Betty Freauf -- Has Voting Become an Enigma?

HAS VOTING BECOME AN ENIGMA?

By Betty Freauf

October 18, 2006

NewsWithViews.com

Who controls the vote? Hey, don�t ask me. My guess is as good as yours. I want to believe our vote was about as secure as it could be for many years when we all went to the polls and were met by the smiling faces of the little old ladies who did that job and knew people in that precinct and we used paper ballots. And yes, I�ve read about the corruption, ballot stuffing, double names and dead people on voter rolls and certain segments of our society not allowed to vote but things have changed even more drastically since the invention of electronic voting and no paper trail.

Politicians like to create the impression a large voter turnout is a sign of a healthy political system but this idea disintegrates rather rapidly when one is reminded that Russia has almost a 100% turnout for its �elections.� In Australia, another democracy moving rapidly toward totalitarianism, the establishment has become so nervous over the situation that it fines those who do not vote.[1]

Oregon has always prided itself in being pioneers in innovative thinking � usually socialist in nature - so an entrenched GOP female secretary of state got the bright idea we needed vote-by-mail in Oregon. Her reasoning was that more people would vote and Oregon voters foolishly passed it by a vote of 757,204 to 334,021 in 1998. My 16 -year old granddaughter recently told me they were discussing the Electoral College in one of her classes. She asked me why we needed it and she�ll probably be expelled if she says what I told her: I simply repeated what an Oregon GOP executive director once told a group of activists in a private meeting: The masses are asses. Yes, folks, this is how the two-party monopoly see us! Voting is like going through one of two doors but ending up in the same room. In short, the players change but the game is always the same. Picture ID�s may be a little better than a mere signature but of what value would that be in a state like Oregon where we have this infamous vote-by-mail and when a Republican bill was introduced in the Senate in Washington, D.C. requiring photo ID�s for anyone to vote, guess who was one of the senators that voted against it? Ron Wyden of Oregon!

The Electoral College was created to defend the votes in the smaller states and those chosen at each party state convention to cast their votes are usually more astute about politics. But let�s be honest. Voters in general aren�t ready to make tough choices because so many have their hands in the government�s pocket for a free lunch and they�ll die to keep their person in office that keeps handing out the pork. As each person sees his neighbor getting a bigger piece of the government pie, he feels he must take quick action to see to it that he is not left out. An uninformed electorate will eventually vote itself into slavery just like the German people did when they ushered in Hitler�s National Socialist Party. While they do much grumbling and mumbling about elected officials, after the votes are cast and the dust settles, we usually find Oregonians, at least, let the rascals stay and I suspect it is the same in your state too.

Before I started this article, I was reading in the voter�s pamphlet about all the plebiscites we will be voting on in November. I said to my husband, the pamphlet certainly exposes all the subversives as they either come out in �favor� or �oppose� certain initiatives. The name of the game is �grouping�. Birds of a feather flock together and these special interest subversives in a stealth manner have gained much strength over the years and have the ability to completely neuter our elected officials of their principles. There are many interlocks. To retain power, they set up committees and commissions and rotate chairs and collectively let their demands be known to the candidates who rarely base their decision on anything but the expediency of the moment, which translates into that which will result in the most votes and the liberal media supports the subversives. And after the people pass a good Constitutional measure, some judge comes along and overturns the vote. It�s tough to return to Constitutional government. Perhaps that is why millions have stopped wasting their time on election day and don�t even bother to vote.

Falwell�s Moral Majority organized years ago and begin to educate and get the evangelical Christians/conservatives to the polls and have been helping to win some campaigns using Voter�s Guides distributed to the churches. FOX NEWS was birthed ten years ago on cable and while they pretend to be �fair and balanced�, they obviously favor the Republican Party while the other networks favor the Democrats. The battle lines were drawn and now Americans United for Separation of Church and State announced its new initiative against election-year politicking in churches and they claim to mail more than 117,000 letters to churches in 11 competitive election states informing them of Internal Revenue Service regulations which scares the evangelical crowd so they back off while the ecumenical crowd goes full speed ahead.

This brings me to a socialist group called �Red Letter Christians� that bases its actions and political philosophy on the words of Jesus, which appear in red letters in some Bible versions and they�ve formed to counter the Moral Majority crowd. In other words, the �religious left� wants to reclaim their faith from the �religious right�. One of its organizers, the Rev. Jim Wallis, is founder of the Sojourner magazine. Another member is Tony Campolo who was Clinton�s spiritual adviser. The Sojourners are an ecumenical group committed to the �Biblical vision of peace and justice.� While that all sounds noble �peace and justice� will only be attainable when Jesus returns to rule this sinful world where power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The �Red Letter Christians� plan to issue thousands of �Voting God�s Politics� voter guides and it sponsored a candidates forum in the key electoral state of Ohio earlier in October. I wonder how that will set with the Americans United for Separation of church and State because they are basically cut from the same mold. More Hegelian Dialectics in play perhaps?

The Red Letter crowd claims the monologue of the religious right is finally over, and a new dialogue has just begun and Wallis said, �That�s good for churches for politics and really, for both parties. We believe the debate on values should be central in American politics. The question is which values, whose values and how should we define moral values?� If they truly knew their Bible, they wouldn�t have to ask that question. So now we have more confusion added into the mix and Satan sits back and watches the sparks fly. The more confusion the more gain for him. I�m also reminded that �red� in the past stood for communism and although I live in a �blue� state, it should be �red� because the United Nations flag flies proudly over �Peace Plaza� in our capitol and my letter to the local fishwrapper exposing the U.N. as a communist front was rejected!!

You can ask just about any person on the street registered to vote who his state senator and representative is or his Congressman or Senator inWashington, D.C. and only a small percentage � perhaps 33% - could answer correctly and promptly and that percentage may even be too high. This is why the two-party monopoly cult continues to rule because many people simply vote the party line and feel as though they�ve done their patriotic duty. Oregon�s ballots will be mailed October 20th. But some people, for whatever reason, will hold ballots up longer and then they rush to the post office or local drop sites set up in the respective counties to help people meet the midnight mailing deadline and yet we are assured there are �safeguards.�

I remember shortly after it was implemented, it took nearly a week to get the results and things haven�t improved all that much. My county clerk mentioned in a newspaper article that he had to have staff redo many of the ballots because they made mistakes, tried to correct them or spilled coffee on them and the computer couldn�t read them. Now if that happened at a polling booth in a precinct with paper ballots, a new one could be quickly issued. Of course, we know �ballot tampering� is illegal but nothing was done. The staff just pretended they knew what some voter meant. But even with vote-by-mail, current turnouts have been only about 50%.

In addition, vote-by-mail has caused election campaigns to shift strategies. If candidates are going to sling any mud, they�d better get it done by October 20th in Oregon. And October is the month for political �surprises�. Long-known potential scandals are kept secret by opponents and the media until October. Neither party misses an opportunity to bash the other and a song on our local �progressive� radio station is being played about the Holier Than Thou Republicans.

On the heels of the former Congressman Mark Foley (R-Fla) scandal we opened our newspapers up on October 14th and found that country-singer, Sara Evans (who you may have recently seen on Dancing with the Stars) is suing her husband for divorce and making some outlandish charges. Why did she choose October to sue? Her husband is a plain old country bumpkin traditionalist like many others born and raised in our Willamette Valley, Oregon. This guy is hardly a blip on the political radar screen outside of the 5th Congressional district where he once ran for Congress and lost on the Republican ticket. His only claim to fame is that he happened to have married Sara Evans. They were both waiting tables in Nashville where they went looking for stardom. She later got lucky and hit big time. And now he�s big news. Why? Because the Republican Party has been boasting of its �family values� and pride comes before a fall. Now she is dropping out of the Dancing with Stars to devote her time to �personal matters�. This appears to be another well-orchestrated blow to the GOP by a bunch of desperate Democrats.

Michael Savage in his book Political Zoo mentions Bill Clinton�s borderline criminal activities such as Waco, Whitewater, Troopergate, Travelgate, Filegate, Chinagate, and a long list of the women who accused him of inappropriate behavior and add to that list Pardongate before he left office and we�ve got a person who should be hiding his head in shame and yet the media still puffs him up every time he plans a �photo op.�

And then with this vote-by-mail we have throngs of last-minute procrastinators who haven�t received a ballot and rush to county elections offices to get one. In the 2000 presidential race the T.V. showed lines stretching down the block in Portland, Oregon. And what about those �safeguards�? Eventually the approximately 1.5 million votes were counted but it took much longer than expected leaving people across the country wondering why it took three days to know who won Oregon�s presidential race, which put us in the �blue state� category but after we were done, in Florida they were still counting hanging chads.

Election officials claim a combination of old-fashioned hand-sorting and new-fangled optical scanning machines just takes time. I know there are cases where one vote made the different on election day, however, I believe with electronic voting, free elections have become an enigma. When we used paper ballots, I remember the newspapers usually having the results the next day so we haven�t really advanced except the computers can be easily manipulated. Voting today can be an accessory to fraud. The real point is our vote may count for precisely nothing. Hey, if some hacker can break into the Pentagon computers, it�s a piece of cake to alter the vote on election day.

We all remember how the mainstream media in 2000 declared Al Gore the winner but we now have George Bush in the White House. Mysterious things happen to these Diebold highly hackable machines with untraceable and unrecountable electronic ballots across the country. The same thing happened four years ago in Oregon�s governor race only in reverse. The GOP pro-life candidate had the lead as we all yawned and went to bed only to discover the next morning the Democrat had won.

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So, exercise your right to vote. Pull those levers, punch those cards, in Oregon they can fill out their vote-by-mail ballots but remember, God allows Satan to carry out nefarious plots for definite reasons and there is usually a teaching lesson in there some place if we learn to read between the lines. Eventually what is done in secret will be exposed, if not now, on judgment day.

Hopefully one vote will still count,[Read] but then again our elections may be primarily for outward consumption like Glasnot (openness) and Perestroika (restructuring) was in the Soviet Union under Gorbachev. [Read]

Footnotes:

1. Restoring the American Dream by Robert J. Ringer � 1979 (P. 41)

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Betty is a former Oregon Republican party activist having served as state party secretary, county chairman, 5th congressional vice chairman and then elected chairman, and a precinct worker for many years but Betty gave up on the two-party system in 2004 and joined the Constitutional Party.

Betty is a researcher specializing in education, a freelance journalist and a regular contributor to www.NewsWithViews.com

E-Mail: bettyboot@wvi.com

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