Late last week, HBO started airing an astounding documentary called “Hacking Democracy” which documents Black Box Voting’s Bev Harris' efforts to prove that electronic voting is not only hackable, it has been hacked. As Doris “Granny D” Haddock points out in her commentary about the show,

What is shown by the film is that, if Diebold designed their ATM machines the way they design their voting machines, none of us would have a dime left in our bank accounts. Such remarkable facts are usually not the result of incompetence, but of design.

Perhaps the most jaw-dropping piece of information in this documentary is that John Kerry not only knew that the voting machines could be hacked and votes manipulated before he conceded the election, he knew that in fact it had happened. Yes, that is right, Kerry knew there was evidence that the election could have been rigged and he still threw in the towel.

I have always wondered how Kerry suddenly catapulted to the lead spot in that election. It had to have been more than Howard Dean’s scream. Could it have been a very orchestrated effort to make sure that if something went wrong and the Republicans weren’t able to control and win the election as planned that someone who supported the agenda behind the war on terrorism would still be at the helm?

In the run-up to this election, it is important to remember that we have Nancy Pelosi saying that impeachment won’t be on the table if the Dems win control of the House and Howard Dean saying that no, the Democratic Party doesn’t have a plan for bringing the troops home or ending the Iraq conflict anytime soon. It has taken six long years for the consciousness of the American public to reach critical mass in understanding that something is seriously wrong with this presidency. But what we are still refusing to see is that the Democratic Party is not a true alternative. No matter what happens on Wednesday morning, we are still going to be sitting in a deep smelly pile of brown stuff with no real plan to clean up the mess.

Another woman who has worked tirelessly to expose the hijacking of democracy is Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA). From the beginning, she has questioned the official 911 story and worked to document the disenfranchisement of black voters. All of this is documented in American Blackout. Because of McKinney’s courageous insistence on telling the truth, she has been the victim of two highly organized campaigns to drive her out of office. You’ll recall earlier this year she was accused of hitting a Capitol Hill police officer who stopped her when she didn’t show him her ID. The supposed video evidence of the incident was never released and the charges were dropped, but not before the way over the top news coverage had done its damage. McKinney lost her primary and will not be returning to office in January.

So before you go out and celebrate Tuesday night/sink into the depths of depression depending on how this goes down, sit yourself down and watch these films that document the work of these two courageous women. Until we understand the extent to which our democracy has been stolen, we will not be able to reclaim it.

Lucinda Marshall is a feminist artist, writer and activist. She is the Founder of the Feminist Peace Network. Her work has been published in numerous publications in the U.S. and abroad including, Awakened Woman, Alternet, Dissident Voice, Off Our Backs, The Progressive, Rain and Thunder, Z Magazine, Common Dreams and Information Clearinghouse. She blogs at WIMN Online.

Other Articles by Lucinda Marshall

* Child Abuse: As American as Apple Pie
* Is Betty Ugly?
* Foley is a Red Herring
* What Women are Saying About the Violence in the Middle East
* Women’s Equality Day: In Praise of Radical Women
* Penis Politics
* Involuntary Motherhood
* Kathleen Parker’s Duke Rants Miss the Point
* What Mothers Really Want
* The Harm that Occurs When Women are Under- and Mis-Represented
* Ending Terrorism Against Women Begins at Home: The Urgent Need To Fully Fund VAWA
* President Bush’s Ken-Doll Performance an Insult to Women
* How Hot Does it Have to Get?
* 30,000 Iraqis, More or Less
* We're Melting
* The Turning Point
* Geena in 2008
* Before There Are 2,000 More
* The Booby Trap: Does Breast Cancer Awareness Save Lives? A Call to Re-think the Pink
* Were Women Raped in New Orleans?
* Why I Do Not Support The Troops
* The Democratic Unravelling
* Child for Sale: The Corporate Takeover of Our Classrooms
* The Dead Children's Society
* Media Exclusion of Women as Sources Impedes Meaningful Reform
* Military Pollution: The Quintessential Universal Soldier
* Honoring the Lives of Women in Perilous Times
* Why We are Horrified by the Destructive Forces of Nature but Accept Our Own Violence
* The Financial Immorality of American Generosity
* The Surreality Show: Stranger than Fiction
* (Not) In The News: Media Culpability in the Continuum of Violence Against Women
* Yanar Mohammed on the Impact of the US Occupation on the Lives of Iraqi Women
* The Misogynist Undercurrents of Abu Ghraib