The trouble with your rant is, "Where is the Bastille, here in this big country?" You have to be more specific, in a country this big and this diverse and with SO MANY overt and covert methods of control.
Diverse & big, yes, with multiple problems, yes, but we have one thing in common: ALL of our voting machines, in every state, are now run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled largely (80%) by one, private, far rightwing-connected corporation, ES&S (which just bought out Diebold, aka Premier), with virtually no audit/recount controls.
What's wrong with this picture? Do you know HOW OUTRAGEOUS AND ANTI-DEMOCRATIC this is? They have now removed the bottom line--the BOTTOM LINE--of democracy: the counting of our votes in the PUBLIC VENUE.
As with the Bastille--a dungeon-like prison of the 'Ancien Regime'--the voting machines are not our only problem. But they are actually worse than that prison because the control is pervasive, secret and invisible. 'TRADE SECRET' code! Can you believe it?
Back in '06, when FLA-13 was flipped by an ES&S machine, the Dem took it to court and asked to review ES&S's source code, to find out what happened to the 18,000 Dem votes that went missing. ES&S refused and argued that its 'right' to profit from our elections
trumps the right of the voters to know how their votes were tabulated! In a democracy, ES&S would have been laughed out of court. But no, the judge ruled in ES&S's favor. But here's the real kicker. The Dem candidate took the matter to the new Dem Congress--the ultimate arbiter of elections--where it was quickly buried and never heard from again.
How's that for a kick in the nuts? Our own party leaders--all of whom voted for and supported non-transparent, unverifiable, corporate-run, 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting and STILL support it.
So, one, you gotta figure that 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting is VERY, VERY, VERY important to "the powers that be" whichever party they claim to belong to. There is plenty of other evidence that it is--for instance, the Anthrax Congress passed the e-voting boondoggle in the
same month as the Iraq War Resolution, and another for instance, the corpo-fascist media's COMPLETE black-holing of this theft of democracy--'TRADE SECRET' vote counting. And two, we gotta start SOMEWHERE, to unpeel the layers of control, and the 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines and central tabulators are, basically, the final nail in that system. Pull that one out and the rotten structure will start to unravel, and other nails will start to become removable.
Corporations have NO PLACE between us and our vote count. They have NO RIGHT to be there. We've got to remove them.
It is also a DOABLE citizen campaign. Control over voting systems still resides at the state/local level, where ordinary people still have some potential influence. As I said, your county registrar may live right down the street from you. Most Americans don't live that far from their state capitol. The e-voting coup was not accomplished by a federal requirement of e-voting but rather by corruption. There is NO federal saw requiring it. We can return to old-fashioned paper ballot vote counting or an OPEN SOURCE code system, without needing an act of Congress, if we can get enough people in local jurisdictions to face down our corrupt local officials.
Don't lament. Don't rant. Or do, if you need to. But get beyond that to think in practical, strategic terms. Where does our power reside, and what is the state of that mechanism of power?
Voting is very nearly the definition of our sovereignty as a People. By voting, we transfer some of our power temporarily to individual leaders, who exercise it on our behalf. That very mechanism has been taken over not just by private entities but mostly by ONE very evil private entity.
I won't go into what I think the consequences of this have been already, over the last three elections (including Dem victories). You can read about that if you want to, here
"Restoring democracy in the United States"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x573647It also appeared here, with many comments
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=125x302923#303036But if your complaint is that none of our leaders seem accountable to us any more, then you don't need to know how they have been suborned--we can only guess at it, anyway--because the situation with 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting is that subversion and control of our leaders is INHERENT. It has been INSTALLED in our system with money AND now with 'TRADE SECRET' code. And the 'TRADE SECRET' code is the one we can get at--with a lot of effort, to be sure, and requiring widespread citizen participation, but it CAN be done.
Black Americans did it, with their basic right to vote back in the 1960s. That was VERY difficult and was conducted exactly as this campaign should be--and needs to be--at the precinct, county and state level, with peaceful group confrontations of the white power establishment right at the precinct or registrar's office. They ultimately got a federal law, which we could also get, once we get rid of the corporate voting machines.
And Latin Americans have accomplished something similar in their countries--honest, transparent elections--resulting in a HUGE change for the better in Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Uruguay, Paraguay and other L/A counties. They had even worse starting conditions than we do. The key to--and first lesson of--their democracy revolution has been transparent vote counting. Many of these countries have
horrible media, but they keep electing Leftists, time and again. The vote count is reliable and verified. They get out the vote.
Don't think generalized revolution. Think specific targets, that, in current circumstances, are doable without the violent corporate state coming down upon our heads. Protests with a specific point--a big one--a righteous point, that many will approve of--and that, if successful, will materially alter the power structure. You are right in that respect--mentioning the Bastille. But the "Bastille" was only a symbol by the time they stormed it. Invading that prison didn't, in itself, change anything. The French revolutionists also didn't have much experience and tradition for establishing a democratic system and they ultimately faltered because of that. We do have that experience and tradition. We know what the elements are. We know--if we think about it--that our right to vote is key. It is a must do, to retrieve it from corporate control. Or it isn't democracy.
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