Election Fraud Blog

The GOP is Certain to Win in 2006, Unless…

July 26, 2005
By Ernest Partridge, The Crisis Papers

I have frequently been accused of being hopelessly optimistic. Perhaps so: that’s what keeps me going. But now, for those who thrive on gloom and doom – it’s your turn.

Here’s the very bad news – the Democrats will almost certainly lose in 2006 and again in 2008, for three essential reasons: (a) the GOP and the Bush junta simply cannot afford to lose, (b) they can prevent their defeat no matter what the voters have to say about it (as they have in the last three elections), and (c) apparently the Democratic Party, the media, and law enforcement are unable and/or unwilling to do anything about it.

A GOP win in 2006 and 2008 seems simply inevitable – as inevitable as LBJ’s re-election, Nixon completing his second term, and the endurance of the Soviet Union and apartheid South Africa. By this I mean that all this would have come to pass but for some extraordinary and unforeseen developments. Nothing less will budge the GOP from the White House and the Congress.

After all, their "private sector" supporters count and compile the votes with secret software – and do so with no official independent means of validation. These facts about voting in the United States are publicly known and undisputed. And yet, despite compelling and unrefuted evidence of voting fraud, no one, except some determined citizen groups and a small minority of members of Congress, seems willing to do anything about it.

So the GOP will win for three essential reasons. Let’s take them in order:

1. The GOP and Bush, Inc. cannot afford to lose

If the Democrats take control of just one house of Congress in 2006, they will gain the powers of Congressional investigation – the right to issue subpoenas to witnesses and for essential documents, and the right to require witnesses to testify under oath, which carries with it the threat of criminal conviction for perjury. And be assured that should the Democrats take charge of congressional investigations, chaired by such prosecutorial hawks as Henry Waxman, John Conyers and Patrick Leahy, the worm-cans would be opened.

To be sure, Congressional Democrats have recently held unofficial hearings on the 2004 voting irregularities in Ohio, on The Downing Street Memos, on media reform, and on the Karl Rove scandal. But these have all been rather toothless affairs, boycotted by the Republicans, with all testimony volunteered and none under oath. Official Congressional investigations would be a whole other story.

For there is good reason to suspect that the Bush Administration is less a government than it is a crime syndicate, which, thanks to a compliant Congress and Justice Department, has to date done its dirty work without fear of investigation or prosecution. Among the possible crimes that are crying for investigation: war profiteering, Congressional bribery and corruption, election fraud, war crimes, and of course the "outing" of a covert CIA operation – an act which Bush’s own father described as treasonous.

Accordingly, the loss of either house of Congress would not merely send the Busheviks back into private life: it might send many of them straight to federal prison. And the prospects for the GOP malefactors would be still worse if the Democrats reclaimed the White House in 2008, and with it the criminal investigation and prosecution powers of the Justice Department.

Nor is the threat of criminal prosecution the only concern. In addition, with a Democratic victory, the GOP oligarchs would be required to give back the keys to the federal candy store. With a return to fiscal sanity, the super-wealthy might once again be required to pay a fair share of federal taxes. Legislation might be passed to cut back on corporate welfare, to further reform campaign financing, and to reduce the influence of the lobbyists. Furthermore, the corporate foxes would be chased out of the regulatory hen-houses – the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, etc. – thus restoring to these agencies their intended function of protecting the public interest.

In sum, from the point of view of the Republicans, continuing control of the Congress in 2006 and of the White House in 2008 is not simply desirable – it is absolutely mandatory.

2. The GOP can prevent their defeat, no matter what the voters have to say about it

As things now stand, a Democratic win in 2006 is as likely as a vote for the restoration of the Romanov dynasty in the Soviet "elections" of 1930. And for the same reason: the party in power (more precisely its supporters in private business) counts the votes.

Evidence is abundant and compelling that the presidential election of 2004 and key congressional races in 2002 were stolen, primarily through the use of paperless touch-screen voting machines and the software that collected and totaled ("compiled") incoming election returns. Though numerous private individuals and public-interest groups have presented this evidence, it is only through their initiatives that the issue remains alive. Because I have expressed my suspicions repeatedly and at some length, I will not repeat them here.

But let’s suppose, despite all that evidence, that the 2002 and 2004 elections were entirely fair and accurate. If so, this was due solely to the civic-minded decision of the Republicans who built the machines and wrote the software to play it straight. They faced little prospect of exposure if they chose to fix the vote totals. The machines produce no independent record of the votes and, as noted, the software is secret. In addition, as numerous public demonstrations have proven, the machines can be readily hacked leaving no trace of the tampering.

So it comes to this: whether or not the past elections were stolen, the voting technology is now in place (and expanding under the "Help America Vote Act") that will allow its designers, the writers of its software, and whoever might have access to the back-door hookups to produce any election result that they might desire. Short of a confession by a guilty culprit and absent an arithmetic or programming blunder, there is simply no way that fraud can be proven after the fact through an examination of the polling and compiling equipment and software.

To those who demand verification of election returns, there is only one answer: "trust us!" And to those who shout "fraud!" there is the familiar response: "don’t be paranoid."

But while there are no direct means to validate paperless e-votes, statistical analyses of exit polling can provide external indications of election fraud. And in fact they have done just that as, for example, one such study has calculated the probability of Kerry’s loss at less than one in a million. However, we all know how much impact these statistical studies have had on the final "official" results. Zilch!

And what is the Republican response to those troublesome exit polls? Former RNC Chair, Ed Gillespie, has a straightforward answer: abolish the exit polls which, he claims, have been "proven unreliable" in the last three elections. In other words: shoot the messenger.

Then how about legislation requiring a paper record of each vote to provide validation? The Congressional Republicans won’t hear of it. Which causes one to wonder, doesn’t it? Is it just possible that they suspect (as I am convinced) that if we had a free and honest elections, the GOP would be burnt toast?

The bottom line: will the Republicans cheat in order to prevent defeat in 2006? They can if they want to, and as we have noted above, their motivation to avoid defeat is extreme.

3. The Democratic Party, the media, and the law are unwilling to do anything about it

The Democrats

As we all know, John Kerry, who promised to see to it that "every vote was counted," threw in the towel a few hours after the last polls closed, even as an avalanche of reports of vote total anomalies, of voter intimidation, and of voting machine malfunctions were incoming. The Kerry Campaign, sitting on millions of dollars in their war chest, gave no support to the challenges of the Ohio returns – these challenges were pursued by the Libertarian and Green candidates.

The Democratic Party’s continuing refusal to face up to grim realities was made evident in the DNC’s investigation of the irregularities in the 2004 Ohio election, released just last month. As Steven Rosenfeld and Bob Fitrakis of the admirable Columbus Free Press see it:

[The DNC report] is a shocking indictment of a party caught completely off-guard in its most heated presidential campaign in years, and a party that still doesn’t fully understand what happened and how to avoid a repeat in the future.

The report primarily documents the fact that Jim Crow voter suppression tactics targeting Democratic African-American voters were rampant in Ohio’s cities during the 2004 presidential election…

But the DNC reports says those factors do not mean John Kerry won the election, nor does it mean that the new electronic voting machines are unreliable – even though some of the precincts with the highest percentages of reported problems were outfitted with the new electronic voting machines…

The DNC was denied access to the voting machines and software, and to the tabulating computers in Ohio. Apparently on the assumption that what they cannot examine doesn’t exist, the "fraud factor" does not figure significantly into the DNC report.

And so the Democratic Party is cheerfully carrying on as if nothing has changed since Bill Clinton was re-elected in 1996. They are looking hopefully to taking back the Congress in 2006 and the White House in 2008, as they fire up the base, and solicit still more contributions. They uncritically assume that all they need to do is get more voters to the polls than the GOP, and that the voting machines and compilers will do the rest – reliably and automatically.

Those poor, naive, fools!

Like Charlie Brown, they just assume that if they run up to the football once again, Lucy won’t snatch it away this time. But of course, GOP-Lucy will do just that, thanks to the Democrats’ reliable gullibility. Like Brooklyn Dodgers fans in the 1940s and 1950s, they keep saying "wait till next year." And next year the "Bums" are creamed again by the Yankees.

2002 and 2004 were "next year" for the Democrats. So too are 2006 and 2008. By refusing to face up to the fact that they’ve been had by the GOP voting machines and software, the Democratic Party is setting itself up for certain defeat in 2006 and 2008.

The Media

A week after the 2004 election, actor Peter Coyote reported:

I received a phone call from a good friend who works at CBS – I’ve known her for years and she is a Producer for some of the news programs, one well known one in particular. She tipped me off that the news media is in a "lock-down" and that there is to be no TV coverage of the real problems with voting on Nov. 2nd. She said similar "lock-down orders" had come down last year after the invasion of Iraq, but this is far worse – far scarier. She said the majority of their journalists at CBS and elsewhere in NYC are pretty horrified – every one is worried about their jobs and retribution Dan Rather style or worse. My source said they’ve also been forbidden to talk about it even on their own time but she was pissed and her journalistic and moral integrity as what she considers to be a government watchdog requires her to speak out, … [and] to "spread" the word…

Regardless of the reliability of Peter Coyote’s report, it is easy enough to tell if the mainstream media (MSM) has put an embargo on the election fraud issue. Just try to find any treatment of the issue on the MSM (Keith Olberman honorably excepted). If there is any such mention, more than likely it is to dismiss accusations of election fraud as "kookery" and "conspiracy theory" – beyond the pale of respectable public opinion.

Thus, what may be the greatest political crime in the history of the American republic is deemed by the MSM as unworthy of their attention. Maybe there was no such crime. But given the unmistakable indication that there might have been, isn’t at least an investigation by the media in order? Say, something on the order of an investigation of the (ultimately innocent) Whitewater land deal by the Clintons?

Law Enforcement

The greatest vulnerability of the e-voting companies might be a rigorous application of state and municipal voting fraud laws. Though I keep a close and steady eye on the issue of electoral integrity, I have heard of no criminal investigations in progress. Have you? If so, please report them to me. (crisispapers@hotmail.com). Of course, if such investigations are in their early stages, the public is unlikely to hear of them. So some good news just might be in the pipeline.

Is there any hope?

Not if things continue as they are. There may have to be a dramatic disruption in the flow of events. And there is no guarantee that this disruption won’t have horrible consequences. For example, if Al Qaeda manages to slip a nuclear device into a shipping container and it goes off in one of our ports, all bets are off. Martial law is a distinct probability, and American democracy will be a goner.

As it happens, Bush’s Department of Homeland Security has done precious little to intercept such horrors. And who knows, Valerie Plame Wilson’s covert operation just might have been able to intercept it – had she been allowed to stay on the job.

Hopefully, if a different kind of "dramatic disruption" comes around, it will work to our favor. For all we know, it may even now be in its early stages: the Rove/Plame/CIA scandal may be at the "third-rate burglary" phase, with the analogs to "the cancer on the Presidency" and the White House tapes still to come. The new "deep throat" may yet enter the stage.

Tomorrow, some state Attorney General or municipal District Attorney might open an investigation of voting fraud. In the United States, elections are administered on the state and municipal level. So if paperless machines were used in said AG’s or DA’s jurisdiction, Diebold and ES&S executives and technicians could be subpoenaed and required to testify under oath. If in fact these companies cooperated in the stealing of a Presidential election, "the truth is out there" to be gathered and exposed by an aggressive prosecutor.

Would that kind of news be just too much to be ignored by the MSM? Who knows? If the truth is that the conduct of all recent elections was 100% copasetic, then the GOP should welcome such investigations. It may be noteworthy that the GOP does not seem to be encouraging such investigations.

Is the mainstream media united and unmovable in its determination to spare the American public the discomfort of reading or hearing bad news about its government and its president? The credibility and audience of the MSM is falling alongside the public opinion scores of George W. Bush. Will one or two mainstream TV networks or print publications defect from the pack and try to do journalism for a change? Will others follow? Or will the MSM become irrelevant as alternative and independent media and the Internet become the primary public sources of news? (The "Pravda/Samizdat solution").

Is the CIA going to sit still for this? After all, that’s in their charter – stay out of US politics. But of this much we can be confident; the rank and file of the CIA is super-pissed-off. One of their own has been trashed, her operation demolished, and dozens (?) of agents and operatives put in grave danger. Possibly some have been killed. Nor is that all. The CIA has been asked to take the fall for the Iraq fiasco – the result of "flawed intelligence" the Bushistas tell us. The motto on the floor at Langley, The Truth Shall Make Your Free, has been effectively supplanted with The Truth Shall Get You Canned.

Pissing off the CIA can be a very dangerous business. These folks are very good at overthrowing governments. What does it take to get them to bring these skills home? I’m not talking about tanks surrounding the White House. Just the usual bag of behind the scenes spook-tricks: bribery, blackmail, intimidation, disinformation – you know, the sort of stuff that Karl Rove uses to perfection. If I were Bush, I’d be afraid – very afraid.

What about the Republicans? To date, they are a solid block. In the entire GOP Congressional delegation, not a single Senator or Congressperson has stood up to denounce and deplore Plamegate. What does it take for at least some Republicans to face up to their conflict of loyalties between the Republican Party and the United States Constitution, to which they all swore an oath of allegiance? Where is today’s Howard Baker, now that the country so desperately needs him? Might it be Voinovich? Chaffee? Snowe? Collins? Lugar? McCain? Maybe Chuck Hagel, who has a lot to tell us about e-voting. When will just a few Republicans come to appreciate that, as in Watergate, if the President goes down he could take the party down with him – to avoid which, they may have to cut him loose? When a few start to defect, who will follow?

Then there’s the economy. A sudden downturn would surely get the public’s attention. How long will China and Japan continue to support our deficit spending? As middle class incomes continue to decline, consumer debt expands, and interest rates rise, when does the retail market collapse? With China, Japan and India entering the market and production at a peak, oil and gas prices can only go up. Most informed economists outside of Bush’s reservation are pessimistic. Clearly, the U.S. economy can not go on like this, and yet Bush is determined to stay the course – all the way to and over the precipice.

Something’s gotta give – and when it does, if the Democrats are smart, resourceful and bold, will seize the moment. But if they sit by and ponder, as they’ve been inclined to do of late, then they, and we, are done for.

What to do?

Can the GOP be beaten in 2006 and 2008? As we said, not if things continue as they are. So do we give up? Not on your life! We do our utmost to determine that things do not continue as they are.

Here are some suggestions (and send me some of your own):

If you live in a state or a district that uses paperless voting machines, and if there is statistical or other evidence of voting fraud, contact your state Attorney General or your local District Attorney and demand a criminal investigation.

As the 2006 election approaches, join the determined effort to abolish e-voting and to use paper ballots instead. Failing that, demand paper receipts from the e-voting machines. If, as is likely, e-voting and computer compilation remains in place, it is still possible to institute safeguards, e.g., double-balloting, random inspection of touch-screen machines, and parallel compilation of regional votes. (For more details, see my "What Can We The People Do About Election Fraud?")

Insist on exit polling. If the RNC tries to put the exit polling companies out of business, set up alternative exit polls. Same with pre-election polls.

A simple majority may not suffice in your district or state. Work relentlessly for a super-majority. If sufficiently large, the "fixers" might not dare to steal the election. Suppose, for example, that the imminently defeatable Rick Santorum were behind in the late polls by 65% to 35%. How would a "surprise" Santorum victory go down? Add this to several more "surprises," resulting in continuing GOP control of Congress. Might it finally dawn on the U.S. public that their trips to the polls are a waste of time, and that the election results are simply what the GOP want them to be? And might that public finally begin to see the 2002 and 2004 elections in a new light?

Above all, remember: if things continue as they are, we’re cooked. The GOP will not be stopped. They count the votes. Simple as that. We must see to it that things don’t continue as they are.

Dr. Ernest Partridge is a consultant, writer and lecturer in the field of Environmental Ethics and Public Policy. He publishes the website, The Online Gadfly and co-edits the progressive website, The Crisis Papers. Send comments to: crisispapers@hotmail.com.

Crisis Papers Archive

These are two of the best articles I have seen on the subject.

Final Tallies Minus Exit Polls = A Statistical Mystery!
by John Allen Paulos

Professor of mathematics at Temple University and winner of the 2003 American Association for the Advancement of Science award for the promotion of public understanding of science, John Allen Paulos is the author of several best-selling books, including Innumeracy and A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market.

OpEd in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Nov. 24, 2004

http://www.math.temple.edu/~paulos/exit.html

Note: The belated "official" response" of January 19, 2005 to the controversy certainly points to a possible explanation, but I can’t say that I’m at all convinced by it. Unfortunately, if people – and the media in particular – couldn’t rouse themselves to demand (the investigation needed for) a truly convincing explanation before the inauguration, they certainly aren’t going to demand one now. Alas …

Why did the exit polls taken on election day in the battleground states differ so starkly from the final tallies in those states? As my crosstown colleague, Steven Freeman of the University of Pennsylvania has demonstrated in his paper, "The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy," the pattern is unmistakable. In Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida, the differences between Bush’s final tallies and his earlier exit poll percentages were, respectively, 6.7%, 6.5%, and 4.9%.

Similarly huge differences between the final tallies and the exit poll percentages occurred in 10 of the 11 battleground states, all of them in Bush’s favor. If the people sampled in the exit polls were a random sample of voters, Freeman’s standard statistical techniques show that these large discrepancies are way, way beyond the margins of error. Suffice it to say that the odds against them occuring by chance in just the three states mentioned above are almost a million to one.

Since exit polls historically have been quite accurate (there is no question about likely voters, for example) and the differences as likely to have been in one candidate’s favor as the other’s, we’re confronted with the question of what caused them. Given the indefensible withholding of the full exit poll data by Edison Media Research, Mitofsky International, the Associated Press and various networks, we can only hazard guesses based on what was available election night. The obvious speculation, alluded to above, is that the exit samples were decidedly non-random.

more…
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The Strange Death of American Democracy:
Endgame in Ohio
by Michael Keefer

http://globalresearch.ca/articles/KEE501A.html

www.globalresearch.ca
24 January 2005

snip

Like the unsavoury Katherine Harris, who was Florida Secretary of State in 2000 and simultaneously state Chair of the Florida Bush-Cheney campaign, Kenneth Blackwell occupied a strategic double position as Co-Chair of the Ohio Bush-Cheney campaign and Secretary of State in what analysts correctly anticipated would be the key swing state of the 2004 election. From this position, a growing body of evidence shows, he was able to oversee a partisan and racist pre-election purging of the electoral rolls,<10> a clearly partisan reduction of the number of voting precincts in counties won by Gore in 2000 (a move that helped suppress the 2004 Democratic turnout),<11> a partisan and racist misallocation of voting machines (which effectively disenfranchised tens of thousands of African-American voters),<12> a partisan and racist system of polling-place challenges (which together with electoral roll purges obliged many scores of thousands of African-Americans to vote with ‘second-class-citizen’ provisional ballots),<13> and a fraudulent pre-programming of touch-screen voting machines that produced a systematic ‘flipping’ of Democratic votes into Bush’s tally or the trash can.<14> In a nation that enforced its own laws, the misallocation of voting machines–a clear violation of the equal protection provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution–would alone have sufficed to invalidate the Ohio election.

Having overseen one of the more flagrantly corrupt elections in recent American history, Blackwell and his Republican machine proceeded to "take care of the counting"–which involved a partisan and racist dismissal of scores of thousands of African-American ballots as "spoiled,"<15> a flagrantly illegal "lock-down" of the vote-tallying process in Warren County on the transparently false grounds of a supposed terrorist threat,<16> massive electronic vote-tabulation fraud in this and other south-western Ohio counties,<17> and marginally less flagrant but evidently systematic forms of ‘ghost-voting’ and vote theft elsewhere in the state.<18>Blackwell then saw to it (with the active assistance of partisan Republican judges, and the passive assistance of a strangely supine Democratic Party) that no even partial recount–let alone anything resembling a voting-machine or vote-tabulator audit–could get under way prior to the selection of Ohio’s Republican electors to the Electoral College.<19>

He also did his utmost to block public access to election data, ordering the Boards of Election in all eighty-eight Ohio counties to prevent public inspection of poll books until after certification of the vote, which he delayed until December 6th.<20> On December 10th, his Election Administrator, Pat Wolfe, intervened to prevent analysis of poll-book data by ordering, on Blackwell’s authority, a renewed "lock-down" of voting records in Greene County and the entire state. (According to Ohio Revised Code Title XXXV Elections, Sec. 3503.26, such records are to be open to the public; Ohio Revised Code Sec. 3599.42 explicitly declares that any violation of Title XXXV "constitutes a prima facie case of election fraud….")<21>

Bizarrely enough, on the night following the statement to election observers in Greene County that all voter records in the State of Ohio were "locked down" and "not considered public records," the Greene County offices were left unlocked: when the same election observers returned at 10:15 on the morning of Saturday, December 11th, they found the building open, a light on in the office (which had not been on when it was closed on the evening of the 10th), and all of the poll books and voting machines unsecured.<22>

When at last the Green and Libertarian parties’ lawyers were able to obtain a recount, Blackwell presided over one that was fully as corrupt as the election had been. Sample hand recounts were to be carried out in each county, involving randomly-selected precincts constituting at least three percent of the vote; any disagreements between the sample recount and the official tally were supposed to prompt a full county-wide hand recount. According to Green Party observers, however, a substantial proportion of Ohio’s eighty-eight counties broke the law by not selecting their hand-recount precincts randomly.<23> There is evidence, most crucially, that Triad Governmental Systems, the private corporation responsible for servicing the vote-tabulation machines in about half of the state, tampered with selected machines in counties across Ohio immediately before the recount in order to ensure that the sample recount tallies would conform with the official vote tallies.<24> (Triad’s technicians knew which machines to tamper with because, it would appear, Board of Election officials, in open violation of the law, told them which precincts had been pre-selected.)

Despite this widespread tampering, there were discrepancies in at least six counties between the sample hand recounts and the official tallies–and yet the Board of Elections refused to conduct full county-wide hand recounts.<25> As David Swanson writes,"Only one county conducted a full hand recount, which resulted in 6 percent more votes than in the original vote. Those extra votes were evenly split between Kerry and Bush, but–even assuming that one county’s votes have now been properly counted–how do we know where votes in the other 87 counties would fall? Should an extra several percent of them show up, and should they be weighted toward Kerry, the election would not have yet been what the media keeps telling us it is: over.<26>

more…

Posted on Democratic Underground by TruthIsAll

For Immediate Release: 07/14/2005
Contact: See this annotated thread. It’s all in the numbers:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph…

THE UNANSWERED QUESTION: WHO REALLY WON IN 2004?

According to the vote tabulators, in the 2004 presidential election George W. Bush won a stunning victory that defied all odds, particularly those applied by unbiased statisticians. He won despite trailing in most state and national polls. He won despite an approval rating of less than 50%, usually the death knell for an incumbent presidential candidate. He won despite trailing in the three National Exit Polls three timelines from 4pm to 12:22 am (13047 respondents) by a steady 48%-51%, miraculously winning the final exit poll (with only 613 additional respondents, totaling 13,660). This poll was “weighted” (altered) to meet the reported election result on the assumption that the reported result was accurate — quite an assumption. The final poll showed a stunning reversal of the Kerry 51%-48% poll margin, which had been measured consistently all day by the same polling group: major news/networks and polling firm Edison-Mitofsky.

The analysis of exit polls and documented fraud in this election began on the Internet. A number of academics posted detailed work showing the near-impossible odds of Bush overcoming deficits in the state exit polls and the National Exit Polls. Much of this analysis comes from “TruthIsAll” (TIA), a poster on DemocraticUnderground.Com. TIA has a background and several degrees in applied mathematics. Using various elements of the national and state exit polls and other data sources, he produces results that are thorough, detailed, sober and compelling. He shows ALL data and calculations, while encouraging others to check his math. Only once did he make a minor math error, after asking DUers to check his calculation of probability that at least 16 states would deviate beyond their exit poll margin of error and go for Bush. The answer turned out to be one in 19 trillion! The debates on DemocraticUnderground’s “2004: Election Results and Discussion” forum are legendary and have attracted observers from all over the Net.

Before the election, TIA produced a daily update of his Election Model site. On 11/1/04, based on extensive statistical analysis, he projected a Kerry win of 51.63% to 48.38%, using a combined average of national polls, and of 51.80% to 48.2% using a Monte Carlo simulation of individual state polls. After the polls closed, data from the Edison Mitofsky NEP survey (sponsored by the major television networks and CNN) was unintentionally released over the Internet. This was internal network data, embargoed from public use, data with statements like “Estimates not for on-air use” and “This page cannot be displayed.” The networks had locked down this data for their own use in an “electronic cover-up” that was offensive to those who knew the story. Luckily for all of us, Jonathan Simon downloaded the exit poll data and saved the CNN screen shots! The Edison-Mitofsky (EM)-Corporate Media (CM) “embargoed data” was available for anyone with eyes to see it and a mind to review it.

TruthIsAll immediately began analyzing and publishing analyses on the forbidden data. Looking at the demographics on the second to last E-M major network poll, he laid out the set of improbable circumstances needed for Bush to win: “To believe Bush won the election, you must also believe….” This post was cited by Will Pitt in a major blog, which gave it wide visibility on the Net. “KERRY WON THE FEMALE VOTE BY A HIGHER PERCENTAGE THAN BUSH WON THE MALE VOTE…AND MORE WOMEN (54%) VOTED THAN MEN (46%).” It was all right there, polling results that we were never intended to see. But this was only the beginning. There are over 100 individual analytical postings that demonstrate the tremendous odds against a Bush win. This high-level analysis dovetailed with and was confirmed by on-the-ground stories of voting rights violations all over the country, particularly in Ohio.

The key data sources for TIA’s analysis are the four EM National Exit Polls and the 50 state exit polls. For those who doubt the reliability of exit polling, there has been a trend toward accuracy within 0.4% since 1998. These Exit polls are endorsed heartily by international voting rights activists — the Carter Center, for example — and even the Bush administration, which used them, ironically, in the Ukraine elections to demonstrate fraud and call for a new election.

At 12:22 am on November 3, the national exit poll of 13,047 respondents showed Kerry to be the winner by 51% to 48%, matching TIA’s pre-election projection. The poll was “un-weighted,” meaning the EM and CM had yet to apply weighting “adjustments”: percentages and weights applied to all the demographic categories to match the poll results to the reported vote count! Imagine if this technique had been applied by exit pollsters in the first Ukrainian election to show victory for the incumbent, who had committed gross election fraud. Yet this odd technique of turning a poll into a ratification of the actual voting results was applied in the American election. The final exit poll, with 13,660 respondents, showed a stunning reversal of fortune for Bush. The poll results were “re-weighted” to create a Bush “victory margin.”

The odds against the deviations from the state and national exit polls to the final vote count are astronomical. In addition, there is the consistency of the “pristine” exit poll timeline from 4 pm (8349 respondents) to 7:30 pm (11,027) to 12:22 am (13,047).

In addition to the gender-based evidence cited above, TIA has shown that some weightings for the question “How did you vote in 2000” are mathematically impossible. For example, the final poll claims that 43% of all 2004 voters were former Bush 2000 voters. But 43% of 122.3 million, the number of votes in the 2004 presidential election, is 52.59 million, and Bush only got 50.46 million votes in 2000, approximately 1.75 million of them from voters who have since died. Therefore, Bush’s final poll exit poll numbers, WHICH WERE MATCHED TO THE VOTE, had to be off by 4 million votes.

The analysis also demonstrated that other voter statistics make it impossible for Bush to have won. Even if all Bush voters from 2000 showed up and voted for him, he still needed an additional 13 million votes. He didn’t get them from new voters and those who did not vote in 2000; those voters preferred Kerry by an almost 3-to-2 margin. Because of this, a Bush victory required that he must win a whopping 14% of Gore 2000 voters, all of whom had to return to vote in 2004. But Gore voters were angry; they came back to defeat Bush once again after having the election stolen from them.

Logical absurdities and inconsistencies in Election 2004 abound. The data, analysis, and narrative are available at (insert link) for open-minded individuals who want to form their own conclusions about “Stolen Election 2004.”

This work is just part of a comprehensive set of election fraud work and analysis provided by the dedicated voting rights activists in DemocraticUnderground.Com’s “2004: Election Results and Discussion” forum, a unique Net resource.

Exit Poll Analysis: The Essential Threads
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph…

Exit Poll Analysis: A Complete Selection
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph…

posted by autorank on Democratic Underground 

OUR EVIDENCE

We know Kerry led the pre-election state polls.
We know Kerry led the pre-election national polls.

We know Kerry led the post-election state exit polls, 51-48%.
We know Kerry led the post-election national exit poll, 51-48%

We know documented voting machine “glitches” favored Bush 99% of the time.

We know the media and E-M will not release detailed raw precinct data.
We know Blackwell refused to testify before Conyers.
We know Mitofsky refused to testify before Conyers.

We know that there were over 21 million new voters.
We know Kerry won the vast majority (57-62%) of new voters.

We know there were 3 million former Nader voters.
We kknow Kerry won Nader voters by 71%-21% over Bush.

We know Party ID averaged 39% Dem/35% Rep/26% Independent in the prior three elections.
We know Party ID was 38/35/27 for the first 13047 National Exit Poll respondents.
We know it was changed to 37/37/24 for the final 613 in the 13660 Final.

We know Kerry, like Gore, won the female vote 54/46% up until the final 660 respondents.
We know it was changed to 51% in the 13660 Final.

We know Bush 2000 voters represented an IMPOSSIBLE 43% of the 2004 electorate in the final 13660 Exit poll.
We know it was changed from 41% in the first 13047
We know that Bush had 50.456 mm votes in 2000.
We know that about 3.5% of them have since died.
We know, therefore, that the Bush percentage could not have been higher than 39.8% (48.69/122.26).
We know that with the 39.8/40.2% weighting, Kerry won by 52.4-46.7%, or SEVEN million votes.

We know the 2000 election was stolen – by Bush in Florida where 175,000 punch cards (70% of them Gore votes) were spoiled.
We know SCOTUS stopped the recount and voted 5-4 for Bush.

We know the 2002 election was stolen (ask Max Cleland).

We know that the National Exit Poll MoE is under 1%.
We know because we checked the NEP margin of error table.
We know because we did the simple MoE calculation.
We know that Kerry won the Natioanl Poll by over 3%, 51-48%.
We know the odds are astronomical that the deviation was triple the MoE.

We know that 42 of 50 states deviated from the exit polls to Bush. We know that includes ALL 22 states in the Eastern Time Zone.

We know that 16 states deviated beyond the exit poll MoE for Bush, and none did for Kerry.

We know that touch screen voting machines became widely used in 2004.

We know that Republicans fought against paper ballots for Diebold and ESS touch screens.

We know that ALL Diebold ATMs provide a paper receipt.

We know that the deviation trend from the exit polls to the vote was approaching ZERO until 2000, when there was a dramatic reversal.

We know that scores of newspapers which supported Bush in 2000 supported Kerry in 2004.

We know that Kerry won the Ohio Exit Poll, by at least 51-48%.

We know the media will not report in any of the above.

THEIR EVIDENCE:
Something we don’t know.
The rBr hypothesis: Bush voters were reluctant to speak to exit pollsters.

But..
We know that many Republican voters deserted Bush for Kerry.
We know there were hardly any Gore Democrats who voted for Bush.

Ladies and Gentleman of the Jury:
Have you reached a verdict?

Posted by TruthIsAll on Democratic Underground 

MEDIA CONSPICUOUSLY ABSENT FROM HOUSTON ELECTION ASSESSMENT HEARING

Citizens must once again “BE THE MEDIA” to spread the truth!
by Vickie Karp, Black Box Voting/Coalition for Visible Ballots

Once again, the Fourth Estate has failed the American public: the press, as well as mainstream media in general, failed to show up to cover an historic hearing on the REAL, DOCUMENTED facts about election fraud in November 2004 which were presented at a citizens’ organized hearing in Houston last Wednesday, June 29th. The hearing was held one day before the James Baker/Jimmy Carter Federal Election Reform Commission hearing, which election reform groups agree has successfully avoided confronting the truth about election fraud in this country to this date.

The exceptions were two local KPFT radio journalists, Pokey Anderson and Lisa Cohen, and one Houston IndyMedia representative Lorie Kramer. Otherwise, no media deemed it important enough to cover the amazing evidence put forward by technical experts, journalists, attorneys, and citizens from across the country that could leave no doubt that the Presidential election of 2004 was stolen.

The event was organized by Houstonian Kip Humphrey and his wife Carol who have refused to “just get over ” the results of last year’s election. Kip has been active in election reform since studying the Hart InterCivic machines used in Harris County (Houston) and watching as his son cast his first vote on what Humphrey believes to have been a compromised voting system. Kip discovered a machine exploit designed to deny John Kerry untold numbers of votes, documented reports of which he found in every county in the country where Hart Intercivic eSlate voting machines were placed. Voters attempting to cast a straight Democratic ticket ("Vote Democratic Slate" option) reported that the machine failed to register a vote for John Kerry, sometimes registering a vote for George Bush, sometimes a vote for a third party, sometime registering no vote for president at all.

When he voted, Kip tested for this exploit and found that the machine exploit capitalized on voter impatience. When initially voting, the machine’s scroll wheel was calibrated to 17 rotations to scroll down the ballot. In reviewing the ballot prior to casting a vote, the ballot opened at the very bottom with the scroll wheel calibrated to take 25 turns to scroll to the very top of the ballot where the incorrect vote for president could be found. Furthermore, registering a vote for president required correcting the vote twice, scrolling through the entire ballot each time before confirming a vote was registered for Kerry. Humphrey refuses to stand by, do nothing, and let his children inherit a corrupt voting system. This is the third major election reform event he and Carol have organized. The first was the “51 Capital March” of December 12th last year, which resulted in 41 states holding protest rallies at their capitals, denouncing the results of November’s election and petitioning state electors to demand an investigation of the 2004 vote. Largely unknown to the public, for the first time in US history, 4 slates of state electors passed such resolutions. Kip opened the Hearing.

The Election Assessment Hearing had the format of a Congressional hearing. Expert presenters gave testimony from a table facing the stage, where panelists sat to receive the information. The panel consisted of: Larry English, Hearing Chairperson and president of INFORMATION IMPACT. English is a renowned authority on information quality processes; Marybeth Kuznik, a 15 year poll worker from Pennsylvania; Eve Roberson, a retired elections supervisor from Santa Rosa, California; Seth Johnson, information quality improvement specialist from New York (and Hearing Vice-Chairperson); and Tom Oswald, a civil and commercial mediator from Ohio. The venue was the Garden Center at Hermann Park. As Hearing Chair Larry English noted in his opening remarks, this was the first time our election process has been reviewed by true information quality management principles.

The hearing was multi-purpose: to illuminate critical information about November’s election which had not yet been addressed by the Baker/Carter Commission; to assimilate a written record of testimony given by experts that day to present to the Baker/Carter Commission at their meeting the following day; and to compile a CD of this data along with other relevant election data submitted by experts who were not able to attend the day’s event. The CD will be sent to Secretaries of State nationwide, to aid them in their critical decisions regarding the purchase of election systems. The states have been put under pressure by a January 1st, 2006 deadline set forth by the so-called “Help America Vote Act”, which promises significant federal funds to the states in exchange for their upgrading voting equipment.

Many believe that HAVA, in its demand for voting systems that will allow the disabled a private vote, has provided a careless rush on the part of the states to purchase paperless electronic voting systems. Such systems received a severe critique at the Hearing by researcher and journalist Bev Harris of Black Box Voting, who has successfully executed numerous hacks on such systems which all resulted in the “flipping” of elections from one candidate to another in a matter of 60 seconds or less and completely without detection. More on that to follow.

The Hearing brought forth a wealth of information that the general public would probably find shocking, given the massive “blackout” of media coverage on vote fraud. Just a few highlights from some of the speakers:

Bob Fitrakis began his testimony citing case after case of voter disenfranchisement and illegal behavior by election workers in Ohio. Fitrakis holds a Ph.D in Political Science and a J.D. from Ohio State University; is a political science professor at Columbus State Community College, and the editor of the Free Press and freepress.org. He was one of the four attorneys in the Moss v. Bush case that challenged the Ohio election results. He served as an Election Protection Legal Advisor for two wards in the city of Columbus on November 2, 2004, and has recently edited a book entitled, “Did George W. Bush Steal America’s 2004 Election? Essential Documents”.

Among some of the startling data he presented: an estimated 34,000 former felons in Ohio were given incorrect information by public officials regarding voting; (Ohio re-enfranchises felons once they have served their time.) Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell issued a ruling that any voter registration on anything but 80 bond cardboard stock would be invalid (ruling later reversed due to public outcry); absurd design of absentee and provisional ballots, leading to many accidental votes for Bush; private parties processing voter registration; 3 ½ hour waits to vote, frequently in the wrong line, which led to many voters leaving due to time constraints; arbitrary and last-minute switching of polling places; threats of arrest to international voting observers; pre-punched ballots (votes pre-cast for Bush); double counting of absentee ballots. This is just a partial sampling of the documented data presented by Fitrakis to this Hearing panel.

Reverend Bill Moss of Ohio, the lead litigant in the now famous “Moss vs. Bush” lawsuit which attempted to overturn the results of the Ohio presidential election, testified to the panel about voter discrimination experienced by his family, as well as many others, in Ohio in November. “A great crime has been committed against the American people,” Moss stated in his testimony, “and it’s not enough to say that we will prevent this from re-occurring. We must address the cause of the crime”. Moss decried the lack of sufficient voting machines in minority districts, rampant “dirty tricks” committed by election officials in Franklin County, Ohio, and described his surprise upon seeing the five squad cars parked conspicuously at his polling place. He wondered: “Why are the police here? Who are they here to protect?” The only logical answer was that police were there to intimidate voters in his primarily minority district. Moss added that democracy is more at risk today because of election fraud than at any other point in his lifetime.

Dr. Richard Hayes Phillips, retired college professor from New York, and twice a recognized expert in federal proceedings, had analyzed 2004 election results at the precinct level in fifteen Ohio counties. He was a leading statistician in the Moss v. Bush lawsuit. In his Hearing testimony, Phillips identified three major problems with the Ohio election: voter suppression; votes cast but not counted; and alteration of the vote count. He gave excellent examples from each category.

Echoing some of Fitrakis’s examples of voter suppression, he also added: long-time residents removed from the voting polls; broken voting machines (“they’ve been like this all day!”…poll workers said polling stations running out of ballots and turning people away; voters sent back and forth between polling places; long lines not designated by precinct causing people to wait for hours in the wrong line.

Statewide, there were 35,000 provisional ballots and over 92,000 regular ballots that were not counted as votes for president. Most of these are punch card ballots, and are highly concentrated in precincts that voted overwhelmingly for Kerry by margins of: 12 to 1 in Cleveland, 7 to 1 in Dayton, 5 to 1 in Cincinnati,, 4.5 to 1 in Akron, etc. Phillips says, “This cries out for an examination of the uncounted ballots and the machines that failed to count them.”

Quoting Phillips: “In Miami County, after 100% of the precincts had reported, more than 18,000 votes were added to the totals.” “In Mahoning County, the Board of Elections reported that 20 to 30 touch screen machines had to be recalibrated because votes were being counted for the wrong candidates. Voters had to scroll through as many as FIVE TIMES before their choice for president was registered. In some precincts, machines failed to record votes for Kerry and defaulted to no choice at all. In other precincts, touch screens were programmed to default to Bush unless the voter successfully overrode the default choice.” All of this led to his pushing for a criminal investigation into the Ohio election, something that is yet to occur.

Dr. Phillips’ closing remark was notable: “It is my professional opinion, having exhaustively examined the available evidence, that the 2004 presidential election was stolen.”

Bev Harris of Black Box Voting gave detailed and expert testimony, some of the most shocking of the day related to electronic voting. She first gave a brief history of her accidental discovery in 2003 of the Diebold company’s election software on the internet (the second largest voting machine vendor in the country) while researching for her book, “Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering in the 21st Century”. After downloading and studying the software along with computer programming experts, “stunning security flaws” were discovered which she called “a virtual handbook on how to tamper with an election using this software”.

Since that time Harris has pushed forward an aggressive agenda of vote fraud research, unveiling that a felon with a four year prison record named Jeffrey Dean was the senior programmer for Global Election System which was later purchased by Diebold, and was kept on there as a consultant; demonstrated along with several world class computer programmers and security engineers at two Washington D.C. press conferences last fall six different hacks possible to “flip” election results on both Diebold and Sequoia machines; sent out over 3000 “Freedom of Information Act” (FOIA) requests to every county in American requesting election records for November’s elections; was handed fake precinct totals by election officials in Volusia County, Florida and then discovered the real totals in a garbage bag outside the building; and also sued Theresa LePore, then-election supervisor of Palm Beach County, for failure to provide the requested “FOIA” requested election documents.

More recently, Harris was invited by Ion Sancho, Election Supervisor from Leon County, Florida, to attempt hacks on real election equipment using Diebold systems. Sancho wanted to see if his Diebold system was as secure as the state officials and Diebold company claimed. Harris invited two world-class computer programmers and security engineers, Dr. Herbert Thompson, of Florida, and Dr. Harri Hursti of Finland to execute the attempts. Within 90 seconds they had broken into the system and changed the vote totals any way they wanted. Harris claims, “The architecture of the Diebold Optical Scan voting system inherently supports the alteration of results,” and added Hursti’s remark: “If you liken the security of this system to a house with a door, this is like a house with an unlockable revolving door”, and called it a voting system designed for “flexibility, not security”. The programmers executed three separate “rigs” in less than five minutes; wrote their own program and fed it into the machine. The number of exploits possible with this design is “staggering”, said Harris.

Harris called into question U.S. computer programmers who have been studying this software for the past few years, asking, “Who knew about this, and when did they know it?” …and, “What did election systems certifiers know, and when did they know it?” Paul Craft, a Florida state election systems certifier, has already admitted when asked that he knew of the above stated flaws in Diebold software, and told no one.

Harris concluded her shocking testimony with the statement that, “Without 100% hand-counted paper ballots, you’ll never find the hack”. Elections held with paper ballots, hand-counted would have approximately four to five “attack vectors”, according to Harris, while any election held with electronic voting equipment has as many as 50 or 60.

When asked by a panelist, “Is there any way you believe this software could be repaired, or printers added, that would give it security and integrity?” her answer was a definitive “NO!”.

Lynn Landes is one of the nation’s leading journalists on the subject of voting security. She is and has been for years an ardent supporter of PAPER ONLY/NO MACHINES/NO ABSENTEE ELECTIONS. She has filed two federal lawsuits challenging the use of voting machines and absentee voting in elections for public office. Lynn’s articles and research can be seen at her website www.EcoTalk.org .

In her testimony, Landes stated that transparency is the most critical feature that should be demanded in the election process. In her research, she has found problem incidents with electronic voting that go back as far as the ’80’s. She stated that voting should be a public process, and that instead our own country has made voting a “privatized, mechanized system, a clandestine back-room process.”

Once considered a radical even among voting activists for her stand on “paper ballots ONLY”, Landes noted that this position is now gaining popular support. “PAPER BALLOTS, HAND-COUNTED ON ELECTION NIGHT—it’ll take about 12 hours. It is not rocket science, and it’s not expensive!” she declared. “This is the only option we have left that is transparent”, citing the total lack of integrity in our current voting systems.

Hearing participants and audience noted with interest that three newcomers appeared around 2pm who were later introduced as Robert Pastor, the Executive Director of the Carter/Baker Commission, and two other Commission senior staff members, Kay Stimpson and John Williams. Pastor requested a summary of events up to that point in the Hearing, which was almost laughable to several of us, as it would be akin to trying to summarize “War and Peace” in 60 seconds or less. Nonetheless, Co-Chair Seth Johnson did a commendable job of doing just that. Pastor requested and was granted a few minutes to make some remarks.

He made an attempt to create common ground by giving his own background in voting rights and election reform work, crediting himself as being one of the creators of the Help America Vote Act, (Thank you?!) and stated that “the most important element is that we are trying to improve our voting systems”.

Upon the conclusion of Pastor’s somewhat predictable, though amiable remarks, Chairperson Larry English asked the audience if there were any questions. When Lynn Landes, Bev Harris, Robert Hayes Phillips, and others lined up at the side of the room, the rest of us had an idea about what was about to ensue. As for Pastor, he appeared clueless. But he soon took on a “deer in the headlights” look as the questions began: He could not aptly answer Landes’ question about why major voting machine vendors’ ties to the Republican party had not been addressed by his commission; when asked by Harris why she and her team who had executed hacks on the voting systems had not been invited to testify, his response was “I don’t need to know how the machines were hacked,”; when Phillips stated his qualifications and his analytical conclusion that the election was stolen, and asked if he was going to be invited to testify before the Baker Carter Commission, and if not, why not, Pastor’s response was “We don’t need such detailed information. We are trying to keep our focus on more generic issues.”

Such was our comic relief for the day. But don’t expect to see any of this on mainstream media. It’s just not important enough!

Many thanks to all the organizers, our many wonderful presenters, and panelists. JOB WELL DONE!

Posted by Amaryllis on Democratic Underground 

Here is why:

DLC director Evan Bayh owns the payroll for "Donna Brazille" , "Joseph Biden" and many other democratic leaders including Al Gore…..

One of those shills is Terry McAuliffe, and he was hiring Hoffheimer and other DINO-republican attorneys when the Ohio election fraud was happening.

John Kerry learned to take direct advice of these guys, and even his co-director to simply concede and "give up".

So John Kerry did so and threw away any chance of the presidency…..John Edwards who is part of the DLC, falsely told him "he might be able to win" to make it appear that Edwards was on his side.

The whole time this happened though, Terry McAuliffe and his lawyers signed a deal with Governor Taft and Kenneth Blackwell. The deal between the DLC SEALED THE ENTIRE INVESTIGATION, THAT THERE WOULD BE "NO" PROSECUTIONS, AND NO LOOKING INTO ELECTION FRAUD. THIS IS BECAUSE BLACKWELL & TAFT ARE PROTECTING A SPECIAL INTEREST GROUP!

The reason the DLC’s Bill Richardson DENIED ANY INVESTIGATIONS IN NEW MEXICO, IS HE WAS IN ON THE SAME DEAL. JOHN KERRY WAS EITHER UNKNOWING OF IT AT THE TIME OR HOPELESSLY LOST.

The reason they *KNEW* about the stolen election and wanted it stolen for the sElection is because WITH NO PAPER TRAIL, AND THOUSANDS OF VOTES STOLEN JOHN KERRY WOULD NEVER BE PRESIDENT. The reason they didn’t want KERRY TO BE FUCKING PRESIDENT IS SIMPLE: IT WAS THE SAME REASON THEY DIDN’T WANT GORE TO BE!

John Kerry would HAVE STOPPED FUNDING THE PHONY ILLEGAL WAR, WHICH THE DLC HAS KNOWN ABOUT THE WHOLE TIME!

http://www.defenddemocracy.org/biographies/biographies….

That’s right, Chairman "Donna Brazille", "Joseph Biden" and all the other corrupt profiteers of PNAC…..And who is there on the report? "William Krystol" PNAC director. This was established almost a year before the year 2000!!!! And Chris Dodd is also there, And Bill Richardson is there too!

And guess why Biden, Harold Ford and others like Hillary Clinton went on CABLE NEWS and talked about how the Democratic party was sunk and that moral values had won–And that the WHOLE PARTY MUST MOVE TO THE RIGHT? Because they were all playing politics for Evan Bayh, who was ASSURED by Karl Rove that the fix was in.

THEY HAD TO HAVE THIS PRESIDENCY- And the proof is right there! So they could have the illegal war and make over 9 billion dollars off EXXON Mobil stock…And then to SHUT THE DNC UP, they forced "Brazille" to go on a half-way WHITEWASH OF THE OHIO FRAUD! They’re covering Blackwell so Rove doesn’t get called out.

THE WHOLE DLC LEADERSHIP HATES KERRY, AND IS COVERING FOR KARL ROVE! They WANT to keep raping countries, and spreading their crap! It’s right in bold writing

This is the whole plot….And they never thought the minutes would get out. NO MATTER WHAT, WE HAVE TO STOP THESE CORPORATE FASCISTS FROM FINISHING THE AGENDA!!!!!!!

http://www.usalone.com/warlies.htm
http://www.commonblog.com/story/2005/6/9/112353/3287

Posted on Democratic Underground by LightningFlash – Frightening if true!