A propósito de...

... fraudes nas 
presidenciais americanas

A pré-campanha e a campapnha presidencial americana ficaram marcadas por uma áspera luta  entre democratas e republicanos em torno da legislação restritiva que os republicanos procuraram impôr em muitos Estados, a pretexto do combate à fraude eleitoral de natureza pessoal que os democratas estimam ser irrelevante. Acontece que os republicanos nunca estiveram nada preocupados com o fenómeno atestado por numerosos estudos e ensaios e bem evidenciado nas eleições na Florida em 2000 da fraude da responsabilidades de autoridades. A revista In These Times voltou a este tema e publica um artigo onde se assinala de ínicio:

The Threat of a Stolen Election

With the use of paperless voting machines in 31 states, recounts become impossible.

BY George Kenney

Perhaps it's because the U.S. Constitution does not guarantee Americans the right to vote. Perhaps it's because election officials believe (or hope) that the public has forgotten what democracy means or what fair elections are all about. Perhaps both parties opportunistically seek an advantage through fraud. Perhaps people are simply stupid. Nevertheless, it remains an almost inconceivable screw-up: in many states, including critical swing states, government officials have not guaranteed that votes can be counted, either, in some cases, counted accurately or, in others, counted at all. The mechanics of U.S. voting systems, by international standards, languish at the level of a dismal third world failure.

Many–maybe most–of our current problems with election auditing can be traced to the proliferation of electronic voting machines. Paperless machines that leave no auditable evidence of who won, who lost, or who stole an election. Machines with flimsy paper trails that can be tinkered with and/or that are too unreliable when needed. Internet voting, which by its nature is 100% insecure. Adding insult to injury, the corporations that sell these electronic gadgets claim, and courts have agreed, that election software is proprietary: the public interest in ensuring a fair election takes second place to corporate profits. Worse still, we have an extremely troubling history of persons with a direct interest in election outcomes owning a piece of the companies that count the vote. See, for example, former Sen. Chuck Hegel's victory in 1996 or, notably, the Romney connection to the privately held company Hart Intercivic whose machines are widely used, including in Ohio. (...)

O resto do artigo está aqui e inclui uma entrevista com Barbara Simons, uma investigadora reformada da IBM e antiga Presidente da Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), «the nation's oldest and largest educational and scientific society for computing professionals».

ler também aqui

Este post só pode terminar com uma heresia que, de qualquer modo, não parece tirar o sono a quase  ninguém nos EUA e no mundo: a de lembrar que, na tão celebrada democracia americana, o candidato com mais votos pode não ser eleito Presidente.

***

E até sobre as eleições de 2004
 que Bush venceu com mais
 3 milhões de votos há um livro assim :