What is the Big Lesson of the UK 'Brexit' Vote for Americans? It Was Done With Paper Ballots

By Dave Lindorff

The decision by a majority of UK voters to reject membership in the European Union in Wednesday's hotly-contested referendum has been a devastating defeat for the corporatist domination of the European political and economic scene. It throws the corporate duopoly in the UK into turmoil, and also has the EU bureaucrats and the banking elite in Brussels and the financial capitals of Europe in a panic, lest other countries' voters, as in Spain and Italy, or even France and the Netherlands, decide to follow suit. (Spain has a national election tomorrow which could be heavily influenced by the British referendum outcome, since if the united left wins, it could eventually lead to Spain's exit from the EU.)

But for the US, which is not a party to the EU, there is also a huge lesson: 'Brexit,' despite being opposed by the political establishment -- Conservative and Labor -- and by the corporate elite of London's City, the financial capital of Europe, won this vote. And the reason the opponents of UK membership in the EU were able to win against all that powerful opposition, has, in no small part, to do with the fact that all the voting was done on paper ballots.

Compare that to the US, where voting, for the vast majority of people, is done on machines, in many cases electronic machines that leave no paper trail of individual votes, or even of vote totals per machine. We are always hearing reports of faulty -- or hacked -- machines that are "flipping" votes, so that someone can cast a vote for a Democratic candidate or party slate and see it switched to Republican, reports of entire tallies for a day's voting being simply lost, machines that don't work, forcing would be voters to wait for hours to vote on a limited number of machines that supposedly are working, limited polling places because county or city governments claim they can's afford to buy an adequate number of machines, a shortage of paper ballots when machines fail, etc.

The list of excuses goes on and on. And why, one might ask, does America vote by electronic machines instead of on readily verifiable paper ballots? The only possible reason is pressure from the corporate media, whose sole interest in our elections is the "horse race" leading to a meaningless competition to get the results out first. Why should it matter though, if you think about it, whether we learn the results of an election an hour or two after the voting ends, or the next day, or even several days after the voting? Why, in fact, do we allow news organizations like AP or theNew York Times to "call" elections based on faulty algorithms that are based on extrapolations of early counts in specific targeted voting districts?...

For the rest of this article by DAVE LINDORFF in ThisCantBeHappening!, the uncompromised, collectively run, five-time Project Censored Award-winning online alternative news site, please go to: www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/3217