May 2012

SOS Gant & ALEC (GUEST POST: GUEST POSTER)

l3wis May 29, 2012 7Comments

Here is something to consider as you get ready to vote for your favorite candidates in this year’s primary and general elections.  This appears to be what Gant and PP are in the process of doing here in South Dakota.  Sunday’s Argus had this Gant comment:

“I’m going to continue to be active in my after-hours life in politics,” Gant said. “During work, I’m going to be very active in making sure our elections and corporations and other aspects of the office are running according to law.”

My question is, whose ‘law’?  Reminds me of Catherine Harris, SOS of FL in 2000 and Ken Blackwell, SOS of Ohio in 2004.  How did it work out for us?  American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is deep into this issue of restricting the people’s right to petition our government, select our representatives and air our grievances.

Well let’s look at what ALEC run Secretary of State (SOS) offices in many states of America, including South Dakota, are doing with their many rule changes to election monitoring and control.  Here is a summary of what we are and will see, then experience:

1. Cause confusion between real Election Fraud and phony Voter Fraud
2. Limit who can vote
3. Limit where they can vote
4. Centrally control the voting lists
5. Hire ALEC member corporations to ‘clean-up’ the voter rolls to remove undesirables
6. Take away local control of the election, no matter the office (school board, city hall to US President)
7. Use insecure, privately controlled voting equipment
8. Using unverifiable voting equipment
9. Use privately owned voting software, owned and controlled by multinational corporations
10. Count the votes in private
11. Final tabulation of vote totals in private

12.   Create diversions, when final tabulations of votes are not done in private, the election supervisors will modify records during diversion

1. Blame diversions to create new rules requiring private vote counting for next election
2. Remove citizen oversight committees
3. Circumvent long established rules
4. Remove any encumbrances to new ALEC rule implementations
5. Make rules so detailed to confuse poll workers, candidates, voters
6. Make ballots difficult to follow for poll workers, candidates and voters
7. Print ballots on special paper owned by voting machine companies, creating the ownership of actual final ballots an issue
8. Ownership of the paper and final vote totals may rest with the voting machine company, which owns the copyright to the tabulating software and paper
9. If an election looks close, create totals just outside of the required recount percentage
10. If a recount is ordered, rerun the ballots in question through the same counting procedures and software so the results are the same

If the above does not work:

1. Use your office to track the business dealings of your potential opponents
2. Use your office as a base for helping the campaigns of your favorite candidates
3. Use your office to destroy potential competition

Just consider this past year’s Wisconsin recall election problems.

Many of the ALEC controlled SOS offices in the United States have attempted to accomplish the above steps slowly over years, so the changes are not seen so suddenly.  It must usually be a gradual implementation process.  The problem South Dakota has this year, is the internal Republican fight boiling under the surface since the days of GOP Karl Mundt, GOP Frank Farrar and Democrat Dick Kniep.  The citizens of South Dakota are seeing the state GOP ready to eat their own in the “to the death” fight between the TeaBaggers, west-east river and the establishment power holders.  The Democrats did this to themselves in 1974 when Kniep ran for his third term against Bill Dougherty.  The two major factions of the state GOP are now in a full assault to finally remove their opponents at any cost.

Look at the race between Tea conservative Ernie Otten against incumbent Republican Senator Gene Abdallah as an example.  This is the classic fight happening within the GOP and is happening throughout the state this year.  The SOS office is going to be key to who the winners are, whether intended or ‘accidental’.

The decades old GOP fight is happening right before our eyes this year.  In the half dozen times it has happened in the SD history, the Democratic Party was ready with solid candidates to take advantage of the situations.  When will the current Democratic Party and it’s officeholders actually back real Democrats?  This year there is no active, positive South Dakota Democratic Party to make use of this situation.

The current Democratic Party operatives have turned over their party to cute email, social networking and the Obama For America efforts.  Very little grassroots or door to door efforts.  No Democratic Party comments about the political activities of the SOS office have been seen.  What is the Democratic Party afraid of?  Where are they?  What is the downside of publicizing potential Election Fraud?  Why are the out of office populace letting themselves be accused of Voter Fraud by the perpetrators of Election Fraud?