If the vote was not hacked then we have to ask: Why not?

if the vote was not hacked then we have to ask another important question. Why not?

It wasn't the security that prevented it. It wasn't a lack of opportunity, or a lack of motivation. Why would such a vulnerable voting system, with so much at stake, NOT be hacked?

When this election came out in the near reverse of polling and expectations we had an indication that something might have been wrong with the integrity of the vote. And because of the lack of traceability and trackability of the vote, we were left with few ways of investigating.

That is the fact that motivates me more than any other. The lack of recourse.

By spending our time trying to decide why Kerry lost, who should be the next DNC chair, and how to sweep homosexuals under the rug (or not), we lost the opportunity to question the integrity of the vote.

We should have said 'I don't believe Kerry lost, I definitely don't believe he lost by this much, and I want to look at the tabulators, I want to lockdown these machines.'

The reason we should have done this is because without rejecting the process of this election it will not be fixed.

Two years from now we will have Congressional elections with no paper trails, on unsecured tabulators, with partisan election boards.

We will complain about voter suppression and maybe even make significant improvements on registration and the equitable distribution of voting machines. But we will not have restored confidence in the actual counting of the vote.

Only by screaming foul and rejecting the integrity of the vote from the outset would we have been able to get action.

Now that is a risky thing to do. Number one, as Kid Oakland points out, it further erodes confidence in the fairness of voting, leading more people to not participate. Number Two, it makes us look hysterical and paranoid and we become easily marginalized if our investigations do not turn up significant fraud. Number Three, it is a distraction from proveable instances of voter intimidation and suppression.

All of this is true. And it's why Kerry bowed out.

But goddamn it! It felt to me like Kerry won.

And I believe that if we look in the right places we will find hacking.

And more importantly, we have to point out that, under current conditions, we have NO WAY of knowing whether hacking occurs.

That cannot go on. It has to change. And there is no better way of getting that change than by making it crystal clear that we think there was fraud and they can't disprove it.

If enough people are on the record as thinking the election was stolen then they will realize the current system is dangerous and undermines our democracy.

But if we keep watching our Cleland's and Mondale's get beat in non-recountable elections we will deserve to live in Bushland.

Daily Kos :: Kerry Won- Get Over It (More on the election issue)