A secure democratic Net is a fundamental right

You must think that I am crazy but in several states the US has started voting. This can be done by mail or in voting offices.

In fact there is no US election, there are elections for the US president in each US state organised by the State the way the State wants to organize it. There are a few reglementations and norms, but they still leave a lot of leverage and freedom to the states themselves. It is for this reason that voting starts and ends at different dates/hours in states and that the voting technology or ways in which you can vote differs also from state to state and sometimes even withing states. And this accounts for each part of the voting process.

We have seen the troubles in 2000 in Florida by which the Democrats had the feeling that the election had been stolen by lawyers and the threat of institutional chaos by Bush. We have seen the troubles in Ohio in 2004 by which some democrats think that the election had also be stolen. So you can expect the Democrats and the activists to be on their guard and to report and treat each incident with all the attention it may need. You can be sure that there are hundreds of lawyers (freelance or paid) that are on standby and have instructions or plans to follow up on each problem.

For the Europeans you should smile and think that those stupid Americans aren't capable of organizing their own presidential election in a decent way. First you have no president but a commissar. Secondly the election for your European parliament is a democratic joke if you take into the account the totally different ways in which they are organised and controlled across the EU.

So back to the US. The Democrats have learned that an advantage in the polls is a smokescreen and that even with that advantage you can still lose 2 elections on election night (or the weeks of legal battle afterwards). The Republicans know that they have won 2 elections the hard way and that it is never too late to win another.

And as the polls are going in every direction and as the primaries have shown that a certain part of the electorate at the very last moment may possible not be able to give their vote to Obama in the voting booth, every problem with voter registration, voting technology, votekeeping and votecounting technology may have an enormous impact.

http://www.wvgazette.com/News/200810170676?page=1&bui...

It would be a pitty if that would be the case because the next president needs a landslide to have enough power to make a new deal in this new century which already seems to start as dangerous as the last one.