The Republican controlled Congress passed the seriously flawed Help Americans Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002.  It was a cash cow for Republican owned touch screen and other electronic voting and counting machines companies; a way to keep control of votes in Republican Party hands, and suppress and steal Democratic votes. 

There were countless warnings from computer experts and others about this undemocratic, unsecure, undetectable potential (which became a reality in 2004) for stealing and changing votes, electronic balloting method.  However, state Democratic parties and the Democratic National Committee continue to ignore the critical importance of countering this, even now.

I and many others have written about this vital issue. Plug in HAVA on this site's search menu button to read more.

In all the excitement among Democratic voters about Obama and Clinton, Democratic officials have given short shrift to how votes are counted and now, during the 2008 primaries, how the voting lists/databases were compiled.  These are the ingredients for another voting fiasco and stolen election in November.

Here are reports from BradBlog about voting list database problems during the 2008 primaries and the consequences around the country:

Georgia: Widespread bottlenecks for voters as problems occur with Diebold's new e-pollbook system and the state's new Photo ID restrictions. Voters waited in line for up to two hours in some places.

New Mexico: 17,000 (11%) forced to vote on provisional ballots in Democratic Caucus as previously registered Democrats find they are no longer on voter rolls recently privatized by voting machine company ES&S.

Arizona: We've begun receiving reports from voters and local officials of polling places where some 40% of voters were forced to vote on provisionals, after state registration system outsourced to ES&S.

California: Various reports of voters registered for one party to find they were switched to another, or not registered at all. Confusion about how to handle non-partisan voters in Los Angeles County leads to nearly 100,000 votes which may not be counted properly.

In addition, from Obama's campaign during the Louisiana primary yesterday, according to BradBlog: " 'The Obama campaign submitted an urgent request for assistance to the Secretary of State’s Division of Elections today, after receiving widespread reports from Democrats across Louisiana who reported that they were not allowed to vote because their party affiliation had been switched. Hundreds of Louisiana democrats went to the polls to vote in today’s presidential primary and found that they were now on registration lists as Independent or Unaffiliated voters.' "

New Mexico on Super Tuesday provides another cautionary example, according to an article in AlterNet: "The mystery of what went wrong in New Mexico’s Super Tuesday Democratic Caucus deepened on Friday. Party officials on background said they absolutely were given a bad voter list from the Secretary of State – whose spokesman, in turn, defended the database prepared by ES&S, one of the nation’s large private election vendors."

As BradBlog explains: "Many states are just now fully implementing new, statewide, computerized registration rolls as mandated by the disastrous Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002. The systems are being outsourced to private companies in many states, and more and more Election Days seem to be turning into Beta Tests for the new systems..."

States' Democratic Party and the DNC should take the advice many of us have offered and which Ellen Theisen, managing editor of VotersUnite.org, succinctly proposes via AlterNet, who said ".....New Mexico’s experience underscores that all election functions need to be run by the public sector. (The Democratic Party straddles the fence between a private and a public entity.) She also said voter lists need to be maintained from the local level up – not the other way around, where officials in the state capital or working for out-of-state companies are responsible for tracking who registers to vote, who moves and who dies."

The warning signs are still there and this time the Democratic Party, local, state and national, better heed them and counter with effective Democratic voter protection or 2008 may be a repeat of 2004. Fool Democrats twice...no excuse...for Democrats!