Is it a conspiracy or am I paranoid?

Sometimes, as I hear about the lastest activities in our government, I wonder if I'm going crazy or not. Am I one of "those" people who believe in alien abductions and conspiracies behind every grassy knoll? (No offense to those of you who have been abducted by aliens...) I can't figure out why else I am so frightened and concerned about our government but so many others are okay with what is going on. I just looked at the Bush Approval Ratings and Idaho Republicans STILL have an 80% approval rating! What is UP with that? Are they BLIND? In a COMA?

My latest headspinning experience...
I received an e-mail this morning that shared some mind-blowing information about the security and integrity of the voting process in America:

1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S. [Source]

2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the US voting machine industry. [Source]

3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.[Source] [Source]

4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." [Source] [Source]

5. 35% of ES&S is owned by Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, who became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines. [Source] [Source]

6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, a long-time friend of the Bush family, was caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee. [Source] [Source] [Source]

7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice- presidential candidates. [Source] [Source]

8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the US and counts almost 60% of all US votes. [Source] [Source]

9. Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters. [Source] [Source]

10. Diebold also makes ATMs, checkout scanners, and ticket machines, all of which log each transaction and can generate a paper trail. [Source] [Source]

11. Diebold is based in Ohio. [Source]

12. Diebold employs 5 convicted felons as developers. These are the people who write the voting machine computer code. [Source] [Source]

13. Diebold's Senior Vice-President, Jeff Dean, was convicted of 23 counts of felony theft in the first degree. [Source] [Source]

14. Diebold Senior Vice-President Jeff Dean was convicted of planting back doors in his software and using a "high degree of sophistication" to evade detection over a period of 2 years. [Source] [Source]

15. None of the international election observers were allowed in the polls in Ohio. [Source] [Source]

16. California banned the use of Diebold machines because the security was so bad. Despite Diebold's claims that the audit logs could not be hacked, a chimpanzee was able to do it! [Source] [Source]

17. 30% of all US votes are carried out on unverifiable touch screen voting machines with no paper trail. Bush's Help America Vote Act of 2002 has as its goal to replace all machines with the new electronic touch screen systems with no paper trail. [Source] [Source]

18. All -- not some -- but ALL of the voting machine errors detected and reported went in favor of Bush or Republican candidates. [Source] [Source] [Source] [Source] [Source] [Source]

19. The governor of the state of Florida, Jeb Bush, is the President's brother. [Source] [Source]

20. Major statistical voting oddities (odds on the order of 250 million to 1!) -- again always favoring Bush -- have been mathematically demonstrated by experts. [Source] [Source] [Source] [Source] [Source] [Source]

I haven't researched all of the sources yet... but if this is saying what it LOOKS like it's saying... my hopes for salvation (or at least a glimmer of progress!) this November may only be spitting into the wind. I do not WANT to believe that our system is SO corrupt that elections are rigged... but COULD IT BE TRUE?

I don't know... it just seems that there is SO much INSANE stuff going on with our government (the sale of ports to UAE, Mike Brown in charge of FEMA, the legislative actions against same-sex marriage, HARRIET MEYERS!) and we are prevented every which way in our attempts to halt the madness. And 80% of Idaho Republicans still approve of Bush.

It's getting to the point where those jokes about "Bush supporters" and their "Kool-Aid" don't seem nearly as funny any more.

UPDATE: I've been trying to locate any credible sites to provide legitimacy to the concerns about the validity of the election. So far all I've been able to locate is from yet another blog, Vote Fraud Allegations Gather Steam. Is this topic just blog chat or is there any legitimate coverage and investigation about it? {Not that blog chats aren't legitimate but you know what I mean!} However, it seems that Black Box Voting is has intensively investigated this issue and is continuing to publish updated findings.

UPDATE: This is still a current topic of discussion in Florida. Check out this article: Watchdog Group Questions 2004 Fla. Vote

UPDATE: A whistleblower is arrested in California: Man Pleads Not Guilty in Voting Device Case