As John Gideon asked in today’s Daily Voting News, why is it that the Financial Times of London is reporting on our nation’s electoral meltdown this year, while the national mainstream media in America couldn’t seem to care less?
The last three election cycles in the US have been marked by controversy not only about candidates, but also about the fairness and accuracy of the voting process. And as voters head to the polls today for primaries in some jurisdictions, the coming cycle promises more of the same.
With about 8,000 separate election authorities managing approximately 175,000 polling places and perhaps as many as 150,000 different ballot forms that include choices for everyone from senator to dogcatcher, American elections are complex even when all goes well. But this cycle sees many states and smaller jurisdictions making last-minute efforts to switch to electronic voting, and early signs of trouble are appearing.
The rest of the piece covers much of the territory — the lawsuits, the ES&S failures, the Dieobld hacks, etc. from all over the country — that we’ve been covering here over the last several weeks in regard to our approaching E-Voting “train wreck”. You know, the one that we’ve written article after article about, complaining that the local media is reporting the stories as if they are solely local problems, while both they and the national media fail to connect the dots which clearly show that these problems are happening everywhere…and on a massive scale.
FT even bothers to mention the almost completely ignored (by the mainstream corporate media in this country) GAO Report on electronic voting which we first broke here, and then waited and waited as every national newspaper and wire service in the country completely ignored it.
FT even managed to advance the story a bit! Go figure!…
A principal author of the report, analyst David Powner, said in an interview that since last autumn, nothing had happened to change the report’s conclusions.
Well, heck, how hard was that?! Thank you, FT!
Oh, well. To paraphrase what they say about Vegas…What’s reported by the The BRAD BLOG, stays on The BRAD BLOG.
At least until it’s picked up by a respected foreign media outlet.
Let’s WRITE them over there, so we don’t have to WRITE them here!
{ed note: Spam comment deleted.}
… somebody has to be the media … the MSM is a conduit for the comfort zone … zoned out from the reality of the republican dictatorship in the US …
We’ve come full circle, folks. The American tradition of press freedom began with John Peter Zenger, who was acquitted of libel against the colonial governor of New York, William Cosby, in the 1730s (please see "The Lindbergh Syndrome" for details). Cosby was an appointee of King George II (isn’t that an irony, the second George!), and the question before the court was "Is it libel to print the truth?" English courts said truth was irrelevant to a charge of libel, but the colonial court disagreed. That ruling was codified into our Constitution later.
Now America has corporate-controlled media that stifle unpleasant truths about an American president, which are outed by a British source. And our King George II might just go the way of his namesakes on account of it. First the Downing Street minutes, now an election expose. God Save the Queen!
RLM #5
Where is the libel ruling "codified into our Constitution"? Libel is one leg of "defamation", the other being "slander".
The MSM is ignoring Colbert’s roasting of the duhcider in chief (Raw Story here).
Re: The train wreck –
I’m thinking we should find out when each state’s primary is taking place, which machines are used in the elections, and print out fliers to hand out (being careful to check the legal restraints first of course) detailing the flaws with those particular machines and warning the person that their vote may not be counted, and why.
If not fliers, perhaps posters…full page ads..rolling billboards..ads on the radio…a banner behind a plane…little flags and magnets on cars with the bradblog or velvet revolution address…hell I don’t know, but we have to wake people up!
Maybe we could do a "runaway bride" publicity stunt…that seems to get the public’s attention.
(Okay, I think I need more coffee.)
At least they have "the Olds" over there… We’re still waiting for "the News" or "the Olds" and have neither.
For Dredd: "Slander" pertains to the spoken word,
"libel" to the written (printed) word. Thus "slander" is irrelevant to freedom of the press, but relevant to freedom of speech. "Libel" is what matters when we talk of press freedom.
My phrase "codified into the Constitution" was meant in a broad sense, not with reference to a specific article. To this day, English libel laws are more stringent than ours; they still cling to the notion that one can write truthfully and still be guilty of libel. We exempt truth from attack under libel statutes. The "fourth estate" wouldn’t bear that designation if this weren’t the case, so the Constitutional reference is valid, I think.
My guess is that they’re not warning us about the upcoming train wreck because they don’t intend to inform us about it when it happens.
RLM #9
Depends on who you listen to, and whether the "case" is handled in court or in the public opinion court.
Freedom of the press is both speech and print. Freedom of speech is too. It might be understood better as freedom of expression.
You did not cite the constitution, but instead yourself. Quote yourself then, instead of the constitution. You have inherent power to quote yourself.
I was just wondering if I missed something in the constitution as I was reading it for the umteenth time. I have found that "the constitution" to most folk is a feeling they have, like a gut feeling, about what they feel it is. But generally when people are asked they realize that themselves.
Hold these two morsels in your mouth at the same time and see if you like the flavor:
From the Financial Times article:
"One problem is that many of the new voting machines that will be deployed are arriving from offshore manufacturing sites – mainly China – and are being rushed into service without adequate quality controls, says Kimball Brace, president of Election Data Services, a voting consultancy firm."
From Stephen Colbert’s speech:
"I believe democracy is our greatest export. At least until China figures out a way to stamp it out of plastic for three cents a unit."
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KestrelBrightEyes, you have some good ideas there.