5 simple rules for stealing the next election

     The line that separates The Voting Rights Act, Voting fraud ,and manipulation seems to be a big fat grey line. There are so many ways to sway results one way or another not deemed illegal, that its hard to know when you're being had. These are just 5 quick ways our votes are being devalued without generating consolidated complaints. It all starts by perpetuating negative feelings. Modern campaigns use negative ads to highlight the oppositions failures and down falls, which energizes the base but also reinforces in some the instinctive attitude that, they're all crooked so why vote for any of them. Right or wrong this successfuly eliminates a block of independent voters, smaller numbers are more easily managed.

       The remaining committed voters are a tougher nut to crack. Lately, some of the most complicated balloting forms to date are being used to further confuse an already difficult process. This year in Illinois the revised voting sheet was so large it wouldn't fit into the machine, delaying counting. The voting process should at-least be consistent within a given State but that's a different story. Believing in one person one vote can leave you disappointed. The popular vote doesn't win elections, You have to vote for the guy who has a delegate vote who also supports your candidate. It doesn't always work though, some voting districts don't have delegates who support your candidate so no matter how many votes your guy wins, they loose. Not how it should be. Ballot confusion and delayed counting are the second and third steps.

         Restricting voter rights hits on two fronts, one by cutting gains made through the Voting Rights Act, cutting citizen participation, and at the same time allowing business to donate unlimited funds to candidates who promote restrictive revisions on average citizens. New voting laws disproportionately hurt lower income voters and students. Veterans Military ID isn't allowed in some cases, fight for us fine, vote for us no thanks. Students can go to war but not vote on who might send them.

          When all else fails. The last trick is the best. Actual vote manipulation, 130 million people voted in 08. According to computer science and security experts at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, on quarter of those voting machines can be hacked with 20 dollars worth of equipment and an 8th grade science education. In 06  Princeton University conducted a successful cyber attack on electronic voting machines, but it required knowledge of the voting machines and all types of complicated hacker code. The new hack was done by constructing a primitive remote control out of basic electronics parts and were able to tamper with votes in machines that 32 million people are still on track to use this year. Homeland Security issued a bulletin in 04 http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/bulletins/SB04-252.html#diebold but no technical advances were made. 

          These tactics all focus on the poorest segments of society. With all of these actions currently in play, the hardest part of conducting the fix will be, what margin of defeat would generate the least amount of suspicion that corruption has occurred.