When will the mission in Iraq be accommplished?
We have heard from our President
We have heard from Congress
We have heard from our media old and new.
But the most important voices needed in calling this question, the Iraqi people’s, have not been heard.
The upcoming elections next month in Iraq, would be a prime opporunity to call the question directly to its citizens. Put it on the ballot. Do they need us to stay or do they wish us to leave.
Empower them to make the decision, provide the means for them to become true partners in the democratic process.
Go or stay the destiny of the country of Iraq would be placed in the hands of its own
If the will of the people is for us to leave, implement an immediate 6 month exit strategy. If requested to stay, commit whatever means necessary to get the job done.
A Sunspot Up Close
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
Democracy is ingrained in the American character and is reflected in its political process from presidential elections down to the most minor of township races. Our passion for fairness and equality has given rise to a set of fundamental requirements for electronic voting systems that are substantially the same from state to state, listed in decreasing order of importance:
I. Thou shalt keep each voter’s choices an inviolable secret.
II. Thou shalt allow each eligible voter to vote only once, and only for those offices for which she is authorized to cast a vote.
III. Thou shalt not permit tampering with thy voting system, nor the exchange of gold for votes.
IV. Thou shalt report all votes accurately.
V. Thy voting system shall remain operable throughout each election.
VI. Thou shalt keep an audit trail to detect sins against Commandments II-IV, but thy audit trail shall not violate Commandment I.
Mr. Shamos also shares his thoughts as to why there are No Receipts Allowed.
If the voter is worried that the machine may not have processed her vote correctly, why doesn’t it just print a receipt? After all, when I play the lottery I get a ticket, and it’s that ticket alone that allows me to claim the prize.
Some candidates have figured out that it can be cheaper to pay voters directly for their votes than to spend the money campaigning and risk losing on Election Day. If you think about it, though, you might wonder how the candidate could ever know whom I voted for. What a fool he would be to pay money and never be able to verify that it had done any good. However, if the voting system printed a receipt that recorded my choices, it would violate the vote-buying prohibition of Commandment III, since I could redeem the receipt for cash from an unscrupulous candidate. (I leave it to your political imagination to determine whether any such people exist.) Without a receipt you would think he has only my word for how I voted, but even this is not true. Every card, mark-sense and electronic system can easily be used to implement vote-buying, but not on a large scale. (I won’t publish how this is done, but it is absurdly simple.) Receipts would turn the practice into a virtual epidemic.
Read the rest of this paper: CFP’93 - Electronic Voting - Evaluating the Threat here.