Yesterday we witnessed an increasingly rare phenomenon: We the People won at the ballot box.

In Ohio and Mississippi voters successfully killed two bills that furthered the Union-Busting, Women-Hating agenda of the extreme right. Senate Bill 5 was defeated by a massive statewide labor coalition, fighting to reclaim their right to collectively bargain in the Buckeye State. In the Bible Belt, women  -- and more than a few good southern men -- stood together to defeat an initiative that would have defined life at the beginning of fertilization, a head-on challenge to Roe v. Wade and a woman's right to choose.

We're happy, of course, for the workers of Ohio who still own their voices, and the women in Mississippi who still own their bodies. But there's a real downside to yesterday's news for progressive-minded Election Integrity activists.

Every time "our side" wins at the voting booth, it becomes much more difficult to talk about our favorite topic: computerized election fraud. 

So what the hell happened? What to make of this bump in the road under the Apocalypse Juggernaut Express our country has become? Why didn't they rig the Trojan Horse computerized voting machines like we damn well know they can do? What stopped them this time?

The fact is that we don't know -- and we never will. We can speculate, that's all. Because our votes are still counted in the electronic dark by secret, proprietary software, none of us can say with certainty what happened in any given election.

Here are some options:

* we really won with absolutely no attempted hacking or rigging the machines

* we were "allowed" to win -- throwing us a bone to take our guard down so we're less vigilant about election fraud leading into the 2012 campaigns

* the results were pre-programmed against us but the turn-out and strength of opposition voters was too high

* the rigging was derailed or sabotaged from within -- counter-rigging? Outside hack?

* almost any other scenario you might concoct

I was chatting on Facebook last night with a few EI activists, deconstructing what just occured, and in particular Sierra Nolan's insightful responses are worth posting here.

"I think it is all gamed so that there are wins to throw off investigation and analysis of the system. While I was excited and happy about many of the outcomes, I was also thinking about how this is going to make getting the message out all that more difficult. The best way I have found is to compare it to gambling and how the machines are gamed. 

I think Mississippi discovered that the language of their bill went too far and would have resulted in some major financial loss for corporate powers. It would have also brought about a lot of court cases they were not yet ready to fight. The fight to make abortion illegal will continue but via another route. . . 

. . . I think it would have been too obvious (to rig it), and they are holding those aces to play in 2012. If they had rigged the Ohio vote tonight with a 25 point spread going in and the entire world saying it was an easy no problem win for the unions, after what happened in WI and what's going on in MI, surely every torch and pitchfork in the Midwest would have justifiably marched in ready to battle it out in Buckeye state. The Mississippi thing, not sure: maybe they just finished Lysistrata at the ladies book club and whoever rigs the machines there would have been directly affected? That's a bit tongue in cheek, but, honestly, men have something invested in their sexual partners' access to birth-control and reproductive options, too."

So, what do you think? Now that our elections are naught but a big guessing game, and we still enjoy the tattered illusion of a free country -- feel free to guess what actually happened yesterday in our elections!

But whatever you do, don't let your guard down. We can celebrate the occasional jackpot in this rigged slot-machine voting system, but remember -- the house always wins in the end.

Hand counted paper ballots -- because democracy is NOT faith based.

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To learn how our votes have been rigged for the past 40 years by corporate-controlled computers, check out THE EVIDENCE

To learn how to have a real election using hand-counted paper ballots, check out HAND COUNTED PAPER BALLOTS NOW!

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Video: How To Rig An Election in A Few Easy Steps