher' the votes electronically. Bad move. That technique, apparently, allows for a paper trail - the minimum of my requirements for a transparent and honest voting system - but who knows how 'sophisticated' it is, that it might not spew out numbers that don't, on their surface, suggest the need for a recount.
No. Not good enough.
Nor is the initial vetting procedure, here in my area of California at least. You first go to a person who checks out if your name is on your precinct's list of registered voters, with 'your' address. They have been instructed to accept one of four forms of ID: 1) your Social Security card (which doesn't totally identify you as a citizen, I don't think; plus such cards can be easily faked. But to move on); 2) your California State driver's license or ID card; either of which has your picture on it (good, as far as it goes; but I'm not sure that you have to show your birth certificate in order to get a driver's license. I did have to show my bc to get my California ID card, so fair enough for that as ID); 3) your passport (fair enough as ID); or 4) the Sample Ballot form mailing that you received at your home address.
So I showed my Sample Ballot form mailing (in my case it was an Absentee Ballot form; apparently based on the fact that my original address with the LA County voting Registrar's Office was overseas, even though it showed, now, was mailed to, my local address). So the lady was happy with that, and started checking for my name on her printout. As she was doing so, I mentioned that I, personally, however, could be anybody; that that 'form of ID' didn't identify me personally. She said that that matter would be covered by the fact that you have to sign your name at the end of the line that has your name on it. But, but…but she couldn't find my name on her printout, so I was sent to the man next to her, who had a different printout, on which to check for my name. What?? And how many con-job possibilities of fraudulent voter registration does THAT little wrinkle put in the works??? While I was with him, the guy behind me in line was signing his name alongside his name in the lady's printout compilation, which she pointed out to me as some sort of proof of how the system worked for identification.* Er - excuse me??
Nobody checked his signature against any form of ID he was carrying.
It was all simply an illusion. A conjurer's trick. A game, among many that people play. And some people believe in.
He could have been anybody, given a Sample Ballot mailed to Joe Blow at an empty apartment address, used for just such a purpose - or purposes plural: multiple names (off of gravestones, say; so that the real Joe Blow wouldn't run the risk of showing up also to vote) at the same address, since there is no cross-checking of addresses, only, possibly, names.
And then he could race off to - be taken to; car waiting outside, motor running - another precinct, and vote there, with the same vetting procedure. Or to say, lack thereof.
Disgusting stuff.
As I was talking to the man with the second printout about my concerns about 'the system', the lady next in line behind the tables, whose job it was to give the person thus vetted their ballot card, stood up and came over and agreed with me that she, too, had concerns about how the whole thing worked. And she was on the inside of 'the system'…
My parting comment to one and all, before I walked back out the door I had just come in, sans voting, was: "I would be very happy to support the system, if I could trust it."
So; bottom line. I am sickened by all this voter fraud going on. This isn't the United States that I used to know. Maybe I'm a little naive on that score, about how 'it used to be'; but I think not. I think that things have gotten worse since the advent of the electronic voting machines. Whatever; it is a sorry state of affairs, and I am appalled by it, and refuse to support it. It needs to be cleaned up entirely. Unless this is the last election…
...in which case, we still need to review where we had come to, in our 3D experience. Which review would show how these last couple of generations of American citizens have sold out the American dream of a self-governing nation, along with which comes the self-responsibility to make it work. Or, as Benjamin Franklin said, and warned 'us' - the future generations of American citizens - about:
"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters."
But like him, I still hold out for a vision for the best outcome of such an experiment in political matters on the planet:
"Where liberty is, there is my country."
And as he also said (perhaps repeating an older expression; which he was a fond collector of): If you lie down with dogs, you'll get back up with fleas. Regardless of the finger-pointing of the excuse of blaming 'who started it', both major political parties are flea-bitten critters, who need and deserve to be put out of our misery.
Am I being too demanding? I don't think so. I think, and feel, that I am simply demanding the highest in human consciousness that we can express, and attain to. I'm demanding Perfection - and from me as well.
If we don't have something to shoot for, we will never get there.
But, perhaps: here we are, anyway. At the end of the line. That timeline. Which, in review (like our personal life reviews), can tell us much about the process of consciousness-raising.
And how far still we have to go, in that regard. Even if we are now to experience a floor to the process we have been involved in - for eons of time - and move up another notch, on the stairway to the heavens.
Much, of humanity.
The rest?
What a drag it would be, to have to go through this sort of thing all over again. And again. And again…
You can put a stop to it. For you.
Now.
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footnote:
* She further assured me that once he had 'signed in' that way, on her printout sheet, the machine that the voters put their ballot cards into would not take another ballot for anyone using that name. I'm not sure precisely how that works - voting is supposed to be private; how does the machine know whose ballot card is whose?? - but the point is, they are still relying on the machine to give them an honest output of what goes into it. Stalin is chuckling in his grave.
Unless he has already returned to incarnation, and is working out his karma. Perhaps in losing an election due to fraud???...
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P.S. My Comment today to an article on The Daily Sheeple site by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts entitled 'U.S. Elections: Will the Dead Vote and Voting Machines be Hacked?':
I went to my polling place today to check out how the system works in this area (i have been out of the country for over 35 years). It was as I suspected from all the horror stories I have been reading about and video watching on the Internet: it’s a farce. Easily manipulated, both as to who is voting and the end result being a count by a machine. I guess it mainly hinges on whose machine it is…
It’s a total disgrace. I was right in not taking part in the charade, which would therefore give my support to it. The country needs a flat refusal by its citizenry to take part in the con job until it is cleaned up top to bottom. Paper trails – and no machines with “secret proprietary software”. Well; no machines, period.
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I guess the only answer, really, is a reset of the whole shebang...
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So if this election “is, in fact, the most important in the lifetime of our country,” why wasn’t more done leading up to it to clean up the voting process, so that it could be trusted??
I have been living outside of the country for some 35 years, and in returning, have been appalled to find out how bad the voting system has been allowed to deteriorate. There is hardly anything left in it to be trusted. It has been corrupted beyond repair, by partisans on both sides of the political aisle.
The country will get what it deserves.
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I see/feel that I need to back off a bit in my disgust over this whole voting/election-theft thing. I've got to believe in the innate integrity of the majority of the American people to 'do the right thing' about the threat of takeover of the country - of My Country - by an alien ideology: that of atheistic socialism/communism/enforced 'equality', with 'redistribution of wealth' its ultimate goal.
Whether Obama is a Christian or Muslim or whatever combination thereof, or neither, really, he is being backed by secular humanists, who believe that life has no reason for being, no purpose except merely in and for itself only. That is a dangerous belief; gives rise to tyrannical attitudes; and it must not be allowed to prevail.
And, I trust the process.
Have to.
It's what I'm committed to.
Whether Obama is a Christian or Muslim or whatever combination thereof, or neither, really, he is being backed by secular humanists, who believe that life has no reason for being, no purpose except merely in and for itself only. That is a dangerous belief; gives rise to tyrannical attitudes; and it must not be allowed to prevail.
And, I trust the process.
Have to.
It's what I'm committed to.
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