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Corporate Control over the Electronic Ballot Booth
Merger of ES&S with Diebold: A dangerous monopoly?
Global Research September 16, 2009
PlanetaryMovement.org by Michael Carmichael
The recent announcement of the pending merger of Election Systems & Software (ES&S) of Omaha, Nebraska with Diebold/Premier has raised warning flags that a monopoly in vote counting will be the inevitable result.
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Suspicions of rigged ballot-counting via manipulation of computer-transmitted data reached a fever pitch one year ago with the affidavit filed in federal court by Stephen Spoonamore, a business associate of Mike Connell, the leading Republican Party specialist in IT and web development.
Spoonamore's affidavit was explosive, because the whistleblower revealed that Mike Connell had informed him that radical Republican operatives could have manipulated the results of elections including the presidential election of 2004 and the general election of 2006.
An attorney sent a letter to then Attorney General Michael Mukasey that stated:
“We have been confidentially informed by a source we believe to be credible that Karl Rove has threatened Michael Connell, a principal witness we have identified in our King Lincoln case in federal court in Columbus, Ohio, that if he does not agree to "take the fall" for election fraud in Ohio, his wife Heather will be prosecuted for supposed lobby law violations."
Mike Connell died on December 19, 2008 while piloting his small airplane near the Akron airport.
The nature and circumstanced of Connell's death raised suspicions about the entire controversy swirling around him at the time of his fatal air crash.
ES&S has a very interesting Republican pedigree including a major investment by Carolyn Hunt of the well-known right-wing Texan family. The following is an account of the company's dubious origins:
Republican Senator Chuck Hagel disclosed in public documents that he was the Chairman of American Information Systems and claimed between a $1 to 5 million investment in the McCarthy Group. In 1997, American Information Systems purchased Business Records Corp. (BRC), formerly Texas-based election company Cronus Industries, to become ES&S.
One of the BRC owners was Carolyn Hunt of the right-wing Hunt oil family, which supplied much of the original money for the Council on National Policy.
In 1996, Hagel became the first elected Republican Nebraska senator in 24 years when he did surprisingly well in an election where the votes were verified by the company he served as chairman and maintained a financial investment.
In both the 1996 and 2002 elections, Hagel’s ES&S counted an estimated 80% of his winning votes.
Due to the contracting out of services, confidentiality agreements between the State of Nebraska and the company kept this matter out of the public eye.
Hagel’s first election victory was described as a “stunning upset” by one Nebraska newspaper.
Planetary is monitoring the situation emerging around ES&S and its impact on the quality of democracy in the United States.
© Copyright 2005-2009 GlobalResearch.ca
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Mike Connell was warned not to fly before plane crash
By Wayne Madsen Online Journal Contributing Writer December 22, 2008 (WMR) - WMR has learned from knowledgeable sources in Ohio that Republican Party computer networking guru Mike Connell was warned not to fly in anonymous warnings conveyed to principals in the ongoing federal civil lawsuit of King Lincoln Bronzeville Neighborhood Association v. Blackwell, stemming from GOP-engineered vote fraud in the 2004 Ohio presidential election, as well as a potential Ohio racketeer-influenced criminal organization (RICO) criminal proceeding against former Bush White House aide Karl Rove and Blackwell, in the conspiracy to illegally steer Ohio’s 20 electoral votes to the Bush column in 2004.
Connell’s Piper Saratoga single-engine plane crashed during the evening of December 19 in Uniontown, Ohio, as it was preparing to land at Akron-Canton airport.
There were no other passengers and Connell was killed in the crash. Connell had flown to College Park, Maryland, the previous day.
Connell, who lived in Akron with his wife Heather and four children, often flew to Washington for activities related to his IT businesses.
Connell’s name surfaced as a key player in Rove’s election fraud conspiracy after this year’s July 17 Columbus news conference hosted by Cliff Arnebeck, the Ohio attorney who has been representing plaintiffs in the federal civil suit against former Republican Secretay of State J. Kenneth Blackwell.
On the phone at the conference was John McCain campaign adviser and computer security specialist Stephen Spoonamore who identified Connell as a key player, as well as potential trial witness, in the GOP’s conspiracy to flip Ohio votes in the 2004 election.
Spoonamore and Connell had reportedly worked together on foreign elections in programs sponsored by the International Republican Institute (ISI) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
Both had traveled abroad together on special election projects to ensure “fair voting” procedures.
GOP vote flipping conspiracy in place earlier than the November 2004
For the first time, WMR has learned that the GOP vote flipping conspiracy was in place earlier than the November 2004 general election and was used to deny votes to Democratic candidates John Edwards and Dennis Kucinich in the March 2, 2004, Democratic primary.
John Kerry won the primary with 52 percent of the vote to 34 percent for Edwards and 9 percent for Kucinich.
After Connell was identified as a potential witness in the civil case against Blackwell and a possible criminal Ohio RICO case against Rove, Blackwell, and perhaps others, the plaintiff attorneys received a tip from a high-level source in the McCain presidential campaign that Rove had issued a threat against Connell.
Connell had worked for the 2008 McCain presidential campaign on the development of its web pages.
WMR has learned from our Ohio sources that five threats against Connell were conveyed to the election fraud plaintiff attorneys with the last tip being “Connell is in danger.”
One of the threats reportedly made by Rove to Connell was that Connell could forget about a pardon from President George W. Bush if he did not “take the fall” in the event criminal charges were brought and that his wife Heather, who was used as a majority stockholder for one of Connell’s web design companies, GovTech Solutions, would be prosecuted for illegal lobbying.
Connell’s other company is New Media Communications, Inc.
We have also learned that one additional tip was relayed to Connell’s wife and it was to the effect that Connell “was in danger and he should not fly his plane.”
Connell’s firms received contracts to place its servers behind the House of Representatives firewall courtesy of then-House Administration Committee Chairman Bob Ney (R-OH), later jailed for his role in the Jack Abramoff lobbying-influence peddling scandal.
Connell also designed and ran the web sites for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Judiciary Committee.
Monitor all committee e-mails and documents including impeachment hearings against Bush and Cheney
WMR has learned that through effective GOP control of these web sites, the Bush White House was able to monitor all committee e-mails and documents, including planning documents for House Judiciary Committee impeachment hearings against Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
We have also learned that Connell’s IT firm did classified web site development work for the CIA.
Based on the threats against Connell, the federal judge hearing the civil suit King Lincoln v. Blackwell, conveyed to Connell that the court would protect him if he came forward.
On October 17, 2008, Connell’s attorneys attempted to quash an October 8, 2008, plaintiff subpoena for his court appearance.
On October 31, U.S. Judge Solomon Oliver denied the motion to quash the subpoena and ordered Connell’s deposition to proceed on November 3, the day before Election Day. WMR has learned that on Friday, October 31, Connell was nervous and “beet red” during the hearing to quash the subpoena.
On Monday, November 3, Connell was composed and it is believed that his top shelf law firm had been selected by Rove to represent Connell for the deposition.
Rove’s intent was to ensure that there would be no deposition from Connell before the November 4 election.
WMR has also learned that Connell was prepared to testify before the House Judiciary Committee about the election fraud in Ohio and other states but that the offer of testimony was not acted upon senior staffers for House Judiciary Committee Rep. John Conyers (D-MI).
A source in Columbus told us that some of Conyers’ senior staffers on his committee and in is office are not to be trusted on issues related to election fraud.
In addition, Rove and the Bush White House attempted to forestall testimony by election officials in Mahoning County and Youngstown, Ohio, on election fraud in 2004 by promising to have former Rep. James Traficant (D-OH), who is currently imprisoned after being convicted of corruption, released early in return for their silence.
Traficant is not scheduled for release from federal prison until Sept, 2, 2009.
Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.
Copyright © 2008 WayneMadenReport.com
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Because they are stealing elections2000 2004 2006 2008They flipped the votes clear as day Segment 1 http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZAyEfovA404 Segment 2 http://youtube.com/watch?v=vTBLfgos5b8 Segment 3 http://youtube.com/watch?v=SzKbigGoMoo Segment 4 http://youtube.com/watch?v=9vNvweInGFs Segment 5 http://youtube.com/watch?v=rX8fRwsTpoQ Segment 6 http://youtube.com/watch?v=m9Kq4dxPwY8 Segment 7 http://youtube.com/watch?v=AsgY4_BB2lo Segment 8 http://youtube.com/watch?v=Jy1sz-xBxf8 |
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Does anybody know what this means?
I am serious.
If the elections are proven to be fraudulent — no matter what the supreme court said in december 2000 — I mean is there anything that can be done or are we forced to consider that legal solutions have failed.
Consider that some lunatic has stolen a gun and taken over a house and refuses to give up.
If the administration’s power is held illegitimately, what do we do — is there any precedent — I dont know of one.
I mean we all know that it is — we all know that he has won no national election
Gore won the 2000 election and Kerry won in 2004 — 2004 shouldn't even count because of 2000 right?
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Published on Tuesday, March 20, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
Blowback from Ohio's 2004 Stolen Election is Escalating
by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
In a bold move "to restore trust to elections in Ohio," Ohio's newly-elected Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, has requested the resignation of all four members of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections.
The two Democrats and two Republicans were formally asked to resign by the close of business on March 21.
Cuyahoga County includes the heavily Democratic city of Cleveland. Brunner is a Democrat who was elected to be Ohio's Secretary of State in November, 2006.
Felony convictions have also resulted in 18-month prison sentences for two employees of the Cuyahoga BOE as a result of what the county prosecutor in the case calls the "rigging" of the outcome in the recount following the 2004 presidential election.
Further problems surfaced in the conduct of Cuyahoga County's May, 2006 primary, in the wake of which Michel Vu, Executive Director of the county's Board of Elections recently resigned.
In tandem, the shake-up in Ohio's biggest county reflects a widening storm surrounding the outcome of the 2004 presidential election and the conduct of elections overall in the nation's most pivotal state.
Among those Brunner has asked to resign is Cuyahoga County BOE Chair Robert Bennett, who chairs Ohio's Republican Party. Voting rights attorney Cliff Arnebeck and others have long charged that Bennett worked closely with White House advisor Karl Rove and Ohio's then-Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell to secure Bush's 2004 victory in Ohio.
Bennett responded to Brunner by saying that he will refuse to resign.
He has placed the blame for the May 2006 primary problems on private voting machine vendors, including Diebold. Bennett claims the rigging of the 2004 presidential recount was caused by the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's office, according to the Columbus Dispatch.
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If Bennett and other Board members refuse to resign by Wednesday, Brunner says they "will face a complaint and public hearing to be conducted in Cleveland…"
In the 2004 presidential election, Cuyahoga County suffered serious election irregularities that worked to the disadvantage of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.
Among them: the purging of 24.93% of all the voters in the city of Cleveland, where Kerry won 83% of the vote; mysterious and suspect vote totals for third party candidates in majority African American wards; unexplained "security" problems that caused the last-minute shift of voting locations in the inner city Cleveland Public School polling places; improbably low apparent turnouts in heavily Democratic inner city wards, and more.
Brunner's request for the resignations comes a week after two Cuyahoga County election workers were each sentenced to 18 months in prison for rigging the recount of the 2004 election in Ohio's biggest county.
These are the first prison terms issued in the escalating scandal over the vote count that gave George W. Bush a second stay in the White House.
The two women are out on bail pending appeal.
But the substantial jail time demanded by Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Peter Corrigan indicates there may be more trials and convictions yet to come, especially in light of new evidence unearthed by the Free Press in other counties around the state.
Jacqueline Maiden and Kathleen Dreamer were each convicted of a felony count of negligent misconduct by an election board employee.
Maiden, 60, was the Cuyahoga Board of Elections' third-highest ranking employee.
Dreamer, 40, was ballot manager. Maiden and Dreamer were also convicted of a separate misdemeanor.
A third defendant in the case was acquitted of all charges.
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The Free Press has unearthed evidence indicating possible criminal misconduct by a wide range of election officials throughout the state, including Blackwell.
Under the law, election boards are required to do recounts by choosing 3% of a county's voters at random for sampling.
But throughout the state, apparently with the explicit knowledge and approval of Blackwell, precincts were hand-counted for recounting, a criminal act.
This non-random sampling in essence voided the recount, for which backers of the Green and Libertarian Parties paid more than $100,000.
According to the prosecution in the case against Maiden and Dreamer, this method of action led to the recount being illegally "rigged."
When investigators working with the Free Press attempted to audit the Cuyahoga County ballots from the 2004 election last summer, BOE officials were unable to find the ballots for four full days.
The investigation team, led by Richard Hayes Phillips, had to find the ballots on their own.
Under Ohio law, the ballots were to be locked in a known location, and secured by two keys, one controlled by each major party.
Brunner says she acted in part because she is concerned that many of the problems from 2004 and 2006 might resurface in the upcoming 2008 election.
"With maximum 18-month prison sentences being handed down to two Cuyahoga County election workers last week, for their role in the 2004 presidential recount, the tremendous problems that surfaced in the May 2006 primary that delayed even the unofficial vote count for five days, and the uncertain future of this board as another Presidential election looms on the near horizon, it is incumbent on me as Secretary of State to provide the direction needed to get this troubled board on track," she says.
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"The voters of Cuyahoga county deserve it, the citizens of Ohio expect it and the rest of the nation will be watching."
In the 2006 primary, Cuyahoga County used the controversial Diebold touchscreen voting machines. These machines suffered a well-publicized meltdown, in which many malfunctioned.
A report from the Election Science Institute (ESI) documented significant differences between votes actually cast on the machines as opposed to those officially counted.
Immediately following the election, 562,498 votes were reported cast in Cuyahoga County, with 30,791 listed as absentee or provisional ballots.
But the official results show just 468,056 counted.
This means that 94,442 ballots cast in the unofficial total disappeared in the official tallies, representing a shocking 16.8% of all the votes cast in Cuyahoga.
Michael Vu, who was the Cuyahoga BOE executive director, came under intense criticism for the bitter controversies surrounding both the 2004 and 2006 elections.
Last month, he resigned "to pursue future career growth," according to a Cuyahoga County Board of Elections release.
In an interesting and perhaps telling statement coming from a Republican who was commenting on an appointee supported by the Democratic Party, Bennett said "Michael Vu has worked hard and accomplished a great deal on behalf of Cuyahoga County votes and will, I am sure, continue to have success in his career of public service.
"Michael oversaw a difficult transition period at the Board including the implementation of a new electronic voting system county-wide in the May (2006) primary followed by a near flawless general election," Bennett concluded.
Brunner's action underscores a growing sentiment that the unraveling of what happened during and after the 2004 election has only just begun.
The Free Press has learned that Brunner's office is also investigating an unexplained undercount in the 2006 general election in six Ohio counties which all used the Diebold TSX DRE voting machines.
In Montgomery County, where the Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ted Strickland beat Blackwell, the Republican nominee, by 107,593 to 76,189, there was an abnormally high 13.76% of the machines registering no vote for the state's highest office.
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U.S. v Gore Bush steals 2000 election |
Alaska Is At It Again: Refuses to Release 2006 Election Database Despite Court Order
State Which Fought Release of Diebold Data Showing 200+ Percent Turnout in 2004 is Again Fighting Against Transparency
The state of Alaska which, as avid BRAD BLOG readers will recall, had been fighting tooth and nail to keep from releasing their database of how voters voted back in 2004, is at it again.
Now, despite a court order, the state is refusing to release the new 2006 database, according to a press release just issued by the state Democratic Party. (Press release posted in full at the bottom of this item.)
Previously, the outgoing Governor Murkowski went so far as to have his top security man issue a memo saying release of the 2004 database would be a "security risk."
The state had argued prior to that that they could not release the database because it was a "company secret" of Diebold's, according to their contract with the Anti-American Voting Company.
All of that after Democrats had discovered a 200% voter turnout in some jurisdications across the state.
Murkowski's daughter Lisa, whom Frank had appointed to fill his seat in the Senate when he ascended to Governor, was in a very close race for that seat in 2004.
In fact, most polls showed her trailing against her opponent prior to Election Day.
A court eventually forced the state to release the 2004 database but it was found to contain hundreds of edits since the 2004 election, including as late as July of 2006, prior to the release of the data.
See all of the stories in our Alaska category for the bizarre roller-coaster ride on this issue in the state.
Now it appears that Alaska is at it again, fighting to not release the database from the 2006 election in the only state that we know of where the Democratic Party themselves are actually fighting for complete transparency.
Here's the first two grafs from today's Press Release just issued. The complete press release follows below it…
Anchorage — The Alaska Division of Elections is violating the public records law and should immediately release copies of the electronic records of the 2006 election results so they can be examined before the election is certified, Alaska Democratic Party Chair Jake Metcalfe said today.
"Once again, the Division of Elections is flaunting the law with excuses and delays by refusing to release critical public records," Metcalfe said.
"Judge Joannides has already ordered them to make copies of each version of the 2006 GEMS database, so it is no burden on them to just release those copies that they are already making.
Why won't they release the records and give the public access to them as they are required by law to do?" Metcalfe said. For immediate release Nov. 28, 2006 contact: Jake Metcalfe Kay Brown Division of Elections Refuses To Release 2006 Election Records
Anchorage — The Alaska Division of Elections is violating the public records law and should immediately release copies of the electronic records of the 2006 election results so they can be examined before the election is certified, Alaska Democratic Party Chair Jake Metcalfe said today.
"Once again, the Division of Elections is flaunting the law with excuses and delays by refusing to release critical public records," Metcalfe said. "Judge Joannides has already ordered them to make copies of each version of the 2006 GEMS database, so it is no burden on them to just release those copies that they are already making. Why won't they release the records and give the public access to them as they are required by law to do?" Metcalfe said.
On Nov. 7, Anchorage Superior Court Judge Stephanie Joannides ordered the Division of Elections to preserve backup copies of the state's 2006 electronic computer database and subsequent tallies of the election results. The Division of Elections had refused to make backup copies of the Diebold computer GEMS database in response to a request from the Alaska Democratic Party, which then sought an emergency court order requiring that copies be preserved of these election records. The Judge agreed with the Democratic Party and issued a temporary restraining order stating that the Division must make backup electronic copies on disk of the GEMS database as it existed on election night and again at the conclusion of each day in which the Division of Elections entered votes manually into the system.
The law says that public records must be produced "as soon as practicable, but not later than the 10th working day" following receipt of the request. Democrats requested the database on Oct. 30 and, through its counsel David Shoup, again on Nov. 3. In a response dated Nov. 27, Division of Elections Director Whitney Brewster told Shoup she would not respond to the Democrats' records request until Dec. 6, two days after the new Governor is sworn into office on Dec. 4.
"The people of Alaska have a right to have all the public records related to our election. We have a right to have them as soon as practicable and Loren Leman and Whitney Brewster don't have a right to withhold them from us," Metcalfe said. "Our prior litigation established that the electronic files of our votes are public records, and it is in the public interest that they be released immediately, before the election is certified. There is no legitimate reason for the Division to withhold these public records."
In light of all the problems that occurred with the vote tallies in 2004 that still have not been reconciled, the Division's failure to keep backup copies of the 2004 database, and the Division's subsequent modifications of the 2004 database after-the-fact in July 2006, vigilance is warranted, Metcalfe said. Democrats want to preserve the opportunity to weight in before certification if any problems are found during review of the electronic data, Metcalfe said.
"We hope the incoming Palin administration lives up to its promise to promote transparent government. It can do so by immediately ordering the Division of Elections to release the information, and by insisting from its very first day that our public elections are public and transparent," Metcalfe said.
Copyright © Brad Friedman |
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Black Box Voting receives new legal threats from ES&S
11-20-06:
This is the fourth time Black Box Voting and/or its founder, Bev Harris, have received legal threats from voting machine vendors who believe they have the right to sell secret software that miscounts elections.
Attached below is a copy of a peculiar cease and desist order from ES&S, which asks Black Box Voting to remove links that don't exist on its Web site. Black Box Voting does not even have access to the information ES&S is demanding.
ES&S machines have demonstrated proven miscounts in Texas, Florida and Arkansas in the Nov. 2006 election, but exactly how the software miscounted is supposed to be a secret, knowable only to people who work for this privately held company.
Even the county officials, who in some cases have been crying out for assistance — and are unhappy with the level of service they've received from ES&S and its contractors — are not permitted to look at the ES&S software that miscounted their votes.
Details on those stories follow, after some addition... More click here
Arizona manual audit a farce
11-14-06: by Michael Shelby
The post-election audit law in Arizona to manually count 2 percent of the precincts was a farce.
Perhaps I was too optimistic, perhaps I wanted to believe we had made some progress. Even after I observed transfer of data between electronic tabulating machines by “thumb drives” at our Maricopa County Elections Department, when I saw that there was no security applied to the custody of the thumb drives before, during, or after the vote counting, I showed up for the post-election audit skeptical but hopeful.
Despite the rigid, nonsensical, arbitrary requirement that a quorum of 72 auditors from each major party must participate or the audit could not be performed, and even though I knew that almost every conceivable obstacle was inserted into SB 1557, Arizona’s Election Reform Bill, by obstructionists to election accountability; I thought that just maybe, this time, we might have a go at accountability.
Sadly, it was not to be.
The first day of the audit w... More click here
Sarasota! Florida! Never doubt that a small group of committed citizens can change the world
11-13-06: By Bill Bucolo
It was an amazing day for voting integrity in Sarasota.
It's been a rough week for Sarasota Supervisor of Elections Kathy Dent. And voting in Sarasota will never be the same again, for two reasons.
One is Kindra Muntz and the other is Susan Pynchon.
First, against all odds Kindra and her volunteers' petition-driven paper ballot initiative won easily with the voters, insuring Sarasota County citizens will henceforth have voter verified paper ballots, and no more shady events like today's goofy paperless recount attempt.
But if Kindra was the gentle wind blowing toward Sarasota's future, Susan Pynchon was "Hurricane Susan" today, leaving no doubt exactly what and where that future is, and they're still picking up after her at the Supervisor of Election's office. There's simply no other way to put it except to say that Pynchon was in the faces of the Sarasota Supervisor Of Elections and her Canvass committee from the very start this morning. They balked a lit... More click here
A quick update on doings
11-9-06:
Unlike 2004, when we did a shotgun mass Freedom of Information Act to thousands of counties -- then actually collected on the ones we felt would be most likely to generate real evidence -- this time the FOIAs (called public records requests at the state level) are being done differently.
Yesterday, we combed through thousands of reports and selected about 500 that we have targeted for a closer look. We are adding to those now and then as new reports come in.
This year, we are doing very customized public records requests, going after strategic information in a way that matches up with specific anomalies. It's a slog. Public records work always is. But it can be a reliable way to identify issues in a way that public officials can't deny, since the records come from the public officials themselves.
Communications
As you may have noticed, the past three months has been focused on mass communications here at Black Box Voting. The whole point, after proving the vulnerability of ... More click here
I'm In Shock!
11-9-06:
I am a new member. I just saw the film "Hacking Democracy" and I am in shock! The film really hit home because I live in Volusia County, a.k.a. "Home of the Negative Votes" and I never heard of what happened until now. Why isn't the media covering this?
Why isn't there a big investigation going on with Diebold by the federal government? Is our whole government corrupt? What was the most appalling to me was the proven FACT that the discs can be programmed to change the vote count before they are even distributed to the precincts. Since this is so, what difference does it make to count the votes, if the outcome is going to be the same?
I am saddened by what I saw, for I feel that we have lost our democracy. The will of the people doesn't matter, if votes can be changed by big business. I applaud the makers of the film for exposing this corruption, and would like to help in any way that I can to help restore power back into the hands of the people.} More click here
Rumsfeld replacement (Robert Gates) was director of voting company
11-8-06:
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld will resign, reportedly to be replaced by former CIA director Robert Gates. Did you know that Robert Gates was involved in the voting machine industry?
Gates was on the board of directors of VoteHere, a strange little company that was the biggest elections industry lobbyist for the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). VoteHere spent more money than ES&S, Diebold, and Sequoia combined to help ram HAVA through. And HAVA, of course, was a bill sponsored by by convicted Abramoff pal Bob Ney and K-street lobbyist buddy Steny Hoyer. HAVA put electronic voting on steroids.
You can find copies of the VoteHere lobbying forms here: http://sopr.senate.gov/cgi-win/m_opr_viewer.exe?DoFn=0
I can't get them to save to pdf, perhaps you can. Enter search terms in both "registrant" and "client" fields and put in terms "Rhoads" "Livingston" and "Votehere" (one at a time.). Then look at the gravy train while it was in the process of derailing American democracy.
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'Meltdown 2006': Voting problems across US
RAW STORY
Published: Tuesday November 7, 2006
With hours left to go before polls close, reports of problems have been widespread, especially in states where close or "bellwether" elections are taking place, RAW STORY has learned.
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Long lines have crippled a crowded Denver, Colorado polling place after the location ran out of provisional ballots almost three hours ago. Two hours later, the ballots had not yet appeared.
Update: A judge has ruled against a Democratic party request to extend polling hours in Denver.
Also in Colorado, Latino voters report receiving racially charged, intimidating phone calls warning them that, based on ethnicity, they are inelligible to vote.
Pennsylvania has suffered, too.
A non-partisan voter hotline—866-OUR-VOTE—has received more reports and complaints about voting irregularities from Pennsylvania than from any other state. Some of those problems are documented here.
Pennsylvania is an important battleground for Democrats, who were polling ahead in congressional races and looked well positioned to pick up a senate seat from Republican Rick Santorum going into today's election.
In Virginia, allegations of statewide voter intimidation are seen as more serious.
Reports have indicated that phone calls have been directed across the state from the fictitious "Virginia Elections Commision," threatening voters with arrest if they appear at polling places to vote. Voters are advised that, because of their out of state registrations, voting in Virginia is illegal. However, many of the voters who've been harassed have been registered instate for years.
Unlike in Pennsylvania—where polls showed Democrat Bob Casey with a large lead over incumbent Santorum—the Virginia senate race is tighter. Recent polls show incumbent Republican George Allen narrowly trailing Democratic challenger Jim Webb. However, the state is considered by many to be a valuable barometer of the national campaign for control of the Senate and the House of Representatives.
Missouri is another bellwether state, where Clare McCaskill is challenging incumbent Republican Jim Talent. There, reports have pointed to vote-flipping both at polling places today and in early voting before today.
Technical problems have plagued states across the Midwest, including Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. Florida and Utah have suffered similar problems, mostly involving broken machinery, or poll-workers without the technical expertise to operate them.
In Kentucky, a voter is suing a poll worker, whose name has not been released, after the volunteer allegedly attacked and choked him before forcing him from the polling location.
Larger national media organizations including MSNBC, The Los Angeles Times, and USA Today are featuring stories about the extent of election troubles across the country.
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| My husband and I were just talking about how much worse and more dangerous this administration is then Nixon. This man who calls himself President was NEVER truely elected. He has stolen 2 Elections and we must keep up the fight to break the media silence and let the people know that their votes aren’t being counted. After all each Kerry vote was voided when the Repubs rigged the race for W. Please keep the articles coming. I mention this imposter W. and how he was never elected to people daily, it can’t hurt to inform as many people as possible. |
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Will the Next Election Be Hacked?
By Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Rolling Stone 5 October 2006
Fresh disasters at the polls — and new evidence from an industry insider — prove that electronic voting machines can't be trusted.
The debacle of the 2000 presidential election made it all too apparent to most Americans that our electoral system is broken. And private-sector entrepreneurs were quick to offer a fix: Touch-screen voting machines, promised the industry and its lobbyists, would make voting as easy and reliable as withdrawing cash from an ATM.
Congress, always ready with funds for needy industries, swiftly authorized $3.9 billion to upgrade the nation's election systems — with much of the money devoted to installing electronic voting machines in each of America's 180,000 precincts.
But as midterm elections approach this November, electronic voting machines are making things worse instead of better. Studies have demonstrated that hackers can easily rig the technology to fix an election — and across the country this year, faulty equipment and lax security have repeatedly undermined election primaries.
Counted ballots six times
In Tarrant County, Texas, electronic machines counted some ballots as many as six times, recording 100,000 more votes than were actually cast.
In San Diego, poll workers took machines home for unsupervised "sleepovers" before the vote, leaving the equipment vulnerable to tampering.
And in Ohio — where, as I recently reported in "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?" [RS 1002], dirty tricks may have cost John Kerry the presidency — a government report uncovered large and unexplained discrepancies in vote totals recorded by machines in Cuyahoga County.
Election staff members technological ability to fix election
Even worse, many electronic machines don't produce a paper record that can be recounted when equipment malfunctions — an omission that practically invites malicious tampering.
"Every board of election has staff members with the technological ability to fix an election," Ion Sancho, an election supervisor in Leon County, Florida, told me.
"Even one corrupt staffer can throw an election. Without paper records, it could happen under my nose and there is no way I'd ever find out about it. With a few key people in the right places, it would be possible to throw a presidential election."
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Waiting for bounce of Diebold stock
Chris Hood remembers the day in August 2002 that he began to question what was really going on in Georgia. An African-American whose parents fought for voting rights in the South during the 1960s, Hood was proud to be working as a consultant for Diebold Election Systems, helping the company promote its new electronic voting machines.
During the presidential election two years earlier, more than 94,000 paper ballots had gone uncounted in Georgia — almost double the national average — and Secretary of State Cathy Cox was under pressure to make sure every vote was recorded properly.
Hood had been present in May 2002, when officials with Cox's office signed a contract with Diebold — paying the company a record $54 million to install 19,000 electronic voting machines across the state.
At a restaurant inside Atlanta's Marriott Hotel, he noticed the firm's CEO, Walden O'Dell, checking Diebold's stock price on a laptop computer every five minutes, waiting for a bounce from the announcement.
Diebold bid highest among nine competing vendors
Hood wondered why Diebold, the world's third-largest seller of ATMs, had been awarded the contract. The company had barely completed its acquisition of Global Election Systems, a voting-machine firm that owned the technology Diebold was promising to sell Georgia.
And its bid was the highest among nine competing vendors. Whispers within the company hinted that a fix was in.
"The Diebold executives had a news conference planned on the day of the award," Hood recalls, "and we were instructed to stay in our hotel rooms until just hours before the announcement.
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They didn't want the competitors to know and possibly file a protest" about the lack of a fair bidding process.
It certainly didn't hurt that Diebold had political clout: Cox's predecessor as secretary of state, Lewis Massey, was now a lobbyist for the company.
Effectively privatized Georgia's entire electoral system
The problem was, Diebold had only five months to install the new machines — a "very narrow window of time to do such a big deployment," Hood notes.
The old systems stored in warehouses had to be replaced with new equipment; dozens of state officials and poll workers had to be trained in how to use the touch-screen machines.
"It was pretty much an impossible task," Hood recalls. There was only one way, he adds, that the job could be done in time — if "the vendor had control over the entire environment."
That is precisely what happened. In late July, to speed deployment of the new machines, Cox quietly signed an agreement with Diebold that effectively privatized Georgia's entire electoral system.
In interest of trouble-free election
The company was authorized to put together ballots, program machines and train poll workers across the state — all without any official supervision.
"We ran the election," says Hood. "We had 356 people that Diebold brought into the state.
Diebold opened and closed the polls and tabulated the votes.
Diebold convinced Cox that it would be best if the company ran everything due to the time constraints, and in the interest of a trouble-free election, she let us do it."
Personally distributing a 'patch'
Then, one muggy day in mid-August, Hood was surprised to see the president of Diebold's election unit, Bob Urosevich, arrive in Georgia from his headquarters in Texas.
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With the primaries looming, Urosevich was personally distributing a "patch," a little piece of software designed to correct glitches in the computer program.
"We were told that it was intended to fix the clock in the system, which it didn't do," Hood says.
"The curious thing is the very swift, covert way this was done."
Received instructions from Diebold not to talk to county personnel
Georgia law mandates that any change made in voting machines be certified by the state.
But thanks to Cox's agreement with Diebold, the company was essentially allowed to certify itself.
"It was an unauthorized patch, and they were trying to keep it secret from the state," Hood told me.
"We were told not to talk to county personnel about it.
I received instructions directly from Urosevich. It was very unusual that a president of the company would give an order like that and be involved at that level."
To avoid detection
According to Hood, Diebold employees altered software in some 5,000 machines in DeKalb and Fulton counties — the state's largest Democratic strongholds.
To avoid detection, Hood and others on his team entered warehouses early in the morning.
"We went in at 7:30 a.m. and were out by 11," Hood says.
"There was a universal key to unlock the machines, and it's easy to get access. The machines in the warehouses were unlocked. We had control of everything. The state gave us the keys to the castle, so to speak, and they stayed out of our way."
Hood personally patched fifty-six machines and witnessed the patch being applied to more than 1,200 others.
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I want my candidate
The patch comes on a memory card that is inserted into a machine. Eventually, all the memory cards end up on a server that tabulates the votes — where the patch can be programmed to alter the outcome of an election.
"There could be a hidden program on a memory card that adjusts everything to the preferred election results," Hood says.
"Your program says, 'I want my candidate to stay ahead by three or four percent or whatever.'
Those programs can include a built-in delete that erases itself after it's done."
Tally surprised observers
It is impossible to know whether the machines were rigged to alter the election in Georgia: Diebold's machines provided no paper trail, making a recount impossible.
But the tally in Georgia that November surprised even the most seasoned political observers.
Six days before the vote, polls showed Sen. Max Cleland, a decorated war veteran and Democratic incumbent, leading his Republican opponent Saxby Chambliss — darling of the Christian Coalition — by five percentage points.
In the governor's race, Democrat Roy Barnes was running a decisive eleven points ahead of Republican Sonny Perdue.
But on Election Day, Chambliss won with fifty-three percent of the vote, and Perdue won with fifty-one percent.
Freeze and improperly record votes
Diebold insists that the patch was installed "with the approval and oversight of the state."
But after the election, the Georgia secretary of state's office submitted a "punch list" to Bob Urosevich of "issues and concerns related to the statewide voting system that we would like Diebold to address."
One of the items referenced was "Application/Implication of '0808' Patch."
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The state was seeking confirmation that the patch did not require that the system "be recertified at national and state level" as well as "verifiable analysis of overall impact of patch to the voting system."
In a separate letter, Secretary Cox asked Urosevich about Diebold's use of substitute memory cards and defective equipment as well as widespread problems that caused machines to freeze up and improperly record votes.
The state threatened to delay further payments to Diebold until "these punch list items will be corrected and completed."
Corporate takeover of votes
Diebold's response has not been made public — but its machines remain in place for Georgia's election this fall.
Hood says it was "common knowledge" within the company that Diebold also illegally installed uncertified software in machines used in the 2004 presidential primaries — a charge the company denies.
Disturbed to see the promise of electronic machines subverted by private companies, Hood left the election consulting business and became a whistle-blower.
"What I saw," he says, "was basically a corporate takeover of our voting system."
Proprietary software
The United States is one of only a handful of major democracies that allow private, partisan companies to secretly count and tabulate votes using their own proprietary software.
Today, eighty percent of all the ballots in America are tallied by four companies — Diebold, Election Systems & Software (ES&S), Sequoia Voting Systems and Hart InterCivic.
In 2004, 36 million votes were cast on their touch-screen systems, and millions more were recorded by optical-scan machines owned by the same companies that use electronic technology to tabulate paper ballots.
The simple fact is, these machines not only break down with regularity, they are easily compromised — by people inside, and outside, the companies.
Eighty-five percent of votes tallied by company he formally worked for
Three of the four companies have close ties to the Republican Party.
ES&S, in an earlier corporate incarnation, was chaired by Chuck Hagel, who in 1996 became the first Republican elected to the U.S. Senate from Nebraska in twenty-four years — winning a close race in which eighty-five percent of the votes were tallied by his former company.
Hart InterCivic ranks among its investors GOP loyalist Tom Hicks, who bought the Texas Rangers from George W. Bush in 1998, making Bush a millionaire fifteen times over.
And according to campaign-finance records, Diebold, along with its employees and their families, has contributed at least $300,000 to GOP candidates and party funds since 1998 — including more than $200,000 to the Republican National Committee.
In a 2003 fund-raising e-mail, the company's then-CEO Walden O'Dell promised to deliver Ohio's electoral votes to Bush in 2004. That year, Diebold would count the votes in half of Ohio's counties.
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Gore ahead not behind in Volusia county
The voting-machine companies bear heavy blame for the 2000 presidential-election disaster.
Fox News' fateful decision to call Florida for Bush — followed minutes later by CBS and NBC — came after electronic machines in Volusia County erroneously subtracted more than 16,000 votes from Al Gore's total.
Later, after an internal investigation, CBS described the mistake as "critical" in the network's decision.
Seeing what was an apparent spike for Bush, Gore conceded the election — then reversed his decision after a campaign staffer investigated and discovered that Gore was actually ahead in Volusia by 13,000 votes.
'Second memory card'
Investigators traced the mistake to Global Election Systems, the firm later acquired by Diebold.
Two months after the election, an internal memo from Talbot Iredale, the company's master programmer, blamed the problem on a memory card that had been improperly — and unnecessarily — uploaded.
"There is always the possibility," Iredale conceded, "that the 'second memory card' or 'second upload' came from an unauthorized source."
Instead of sharing culpability
Amid the furor over hanging chads and butterfly ballots in Florida, however, the "faulty memory card" was all but forgotten.
Instead of sharing culpability for the Florida catastrophe, voting-machine companies used their political clout to present their product as the solution.
In October 2002, President Bush signed the Help America Vote Act, requiring states and counties to upgrade their voting systems with electronic machines and giving vast sums of money to state officials to distribute to the tightknit cabal of largely Republican vendors.
But according to recent e-mails obtained by Rolling Stone, Diebold not only failed to follow up on most of the recommendations, it worked to cover them up.
Michael Wertheimer, who led the RABA study, now serves as an assistant deputy director in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
"We made numerous recommendations that would have required Diebold to fix these issues," he writes in one e-mail, "but were rebuffed by the argument that the machines were physically protected and could not be altered by someone outside the established chain of custody."
In another e-mail, Wertheimer says that Diebold and state officials worked to downplay his team's dim assessment.
"We spent hours dealing with Diebold lobbyists and election officials who sought to minimize our impact," he recalls. "The results were risk-managed in favor of expediency and potential catastrophe."
Memory cards overloading
During the 2004 presidential election, with Diebold machines in place across the state, things began to go wrong from the very start.
A month before the vote, an abandoned Diebold machine was discovered in a bar in Baltimore.
"What's really worrisome," says Hood, "is that someone could get hold of all the technology — for manipulation — if they knew the inner workings of just one machine."
Election Day was a complete disaster.
"Countless numbers of machines were down because of what appeared to be flaws in Diebold's system," says Hood, who was part of a crew of roving technicians charged with making sure that the polls were up and running.
"Memory cards overloading, machines freezing up, poll workers afraid to turn them on or off for fear of losing votes."
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So many cards missing
Then, after the polls closed, Diebold technicians who showed up to collect the memory cards containing the votes found that many were missing.
"The machines are gone," one janitor told Hood — picked up, apparently, by the vendor who had delivered them in the first place.
"There was major chaos because there were so many cards missing," Hood says.
Even before the 2004 election, experts warned that electronic voting machines would undermine the integrity of the vote.
"The system we have for testing and certifying voting equipment in this country is not only broken but is virtually nonexistent," Michael Shamos, a distinguished professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, testified before Congress that June.
"It must be re-created from scratch."
Jammed and inoperable machines throughout Toledo
Two months later, the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team — a division of the Department of Homeland Security — issued a little-noticed "cyber-security bulletin."
The alert dealt specifically with a database that Diebold uses in tabulating votes.
"A vulnerability exists due to an undocumented backdoor account," the alert warned, citing the same kind of weakness identified by the RABA scientists.
The security flaw, it added, could allow "a malicious user [to] modify votes."
Such warnings, however, didn't stop states across the country from installing electronic voting machines for the 2004 election.
In Ohio, jammed and inoperable machines were reported throughout Toledo.
Pushed "Kerry" and watched "Bush"
In heavily Democratic areas of Youngstown, nearly 100 voters pushed "Kerry" and watched "Bush" light up.
At least twenty machines had to be recalibrated in the middle of the voting process for flipping Kerry votes to Bush.
Similar "vote hopping" was reported by voters in other states.
The widespread glitches didn't deter Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell — who also chaired Bush's re-election campaign in Ohio — from cutting a deal in 2005 that would have guaranteed Diebold a virtual monopoly on vote counting in the state.
Local election officials alleged that the deal, which came only a few months after Blackwell bought nearly $10,000 in Diebold stock, was a violation of state rules requiring a fair and competitive bidding process.
Facing a lawsuit, Blackwell agreed to allow other companies to provide machines as well.
This November, voters in forty-seven counties will cast their ballots on Diebold machines — in a pivotal election in which Blackwell is running as the Republican candidate for governor.
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As many as 260,000 votes to Bush
Electronic voting machines also caused widespread problems in Florida, where Bush bested Kerry by 381,000 votes.
When statistical experts from the University of California examined the state's official tally, they discovered a disturbing pattern: "The data show with 99.0 percent certainty that a county's use of electronic voting is associated with a disproportionate increase in votes for President Bush.
Compared to counties with paper ballots, counties with electronic voting machines were significantly more likely to show increases in support for President Bush between 2000 and 2004."
The three counties with the most discrepancies — Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade — were also the most heavily Democratic.
Electronic voting machines, the report concluded, may have improperly awarded as many as 260,000 votes to Bush.
"No matter how many factors and variables we took into consideration, the significant correlation in the votes for President Bush and electronic voting cannot be explained," said Michael Hout, a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Something funky
Charles Stewart III, an MIT professor who specializes in voter behavior and methodology, was initially skeptical of the study — but was unable to find any flaw in the results.
"You can't break it — I've tried," he told The Washington Post.
"There's something funky in the results from the electronic-machine Democratic counties."
Questions also arose in Texas in 2004.
William Singer, an election programmer in Tarrant County, wrote the secretary of state's office after the vote to report that ES&S pressured officials to install unapproved software during the presidential primaries.
"What I was expected to do in order to 'pull off' an election," Singer wrote, "was far beyond the kind of practices that I believe should be standard and accepted in the election industry."
The company denies the charge, but in an e-mail this month, Singer elaborated that ES&S employees had pushed local election officials to pressure the secretary of state to accept "a software change at such a last minute there would be no choice, and effectively avoid certification."
Despite such reports, Texas continues to rely on ES&S.
In primaries held in Jefferson County earlier this year, electronic votes had to be recounted after error messages prevented workers from completing their tabulations.
Change vote totals and produce false election reports
In April, with early voting in local elections only a week away, officials across the state were still waiting to receive the programming from ES&S needed to test the machines for accuracy.
Calling the situation "completely unacceptable and disturbing," Texas director of elections Ann McGeehan authorized local officials to create "emergency paper ballots" as a backup.
"We regret the unacceptable position that many political subdivisions are in due to poor performance by their contracted vendor," McGeehan added.
In October 2005, the government Accountability Office issued a damning report on electronic voting machines.
Citing widespread irregularities and malfunctions, the government's top watchdog agency concluded that a host of weaknesses with touch-screen and optical-scan technology "could damage the integrity of ballots, votes and voting-system software by allowing unauthorized modifications."
Some electronic systems used passwords that were "easily guessed" or employed identical passwords for numerous systems.
Software could be handled and transported with no clear chain of custody, and locks protecting computer hardware were easy to pick.
Unsecured memory cards could enable individuals to "vote multiple times, change vote totals and produce false election reports."
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Obscuring all evidence
An even more comprehensive report released in June by the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan think tank at the New York University School of Law, echoed the GAO's findings.
The report — conducted by a task force of computer scientists and security experts from the government, universities and the private sector — was peer-reviewed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Electronic voting machines widely adopted since 2000, the report concluded, "pose a real danger to the integrity of national, state and local elections."
While no instances of hacking have yet been documented, the report identified 120 security threats to three widely used machines — the easiest method of attack being to utilize corrupt software that shifts votes from one candidate to another.
Computer experts have demonstrated that a successful attack would be relatively simple.
In a study released on September 13th, computer scientists at Princeton University created vote-stealing software that can be injected into a Diebold machine in as little as a minute, obscuring all evidence of its presence.
They also created a virus that can "infect" other units in a voting system, committing "widespread fraud" from a single machine.
Within sixty seconds, a lone hacker can own an election.
Insane such clear threats
And touch-screen technology continues to create chaos at the polls.
On September 12th, in Maryland's first all-electronic election, voters were turned away from the polls because election officials had failed to distribute the electronic access cards needed to operate Diebold machines.
By the time the cards were found on a warehouse shelf and delivered to every precinct, untold numbers of voters had lost the chance to cast ballots.
It seems insane that such clear threats to our election system have not stopped the proliferation of touch-screen technology.
In 2004, twenty-three percent of Americans cast their votes on electronic ballots — an increase of twelve percent over 2000.
This year, more than one-third of the nation's 8,000 voting jurisdictions are expected to use electronic voting technology for the first time.
The heartening news is, citizens are starting to fight back.
Voting-rights activists with the Brad Blog and Black Box Voting are getting the word out.
Voter Action, a nonprofit group, has helped file lawsuits in Arizona, New York, Pennsylvania, Colorado and New Mexico to stop the proliferation of touch-screen systems.
In California, voters filed suit last March to challenge the use of a Diebold touch-screen system — a move that has already prompted eight counties to sign affidavits saying they won't use the machines in November.
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Illegal to count paper ballots
It's not surprising that the widespread problems with electronic voting machines have sparked such outrage and mistrust among voters.
Last November, comedian Bill Maher stood in a Las Vegas casino and looked out over thousands of slot machines.
"They never make a mistake," he remarked to me. "Can't we get a voting machine that can't be fixed?"
Indeed, there is a remarkably simple solution: equip every touch-screen machine to provide paper receipts that can be verified by voters and recounted in the event of malfunction or tampering.
"The paper is the insurance against the cheating machine," says Rubin, the computer expert.
In Florida, an astonishing new law actually makes it illegal to count paper ballots by hand after they've already been tallied by machine.
But twenty-seven states now require a paper trail, and others are considering similar requirements.
In New Mexico, Gov. Bill Richardson has instituted what many consider an even better solution: Voters use paper ballots, which are then scanned and counted electronically.
"We became one of the laughingstock states in 2004 because the machines were defective, slow and unreliable," says Richardson. "I said to myself, 'I'm not going to go through this again.' The paper-ballot system, as untechnical as it seems, is the most verifiable way we can assure Americans that their vote is counting."
Paper ballots will not completely eliminate the threat of tampering, of course — after all, election fraud and miscounts have occurred throughout our history.
As long as there has been a paper trail, however, our elections have been conducted with some measure of public scrutiny.
But electronic voting machines are a hacker's dream.
And today, for-profit companies are being given unprecedented and frightening power not only to provide these machines but to store and count our votes in secret, without any real oversight.
You do not have to believe in conspiracy theories to fear for the integrity of our electoral system:
The right to vote is simply too important — and too hard won — to be surrendered without a fight.
It is time for Americans to reclaim our democracy from private interests.
Read Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?" in the June 15th, 2006, issue of "Rolling Stone."
His investigation into how Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted — enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.
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© : t r u t h o u t 2006 |
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Afghanistan — Western Terror States: Canada, US, UK, France, Germany, Italy Photos of Afghanistan people being killed and injured by NATO |
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Rampant electoral corruption in U.S.
“Nor has there been any action toward rectifying the highly profitable degradation of the American electoral process — beyond the appointment of yet another "blue-ribbon panel" of Establishment worthies to oversee "election reform."
The seriousness of this endeavor can be seen in the man appointed to co-chair the effort: James Baker, the notorious Bush family fixer (and Saudi bagman) who spearheaded the sabotage of the 2000 vote in Florida.
Baker's presence on the panel ensures that nothing will be done to lessen the ruling clique's chokehold on power.
Gangsters are in charge
So let's have no illusions about where we are.
Gangsters are in charge, and nothing and no one will be allowed to challenge their dominion.
They are waging aggressive war to cement their position and that of their allies: the energy barons, the arms merchants, the construction and services cartels, the investment bankers.
These power blocs now command monstrous resources and unfathomable profits; they can buy out, buy off or bury any force that opposes them.
Meanwhile, they use the loot of the stolen Republic — its blood and treasure — as fuel for their ever-expanding war machine: Bush now has a "secret watch-list" of 25 more countries ripe for military intervention, the Financial Times reported. ” |
| Princeton scientists Hack Diebold — YouTube video click here |
| William Anthony, the Democratic Chair of the Ohio Franklin Country Board of Elections, revealed that on November 2, a number of voting machines were transferred from inner city precincts to Parsley’s suburban church. Thousands of African-Americans were deprived of their vote due to the fact that their precincts lacked sufficient balloting hardware. But voters at Parsley’s extreme right-wing precinct had no such waits. The Washington Post estimated between 15-20,000 people left the lines in Columbus alone, after waiting for hours. |
| Election day in Ohio 2004 was defined by partisan chaos, confusion and theft everywhere in the state. But the Noe's Toledo was uniquely rife with corruption and illegality. Well before election day, Lucas County's Democratic headquarters was broken into. Key voter data went missing. On November 2, inner city voting machines mysteriously broke down en masse. Polls opened late. By order of Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, no paper ballots were available for backup. At one school polling station the voting machines were locked in the office of the principal, who called in sick. The Gesu School in West Toledo temporarily ran out of ballots. There were huge lines, missing ballots and technical anomalies associated with the leased Diebold Optical-Scan voting tabulators. Lucas County BOE Director Paula Hicks-Hudson admitted that the Diebold machines had jammed during the previous week's testing, but the BOE did not bother to fix them for the election. Sworn statements at public hearings in Toledo and Columbus confirmed that scores of citizens were disenfranchised because they had to go to work. According to the Toledo Blade, at the Birmingham polling site in east Toledo, the sole machine broke down around 7am. When Ohio Rep. Peter Ujvagi tried to cast his ballot an hour later, a poll worker told him to place his ballot in "a secure slot under the machine" so it could be scanned in later, after Ujvagi had left. When voting rights activists challenged Republican Secretary of State Blackwell's controversial partisan handling of provisional ballots, Tom Noe sued on Blackwell's behalf. Bernadette Noe worked hard to reverse the traditional Ohio practice of allowing provisional ballots to be cast in precincts other than the one in which voters were registered. Her efforts helped disenfranchise innumerable Toledo voters, most of them inner city Democrats. |
Was sampling error a significant factor?
E/M’s conclusion is that sampling error cannot explain the discrepancy between the exit poll results and the official tally. Their reasoning is sound. With 70,000 respondents nationwide, the poll was designed to have a margin of error under 1%. Computation of the theoretical uncertainty in the count is complicated by the fact that the sampling was clustered at a subset of precincts that were hand-picked to produce a
representative sample of each state. But we agree with E/M’s conclusion that the observed discrepancy of 5.5% in the national survey was far outside any reasonable estimate of the poll’s uncertainty.
Seven of fifty* states have t values less than –2.7, meaning that each of their discrepancies had less than 1% probability of occurring by chance. The binomial probability that 7 of 50 should be so skewed is less than 1 in 10 million. A full comparison of the exit polls with the null distribution 4 that discrepancies are distributed randomly by chance (blue curve) yields a probability that is astronomically small.
 http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/Exit_Polls_summary.pdf |
| Paul Krugman, warned in a New York Times article: “It’s election night, and early returns suggest trouble for the incumbent. Then, mysteriously, the vote count stops and observers from the challenger’s campaign see employees of a voting-machine company, one wearing a badge that identifies him as a county official, typing instructions at computers with access to the vote-tabulating software. When the count resumes, the incumbent pulls ahead. The challenger demands an investigation. But there are no ballots to recount, and election officials allied with the incumbent refuse to release data that could shed light on whether there was tampering with the electronic records. This isn’t a paranoid fantasy. It’s a true account of a recent election in Riverside County, California . . . .” All trace of outside intervention vanishes automatically We are learning much more about the architecture of Sequoia’s computer codes because they, too, showed up on an unguarded File Transfer Protocol site on the Internet last year and are now being studied in earnest. Jeremiah Akin, a Riverside County computer scientist and anti-touchscreen campaigner, has discovered a way of writing modifications into the WinEds ballot management software in such a way that all trace of outside intervention vanishes automatically. (Sequoia did not respond to messages seeking comment.) “You can change the code, run it, save it and then, when you close down the system and you bring the system back up, all the modifications you made will be rewritten,” Akin said. “The system will set it back to the original code.” Los Angeles City Beat — DOWN FOR THE COUNT — By ANDREW GUMBEL |
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Patterns of Touchscreen Voting Machine Vote Fraud
Identified and Documented
in Florida, Ohio, New Mexico and Elsewhere If you already understand what happened in the 2004 Presidential Election, and you want to start doing something about it, click here to proceed to a coalition Action plan. If you need to see the proof that the Florida election was racked with manipulation and fraud, read on. Activists investigating the 2004 Presidential election have identified hundreds of precincts in Florida, Ohio and other states where the voting results do not match the exit polls. These inconsistencies occurred primarily in precincts where electronic voting machines with no paper trail were used. In Florida, these discrepancies appear to have amounted to enough to have been responsible for George Bush's statewide "victory" margin. Many of them were in precincts with a strong Democratic majority. Some media commentators have explained the gap between the exit polls and the final vote counts by claiming that the exit polls were flawed. However, in those precincts where there was a machine that produced a "paper trail," the exit polls almost exactly matched the actual vote and there were few discrepancies givingGeorge Bush extra votes. When a voter casts his or her ballot for someone other than the candidate they intended to vote for, this is called a "misvote." Misvotes in Ohio,Florida, and New Mexico appear to have given George Bush his winning percentage. (Misvotes favoring George Bush reached as high as 40% on some vote machines in some Florida, Ohio and New Mexico precincts. There were also high misvote totals in other states.) On November 22, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Verified Voting Foundation (VVF) announced that they had sent letters to voting officials in eight counties around the country urging them to allow independent testing of their electronic voting machines. The two groups were among the 60 organizations in the Election Protection Coalition (EPC), which ran an Election Day hotline and the web-based Election Incident Reporting System (EIRS). The Coalition received 40,002 reports of election irregularities, including 2,242 incidents concerning voting machines. Click here for an analysis of some of these incidents by a team of computer scientists. (This link requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.) According to EFF and VFF, the most serious problems were reported in Mahoning and Franklin counties in Ohio, Broward and Palm Beach counties in Florida in Florida, Mercer and Philadelphia counties in Pennsylvania, Harris County in Texas and Bernalillo County in New Mexico. Florida and Ohio were the bigswing states that gave the election to George Bush. While any form of voting fraud or interference is bad, a malfunctioning voting machine canprevent hundreds of people from casting their votes — or change the votes of those who do. Most computer experts who have studied electronic voting do not consider the systems used in the 2004 election to be secure or reliable. The state of California has successfully sued Diebold, the manufacturer of one touchscreen voting machine over this very issue, after machines that were purchased for California turned out to be unusable. According to programmers and engineers who have investigated the security of electronic voting machines, touchscreen machines can be set up with a default choice for any candidate that would not be visible to the voters. (The Black Box Voting site explains some of the ways in which this can be done.) Their votes would automatically be cast for the default candidate — such as George Bush — unless they could successfully override the hidden default choice programmed into the computer. For example, if a voter deliberately chose not to vote for any Presidential candidate, the touchscreen voting machine would count the non-vote as a default vote for George Bush. Reports from voters in Florida, New Mexico, Ohio, and elsewhere (especially other swing states) documented that many touchscreen voting machines appeared to have been set with a "Default to Bush". The "Default to Bush" could be changed only if a voter successfully selected another candidate. But it appears that in many cases the voters did not successfully override the "Default to Bush," in some cases because they did not notice the problem and in other cases because it was difficult or impossible to get the machine to accept another candidate. This was a major problem in New Mexico andMahoning and Franklin counties in Ohio. There were also problems with "Default to Bush in the"Big Three" Florida counties: Palm Beach, Broward and Dade, and elsewhere in Pinellas, Hillsboro, Pasco, Sarasota and Lee. In fact, Florida was the state with the most reported incidents in the Election Protection Coalition/Election Incident Reporting System database. (There are state-by-state links below.) Election officials had to replace some of the machines in Mahoning County (Ohio) after repeated attempts by technicians to "recalibrate" them failed. This also happened in Florida and New Mexico. The EIRS system also identified patterns of default away from Kerry and the minor party candidates elsewhere. The same pattern was also found in some U.S. Senate races, including the race in Florida, which elected Republican Mel Martinez over Betty Castor. To continue reading this article click here Bulge story continues into 2005 — NASA scientist shows Bush wired in debate |
| The Free Press is printing for the first time a hand-drawn map from an employee of the Ohio Warren County government. The employee, who wishes to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, communicated to the Free Press thoughts on what happened on Election Day in the county that received national attention by declaring a “homeland security alert” while the votes were being counted. With the media and independent election observers “walled off,” as the Cincinnati Enquirer described, the employee claims that “some ballot boxes were taken to the holding area” where they were not monitored by election officials. The Warren County employee referred to the person supervising the unauthorized warehouse as a “Republican Party hack.” The anonymous employee told the Free Press that testimony would be provided if subpoenaed. www.freepress.org Liz Kent, a Democratic challenger from Warren County, testified under oath at a November 18 Cincinnati public hearing investigating Ohio election irregularities: . . . The place I was a challenger in was a precinct that was in an elementary school that was within 300 yards of the Board of Elections. There was another elementary school directly behind that which was even closer to the Board of Elections, and we had two precincts voting in these. . . .My biggest complaint is the fact that no politicians from Warren County ever told any of the citizens that there was a homeland security threat. The FBI has denied that there was any homeland security threat on Election Day. |
Team Bush paid MILLIONS to Nathan Sproul-and tried to hide it!
by Mark Crispin Miller and Jared Irmas
Mark Crispin Miller, a professor of culture and communication at New York University. Jared Irmas is a junior at New York University. Originally published on Thursday, June 30, 2005 at News From Underground | ||||
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twenty twenty
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Election Fraud 2004 — The biggest story of our lives
Tuesday 10th May 2005
At 5:00 p.m. Eastern time on Election Day, I checked the sportsbook odds in Las Vegas and via the offshore bookmakers to see the odds as of that moment on the Presidential election.
John Kerry was a two-to-one favorite.
You can look it up.
People who have lived in the sports world as I have, bettors in particular, have a feel for what I am about to say about this: these people are extremely scientific in their assessments.
These people understand which information to trust and which indicators to consult in determining where to place a dividing line to influence bets, and they are not in the business of being completely wrong.
Oddsmakers consulted exit polling and knew what it meant and acknowledged in their oddsmaking at that moment that John Kerry was winning the election.
And he most certainly was, at least if the votes had been fairly and legally counted.
What happened instead was the biggest crime in the history of the nation, and the collective media silence which has followed is the greatest fourth-estate failure ever on our soil.
Thursday 31st March 2005
Scientific Analysis Suggests US Presidential Vote Counts May Have Been Altered
Scientific Analysis Suggests Presidential Vote Counts May Have Been Altered Group of University Professors Urges Investigation of 2004 Election
Officially, President Bush won November’s election by 2.5%, yet exit polls showed Kerry winning by 3% [1] . According to a report to be released today by a group of university statisticians, the odds of a discrepancy this large between the national exit poll and election results happening by accident are close to 1 in a million.
In other words, by random chance alone, it could not have happened. But it did.
Two alternatives remain. Either something was wrong with the exit polling, or something was wrong with the vote count.
Exit polls have been used to verify the integrity of elections in the Ukraine, in Latin America, in Germany, and elsewhere. Yet in November 2004, the U.S. exit poll discrepancy was much more than normal exit poll error (and similar to that of the invalid Ukraine election.[2] )
In a recent survey of US members of the world’s oldest and largest computer society, The Association for Computing Machinery, 95% opposed software driven un-auditable voting machines [3] , of the type that now count at least 30% of U.S. votes. Today’s electronic vote-counting machines are not required to include basic safeguards that would prevent and detect machine or human caused errors, be they innocent or deliberate. [4]
The consortium that conducted the presidential exit polls, Edison/Mitofsky, issued a report in January suggesting that the discrepancy between election results and exit polls occurred because Bush voters were more reticent than Kerry voters in response to pollsters.
The authors of this newly released scientific study "Analysis of the 2004 Presidential Election Poll Discrepancies" consider this "reluctant Bush responder" hypothesis to be highly implausible, based on extensive analysis of Edison/Mitofsky’s exit poll data. They conclude, /“The required pattern of exit poll participation by Kerry and Bush voters to satisfy the exit poll data defies empirical experience and common sense under any assumed scenario.”/
A state-by-state analysis of the discrepancy between exit polls and official election results shows highly improbable skewing of the election results, overwhelmingly biased towards the President.
The report concludes, “ We believe that the absence of any statistically-plausible explanation for the discrepancy between Edison/Mitofsky’s exit poll data and the official presidential vote tally is an unanswered question of vital national importance that needs thorough investigation.”
Ph.D. statisticians in America who have seen this group’s preliminary exit poll study have not refuted it. This new study is a much more comprehensive an analysis of the exit poll discrepancies.
The report is available on-line:
http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/Exit_Polls_2004_Edison-Mitofsky.pdfAn executive summary of the report by is available at:
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twenty twenty
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Prominent Statisticians Urge Investigation of U.S. Presidential Election Results
Monday 31st January 2005:
Prominent Statisticians Refute ’Explanation’ of 2004 U.S. Exit Poll Discrepancies in New Edison/Mitofsky Report and Urge Investigation of U.S. Presidential Election Results.
President Bush won November’s election by 2.5% yet exit polls showed Kerry leading by 3%. Which was correct?
"There are statistical indications that a systematic, nationwide shift of 5.5% of the vote may have occurred, and that we’ll never get to the bottom of this, unless we gather the data we need for mathematical analysis and open, robust scientific debate.", says Bruce O’Dell, USCountVotes’ Vice President.
List of professors and acedemicians
The study, “Response to Edison/Mitofsky Election System 2004 Report”, was co-authored by a diverse group of professors and academicians specializing in statistics and mathematics. The USCountVotes team included Josh Mitteldorf, Ph.D., Temple University Statistics Department; Kathy Dopp, M.S. in mathematics, USCountVotes President; Steven F. Freeman, Ph.D., Visiting Scholar & Affiliated Faculty, Center for Organizational Dynamics, University of Pennsylvania; Brian Joiner, Ph.D., Professor of Statistics and Director of Statistical Consulting (ret), University of Wisconsin; Frank Stenger, Ph.D. Professor of Numerical Analysis, School of Computing, University of Utah; Richard G. Sheehan, Ph.D. Professor, Department of Finance, University of Notre Dame, Elizabeth Liddle, M.A. (UK) Ph.D. candidate at the University of Nottingham, Paul F. Velleman, Assoc. Professor, Ph.D., Department of Statistical Sciences, Cornell University; Victoria Lovegren, Ph.D., Lecturer, Department of Mathematics, Case Western Reserve University; Campbell B. Read, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus, Department of Statistical Science, Southern Methodist University.
Their study does not support claims made by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International that exit poll errors were to blame for the unprecedented 5.5% discrepancy between exit polls and official 2004 election results.
According to this analysis by a group of senior statisticians, the new data just released by the exit-pollsters shows that the possibility that the overall vote count was substantially corrupted must be taken seriously. “Now we have statistical evidence that these reports were the tip of a national iceberg. The hypothesis that the discrepancy between the exit polls and election results is due to errors in the official election tally is a coherent theory that must be explored,” said statistician Josh Mitteldorf.
Their paper titled "Response to Edison/Mitofsky Election System 2004 Report" notes that the Edison/Mitofsky report offers no evidence to support their conclusion that Kerry voters “participated in the exit polls at a higher rate than Bush voters”. In fact, the data provided in the Edison/Mitofsky report suggests that the opposite may have been true: Bush strongholds had slightly higher response rates than Kerry strongholds.
The statisticians go on to note that precincts with hand-counted paper ballots showed no statistical discrepancy between the exit polls and the official results, but for other voting technologies, the overall discrepancy was far larger than the polls’ margin of error. The pollsters at Edison/Mitofsky agreed that their 2004 exit polls, for whatever reason, had the poorest accuracy in at least twenty years.
full report(article format) "Election Fraud Update: Experts Respond to Mitofsky’s Exit Poll Report"
http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=5192
Wednesday 27th April 2005:
My Election 2004 Bad Dream Philadelphia Daily News
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Election Fraud Exposed in Criminal Complaint Filed in Ohio
Friday 25th February 2005:
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twenty twenty
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KERRY WON OHIO JUST COUNT THE BALLOTS AT THE BACK OF THE BUS
Most voters in Ohio chose Kerry.
Here’s how the votes vanished. |
Monday 15th November 2004:
by Greg Palast This February, Ken Blackwell, Ohio’s Secretary of State, told his State Senate President, "The possibility of a close election with punch cards as the state’s primary voting device invites a Florida-like calamity." Blackwell, co-chair of Bush-Cheney reelection campaign, wasn’t warning his fellow Republican of disaster, but boasting of an opportunity to bring in Ohio for Team Bush no matter what the voters wanted. And most voters in Ohio wanted JFK, not GWB. But their choice won’t count because their votes won’t be counted. The ballots that add up to a majority for John Kerry in Ohio — and in New Mexico — are locked up in two Republican hidey-holes: 'spoiled' ballots and 'provisional' ballots. Ballots simply chucked in the garbage OHIO SPOILED ROTTEN — American democracy has a dark little secret. In a typical presidential election, two million ballots are simply chucked in the garbage, marked "spoiled" and not counted. |
A dive into the electoral dumpster reveals something special about these votes left to rot.
In a careful county-by-county, precinct-by-precinct analysis of the Florida 2000 race, the US Civil Rights Commission discovered that 54% of the votes in the spoilage bin were cast by African-Americans.
And Florida, Heaven help us, is typical.
Nationwide, the number of Black votes 'disappeared' into the spoiled pile is approximately one million.
The other million in the no-count pit come mainly from Hispanic, Native-American and poor white precincts, a decidedly Democratic demographic.
Ohio Republicans, simultaneously in charge of both the Bush-Cheney get-out-the-vote drive and the state’s vote-counting rules, doggedly and systematically insured the spoilage pile would be as high as the White House.
Halting hand count
Vote spoilage comes in two flavors.
There are 'overvotes' — too many punches in the cards, and 'undervotes.'
Here we find the hanging, dimpled and 'pregnant' chads created by old, dysfunctional punch card machines, in which the bit of paper covering the hole doesn’t fall out, but hangs on.
Machines can’t read these, but we humans, who know a hole when we see one, have no problem reading these cards ... if allowed to.
This is how Katherine Harris defeated Al Gore, by halting the hand count of the spoiled punch cards not, as is generally believed, by halting a "recount."
Whose chads are left hanging?
Ohio refused to fix vote-eating machines
In Florida in 2000 federal investigators determined that Black voters’ ballots spoiled 900% more often than white voters, mainly due to punch card error.
Ohio Republicans found those racial odds quite attractive.
The state was the only one of fifty to refuse to eliminate or fix these vote-eating machines, even in the face of a lawsuit by the ACLU.
Apparently, the Ohio Republicans like what the ACLU found.
The civil rights group’s expert testimony concluded that Ohio’s cussed insistence on forcing 73% of its electorate to use punch card machines had an 'overwhelming' racial bias, voiding votes mostly in Black precincts.
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Blackwell doesn’t disagree; and he hopes to fix the machinery ... sometime after George Bush’s next inauguration.
In the meantime, the state’s Attorney General Jim Petro, a Republican, strategically postponed the trial date of the ACLU case until after the election.
Fixing a punch card machine is cheap and easy.
If Ohio simply placed a card-reading machine in each polling station, as Michigan did this year, voters could have checked to ensure their vote would tally.
If not, they would have gotten another card.
Blackwell knows that. He also knows that if those reading machines had been installed, almost all the 93,000 spoiled votes, overwhelmingly Democratic, would have closed the gap on George Bush’s lead of 136,000 votes.
JIM CROW’S PROVISIONAL BALLOT
Add to the spoiled ballots a second group of uncounted votes, the ’provisional’ ballots, and — voila! — the White House would have turned Democrat blue.
But that won’t happen because of the peculiar way provisional ballots are counted or, more often, not counted.
Introduced by federal law in 2002, the provisional ballot was designed especially for voters of color.
Proposed by the Congressional Black Caucus to save the rights of those wrongly scrubbed from voter rolls, it was, in Republican-controlled swing states, twisted into a back-of-the-bus ballot unlikely to be tallied.
Unlike the real thing, these ballots are counted only by the whimsy and rules of a state’s top elections official; and in Ohio, that gives a virtually ballot veto to Bush-Cheney campaign co-chair, Blackwell.
Mr. Blackwell has a few rules to make sure a large proportion of provisional ballots won’t be counted.
For the first time in memory, the Secretary of State has banned counting ballots cast in the "wrong" precinct, though all neighborhoods share the same President.
Over 155,000 Ohio voters were shunted to these second-class ballots.
The election-shifting bulge in provisional ballots (more than 3% of the electorate) was the direct result of the national Republican strategy that targeted African-American precincts for mass challenges on election day.
This is the first time in four decades that a political party has systematically barred — in this case successfully — hundreds of thousands of Black voters from access to the voting booth.
While investigating for BBC Television, we obtained three dozen of the Republican Party’s confidential "caging" lists, their title for spreadsheets listing names and addresses of voters they intended to block on any pretext.
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We found that every single address of the thousands on these Republican hit lists was located in Black-majority precincts.
You might find that nasty and racist. It may also be a crime.
Before 1965, Jim Crow laws in the Deep South did not bar Blacks from voting.
Rather, the segregationist game was played by applying minor technical voting requirements only to African-Americans.
That year, Congress voted to make profiling and impeding minority voters, even with a legal pretext, a criminal offence under the Voting Rights Act.
Didn’t stop the Republicans of ’04
But that didn’t stop the Republicans of ’04.
Their legally questionable mass challenge to Black voters is not some low-level dirty tricks operation of local party hacks.
Emails we obtained show the lists were copied directly to the Republican National Committee’s chief of research and to the director of a state campaign.
Many challenges center on changes of address. On one Republican caging list, 50 addresses changed from Jacksonville to overseas, African-American soldiers shipped Over There.
You don’t have to guess the preferences registered on the provisional ballots. Republicans went on a challenging rampage, while Democrats pledged to hold to the tradition of letting voters vote.
Blackwell has said he will count all the 'valid' provisional ballots.
However, his rigid regulations, like the new guess-your-precinct rule, are rigged to knock out enough voters to keep Bush’s skinny lead alive.
Other pre-election maneuvers by Republican officials — late and improbably large purges of voter rolls, rejection of registrations — maximized the use of provisional ballots which will never be counted.
For example, a voter wrongly tagged an ineligible 'felon' voter (and there’s plenty in that category, mostly African-Americans), will lose their ballot even though they are wrongly identified.
KERRY BLACKS OUT It was heartening that, during his campaign, John Kerry broke the political omerta that seems to prohibit public mention of the color of votes not counted in America.
"Don’t tell us that in the strongest democracy on earth a million disenfranchised African Americans is the best we can do."
The Senator promised the NAACP convention, "This November, we’re going to make sure that every single vote is
counted."
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But this week, Kerry became the first presidential candidate in history to break a campaign promise after losing an election.
The Senator waited less than 24 hours to abandon more than a quarter million Ohio voters still waiting for their provisional and chad-spoiled ballots to be counted.
While disappointing, I can understand the cold calculus against taking the fight to the end.
To count the ballots, Kerry’s lawyers would, first, have to demand a hand reading of the punch cards.
Blackwell, armed with the Supreme Court’s Bush v. Gore diktat, would undoubtedly pull a 'Kate Harris' by halting or restricting a hand count.
Most daunting, Kerry’s team would also, as one state attorney general pointed out to me, have to litigate each and every rejected provisional ballot in court.
This would entail locating up to a hundred thousand voters to testify to their right to the vote, with Blackwell challenging each with a holster full of regulations from the old Jim Crow handbook.
Given the odds and the cost to his political career, Kerry bent, not to the will of the people, but to the will to power of the Ohio Republican machine.
We have yet to total here the votes lost in missing absentee ballots, in eyebrow-raising touch screen tallies, in purges of legal voters from registries and other games played in swing states.
But why dwell on these things?
Our betters in the political and media elite have told us to get over it, move on.
To the victors go the spoils of electoral class war.
As Ohio’s politically ambitious Secretary of State brags on his own website, "Last time I checked, Katherine Harris wasn’t in a soup line, she’s in Congress."
NEW MEXICO GOES KERRY - BUT WHO’S COUNTING?
Why single out Ohio?
So it also went in New Mexico where ballots of Hispanic voters (two-to-one Kerry supporters) spoil at a rate five times that of white voters.
Add in the astounding 13,000 provisional ballots in the Enchanted State — handed out 'like candy' to Hispanic, not white, voters according to a director of the Catholic Church’s get-out-the-vote drive — and Kerry wins New Mexico.
Just count up the votes ... but that won’t happen.
Investigative reporter Greg Palast is author of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (Penguin 2004).
Oliver Shykles and Matthew Pascarella of GregPalast.com contributed to this article.
View Greg Palast’s BBC Television film, "Bush Family Fortunes," now available on DVD, at http://www.gregpalast.com/bff-dvd.htm
To receive Greg’s investigative reports click here: http://www.gregpalast.com/contact.cfm
http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=393&row=0
by : Greg PalastMonday 15th November 2004 |
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twenty twenty
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The Silence of the Scams: Psychological Resistance to Facing Election Fraud
Saturday 16th April 2005
A Political Psychological Puzzlement
Under what conditions do millions of allegedly "free" people knowingly acquiesce to being deceived, dominated and deprived of their own political will?
How is it that even those who were politically engaged for the first time resign themselves to an unjust fate, refusing even to consider what happened to our country?
Why do progressive citizens actively dismiss and even malign a small group of courageous, devoted people working day and night on their behalf to uncover, calculate, analyze, and evaluate the extensive, varied forms of criminal sabotage that undermined their democracy?
How are Americans becoming complacent with escalating fraudulent activity?
In other words, how do so many people live with the knowledge that they have been tricked before, were just tricked again and then submit to life under the power of those who tricked them?
Environment of passivity and fear
Why were hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians out for days in the freezing cold, refusing to accept fraud, while Americans are helplessly colluding with forces of domination?
Granted, we face a conspiracy of silence in the media, a propaganda campaign discrediting exit polls (which are accurate in counties with paper trails and other countries), and a dismissal of those who challenge the vote as nuts, sore losers and "conspiracy theorists."
Censorship, brainwashing and intimidation create an environment of passivity and fear in subtle yet powerful ways that keep the system going with the complicity of those who have been robbed.
We must wonder what is going on in the collective psyche that allows the systematic and progressive usurpation of power.
The Dance of Domination
The psychology of electoral domination has two parts — what is being done to people and how they allow it.
Psychological techniques, used deliberately, allow many tricks to go unnoticed and unchallenged.
For example, "mystification" is a plausible misrepresentation of reality in which forms of exploitation are presented as forms of benevolence.
Like magic and the use of distraction, the issue of voting reform was manipulated and misrepresented, so people felt calmed by the illusion that the problems are being corrected.
In fact, the exact opposite is true.
Elements of the Help America Vote Act, HAVA (a name as Orwellian as the Clear Skies Initiative, more accurately should be called "Hide America's Voting Anomalies"), includes intrusive identity checks, the introduction of the "provisional ballot" most of which were not counted, and the use of electronic voting machines.
Each of these was brilliantly misused for the opposite intention — to corrupt and deny votes to Kerry in ways people wouldn't notice.
Brainwashing, propaganda, misinformation, disinformation
The subterfuge was successfully accomplished with use of censorship, illusion, distortion, brainwashing, propaganda, misinformation, disinformation, mystification, intimidation, shaming, and domination. As Bush might say, it was a "catastrophic success."
These techniques combine to form something like a collective hypnotic induction, which creates an illusion of a consensus that cannot be challenged.
Few have the insight, training or tools to see through the manipulation.
Even fewer have the courage to take on the challenge.
For many, responses to domination may include learned helplessness, psychic numbing, fear, cowardice, conformity, denial, cognitive laziness, disbelief, avoidance, and submission to authority.
These items are inter-related and the lists are not exhaustive.
Many don't want to deal with the corruption
Before the psychological explanations, it is necessary to acknowledge a basic factor: the overwhelming ignorance of the facts that most Americans have(though subliminal awareness and lack of desire to know the facts can exacerbate this).
Of course if the facts were accurately reported in the mainstream media, the collective psychological climate would be conducive to a healthier public response.
People accept fraud for reasons which may be conscious or unconscious.
Some of the ways that they do this are described below.
Confusing Outcome with Process
Many don't want to deal with the corruption because they believe that challenging fraud won't change the outcome, so there's no point.
This might be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It represents a kind of immature, black-and-white thinking, as the outcome is a separate issue from the process.
Even if it doesn't affect the outcome, voter suppression is criminal.
Paradoxically, refusal to examine the process prevents discovery, which might change the outcome.
The Ohio vote challenge required two-hour debates in the House and Senate.
Emotional, even hysterical accusations for not accepting the outcome
Most Democrats who supported the challenge, emphatically stated that they didn't expect it to change the outcome, as if they were intimidated into making that point first or they would be ridiculed and dismissed.
Most Republicans ignored their actual words and made emotional, even hysterical accusations of them not accepting the outcome, being sore losers, and worse.
Republicans ignored the issue of voter suppression and praised Kerry highly for not making a big deal out of this.
Numbers, Imagery and Perceptions People believe that Bush won by 3,500,000 votes — a margin too large to challenge, compared to Gore's 500,000.
They are not aware of the long list of dirty tricks, and knowing of one or two, don't believe they can add up to 3,500,000.
To bring the popular vote to a tie, it only has to add up to half that, 1,750,000, or an average of 35,000 votes per state.
Correcting for Ohio's fraud could change the electoral vote.
People may believe subliminally that even if Ohio went to Kerry, the difference in the popular vote is too great.
The report of the Conyers Committee may be the best single summary that we have at this time to suggest estimates of the numbers affected.
Discomfort with Numbers.
The best evidence for fraud in the 2004 election is statistical, according to Josh Mitteldorf of Temple University's Statistics Department.
Many are uncomfortable with numerical and statistical science that quantifies judgments about likelihood.
For example, statistician Dr. Steve Friedman of University of Pennsylvania, and graduate of MIT found that the discrepancy between exit polls and the actual vote count in each of three states, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, is 1 in 1,000,000, but the likelihood of all three states being discrepant in the same direction is 1 in 250,000,000.
What people heard in the news was a smear campaign invalidating the credibility of exit polls, even though they are considered highly accurate, are used in many countries as indicators of fraud, and that exit polls in counties with a paper trail matched the official vote count, and in counties where there was no paper trail and evidence of computer irregularities, the official count was different than the exit polls and always favored Bush.
They even made up fake reasons for this discrepancy regarding response bias — which did not exist where there were paper trails.
Disbelief
Many people don’t believe the allegations of fraud because they didn’t read about it in the New York Times or hear it on CNN.
(The only mainstream media to report it was Keith Olberman on Countdown, MSNBC.)
We might wonder about the media censorship on this story and intentions to promote disbelief in the populous, in addition to ignorance.
Conformity and Herd Mentality
Because of the media blackout, ignorance, and emotional tone of reporting, Americans have a false perception about objective reality.
The majority conforms to this misperception and most do not have the psychological make-up to challenge the status quo.
The few that are courageously addressing this are not heard, or else they are severely shamed, ridiculed and viciously accused of causing problems.
Thus, even the thought of questioning is suppressed.
Learned Helplessness
Psychologist Martin Seligman's theory of learned helplessness explains how when one's repeated actions have no effect, people learn that what they do doesn't make a difference and give up, even in situations where they can potentially make a difference.
People worked hard on this election and believe that they lost.
They are burned out.
They feel all their hard work, time, energy and money didn't help so they don't want to deal with it.
Learned helplessness is also associated with elevation of levels of cortisol and immune suppression — suggesting it is ultimately not adaptive or healthy to give up.
Conversely, taking action in the face of injustice is a sign of health, enhanced immune response and can be an antidote to depression.
Cowardice
It is reasonable to fear sticking one's neck out and challenging the powers that be.
There may be legitimate reasons to be afraid of individual action, but this becomes part of the problem and rewards domination.
As long as people remain silent and isolated from one another, we don't realize the safety implicit in concerted collective action.
The safety in numbers can reduce fear.
Denial and Psychic Numbing
We are comforted with the belief that our leaders are good people who are protecting us.
Many decent, well-meaning people believe the best about our system of government and democracy and can't believe that corruption is going on.
It is frightening, unsettling, and intolerable for many Americans to question these core beliefs about our leaders and to accept the reality of extensive fraud.
Also, ignorance is bliss, but for the moment, and knowledge implies responsibility, which may be feared and avoided.
Denial and numbing — not knowing and not feeling — protect us from this painful awareness in the present, but they cannot protect us from the real effects of these hidden realities which render us vulnerable to increasing domination and danger in the long term.
If one is in an impossible situation, these habits serve as survival mechanisms to avoid the pain of awareness.
However, if one can do something to make a difference, then psychic numbing and denial are maladaptive.
Submission to Authority
The thought of challenging powerful, dominating authority with the prospect of losing is overwhelming.
Increasing authoritarianism reinforces this dynamic in gradual, subtle ways.
Some may also be afraid of challenging a president during a war and falsely believe it will harm national security.
Political Egocentrism
Many feel that there is no action that they can personally take on this level.
It is too big for them, so they don't even seek out information or support or value the work that others are doing on their behalf.
Avoidance and Compartmentalization
People want to retreat, to focus on their own survival, family, daily life and pleasure, which are manageable.
They are less focused on the scary bigger picture.
This is completely understandable and even enviable.
Furthermore, those struggling with high unemployment, lower wages, and other hardships created by the Bush administration are too preoccupied with their survival issues to pay attention to politics.
In this way, disempowerment of certain segments of the population works to the administration's advantage.
Evolution, Adaptation and Survival
All of these reactions are understandable, but all are part of the problem.
In the short run, they may minimize pain, but in the long run they are counterproductive and serve to magnify and multiply problems that are not being faced.
Such avoidance mechanisms are not adaptive, as they play into the game of the destructive forces, allowing them to dominate.
The continuation of the processes of systematic domination requires the ignorance, passivity and complicity of the majority of decent people, including the millions who supported Kerry.
These people are colluding with their own domination.
The Courageous Minority
The reactions listed above are completely natural.
Carl Jung said that consciousness is a work against nature.
To go against the collective tide of ignorance, conformity and cowardice is a work against nature taken on by the courageous few.
This collective, archetypal drama described by Jung was popularized by Joseph Campbell in The Hero's Journey.
The Hero is the one who is willing to take on challenges that most people fear.
According to Jung, the hero archetype represents the progressive force in society.
Unable to deny what is going on or remain silent
The people I have witnessed working intensely to investigate and challenge voter fraud, have a particular psychological profile.
They are courageous and willing to face pain and fear.
They call up their strength to challenge authority, as our lives, our freedom and democracy depend on it.
They are unable to deny what is going on or remain silent.
They are the heroes, in our mythical, archetypal Hero's journey, willing to face the dragons who are guarding our "National Treasure."
They are acknowledged in a piece by William Rivers Pitt called "Heroes" on Truthout.org.
Pitt quotes Bob Dylan: "I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom."
Only by facing the pain can we transcend it.
Consciousness is the first step.
Action is an antidote to depression.
It would be a sign of health, freedom, and conscious evolution if more people could muster up the courage to face the painful truth of what is happening in our country and support the great work of those courageous souls — who are not nuts or conspiracy theorists, but evolved, conscious, healthy leaders taking personal risks and sacrifices to elevate our democracy, restore our integrity and ultimately to increase our security on the world stage.
If we let them.
Some Links for Detailed Accounts of Voter Fraud
For a proper psychological understanding of suppression, it is necessary to recognize the quantity and quality of information being suppressed. The
extent of fraud and ignorance of it are mind-boggling. Below are some links with detailed information.
Links for detailed information about voter fraud http://www.auditthevote.org/briefing.jsp
A Guide to Ohio and New Mexico Recounts: Statistical Anomalies and Evidence of Voting Machine Malfunction and Fraud in the 2004 Presidential Election January 5, 2005 By: Audit the Vote and Help America Recount http://www.helpamericarecount.org/election.html Analysis of 2004 Election Irregularities http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/123004B.shtml TV Networks Officially Refuse to Release Exit Poll Raw Data By Gary Beckwith, The Columbus Free Press, 22 December 2004 http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0103-32.htm Thom Hartmann in "Dialing for Democracy" Now Is Critical January 3, 2005, CommonDreams.org http://nightweed.com/usavotefacts.html 20 Amazing Facts About Voting in the USA http://www.votersunite.org/info/mapflyer2004.htm Partial list of incidents reported in the news http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2005/1065 by Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld and Harvey Wasserman by : DIANE PERLMAN Saturday 16th April 2005 |
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E Elites TV — Elite News Source December 12, 2004
Strange and suspicious behavior regarding the election and recounts from Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell
For a Republican and state Bush campaign co-chair Secretary of State responsible for the election in his state who claims that the Presidential election was conducted fairly, Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell is behaving very strangely and suspiciously. Claims of massive fraud and corruption regarding the tally in Ohio are rampant among the progressive blogosphere and are growing daily.
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| New York Daily News November 30, 2004 Ohio Tally Fit for Ukraine
by Juan Gonzalez
It has been a month now and we still don't have a clear count of the votes for our own presidential race from the state of Ohio.For those who may have forgotten, Ohio supposedly assured George W. Bush a second term in the White House — only the most important job on the planet.
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Published on Tuesday, December 28, 2004 by the Columbus Free Press (Ohio)
Ohio GOP Election Officials Ducking Subpoenas as Kerry Enters Stolen Vote Fray
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by Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld and Harvey Wasserman
COLUMBUS — Ohio Republican Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell refused to appear at a deposition on Monday, December 27. The deposition was part of an election challenge lawsuit filed at the Ohio Supreme Court.
Meanwhile John Kerry is reported to have filed a federal legal action aimed at preserving crucial recount evidence, which has been under GOP assault throughout the state.
Richard Conglianese, Ohio Assistant Attorney General, is seeking a court order to protect Blackwell from testifying under oath about how the election was run. Blackwell, who administered Ohio's November 2 balloting, served as co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign.
James R. Dicks, Miami County Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, filed a motion to block a subpoena in his county while Conglianese filed to block subpoenas in ten key Ohio counties.
President George Bush, Vice-President Richard Cheney and White House Political Advisor Karl Rove received notice that they will be deposed Tuesday and Wednesday, December 28 and 29. The trio’s Ohio attorney, Kurt Tunnell, so far claims his clients have not been properly served. Under Ohio law, the Republican-dominated Ohio Supreme Court is responsible for serving the three with subpoenas.
Meanwhile, the Election Protection legal team has collected new statements under oath describing more voting and vote-counting problems on November 2.
Voters in Trumbull County have testified that on Election Day they received punch-card ballots where holes were already punched for Bush. Meanwhile, a notarized affidavit signed by Angela Greene, who voted at Whitehall Yearling High School in central Ohio's Franklin County, stated that one of the malfunctioning electronic voting machines at her polling place was delivered without a cartridge – meaning votes cast might have gone uncounted.
In Miami County, Blackwell certified a 98.6% turnout in the Concord Southwest precinct, comprised of 520 votes for Bush and 157 for Kerry. This statistically improbable turnout has all but 10 of the 689 registered voters casting their ballots on Election Day. A preliminary canvas by The Free Press of less than half the precinct found 25 registered voters admitting they had not voted, meaning the official tally was almost certainly fraudulent.
The nearby Concord South precinct certified a 94.27% voter turnout, with 468 alleged votes for Bush versus 182 for Kerry. Miami County is included in the election challenge since it somehow reported nearly 19,000 additional votes after 100% of the precincts had reported on Election Day.
In Madison County, where public records requests were filed to obtain voting records, the voting results provided by the Madison County Board of Elections came directly from a private company, Triad Governmental Systems, Inc. An email dated November 29, 2004 from Brandon Sandlin of Triad reads as follows: “Hello to all in Madison County! Attached you will find the cumulative report (oh49unov.pdf) with over and under votes reported as well as the official abstract (oh49abs.pdf). These reports may be printed for your records and then mailed to the state along with your other certification reports.” Coming from a private corporation, Triad's letter underscores the barriers to making a reliable independent public assessment and recount of Ohio's presidential tally.
In Mahoning County, the Washington Post reported new affidavits documenting electronic "vote hopping" from Kerry to Bush. This means voting machines highlighted the choice for Bush before the voter recorded a choice of his or her own. The legal team has been told by a computer expert that this may mean the machines were pre-set on a Bush vote as a default. The Free Press has obtained dozens such sworn statements of vote hopping.
The legal team is also exploring new evidence that in Coshocton, Ohio, write-in votes wrongly defaulted to Bush when run through the voting machine.
On December 23, U.S. Representative John Conyers, Jr. of the House Judiciary Committee, wrote a letter to Triad President Brett A. Rapp inquiring whether or not Triad possessed remote access capabilities for any of the 41 counties where its election tabulation software or computers are in use.
Attorneys for the election challenge team are also exploring ties between Triad and the Tennessee-based company Datamaxx. Ohio public safety and police agencies use the Datamaxx DMPP2020 software for its LEADS computer systems. Datamaxx makes numerous remote access products that law enforcement can access with mobile and handheld computers.
The Free Press has also obtained a list of all voting machines assigned in Franklin County, including serial numbers. The list contains at least 42 machines originally assigned to predominantly African-American and inner city wards that voted 80% for Kerry, and where voters waited in line for three hours and more on Election Day.
These 42 machines were blacked out on the list, raising the question of whether these were among the 68 machines the Franklin County Board of Elections has admitted holding back in the warehouse despite obvious shortages at certain polling places. Affidavits from poll workers confirm that numerous requests for more machines were made through election day, but that few if any were delivered.
Franklin County Board of Elections Chair Bill Anthony claims that low-level poll workers refused to accept the machines assigned by high-ranking election officials. But he has yet to provide specific details. Anthony has repeatedly claimed that he was a watchdog for Democratic interests in the election, but he was a political appointee of the Republican Secretary of State.
Under Ohio election law, the members, directors and deputy directors of all boards of elections are assigned by the Secretary of State. They hold these paying jobs at his discretion regardless of whether they are Democrat or Republican. A major argument of those who claim Ohio’s 2004 presidential election was fraud-free centers on the myth that local precincts are run as bipartisan operations, deflecting charges of partisan interference while failing to account for the fact that the principles all owe their jobs to the Secretary of State, who in this case served as co-chair of the state's Bush-Cheney campaign.
These problems add to the established pattern of problems that favored Bush at Kerry’s expense.
Despite the legal stonewalling, lawyers directing the election challenge case are still pursuing evidence-gathering efforts. Three expert witnesses are scheduled to be deposed on Thursday and Friday, including specialists in statistics and vote counting irregularities.
The challengers are seeking a January 4th hearing before the Ohio Supreme Court. Members of Congress meet in Washington on January 6 to evaluate the Electoral College vote. Led by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), it is virtually certain numerous members of the Congressional Black Caucus will challenge that vote. But the assent of a Senator is required for the challenge to go forward, and thus far none has definitively confirmed.
Despite ducking depositions, Blackwell is escalating his public appearances in hopes of becoming Ohio’s next governor. On January 12, 2005, Blackwell is scheduled to speak at the exclusive Scioto Country Club on the topic of “Ethics in Leadership.” Blackwell became nationally known after disenfranchising voters who had not registered on 80-pound bond paper stock under an archaic Ohio law.
He reversed longstanding Ohio tradition that allowed voters to cast provisional votes by county by ruling that none of these votes would be counted unless the voter was in the right precinct. He also was recently censured for running a “get out the vote” campaign for Issue One, a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and spousal benefits.
Meanwhile, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) was reported to be filing a brief in federal court in relation to the activities of Triad and events in Hocking County, where serious questions have arisen as to the integrity of the recount. Kerry previously circulated a letter to all 88 counties requesting information on how the vote was conducted.
The Kerry campaign raised millions of dollars from grassroots supporters with the promise that "all votes would be counted." But the Democrats are not known to have helped fund the legal work of the Green and Libertarian Parties and their grassroots Election Protection supporters, who have raised the money for the shoestring campaign that has kept the legal challenges alive thus far.
An Election Protection rally in downtown Columbus has been set by Rev. Jesse Jackson for 2pm Monday, January 3. It will be followed by a national gathering in Washington January 6, to take place as Congress evaluates the Electoral College and the Ohio votes, which have allegedly given George W. Bush another term in the White House.
BobFitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of theupcoming OHIO'S STOLEN ELECTION: VOICES OF THE DISENFRANCHISED, 2004, abook and film project from http://freepress.org |
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Vote Machine Fraud documented in Florida Coastal Counties- Hearings to be Held Feb 1 & 3
The biggest Democratic counties in Florida are Palm Beach, Broward, and Dade. Each of these counties had dozens of precincts where vote-switching was reported. Most involved switches from Kerry to Bush, but there a few reported cases of votes switching from Kerry to a minor candidate or no vote.
(Recall that non-votes were likely to be switched to Bush. A smaller number of reports documented votes switched from Betty Castor to Mel Martinez in Florida’s U.S. Senate race. Poll workers and poll watchers told frustrated voters who were having trouble that "this has been going on all day". EIRS found that these problems were so widespread they were reported throughout Election Day on local Florida radio and TV stations. A smaller number of vote switching cases were reported in Hillsboro, Sarasota, Pinellas, Pasco, and Lee counties. Some of these were votes switched in the U.S. Senate race.
If a significant number of machines were programmed for "Default to Bush," this would mean fewer than normal undervotes. (In an undervote, nobody gets the vote.) In fact, undervotes decreased by over 50% in all Florida touchscreen counites except Broward. The experience of Mahoning County in Ohio, which used ES&S Ivotronic touchscreen machines, is a good comparison.
In Mahoning, EIRS reports of switching include many affidavits. The majority of machines defaulted to Bush, but some defaulted to "blank" (an undervote). Thus voters for Kerry, who chose Kerry but didn’t notice that the vote later switched to Bush, would end up either voting for Bush or "blank" (an undervote), depending upon the machine default.
Kerry would lose all of these votes, but the pattern of undervotes would not look so unusual. The default to blank might also be considered less suspicious than the "Default to Bush" pattern and would be less likely to get reported through the hotline system (which most voters were not familiar with — many disasterous irregularities were never reported).
A focused search of the Florida EIRS data has confirmed the same pattern also exists in Florida, especially Broward County. Several computers defaulted to blank after Kerry was initially chosen, as seen in the EIRS cases.
The EIRS cases for each county reported here are based on a limited search of the thousands of incident reports, and it is likely that these are just a small fraction of the total number of incidents.
These documented cases of vote-switching prove that the "Default to Bush" was programed into a number of the touchscreen vote machines of the big touchscreen counties. Computers don’t consistently do something unless they are programed to do it.
This appears to explain the big gap between the exit polls and final vote counts in the big touchscreen counties. The exit polls appear to have been correct, just as they matched the final vote counts in all the non-touchscreen counties. The only questions are, Who was responsible? and What can we do about it?
My previous study examined Presidential votes by county in 2000 and new registrations by party from 2000 to 2004. It pointed out an ususual swing to Bush inconsistent with previous voting patterns and new voter registrationsin these counties.
This vote machine fraud pattern is consistent with the unusual shift to Republican candidates, which is documented by several detailed studies of voting and registration patterns, along with the exit poll data that also documented this unusual and unexplained shift in the official votes.
Links here http://www.flcv.com/fraudpat.html Election Protection has announced a pair of additional election fraud hearings in peninsular Florida over and above the one at Orlando City Hall at 6PM on Thursday, January 27. Here’s the appropriate excerpt from their announcement: North Florida - February 1 6:00 - 8:00 p.m. St. James Building Renaissance Room (on the 1st floor) 117 W. Duval Street Jacksonville, FL South Florida - February 3 6:00 - 8:00 p.m. United Teachers of Dade Building 2200 Biscayne Blvd. Miami, FL For more information, contact: Irma Palacios - (305) 573-7329 or Linda Morris - (850) 877-0307 by : Florida League of Conservation Voters Monday 31st January 2005 Wednesday 15th December 2004: Green says voting company tampered with recount effort http://www.bluelemur.com/index.php?p=490 |
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In Sarper County, Nebraska, a computer problem doubled the votes in half the county’s precincts, adding 3000 phantom votes to the totals.
In Guilford County, North Carolina vote totals were so large that the tabulation computer threw numbers away. Retallying changed two outcomes and awarded an additional 22,000 to John Kerry.
In Broward County, Florida at least 21 voting machines malfunctioned and were replaced. Most of them had already been used by voters.
Poll workers in Broward County, Florida expressed concern that boxes of absentee ballots remained uncounted in the central storage facilities and were promptly escorted out of the Supervisor’s office by security after raising that concern.
FBI terror threat that the FBI says was never issued
Citing concerns about potential terrorism, Warren County, Ohio officials locked down the county administration building on election night and blocked anyone from observing the vote count. Warren County was apparently the only one of 88 counties to opt for such measures.
Warren County Commissioners President Pat South said, "In a face to face meeting between the FBI and our director of Emergency Services, we were informed that on a scale from 1 to 10, the tri-state area of Southwest Ohio was ranked at a high 8 to a low 9 in terms of security risk. Warren County in particular, was rated at 10.”
Keith Olbermann of MSNBC’s countdown has been the lone voice in the mainstream media reporting on the voting irregularities, he reports that the Bureau issued no such warning.
“The FBI did not notify anyone in Warren County of any specific terrorist threat to Warren County before Election Day,” FBI spokesman Michael Brooks told Cincinatti Enquirer reporters Erica Solvig and Dan Horn.
Through a spokeswoman, Ohio Public Safety Director Ken Morckel told the newspaper that his office knew of no heightened terror warning for election night for Warren County or any other community in Greater Cincinnati.
Despite the contradiction from both security services, Ms. South again amplified, telling the Enquirer “It wasn’t international terrorism that we were in fear of; it was more domestic terrorism.”
So the media was kept two floors away from the vote counting at the Warren County Administration on election night on the basis of a “10” FBI terror threat that the FBI says was never issued.
Many of the Voting Irregularity stories stem from impossible statisical coincidences
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One of the first statistical anomalies to appear on election night were Bush’s astounding victories in Florida.
In counties registered heavily democratic, Bush scored amazing victories, earning all of the republican vote and half of the democrat vote as well.
For instance, in Holmes County, Florida democrats are 73% of the registered voters, yet Bush received 77% of the vote.
What’s an even more striking coincidence is that these results are repeated only in Florida optical-scan counties.
In touchscreen voting counties the number of registered democrats and the number of kerry votes was similar, but in optical-scan counties they were reversed.
Optical-scan counties use Diebold software on the central tabulator, which is a windows PC hooked up to a modem. Precincts dial in their results to this machine which is something akin to the ’one ring to rule them all’.
Bev Harris found it odd that county officials accidentally gave her the county’s central tabulator phone number — if she had been a malicious hacker, she could have hacked the vote from her home computer.
Exit Polls created much of the controversy, when they were dead on in most states, but way off in swing states, where the early exit polls predicted a Kerry win, the machine tabulators computed a Bush victory.
CNN changed their exit poll data because it didn't match with voting 'results'
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The mainstream media instantly reported that the exit polls were flawed, CNN even went so far as to change their exit polls to match with the voting results.
A member of DemocraticUnderground.com had been watching these polls closely, and had actually saved a screenshot of the CNN exit poll before it was altered. CNN claimed to have over-sampled black voters, and had changed their results accordingly.
This still doesn’t account for the amazing coincidence of the exit polls being accurate in most states, but off in others.
Steven Freeman, PhD professor at the University of Pennsylvania writes that exit polls are usually quite accurate, and the odds of them coincidentally being off in some states and not others is about 250 million to 1.
Dr. Freeman also referenced a NY Times article from Oct 17, 2004 titled: Exit Polls to Protect the Vote which notes that Exit Polls are used to verify the vote around the world.
Just this summer in Georgia (Eastern Europe) the exit polls showed the challenger ahead, but the vote showed the ruling party winning — people marched in the streets and demanded the leader step down in a peaceful revolution.
Election’s unexplained exit poll discrepancies make systematic fraud or mistabulation an unavoidable hypothesis
Dr. Freeman’s well-reasoned, well-written argument and statistical analysis of the exit poll data is presented very convincingly — he concludes:
"Systematic fraud or mistabulation is a premature conclusion, but the election’s unexplained exit poll discrepancies make it an unavoidable hypothesis, one that is the responsibility of the media, academia, polling agencies, and the public to investigate."
Since publication, the mainstream media has continued to debunk the vote fraud stories as ’tin-foil hat conspiracy theorists’, but they don’t call Dr. Freeman’s analysis a conspiracy theory, they just ignore it.
Voter Suppression
One of the biggest voting problems will never show up, even with a full hand recount. That’s because Republicans across the country employed various voter suppression techniques such as calling democrats with false polling locations, flyers stating that the polls would also be open on wednesday, and by not providing enough voting machines in poor neighborhoods.
People reported waiting in line for 6, 8, even 10 hours to vote — we’ll never know how many turned away because they had work or kids and couldn’t afford to wait in line all day.
Cleveland voted +90% for Kerry even with the vote suppression — ie that’s why it was targeted — imagine the results if everyone in Cleveland was able to vote without standing in line.
Why isn’t there a re-vote?
Why are any of these practices acceptable? Why do white people in Red states go in and vote without having to wait in line at all, while black folks in poor ghetto neighborhoods are forced to wait for hours on end?
If any single person is denied the right to vote, then our democracy is in danger — Election 2004 saw thousands of people denied access to the polls in several different states — why is this acceptable at all?
The media talks as if it’s something to be fixed for 2008... but my question is why did it happen, and why isn’t there a re-vote?
Computer 'glitches'
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Aside from the voter suppression, most of the nationwide voting problems Nov 2nd were quote ’computer glitches’
Computer Loses More Than 4,000 Early Votes WSOC Charlotte, NC TV Channel 9
Jacksonville, N.C. — More than 4,500 Carteret County votes have been lost because officials believed a computer that stored ballots electronically could hold more data than it did.
Carteret officials said UniLect Corp., the maker of the county’s electronic voting system, said each storage unit could handle 10,500 votes, but the limit was actually 3,005 votes. When they tried to store more than 7,500 early votes in the unit, some 4,530 were lost.
In a letter to county officials, president and owner of Calif. based UniLect Jack Gerbel blamed the mistake on confusion over which model of the voting machines were in use in Carteret County.
But he also noted that the machines flash a warning message when there is no more room for storing ballots.
"Evidently, this message was either ignored or overlooked," he wrote.
Tried to select Kerry
There were complaints in several states of touchscreen voting machine problems USA Today reports:
Roberta Harvey, 57, of Clearwater, Fla., said she had tried at least a half dozen times to select Kerry-Edwards when she voted Tuesday at Northwood Presbyterian Church. Each time she selected Kerry, Bush would appear as her choice. After 10 minutes trying to change her selection, the Pinellas County resident said she called a poll worker and got a wet-wipe napkin to clean the touch screen as well as a pencil so she could use its eraser-end instead of her finger. Harvey said it took about 10 attempts to select Kerry before and a summary screen confirmed her intended selection.
Machine counted backwards after 32,000 votes
One county in Florida had two very different problems. In Broward County 58,000 absentee ballots were lost before the election and on election day it was discovered that after reaching 32,000 votes, the machines started to count backward.
Michael Mayo of the Florida Sun Sentinel writes:
Let me get this straight. Nearly half the absentee ballots mailed out by the Broward elections office earlier this month have disappeared, and the best deputy supervisor Gisela Salas can do is blame the post office and say, "We really have no idea what’s going on."
The Palm Beach Post covered the story about voting machines that count backward after 32,000 votes. The problem cropped up in the 2002 election. ES&S (the voting machine company) told Mayor Ilene Lieberman it had sent software upgrades to the Florida Secretary of State’s office, but that the office kept rejecting the software. The state said that’s not true. Broward elections officials said they had thought the problem was fixed.
Secretary of State spokeswoman Jenny Nash said all counties using this system had been told that such problems would occur if a precinct is set up in a way that would allow votes to get above 32,000. She said Broward should have split the absentee ballots into four separate precincts to avoid that and that a Broward elections employee since has admitted to not doing that.
In Ohio a machine error gave Bush an extra 3,893 votes USA Today
An error with an electronic voting system gave President Bush 3,893 extra votes in suburban Columbus, elections officials said.
Franklin County’s unofficial results had Bush receiving 4,258 votes to Democrat John Kerry’s 260 votes in a precinct in Gahanna. Records show only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct.
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| Vote switching software ...An exhaustive investigation has turned up a link between current Florida Republican Representative Tom Feeney, a customized Windows-based program to suppress Democratic votes on touch screen voting machines, a Florida computer services company with whom Feeney worked as a general counsel and registered lobbyist while he was Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, and top level officials of the Bush administration. More click here |
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Oklahoma Independent Media Center — November 27 2004
Voting Machines Count Backwards in Okla.
57 Rural Counties Affected - Vote Fraud Suspected
by Bob Nichols
That looks like what the secretly programmed machines did for Sen. Kerry in President Bush's easily won Presidential Election victory in Oklahoma.
All 77 counties use the Optech Eagle voting machines and Tabulator's made by ES&S, Sen Hagel's republican company.
The respectable, conservative "Tulsa World" newspaper reported Nov 3rd that Kerry was winning in 57 of the states's rural counties., with 70% of the vote counted.
Turns out that the famous November 3rd report was probably not supposed to be printed.
It represented the counting when the tabulating was about 70% "complete," as they used to say in the old Soviet Unon.
The "official" State of Oklahoma Election Board vote totals released later show Kerry not winning; but, losing in all the state's 77 counties, including the 57 rural counties.
Yea, somebody really messed up, big time, and published a partially completed and, I guess you would haver to call it, "fixed" vote.
A simple comparison of total votes for Kerry between the staid establishment mouthpiece, the "Tulsa World" newspaper and the so-called "official" final vote totals at the State Election Board show fewer votes for Kerry in 57 counties than the "Tulsa World" does.
Fifty-seven of the 57 counties clearly demonstrate that Sen Kerry lost 37,982 votes to the ES&S Optech Machines. During the same time period President Bush gained a whooping 393,825 votes.
Nice, slick, easy way to win an election. As a man once said "He stole it fair and square!"
In other words, Kerry lost votes already cast by voters. The voting machines counted backwards. What could be simpler than that?
Who programs these things, eh? Why, ES&S Corp., of course. It turns out the every vote in the state, all 1.4 Million of them cast, were counted on the same type of flawed machine, programmed originally by the Hagel's ES&S company. Whether they knew the difference or not is not known; but, spokesmen for the State Election Board would only say the Machines and Tabulators were fron Optech. They breathed not a word about ES&S. Who really won? Well, nobody really knows! Most people in Oklahoma still think President Bush won his Presidential election. Wrong! Time for a re-count, this time by hand! Not that Oklahoma's very few Electoral Votes make much difference in the grand scheme of things. Except, of course, fraud is suspected in Ohio, too. A recount is already guaranteed in Ohio. What will Oklahoma officials do? "Film at 11." Fat chance! People in the Great Flyover State of Oklahoma all know that the Professional Hairdo Anchors in the Oklahoma TV stations and the Radio Celebrities will not touch this with a 30 Foot Pole since their right wing owners keep them on a real short leash. But, the money is good and the living is easy in Oklahoma, where "The Oklahoma Observer" says 20% of the people can't even read. This makes TV and radio even more important. If these small state celebrities are reading this, and you know they are, then these parasites know the truth. I dare you, Kelley! Go for it! Get a life, dude! (Kelly Ogle is a local TV personality in Oklahoma City who specializes in "happy talk" transitions.) Watch for more election 2004 reports here as I get to them. Please circulate and distribute IMC this report widely. You know that none of us can depend on the so-called dominant press to do so in the great state of Oklahoma or the USA anymore. Meantime, I reminded of the Salsa ad for some company. When informed that somebody had bought Salsa from a company in New York City, an ole boy hollers off screen "Get a rope!" By the way, what are YOU going to do about this situation? |
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In Sarper County, Nebraska, a computer problem doubled the votes in half the county’s precincts, adding 3000 phantom votes to the totals.
In Guilford County, North Carolina vote totals were so large that the tabulation computer threw numbers away. Retallying changed two outcomes and awarded an additional 22,000 to John Kerry.
In Broward County, Florida at least 21 voting machines malfunctioned and were replaced. Most of them had already been used by voters.
Poll workers in Broward County, Florida expressed concern that boxes of absentee ballots remained uncounted in the central storage facilities and were promptly escorted out of the Supervisor’s office by security after raising that concern.
Ohio election irregularities
Interview with Bob Fitrakis, conducted by Scott Harris
Bob Fitrakis: Two days after the election I was speaking as a political scientist. I was invited by a Unitarian church and everyone was very gloomy, and I was sitting there and some guy who said he was a consultant, never even got his name, said, well you are an attorney, why don't you call public community hearings and start taking testimony before all this evidence evaporates and see if what you are saying is true about a system failure.
And the next thing you know we have got five hundred people in the church on the Eastside within a week, and we've got a couple of hundred sworn statements under oath, as well as literally another hundred affidavits.
Since then, I've been given in the process another two thousand affidavits.
This pattern is emerging, what it looks like, the intercity district in Columbus was suffering complete total failure.
Let me tell you what that is.
We vote on computers here.
The recommended guideline is one machine, one hundred voters.
That is supposed to take ten hours, and one extra hour to get people to and from the machine.
I'm looking, I'm glancing down at evidence that was introduced by a precinct judge under oath, then admitted to by the Franklin County Board of Elections.
This is Columbus - two hundred and twenty votes per machine - two hundred and fourteen - two hundred and sixteen.
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We had presiding judges quitting in the middle of the election.
We have sworn testimony from at least three people that they tried to hire people out of the line. <
We have testimony of waits as long as seven hours.
Two, three, four hours were common.
In Knox County, people waited as long as thirteen hours.
People cast their votes at two or three A.M., in the morning of November 3rd.
They had thirteen hundred people vote at that polling place - two machines. The states own guidelines suggest thirteen machines.
And oddly, in Franklin county, where there were three and four hour waits in the Democratic wards of the inner city, what we are finding now is that - we have sworn statements, and people have turned in evidence - that they held back sixty-eight machines.
There were fifty-eight precincts targeted by the Election Protection Coalition, as low-income districts, primarily African-Americans.
The sixty-eight they now admit, under oath, they held back, would have in fact aided those districts.
So, literally hundreds and hundreds of people, we believe the figure will climb into the thousands, and could be anywhere from five to ten thousand people, didn't vote because the machines weren't there in Franklin County.
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Scott Harris: If you were distil it down Bob, to the essential issues about the election in Ohio that you have observed from this testimony and sworn statements - put it in a nutshell for us, what are the big problems here, and is it enough to make a difference in the outcome of who won in the election in Ohio, and hence the election in the United States.
Bob Fitrakis: Personally I think it is. You have got two hundred and forty seven thousand uncounted ballots.
What we're coming up with is that the provisional ballots, about a hundred and fifty-five thousand of them, are disproportionably from the heavy Democratic areas.
Another ninety-two thousand votes, where no vote was recorded, from the testimony, and what we've observed and counted, come disproportionately from Mahoning County, Cuyahoga, Lucas County where Toledo is, all of the areas where Kerry won overwhelmingly, which might explain why the exit polls are wrong.
Because there are two hundred and forty-seven uncounted votes, they're probably likely, based on demographics of where they came from, to brake disproportionately towards Kerry.
Well are you optimistic that the American people will find out the truth about these votes, the spoiled ballots, the miscounts, and have faith restored in our system.
You can't do anything really about the Provisionals. You are at the mercy of these partisan Board of Elections and the highly partisan J. Kenneth Blackwell who works for Bush and Cheney as the co-chair of their re-election campaign.
You can't do anything. But once you call for a recount then you can get in there and bring in forensic experts.
I think the recount is going to reveal shocking revelations about what really happened in Ohio, just as these mass public hearings have.
And as a consequence of that, I believe the American people will in fact be so outraged that the votes will be counted and we will find out in Ohio who really won, and that there will be a movement, just like the populace and progressive movement for honest and clean government and reform.
And J. Kenneth Blackwell will be swept into the dustbins of history like Boss Tweed, and hopefully will end up in jail if I had my way, because I believe what went on in Ohio was criminal.
And I think, sooner or later, the American people will realise this election was not free and fair and it was won because of massive voter suppression of minorities.
Massive irregularities by machines provided by highly partisan, private corporations with secret software that were backing the President.
That was Bob Fitrakis, a professor of political science and attorney, who helped moderate the Ohio hearings on election irregularities.
For more information visit these websites: www.freepress.org and www.votersunite.org
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Indymedia.us
— November 01, 2004 MONDAY Nov 1 2004: New information indicates that hackers may be targeting the central computers counting our votes. All county elections officials who use modems to transfer votes from polling places to the central vote-counting server should disconnect the modems now. There is no down side to removing the modems. Simply drive the vote cartridges from each polling place in to the central vote-counting location by car, instead of transmitting by modem. "Turning off" the modems may not be sufficient. Disconnect the central vote counting server from all modems, INCLUDING PHONE LINES, not just Internet. In a very large county, this will add at most one hour to the vote-counting time, while offering significant protection from outside intrusion. It appears that such an attack may already have taken place, in a primary election 6 weeks ago in King County, Washington — a large jurisdiction with over one million registered voters. Documents, including internal audit logs for the central vote-counting computer, along with modem "trouble slips" consistent with hacker activity, show that the system may have been hacked on Sept. 14, 2004. Three hours is now missing from the vote-counting computer's "audit log," an automatically generated record, similar to the black box in an airplane, which registers certain kinds of events. Related: An Election Spoiled Rotten — Kerry Already Down 1 Million votes | Greg Palast — newest BBC report on Florida Black Voter 'caging' | New Florida vote scandal feared | VOTERS BEWARE!! FRAUD HAS BEGUN! | E-Voting Tests Get Failing Grade & so does its fraudulent 'creditation' framework | Why Do Americans Need a Machine to Vote? Alternet July 16, 2004 The silencing of the Dems Florida Congresswoman Corrine Brown accused Republicans of stealing the 2000 election, calling it a "coup d'etat," on the floor of the House. She was promptly silenced and her comments were stricken from the record — officially they don't exist. The accusation came while the House was debating a measure involving the monitoring of the 2004 elections by the UN. Indiana Republican Steve Buyer had proposed a measure barring anyone from proposing a measure to request that elections be monitored. A preemptive strike as it were.
Brown represents a largely black constituency — by far the largest single group to be disenfranchised in 2000. In fact, the House leadership so appalled by Brown's outrageous words need only have read yesterday's paper to learn that the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has determined that the disenfranchisement of voters in Florida was deliberate.
The House's presiding officer, Republican Mac Thornberry of Texas, ruled that accusations of criminal wrongdoing have no place in the House. Funny, you'd think that criminal wrongdoing itself would have no place in the House either.
I don't suppose the newsmakers will frame this as a Republican attempt to squelch free speech and limit Democracy?
United States 'coup d'etat'
Transcript taken Fast Coast News video:
"I come from Florida where you and others participated in what I call the United States "coup d'etat." We need to make sure that it doesn't happen again.
Over and over again after the election when you stole the election you came back here and said get over it. No we are not going to get over it, and we want verification from the world."
Fast Coast News July 15, 2004
Congresswoman Corrine Brown silenced by the US house today.
In a debate over an amendment involving election monitoring in FLorida Representative Brown called the 2000 election, yes you heard it, a "coup d'etat."
House member voted her out of order and stuck her words from the record.
The House also punished Brown by not letting her speak for the rest of the day.
A Florida appeals court dismissed a lawsuit that sought a paper trail for the state's new touchscreen voting machines, ruling Friday voters are not guaranteed "a perfect voting system."
U.S. Representative Robert Wexler had argued the new machines will not allow for an accurate manual recount — such as the one needed during the 2000 presidential election fiasco.
He sued Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood and Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore to force them to add a paper trail to the computerized machines.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. Oct. 16, 2004 — Florida set new guidelines for recounting touch-screen ballots in close elections, but voter-rights groups said the court-ordered decision doesn't go nearly far enough to ensure a fair election.
A coalition including the American Civil Liberties Union, Florida Common Cause, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the American Way Foundation wanted touch-screen voters to have the option of using a paper ballot. They also wanted to create a process to make sure all votes cast match the number of people who voted, and to have a federal court oversee a recount if one were necessary.
"It seems like every time they have a decision to make, somehow they find a way not to come down on the side of voters or the side of protecting the right to vote," said Howard Simon, executive director for the ACLU in Florida. |
— click here New Zealand Herald Reuters July 16, 2004 Florida voters face renewed election chaos, commission told. WASHINGTON - Florida faces another debacle in the presidential election on November 2, with the possibility that thousands of people will be unjustly denied the right to vote, the US Commission on Civil Rights heard on Thursday. In a hearing on the illegal disenfranchisement of alleged felons in Florida, commissioners accused state officials of "extraordinary negligence" in drawing up a list of 48,000 people to be purged from voter rolls, most of them because they may once have committed a crime. |
"They have engaged in negligence at best and something worse at worst," said Mary Frances Berry, chairperson of the commission, an independent bipartisan body whose members are appointed by the President and Congress.
She said the commission would ask the Justice Department to investigate the matter.
"It does seems to me there is a smoking gun here," said commissioner Christopher Edley.
"There has been extraordinary negligence in the way the felon purging process has been conducted. ... If it was intentional, this could be a violation of the federal Civil Rights Act."
US President George W Bush won a bitterly disputed election in Florida in 2000 by 537 votes after a month-long battle that was ultimately decided by the Supreme Court.
This year's battle between Bush and Democrat John Kerry promises to be equally tight. The president's younger brother, Jeb Bush, is governor of Florida.
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Last weekend, Governor Bush said the state would drop the list after newspapers pointed out it included only 61 Hispanics. Hispanics in Florida have generally supported Republicans, while blacks, who made up a disproportionate number on the list, overwhelmingly support Democrats.
After the 2000 election, it emerged that thousands of people, mostly blacks, were improperly denied the right to vote because they mistakenly appeared on a list of ex-felons. Florida is one of seven states that denies former prisoners the right to vote for life unless a clemency commission restores their rights.
This year, the state produced a new list of 48,000 people to be purged from voter rolls. The state kept the list secret until news organisations sued and a judge ordered the state to make it public.
Ion Sancho, supervisor of elections in Florida's Leon County, told the commission the list was "garbage" and that Florida was facing another election disaster.
"We recognised the lists were a prescription for disenfranchisement all over again, Sancho said.
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The list was riddled with inaccuracies, he said, because no one had checked the source databases to correct errors. For example, it failed to list the alleged felonies those excluded had committed and where and when they were committed.
Sam Heyward, a resident of Tallahassee, told the commission he had received a letter informing him his name was being purged from the voting rolls. He had committed a crime in 1978 but had his voting rights restored in 1986; since then he has voted in every election.
The state said each of Florida's 67 counties would now have to find its own way to purge its voter rolls of felons. The commission heard that many counties, especially those controlled by Republicans, would probably use the state list despite its flaws and that court action was likely.
Florida Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson told the commission he was also concerned about possible voter intimidation. He warned of "police look-alikes" appearing at polling stations in black neighbourhoods with video cameras, of police roadblocks near polling stations and other dirty tricks.
Additionally, there were serious problems reported with the new touch screen computer voting machines half of Florida's voters would be using. In the March Democratic primary, hundreds of votes that were cast were not recorded.
"It is embarrassing to me that we have to go through these kinds of questions," Nelson told the commission.
I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president
California's experience March 2004, according to Secretary of State Kevin Shelley.
"There was a wholesale breakdown in the election last March in one of our major counties that most Americans are familiar with, San Diego," says Shelley.
"And untold thousands of individuals were turned away and denied their right to vote because the voting equipment couldn't start."
A Diebold plot to rig the elections?
Where did that idea come from?
The rumors began with this letter from Diebold's CEO, Wally Odell, who was moonlighting as a Republican fundraiser.
In his invitation to a benefit for Bush August 2003, he wrote, "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president."
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6,300 Siegelman’s votes disappeared
November 2002, Comal County, Texas — A Texas-sized lack of curiosity about discrepancies: The uncanny coincidence of three winning Republican candidates in a row tallying up exactly 18,181 votes each was called weird, but apparently no one thought it was weird enough to audit.
Conversion to alphabet: 18181 18181 18181 ahaha ahaha ahaha
November 2002, Baldwin County, Alabama — No one at the voting machine company can explain the mystery votes that changed after polling places had closed, flipping the election from the Democratic winner to a Republican in the Alabama governor’s race.
“Something happened. I don’t have enough intelligence to say exactly what,” said Mark Kelley of ES&S.
Baldwin County results showed that Democrat Don Siegelman earned enough votes to win the state of Alabama.
All the observers went home.
The next morning, however, 6,300 of Siegelman’s votes inexplicably had disappeared, and the election was handed to Republican Bob Riley.
A recount was requested, but denied.
November 2002, New York — Voting machine tallies impounded in New York: Software programming errors hampered and confused the vote tally on election night and most of the next day, causing elections officials to pull the plug on the vote-reporting Web site.
Commissioners ordered that the voting machine tallies be impounded, and they were guarded overnight by a Monroe County deputy sheriff.
November 2002, Georgia — Election officials lost their memory: Fulton County election officials said that memory cards from 67 electronic voting machines had been misplaced, so ballots cast on those machines were left out of previously announced vote totals.
No hand count can shine any light on this; the entire state of Georgia went to touch-screen machines with no physical record of the vote.
Fifty-six cards, containing 2,180 ballots, were located, but 11 memory cards still were missing two days after the election: Bibb County and Glynn County each had one card missing after the initial vote count.
When DeKalb County election officials went home early Wednesday morning, they were missing 10 cards.
LA Weekly
— part of interview with Gore Vidal.
MARC COOPER: Speaking of elections, is George W. Bush going to be re-elected next year?
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GORE VIDAL: No. At least if there is a fair election, an election that is not electronic. That would be dangerous.
We don’t want an election without a paper trail.
The makers of the voting machines say no one can look inside of them, because they would reveal trade secrets.
What secrets? Isn’t their job to count votes?
Or do they get secret messages from Mars?
Is the cure for cancer inside the machines?
I mean, come on.
And all three owners of the companies who make these machines are donors to the Bush administration.
Is this not corruption?
So Bush will probably win if the country is covered with these balloting machines.
He can’t lose.
MARC COOPER: But Gore, aren’t you still enough of a believer in the democratic instincts of ordinary people to think that, in the end, those sorts of conspiracies eventually fall apart?
GORE VIDAL: Oh no! I find they only get stronger, more entrenched.
Who would have thought that Harry Truman’s plans to militarize America would have come as far as we are today?
All the money we have wasted on the military, while our schools are nowhere.
There is no health care; we know the litany.
We get nothing back for our taxes.
I wouldn’t have thought that would have lasted the last 50 years, which I lived through.
But it did last.
Uncensored Gore Vidal - click here |
Bush v. Gore Appointment of U.S. President by the U.S. Supreme Court — Raw political clout exercised by US Supreme Court |
US Dention centers Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America State of the Union |
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Bulge story continues — NASA scientist shows Bush wired in debate Vanity Fair October 2004 issue — Florida election stolen for Bush The erroneous 20,000 votes in Volusia BlackBoxVoting.com E voting — Is the fix in? It's a hacker's dream, secretly programmed computer systems installed by politically partisan private firms Winning Nebraska Senator heavily invested in voted machine company New audio from Bev Harris press conference,54 minutes Discusses Diebold employing embezzler in key position, and other people with criminal records, discusses why electronic voting should not be used in next election due to massive possible back and front door manipulation. Takes awhile to get into the press conference, well worth taking the time, if you think the vote counting procedure is not safe. US Vote Counting Program The mid-term elections in Georgia — something didn't make sense Will the 2004 Election be Stolen With Electronic Voting Machines? Voting machines blasted by scientists How Orwellian Computer vote rigging Secret world of voting machines Irregularity highlights 2002, including Florida, Texas, King County,WA., and more. Understanding the problem Theft of your vote is just a chip away How George Bush won 2004 election. Winning Nebraska Senator heavily invested in voted machine company Criticism of Broward's touch screen voting machines intensifies Chief executive of Diebold committed to help Ohio deliver for Bush California declares paper ballots mandatory — in 2006 Legal war against grass-roots advocates These are the people counting your votes Diebold retreats — lawmaker demands inquiry Diebold response to John Hopkins study Diebold rebuttals don't stand up Diebold changes its story yet again Voting machine study divides MD officials Offshore company captures online military vote |
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