Election Fraud Blog

ZOGBY POLL:

VOTERS QUESTION OUTCOME OF 2004 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

Only 45% of Voters “Very Confident” Bush Won Election “fair and square”

By Michael Collins

Part II of a II Part Series (Part I)

“Scoop” Independent News

Washington, DC

At their lowest points of popularity, do you recall anyone who claimed that Presidents’ Carter and Nixon stole their elections or that they didn’t win fair and square? Did any analysts or activist groups clam massive election fraud in the elections that brought these ultimately very unpopular presidents to office?

How confident are you that George Bush really won the 2004 presidential election? If you are a typical American voter and you have doubts, how did those doubts arise? A mid August Zogby Poll of 1018 likely voters answered the first of these two very important questions (The author was a contributing sponsor for the survey.)

How confident are you that George W. Bush really won the 2004 presidential election?

Very confident that Bush won fair and square…….. 45.2%

Somewhat confident that Bush won fair and square… 20.0%

Not at all confident that he won fair and square…… 32.4%

Other/not sure………………………………………. 2.4%

This is a remarkable result. Nearly two years into the second term of his presidency, less than half of those polled think that the 2004 election victory was “fair and square.” 20% say they are “somewhat” confident, which is hardly an endorsement of legitimacy. Webster’s defines “somewhat” as follows: “…in some degree or measure: SLIGHTLY.“ This does not exactly qualify as an endorsement of a critical democratic process. The 32% who are “not at all confident” represent a major portion of the population holding the belief that Bush failed to win without cheating. Combining “not at all confident” with “somewhat” “slightly”, according to Webster’s, produces a category of 52% who “doubt” the legitimacy of the election. Altogether, these results are a clear vote of no confidence.

Combining “not confident at all” and “somewhat” (“in some degree measure: SLIGHTLY”) produces a category of “Doubts.” This gives a clear picture on legitimacy versus illegitimacy issue.

Survey Excel file available here.

Those who doubt: Not at all confident that he won fair and square – 32%

Fifty nine percent of Democrats, 5% of Republicans, and 34% of independents comprise the group with no confidence in a Bush win. Dividing the group by race shows that 54% of Asians and 71% percent of African Americans have serious doubts in the legitimacy of the election, along with 25% of whites and 37% of Latinos. Thus, a majority of Asian and African American voters lack confidence in the president’s legitimacy to rule while significant numbers of whites and Latinos do as well.

Groups thought to be in the hip pocket of the Republican administration show no confidence at a significant rate. NASCAR fans doubt the election results at a rate of 28% and born again Christians at 25%. Those in rural areas and the suburbs show some real doubt with rates of 28% and 29% respectively demonstrating a significant level of doubt. Members of the armed forces were right at the survey average with 32% questioning the legitimacy of the election.

The geographical distribution of no confidence was mildly surprising: East, 44%; South 30%; Central States/Great Lakes 24%; and West35%. Given the strength of the Republican Party in the South and relative strength of Democrats in the Central States/Great Lakes, this outcome stands out.

Those who without doubt: Very confident that Bush won fair and square – 45%

Fifteen percent of Democrats, 80% of Republicans, and 39% of independents comprise the group that is very confident that Bush won fair and square. Dividing that group by race shows that 39% of Asians and 9% percent of African Americans are very confident in the legitimacy of the election, along with 51% of whites and 38% of Latinos. Central States/Great Lakes comprise 54% of this group with the South at 46%. The West comprises 42% with the East accounting for just 32% of likely voters.

Whites, 51%, born again Christians, 58%, and people with household incomes over $100,000 are at the top of those very confident in a legitimate election. Only 54% of the rural population was very confident in a legitimate election. This may reflect the significant decrease in rural support for Bush in 2004 when compared to the 2000 election. All of these figures in the low fifties indicate that even among core constituencies, there are barely a majority of voters with a high degree of confidence that the election was legitimate.

Those in between: Somewhat confident that Bush won fair and square – 20%

Democrats and Independents, at 24% and 22% respectively, out number Republicans at 14%. Those who said that they were “somewhat confident” in the legitimacy of the election were evenly distributed around the country with only 3% separating the lowest reporting region, the South at 19%, and the West at 21%, which was the highest. Born again Christians come in at 15% percent, while non sectarians report at a rate of 19%.

The “in betweens” show less difference than the “very confident” and the “not confident at all” responders among the various subgroups polled.

Where they live: confidence by location

Those with “doubts are more likely to live in a large city. But nearly half in rural areas show “doubts.”

The Importance of this Survey

Why are these results important? The notion of legitimacy is central to political systems and central to the ability of an elected leader to rule effectively (although a low level of legitimacy can allow a ruler to stay in power for a period). The vast majority of the public, regardless of political leanings, needs to confer legitimacy through a belief that those elected were elected fair and square. Significant numbers doubting basic legitimacy create major problems for those “elected” and for stability in the system. The result of only 45% trusting the system arises in a news environment in which the main stream media simply refuses to doubt the fairness or the 2004 election and studiously avoids any charges of outright election fraud and a corrupted result.

How the doubts arose will require more research. The response to other Zogby Poll questions in the same survey provides a major hint. 60% of American voters believe that tampering with only one machine can alter the outcome of an entire election. Nearly 80% oppose the use of secret, vendor-only computer code to run voting machines. Plus an amazing 92% of respondents said that they want the right to watch votes being counted and the right to make inquires of election officials regarding vote counting. They want that right because it belongs to them but also, I argue, because they doubt the process and the checks and balances. These doubts about the election occur at the same time there is doubt about the outcome and interact to reinforce each other.

Grave doubts exist about the 2004 presidential election in Ohio and elsewhere. Questions are asked primarily by mathematicians who cannot tolerate a seeming suspension of the laws of mathematics for one day only, November 2, 2004, voting rights activists who witnessed voter suppression and election irregularities at an extraordinary rate, and ordinary citizens whose civic concern was awakened by the 2000 Supreme Court selection and the 2004 election that defied all logic.

Despite the productivity of election fraud researchers and voting rights advocates, very little attention has been given to questions of election fraud by the corporate media. The significant vote of no confidence expressed by a representative sample of 1018 likely voters was driven by several factors: from information gained through channels other than corporate media outlets or due to a general distrust of the President based on his behavior and actions or a combination of these and other influences.

What does this mean? Some preliminary thoughts.

This survey elaborates another Zogby Poll conducted in Pennsylvania and sponsored by OpEdNews.com. In that survey, 39% of Pennsylvania residents indicated that they thought that 2004 Presidential election was stolen. In the current survey, a middle category was created to capture those with doubts, only “somewhat confident” that Bush won fair and square. By creating that category in this national poll of likely voters, those who doubt legitimacy increased 13 percentage points to 52% while those likely to share the sentiment that 2004 was stolen, dropped from the Pennsylvania 39% to the national sample of 32%.

At this point, the Bush Presidency is an illegitimate one, lacking in the necessary consensus to rule with any degree of confidence by the people. We have entered the Potemkin Village of democracy where the façade of legitimacy is nothing more than a Hollywood back lot. This is the inescapable conclusion from this poll of likely voters.

Combining “not at all’ and “somewhat” responders, over half of American voters have doubts about the election, with a third of the total survey expressing serious doubts about the outcome of the election. Despite what the script writers at ABC and the other networks weave into the nightly network indoctrination, there is a vast distrust of this president and this administration; a distrust so profound that it includes a belief that the president wasn’t even re-elected in 2004.

Corporate Media: Asleep at the Switch

There won’t be much discussion of this Zogby poll by corporate media reporters and pundits. If it occurs, it might go something like this: “Most Americans confident in 2004 Election;” “Bush Still Solid with the People;” “Core Groups Support Outcome of 2004 Election.” Of course, none of those headlines will appear. For one or a multitude of reasons, the American corporate media has studiously ignored any controversy concerning election 2004. To discuss questions of legitimacy in public would entail raising the question of a stolen election. It won’t happen but it should. .

If we assume that this data is actually discussed by the corporate media, a dismissal strategy is available. The headlines would read: “Doubt in Legitimacy of 2004 Presidential Election Based on Attitude toward Bush Performance” or, for certain news organizations, “Complainers Doubt 2004 Outcome.” Those who think the country is headed in the right direction comprise 79% of those who are very confident in 2004 results. They comprise only 8% of the “not confident at all” group. Those who think the country is headed in the wrong direction represent 26% of the very confident responders and 47% of the not confident at all group.

Of course, President Carter’s popularity dropped below 30%, a majority of Americans were positive we were headed in the wrong direction. You will be very hard pressed to find one single voice rose to challenge Carter’s popular vote victory, even though his victory margin was narrow. The hypothesized right-wrong explanation of this exceptionally low level of confidence in the system is not a particularly good argument but it will not be needed.

There is a uniform failure to address the legitimacy of the 2004 election. It is not the fault of the public. From these results, it is easy to imagine a robust dialogue followed closely by an intense public debate on the real questions that lead those who do to doubt the legitimacy of the 2004 presidential election. With such a debate, the numbers “not at all confident” would rise even higher. What a shame it would be if the information managers win yet again.

*** # # # # ***

Copyright. Permission to reproduce in whole or part with attribution to the author, Michael Collins, a link to “Scoop,” and attribution of polling results to Zogby International.

Michael Collins is a writer who focuses on clean elections and voting rights. He is the publisher of the web site, www.ElectionFraudNews.com. His articles in “Scoop” Independent News can be found here.

MichaelCollins @ electionfraudnews.com

***APPENDIX***

The Zogby poll was conducted from August 11 through 15, 2006. 1018 adult voters were interviewed by phone. The sample of people interviewed reflects the demographic and regional diversity of the United States. Due to the size, it has a 3.1 % (+/-) margin of error. 95% of Zogby’s political polls have come within a 1% margin of accuracy in predicting election outcome. The survey was commissioned and sponsored by election rights and business law attorney Paul Lehto of Everett, Washington. This author, Michael Collins, was a contributing sponsor, along with Democracy for New Hampshire.

END

By Michael Collins for Scoop Independent News, Sept. 25th 2006

By Michael Parenti

The 2004 presidential contest between Democratic challenger Senator John Kerry and the Republican incumbent, President Bush Jr., amounted to another stolen election. This has been well documented by such investigators as Rep. John Conyers, Mark Crispin Miller, Bob Fitrakis, Harvey Wasserman, Bev Harris, and others. Here is an overview of what they have reported, along with observations of my own.

Some 105 million citizens voted in 2000, but in 2004 the turnout climbed to at least 122 million. Pre-election surveys indicated that among the record 16.8 million new voters Kerry was a heavy favorite, a fact that went largely unreported by the press. In addition, there were about two million progressives who had voted for Ralph Nader in 2000 who switched to Kerry in 2004.

Yet the official 2004 tallies showed Bush with 62 million votes, about 11.6 million more than he got in 2000. Meanwhile Kerry showed only eight million more votes than Gore received in 2000. To have achieved his remarkable 2004 tally, Bush would needed to have kept all his 50.4 million from 2000, plus a majority of the new voters, plus a large share of the very liberal Nader defectors.

Nothing in the campaign and in the opinion polls suggest such a mass crossover. The numbers simply do not add up.

In key states like Ohio, the Democrats achieved immense success at registering new voters, outdoing the Republicans by as much as five to one. Moreover the Democratic party was unusually united around its candidate-or certainly against the incumbent president. In contrast, prominent elements within the GOP displayed open disaffection, publicly voicing serious misgivings about the Bush administration’s huge budget deficits, reckless foreign policy, theocratic tendencies, and threats to individual liberties.

Sixty newspapers that had endorsed Bush in 2000 refused to do so in 2004; forty of them endorsed Kerry.

All through election day 2004, exit polls showed Kerry ahead by 53 to 47 percent, giving him a nationwide edge of about 1.5 million votes, and a solid victory in the electoral college. Yet strangely enough, the official tally gave Bush the election. Here are some examples of how the GOP “victory” was secured.

—In some places large numbers of Democratic registration forms disappeared, along with absentee ballots and provisional ballots. Sometimes absentee ballots were mailed out to voters just before election day, too late to be returned on time, or they were never mailed at all.

—Overseas ballots normally reliably distributed by the State Department were for some reason distributed by the Pentagon in 2004. Nearly half of the six million American voters living abroad—a noticeable number of whom formed anti-Bush organizations—never received their ballots or got them too late to vote. Military personnel, usually more inclined toward supporting the president, encountered no such problems with their overseas ballots.

—Voter Outreach of America, a company funded by the Republican National Committee, collected thousands of voter registration forms in Nevada, promising to turn them in to public officials, but then systematically destroyed the ones belonging to Democrats.

— Tens of thousands of Democratic voters were stricken from the rolls in several states because of “felonies” never committed, or committed by someone else, or for no given reason. Registration books in Democratic precincts were frequently out-of-date or incomplete. —Democratic precincts—enjoying record turnouts—were deprived of sufficient numbers of polling stations and voting machines, and many of the machines they had kept breaking down. After waiting long hours many people went home without voting. Pro-Bush precincts almost always had enough voting machines, all working well to make voting quick and convenient.

—A similar pattern was observed with student populations in several states: students at conservative Christian colleges had little or no wait at the polls, while students from liberal arts colleges were forced to line up for as long as ten hours, causing many to give up.

—In Lucas County, Ohio, one polling place never opened; the voting machines were locked in an office and no one could find the key. In Hamilton County many absentee voters could not cast a Democratic vote for president because John Kerry’s name had been “accidentally” removed when Ralph Nader was taken off the ballot.

—A polling station in a conservative evangelical church in Miami County, Ohio, recorded an impossibly high turnout of 98 percent, while a polling place in Democratic inner-city Cleveland recorded an impossibly low turnout of 7 percent.

—Latino, Native American, and African American voters in New Mexico who favored Kerry by two to one were five times more likely to have their ballots spoiled and discarded in districts supervised by Republican election officials. Many were given provisional ballots that subsequently were never counted. In these same Democratic areas Bush “won” an astonishing 68 to 31 percent upset victory. One Republican judge in New Mexico discarded hundreds of provisional ballots cast for Kerry, accepting only those that were for Bush.

—Cadres of rightwing activists, many of them religious fundamentalists, were financed by the Republican Party. Deployed to key Democratic precincts, they handed out flyers warning that voters who had unpaid parking tickets, an arrest record, or owed child support would be arrested at the polls—all untrue. They went door to door offering to “deliver” absentee ballots to the proper office, and announcing that Republicans were to vote on Tuesday (election day) and Democrats on Wednesday.

—Democratic poll watchers in Ohio, Arizona, and other states, who tried to monitor election night vote counting, were menaced and shut out by squads of GOP toughs. In Warren County, Ohio, immediately after the polls closed Republican officials announced a “terrorist attack” alert, and ordered the press to leave. They then moved all ballots to a warehouse where the counting was conducted in secret, producing an amazingly high tally for Bush, some 14,000 more votes than he had received in 2000. It wasn’t the terrorists who attacked Warren County.

—Bush did remarkably well with phantom populations. The number of his votes in Perry and Cuyahoga counties in Ohio, exceeded the number of registered voters, creating turnout rates as high as 124 percent. In Miami County nearly 19,000 additional votes eerily appeared in Bush’s column after all precincts had reported. In a small conservative suburban precinct of Columbus, where only 638 people were registered, the touchscreen machines tallied 4,258 votes for Bush.

—In almost half of New Mexico’s counties, more votes were reported than were recorded as being cast, and the tallies were consistently in Bush’s favor. These ghostly results were dismissed by New Mexico’s Republican Secretary of State as an “administrative lapse.”

Exit polls showed Kerry solidly ahead of Bush in both the popular vote and the electoral college. Exit polls are an exceptionally accurate measure of elections. In the last three elections in Germany, for example, exit polls were never off by more than three-tenths of one percent.

Unlike ordinary opinion polls, the exit sample is drawn from people who have actually just voted. It rules out those who say they will vote but never make it to the polls, those who cannot be sampled because they have no telephone or otherwise cannot be reached at home, those who are undecided or who change their minds about whom to support, and those who are turned away at the polls for one reason or another.

Exit polls have come to be considered so reliable that international organizations use them to validate election results in countries around the world.

Republicans argued that in 2004 the exit polls were inaccurate because they were taken only in the morning when Kerry voters came out in greater numbers. (Apparently Bush voters sleep late.) In fact, the polling was done at random intervals all through the day, and the evening results were as much favoring Kerry as the early results.

It was also argued that pollsters focused more on women (who favored Kerry) than men, or maybe large numbers of grumpy Republicans were less inclined than cheery Democrats to talk to pollsters. No evidence was put forth to substantiate these fanciful speculations.

Most revealing, the discrepancies between exit polls and official tallies were never random but worked to Bush’s advantage in ten of eleven swing states that were too close to call, sometimes by as much as 9.5 percent as in New Hampshire, an unheard of margin of error for an exit poll. In Nevada, Ohio, New Mexico, and Iowa exit polls registered solid victories for Kerry, yet the official tally in each case went to Bush, a mystifying outcome.

In states that were not hotly contested the exit polls proved quite accurate. Thus exit polls in Utah predicted a Bush victory of 70.8 to 26.4 percent; the actual result was 71.1 to 26.4 percent. In Missouri, where the exit polls predicted a Bush victory of 54 to 46 percent, the final result was 53 to 46 percent.

One explanation for the strange anomalies in vote tallies was found in the widespread use of touchscreen electronic voting machines. These machines produced results that consistently favored Bush over Kerry, often in chillingly consistent contradiction to exit polls.

In 2003 more than 900 computer professionals had signed a petition urging that all touchscreen systems include a verifiable audit trail. Touchscreen voting machines can be easily programmed to go dead on election day or throw votes to the wrong candidate or make votes disappear while leaving the impression that everything is working fine.

A tiny number of operatives can easily access the entire computer network through one machine and thereby change votes at will. The touchscreen machines use trade secret code, and are tested, reviewed, and certified in complete secrecy. Verified counts are impossible because the machines leave no reliable paper trail.

Since the introduction of touchscreen voting, mysterious congressional election results have been increasing. In 2000 and 2002, Senate and House contests and state legislative races in North Carolina, Nebraska, Alabama, Minnesota, Colorado, and elsewhere produced dramatic and puzzling upsets, always at the expense of Democrats who were ahead in the polls.

In some counties in Texas, Virginia, and Ohio, voters who pressed the Democrat’s name found that the Republican candidate was chosen. In Cormal County, Texas, three GOP candidates won by exactly 18,181 votes apiece, a near statistical impossibility.

All of Georgia’s voters used Diebold touchscreen machines in 2002, and Georgia’s incumbent Democratic governor and incumbent Democratic senator, who were both well ahead in the polls just before the election, lost in amazing double-digit voting shifts.

This may be the most telling datum of all: In New Mexico in 2004 Kerry lost all precincts equipped with touchscreen machines, irrespective of income levels, ethnicity, and past voting patterns. The only thing that consistently correlated with his defeat in those precincts was the presence of the touchscreen machine itself.

In Florida Bush registered inexplicably sharp jumps in his vote (compared to 2000) in counties that used touchscreen machines.

Companies like Diebold, Sequoia, and ES&S that market the touchscreen machines are owned by militant supporters of the Republican party. These companies have consistently refused to implement a paper-trail to dispel suspicions and give instant validation to the results of electronic voting. They prefer to keep things secret, claiming proprietary rights, a claim that has been backed in court.

Election officials are not allowed to evaluate the secret software. Apparently corporate trade secrets are more important than voting rights. In effect, corporations have privatized the electoral system, leaving it easily susceptible to fixed outcomes. Given this situation, it is not likely that the GOP will lose control of Congress come November 2006. The two-party monopoly threatens to become an even worse one-party tyranny.

Michael Parenti’s recent books include The Assassination of Julius Caesar (New Press), Superpatriotism (City Lights), and The Culture Struggle (Seven Stories Press). For more information visit: www.michaelparenti.org.

from ZNet

 

In his 2006 book “Stealing Democracy,” Spencer Overton illustrates historical and current flaws related to America’s voting system, including an overview of most states. Check the status of your home state below.

Also, find the latest rules in your state regarding:

• The Redistricting Process
  
• Electronic Voting Machines and Paper Trails
  
• Ex-felon Disenfranchisement
  
• Voter Identification

Alabama

• 2004: Residents of Asian ancestry account for one-third of the population of Bayou La Batre, and despite intimidation of Asian Americans at the voting polls, Phuong Tan Huynh becomes the first Asian American councilman in Bayou La Batre by fewer than 100 votes.
• 1996: In Bayou La Batre, despite a sizeable Asian American community, only 15 of the town’s 800 votes were cast by Asian Americans.
• 1995-2004: Alabama is among the top 15 states in voting rights objections and claims per capita, most federal observers sent to monitor elections per capita, largest disparities between citizens of color and statewide elected officials of color, least party competition for voters of color, and largest minority group.
• 1960s: Dallas County has a voting-age population estimated at 29,500, just over half of whom are black. However, politicians ensure that the rolls include only one percent of its black residents by requiring that applicants for registration pass and oral exam about the U.S. Constitution and possess “good character.”

Alaska

• 1995-2004: Alaska is among the top 15 states with the largest low-English proficient populations.

Arizona

• 1995-2004: Arizona ranks among the top 15 states in voting rights objections and claims per capita, most federal observers sent to monitor elections per capita, largest disparities between citizens of color and statewide elected officials of color, largest racial disparities in voter turnout, largest minority group, and largest low-English-proficient population.

Arkansas

• 1995-2004: Arkansas is among the top 15 states for largest disparities between citizens of color and statewide elected officials of color, the least competition for voters of color, and the largest minority group.

California

• 2004: All of the incumbent state legislators or U.S. House members who run retain their seats.
• 2004: Ventura County, where 33 percent of the population is Latino and where 26,000 Spanish speaking U.S. citizens have limited English skills, is charged with failing to provide enough bilingual poll workers and voting materials. In response, the county agrees to provide its first Spanish-language ballot and offers bilingual county employees the day off with pay plus a stipend to ensure that 300 of the county’s 1,300 poll workers could speak both Spanish and English.
• 2004: Los Angeles County provides ballots in more languages than any other area in the nation – including English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Tagalog, and Vietnamese. Of the 22,000 poll workers in the county leading up to the 2004 election, almost 5,000 said they were bilingual.
• 2002: Democrat Michael Case decides not to make another run against Republican U.S. House incumbent Elton Gallegly where redistricting inflated registered Republicans from 39 to 46 percent and deflated registered Democrats from 40 to 35 percent of the district’s voters.
• 2002: As a result of redistricting, only one of the fifty-three California U.S. House races is competitive.
• 2002: No more than 17 of the 153 U.S. House, State Senate, and State Assembly seats at stake in California in 2002 are considered competitive, compared with 44 competitive seats following the 1991 redistricting.
• 2002: Following the new U.S. house map, which removes Latino voters from Berman’s district and puts them in an adjacent district represented by another white Democrat, Berman’s voting constituency is reduced from 45 percent Latino to 31 percent.
• 2002: In the November election, 100 percent of the incumbents who run win reelection. The padding of districts ensures that most races are not close. The average incumbent wins with 69 percent of the vote.
• 2001: The California state legislature draws three new maps that assign a total of 173 districts: fifty-three U.S. House seats, forty State Senate seats, and eighty State Assembly seats. State Democrats effectively control the process and pay a consultant $1.36 million to draw the State Senate districts, and incumbent Democratic members of Congress collectively pay the consultant about $600,000 ($20,000 each) to draw the U.S. House map. The new maps protect almost all Republican and Democratic incumbents.
• 1998: In the Democratic primary election, the Latino mayor of San Fernando, Raul Godinez, challenges Congressman Berman. Although three out of four Latinos votes for Godinez, Berman wins handily by receiving nine out of ten white votes.
• 1996: Los Angeles County reports costs of $1.1 million to provide language assistance in Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, and Tagalog at more than 5,600 polling places ($196 per poll).
• 1995-2004: California is among the top 15 states for most federal observers sent to monitor elections per capita, , largest disparities between citizens of color and statewide elected officials of color, largest disparities between citizens of color and officials of color in all elected positions, largest disparities in voter turnout, largest minority group, and largest low-English-proficient population.

Colorado

• 1995-2004: Colorado is among the top 15 states with the largest racial disparities in voter turnout, and the largest low-English-proficient populations.

Connecticut

• 1995-2004: Connecticut is among the top 15 states with the largest disparities between citizens of color and officials of color in all elected positions, the largest racial disparities in voter turnout, and the largest low-English-proficient population.

Florida

• 2004: In anticipation of the 2004 election, the office of Florida Republican Secretary of State Glenda Hood compiled a list of “felons” to be omitted from voting rolls and refused to disclose the list to the public. After a court ordered the list’s release, journalists discovered that it improperly included 2,100 former prisoners who had successfully applied for a restoration of their voting rights. Due to another “computer error” about 22,000 African Americans were incorrectly included on the list.
• 1995-2004: Florida is among the top 15 states with the largest disparities between citizens of color and statewide elected officials of color, largest disparities between citizens of color and all elected officials of color, least party competition for voters of color, largest racial disparities in voter turnout, and largest low-English-proficient populations.
• Florida is one of only four democratic systems in the world that ban voting by all former offenders for life.
• 2000: Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore tires to design a ballot with large type so that it can be read by her county’s large senior population. The confusing ballot is never tested on sample voters, and in the real election it causes thousands in Palm Beach County to mistakenly vote for Pat Buchanan, costing Al Gore an estimated 6,607 Florida votes and the presidency.
• 2000: Had former felons who had completed their sentences been allowed to vote, Al Gore would have won Florida (and thus the presidency) by about 31,000 votes.

Georgia

• 2006: A photo ID requirement would exclude Americans of all backgrounds, but the elderly are some who would bear the greatest burden. According to the Georgia chapter of the AARP, 36 percent of Georgians over age seventy-five do not have a driver’s license.
• 2005: A photo ID requirement would exclude Americans of all backgrounds, but people of color are some who would bear the greatest burden. Only one of the ten Georgia counties with the highest percentage of blacks had an office that issued state IDs, and no such office existed in Atlanta.
• 2005: Secretary of State Cathy Cox states that she cannot recall one documented case of voter fraud relating to the impersonation of a registered voter at the polls during her ten-year tenure as secretary of state or assistant secretary of state.
• 2005: Georgia reduces its list of acceptable identification from seventeen (including non-photo ID such a bank statement, utility bill, or government paycheck) to six forms of state-issued photo ID in an attempt to prevent “fraud.” But at the same time, Georgia scrapped its old law that limited absentee voting to people who met narrow requirements (such as being older than 75 or disabled) anyone who applies. The double standard is particularly disturbing because absentee ballots are widely acknowledged to be more susceptible to fraud than ballots cast at the polls. Further, whites are much more likely than African Americans to vote absentee.
• 1995-2004: Georgia is among the top 15 states in voting rights objections and claims per capita, largest disparities between citizens of color and statewide elected officials of color, largest disparities between citizens of color and all elected officials of color, least party competition for voters of color, and largest minority group.
• 1996-2006: Within the last ten years, politicians in Georgia have used Confederate-flag debates to polarize voters along racial lines.

Hawaii

• 1995-2004: Hawaii is among the top 15 states with the largest minority group, and the largest low-English-proficient populations.

Idaho

• 1995-2004: Idaho is among the top 15 states with the largest low-English-proficient populations.

Illinois

• 1995-2004: Illinois is among the top 15 states for most federal observers sent to monitor elections per capita, and largest disparities between citizens of color and officials of color in all elected positions.

Indiana

• 1995-2004: Indiana ranks among the top 15 states for most federal observers sent to monitor elections per capita, and largest racial disparities in voter turnout.

Kentucky

• 1998: Because former felons are denied their right to vote, U.S. Republican Senator Jim Bunning ekes out a narrow victory, winning by only 6,766 votes (Kentucky banned 94,584 former offenders from voting).
• Kentucky is one of only four democratic systems in the world that ban voting by all former offenders for life.
• 1984: Had former felons who had completed their sentences been allowed to vote, U.S. Republican Senator Mitch McConnell would likely have lost the tightly contested Senate race.

Louisiana

• 1995-2004: Louisiana is among the top 15 states in voting rights objections and claims per capita, most federal observers received to monitor elections, largest disparities between citizens of color and statewide elected officials of color, largest disparities between citizens of color and all elected officials of color, least party competition for voters of color, and largest minority group.
• 2002: Despite attempts at voter suppression, black turnout jumps to 27.1% of the electorate, effectively ensuring that Democrat Mary Landrieu beats Republican Suzanne Terrell for U.S. Senate.
• 2003: whites who voted against Democrat Landrieu cross party lines to vote for white Democrat Kathleen Blanco over South Asian Bobby Jindal.
• 2003: The African-American population in Ville Platte jumped from about 25 percent of the town’s population in 1980 to 56.6 percent in 2000. In 2003, city officials suggest a redistricting plan that reduces the African-American population in one of its six council districts from 55.1 to 38.1 percent, shifting many African Americans within this district to another district that was already 78.8 percent African American, thereby reducing the number of predominantly African-American council districts from four to three.
• 1888-1910: The 1888 voter registration rolls contained the names of 127,923 African Americans and 126,884 whites, but by 1910 only 730 African Americans remained registered.

Maryland

• 1995-2004: Maryland is ranks among top 15 states in largest disparities between citizens of color and statewide elected officials of color, largest disparities between citizens of color and officials of color in all elected positions, least party competition for voters of color, and largest minority group.

Massachusetts

• 2005: Latinos hold two of the seven school-committee seats and four of the nine city-council seats.
• 1995-2004: Massachusetts is among the top 15 states in voting rights objections and claims per capita, the largest racial disparities in voter turnout, and the largest low-English-proficient population.
• 2001: As a result of the voting-rights lawsuit, grassroots registration efforts, and more convenient voter-registration requirements, Latinos, who comprise more than 60 percent of Lawrence residents, make up 43.7 percent of the city’s registered voters.
• 1999: Following settlement of a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Department of Justice for violation of the Voting Rights Act, city officials agree to provide bilingual voting information, ballots and poll workers, and to disseminate election information through local Spanish-language media and community groups.
• 1990: Though approximately 70 percent of the students in Lawrence Public Schools are Latino, no one on the seven-member school committee is Latino.
• 1990: Latinos increase to 25 percent of Lawrence’s voting-age-citizen population, but they comprise only 11 percent of registered voters.

Michigan

• 1995-2004: Michigan is among the top 15 states in most federal observers sent to monitor elections per capita, and least competition for voters of color.
• 2001: Republicans control all three branches of Michigan’s government and draft legislative maps that expand their party’s power in both chambers.

Mississippi

• 1996-2006: Within the last ten years, politicians in Mississippi have used Confederate-flag debates to polarize voters along racial lines.
• 1995-2004: Mississippi is among the top 15 states in voting rights objections and claims per capita, most federal observers received to monitor elections, largest disparities between citizens of color and statewide elected officials of color, largest disparities between citizens of color and all elected officials of color, least party competition for voters of color, and largest minority group.
• 2003: African Americans cast 94 percent of their votes for incumbent Democratic Governor Ronnie Musgrove, but their turnout is not large enough to offset the 77 percent of white voters who favor former National Republican Party Chair Haley Barbour, who Musgrove by fewer than 61,000 votes.
• 2001: In the town of Kilmichael, where the number of African-Americans has grown to over 52 percent of the town’s population, there were several African-American candidates qualified for the mayoral and board races and a very strong possibility that African-American candidates would win most of the municipal offices. However, three weeks before the general election, the incumbent, all-white board of alderman voted unanimously to cancel the election.
• 1965: Following passage of the Voting Rights Act, African American registration increased from less than 6.7 percent in 1965 to 60 percent in 1968.

Minnesota

• 1998: Minnesota’s same-day registration allowed 250,000 new voters to mobilize around and elect as governor political newcomer Jesse Ventura, who won by under 57,000 votes.

Montana

• 1995-2004: Montana is among the top 15 states in voting rights objections and claims per capita.

Nebraska

• 2006: As a result of grass roots efforts promoting campaign finance reform, almost all of Nebraska’s state legislative candidates voluntarily agree to limit their spending to $75,000 in order to receive public funds.

New Jersey

• 1995-2004: New Jersey is among the top 15 states in voting rights objections and claims per capita, most federal observers sent to monitor elections per capita, largest disparities between citizens of color and all elected officials of color, largest racial disparities in voter turnout, and largest low-English-proficient population.

New Mexico

• 1995-2004: New Mexico is among the top 15 states in voting rights objections and claims per capita, most federal observers sent to monitor elections per capita, largest racial disparities in voter turnout, largest minority group, and largest low-English-proficient populations.

New York

• 1990-2003: In the early 1990s, up to 70 percent of residents in New York’s Chinatown spoke little English and only about 30 percent of eligible Chinatown voters were registered. In 1996, after the city added Chinese voting materials and oral assistance, an estimated 30 percent of the Chinese-American voters in the city relied on the Chinese ballots, the cost of which accounted for under 4 percent of the city’s total $16 million election budget.
• In New York City, which has no photo-ID requirement, a study showed that poll workers illegally asked one in six Asian Americans for identification at the polls.
• 1995-2004: New York is among the top 15 states for most federal observers sent to monitor elections per capita, largest disparities between citizens of color and statewide elected officials of color, largest disparities between citizens of color and officials of color in all elected positions, least party competition for voters of color, largest racial disparities in voter turnout, largest low-English-proficient populations.

North Dakota

• 1995-2004: North Dakota ranks among the top 15 states in voting objections and claims per capita.
• 1995-2004: North Carolina is among the top 15 states in voting rights objections and claims per capita, largest disparities between citizens of color and statewide elected officials of color, least party competition for voters of color, and largest minority group.

Ohio

• 2004: Voters at the polls wait in for as long as 5 hours due to large voter turnout and too few voting machines.
• 2004: In Franklin County, 102,000 new voters were added to the registration rolls, but because too few voting machines are provided, there are 170 voters per machine and up to a five-hour wait to cast a ballot.
• 2004: Four years after Florida’s hanging-chad fiasco, only 13.1 percent of American voters use punch-card machines, but more than 70 percent of Ohio voters use such machines.
• 2004: Ohio punch-card machines produce more than 76,000 spoiled ballots in the November presidential election (a smaller number than President Bush’s 118,600-vote margin of victory over Senator Kerry).
• 2004: A federal court in Ohio found that during the 2004 presidential election, Republicans deployed their poll monitors so that only 14 percent of new voters in predominantly white precincts would face a Republican challenger, while fully 97 percent of new voters in African-American precincts would face one.
• 2002 and 2004: A statewide survey found four instances of ineligible persons voting or attempting to vote in 2002 and 2004, out of 9,078,728 votes cast – a rate of 0.00004%.

Oklahoma

• 1995-2004: Oklahoma is among the top 15 states with the largest racial disparities in voter turnout.

Pennsylvania

• 1995-2004: Pennsylvania is among the top 15 states for most federal observers sent to monitor elections per capita, and least party competition for voters of color.

Rhode Island

• 1995-2004: Rhode Island is among the top 15 states with the largest low-English-proficient populations.
• 1996: Central Falls, Rhode Island reports that it spent $100 in printing costs for Spanish materials used at nine polling places (just over $11 per poll).

South Dakota

• 2003: Though many American Indians in South Dakota do not drive cars and lack driver’s licenses, and though several tribes do not issue photo-identification cards, the Republican-controlled South Dakota legislature instigates a photo-identification provision, requiring voters to now show poll workers a South Dakota driver’s license, a state-issued photo ID, a tribal photo ID, or a state university ID.
• 1995-2005: South Dakota ranks among the top 15 states in the most voting objections and claims per capita.
• 2004: Data from the first election covered by the photo ID law indicate that a disproportionately large number of American Indian voters did not bring photo IDs to the polls.
• 2004: In lieu of photo ID, affidavits were signed by under 2 percent of voters statewide, but in each of the predominantly American Indian counties, 5.3 percent to 16 percent of voters signed affidavits.

South Carolina

• 1996-2006: Within the last ten years, politicians in South Carolina have used Confederate-flag debates to polarize voters along racial lines.
• 2005: Based on government pay scales, the state annually pays out less than $18,300 in salaries devoted to compliance with Section 5, averaging under $458 per submission in a year with forty submissions. By contrast, incumbent politicians on the Charleston County Council spent more than $1.5 million of taxpayer funds fighting a single voting rights lawsuit against the Justice Department.
• 1995-2004: South Carolina is among the top 15 states in voting rights objections and claims per capita, most federal observers received to monitor elections, largest disparities between citizens of color and statewide elected officials of color, largest disparities between citizens of color and all elected officials of color, least party competition for voters of color, and largest minority group.
• 2003: In the early 1990s a number of African Americans living southeast of the town of North’s boundary petition to become a part of North, but officials reject the petition with no explanation. If officials had accepted the petition, African Americans would have become the majority of the town’s population. Curiously, in September 2003, the town of North approves a petition to annex a small group of white voters into their town.

Tennessee

• 1995-2004: Tennessee is among the top 15 states with the least party competition for voters of color.

Texas

• 2004: By redrawing districts that snake hundreds of miles across various counties, Republicans inflate their power so that following the 2004 election they control 66 percent of the Texas congressional seats.
• 1995-2004: Texas is among the top 15 states in voting rights objections and claims per capita, largest disparities between citizens of color and statewide elected officials of color, largest disparities between citizens of color and all elected officials of color, largest racial disparities in voter turnout, and largest low-English-proficient population.
• 2003: Enforcement of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act prevents Waller County district attorney, Republican Oliver KItzman, from denying students at Prairie View A&M University, a historically black college, the right to register or to vote.
• 2002: 53 percent of Texas voters cast their ballots for Republican congressional candidates, but Republicans control only 47 percent of the Texas congressional seats.
• 2001: Incumbent Democrat Lee Brown, Houston’s first African-American mayor, increases African-American turnout by 30 percent to narrowly defeat Republican Orlando Sanchez by one percentage point.
• 1974: Vilma Martinez, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, testifies before Congress that election officials in Uvalde County, Texas, refused to name Latinos as deputy registrars, removed registered Latino voters from voting polls, and refused to aid Spanish speakers who spoke little English.

Utah

• 1995-2004: Utah ranks among the top 15 states in most federal observers sent to monitor elections per capita.

Virginia

• 1995-2004: Virginia is among the top 15 states in voting rights objections and claims per capita, largest disparities in voter turnout, and largest minority group.
• Virginia is one of only four democratic systems in the world that ban voting by all former offenders for life. P.

Washington

• 2004: Though seventy percent of the state turns out to vote in the election for governor, only 57 percent of the Asian Americans, who largely support the democratic candidate Christine Gregoire, go to the polls. As a result, Gregoire wins by a mere 128 votes out of more than 2.9 million cast.
• 1995-2004: Washington is among the top 15 states for most federal observers sent to monitor elections per capita.
• 2004: An extensive investigation following the 2004 election uncovered less than one case of double voting or voting in the name of another for every 100,000 ballots cast.

Wisconsin

2004: In Milwaukee, half the city’s residents are white and more than a third are African-American. In a non-partisan mayoral race featuring two democratic candidates, white candidate Tom Barrett beats African-American candidate Marvin Pratt. Polls show that 92 percent of African-Americans voted for Pratt, while 83 percent of white voters cast ballots for Barrett.

Originally posted on PBS.org

What are the effects of media ownership consolidation?

Don’t be a Sitting Duck for the Secret Ballot



Verify Election Results

Run Parallel Elections

Collect Voter Affidavits

CONGRESS! BAN Voting by Secret Ballot, Voting Machine, Internet, Absentee, Early, or Carrier Pigeon.

Others’ videos: GOT DEMOCRACY, Help America Vote On Paper, (from eon3), The Right To Count,  Invisible Ballots(2004),  VoterGate,  The Big Fix 2000

another must watch: 911 Cover Up

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5946593973848835726&q=genre%3Adocumentary&hl=en

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“...our elections are easy to rig because of how we vote.  It wasn’t always this way.   Prior to the Civil War, voting was a completely observable process.  It was only after the Civil War, as the right to vote expanded to African Americans, that the voting process itself began to recede from public view and meaningful oversight.  It started with absentee voting by the military in the 1870’s, the use of secret ballots in the 1880’s, and voting by machine in the 1890’s.  Today, approximately 30% of all voting is conducted early or by absentee, 95% of all votes are processed by machines, and 100% of all ballots are secret and anonymous.”  Lynn Landes

PARTIAL “The Fix Is In” TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

(VIDEO CLIP)  “The election is over. We won.” (Reporter’s voice – “How do you know that?”)  “It’s all over, but the counting.  And we’ll take care of the counting.”

That was Republican Congressman Peter King of New York.  He made those remarks just BEFORE the 2004 presidential election. 

Hi.  I’m Lynn Landes.  I’m a freelance journalist and publisher of the website, EcoTalk.org.  I want to thank you for taking the time to watch this brief video.

Our elections are in deep trouble.  Many Americans no longer believe that voting results are accurate. More and more voters are learning first-hand that voting machines are completely unreliable and that many of our election officials are untrustworthy.  But what’s at the core of this crisis?  The secret ballot.

Any ballot in America can be easily miscounted either by accident or design, regardless of whether it’s a paper ballot or electronic vote. That’s because modern Americans vote by secret ballot.  A secret ballot is an anonymous ballot, which means it can’t be traced to the voter.  We’ve been told that’s a good deal for us, that it protects us against harassment and vote selling.  But, it’s a much better deal for those who want to rig elections and not get caught.  It’s time we scrap the secrecy and go public with our votes.

In this video you’ll hear a startling admission from a voting company representative, I offer some practical advice on how to verify or challenge election returns through the collection of voter affidavits, And I make the case for a return to total transparency in voting, what I call “Open Voting”

The fact is our elections are easy to rig because of how we vote.  It wasn’t always this way.   Prior to the Civil War, voting was a completely observable process.  It was only after the Civil War, as the right to vote expanded to African Americans, that the voting process itself began to recede from public view and meaningful oversight.  It started with absentee voting by the military in the 1870’s, the use of secret ballots in the 1880’s, and voting by machine in the 1890’s.  Today, approximately 30% of all voting is conducted early or by absentee, 95% of all votes are processed by machines, and 100% of all ballots are secret and anonymous.

Worse yet, most of the voting process in America has been privatized and outsourced to a handful of domestic companies and multi-national corporations.  One company, Sequoia, is foreign-owned.  And just two companies (ES&S and Diebold) process 80% of all votes in the United States.  These companies make, sell, and service both ballot scanners and touchscreen machines. 

Although most of the debate over security issues has been framed to target suspicion on outside hackers and backdoors, it is in fact company insiders who have the keys to the front door and complete access to the electronic ballot box. For all practical purposes, voting machine companies are self-regulating, and as such, their employees are in a perfect position to rig elections nationwide.   But even if these companies were regulated, it is virtually impossible to guard against insider vote fraud, as you will see.

The following are video clips of an examination of the Danaher voting system by Pennsylvania state authorities in November of 2005. 

(VIDEO CLIP)

Notice, the Danaher representative assured state officials that the company would not be able to rig elections because their programmers would have to know well in advance all the candidates names and their positions on the ballot.  But that’s ludicrous.  There’s nothing to stop programmers from using secret company code to manipulate votes for a particular candidate.  This can be done while making a service call before, during, or after an election.  It could be accomplished remotely via the Internet, modem, or through wireless technology.  And it can be done without the knowledge of election officials. 

But, setting that issue aside, what if it is not a specific candidate the company wants to rig an election for, but a particular party instead? 

(VIDEO CLIP)

The Danaher representative just admitted that their computer program includes a party identifier next to each candidate’s name.  Therefore, the company can easily write a program that shifts a certain percentage of votes from one party’s candidates to another party before the machines ever leave the factory floor.  That shift could make the difference in tight races.

Most voting machine companies have close ties to the Republican Party and most voting machine irregularities appear to favor Republicans, but I must emphasize, that is not always the case.  Even in Republican and Democratic primaries, where the race is between members of the same party, voting machines are exhibiting suspicious irregularities.  Meanwhile, the Democratic Party and the Green Party’s measured response to the gravity of this situation makes one wonder. 

Pending congressional legislation that would require ballot printers for paperless voting machines is a woefully inadequate response to the threat these machines represent, as a long history of equipment malfunctions and failures can attest.  But, even more disturbing are the actions of some candidates, particularly Democratic candidates, who are conceding extremely close races without waiting for all the absentee and provisional ballots to be counted.  It appears that the fix may be in across the political spectrum.

What’s the solution?  Perhaps voters should support candidates that have no party affiliation.  But, regarding the voting process itself, Congress should return to a policy of open and transparent elections and ban voting by machine, absentee, early, and by secret ballot.  Until that day, we must go public with our votes.  We must provide candidates with hard evidence of how we voted so that election results can be verified, or challenged, if necessary.  Exit polls do not constitute hard evidence.  Only voter affidavits can provide that.  It’s time voters sign up and be counted. 

Specifically, candidates or activists need to conduct a Parallel Election, of sorts.  They need to collect affidavits from voters or, at the very least, get signed statements that include the voter’s name, signature, address, and for whom they voted.  These can be collected in three ways: 1) on Election Day as voters leave the polls, 2) door to door after the election, or 3) by asking voters, particularly absentee voters, to mail-in affidavits or signed statements immediately after they mail in their ballot.  If manpower is a problem, then target only a few polling places or precincts.  Keep in mind that a list of those who voted is a matter of public record.  Most precincts have about 500 voters and most voters don’t vote. 

So, for many races we’re not talking about contacting a lot of people.  Naturally, you want to first contact voters that belong to the same party as your candidate.  Depending on your results, that may be sufficient to challenge election returns.  You don’t need 100% participation from voters.  Any number of signatures collected that exceeds the official vote count is an indicator of a miscount.  

Something similar to this idea was put into practice last winter in North Carolina.  A Republican candidate gathered more than 1400 affidavits from voters in precincts where voting machines malfunctioned and lost thousands of votes.  On the basis of those affidavits his Democratic opponent conceded.

Last year I wrote my first article calling for Parallel Elections. See – http://www.ecotalk.org/ParallelElections.htm  A few activists around the country did just that.  On the basis of signed statements collected at 11 polling places in a California election, a recount was granted.  Unfortunately by the time the recount was held, there was plenty of opportunity for election officials to minimize the miscount. So, be careful about asking for a recount when what’s actually needed is a new election that’s free from voting machines at the very least.  And remember, even a new election needs a Parallel Election to serve as a check. 

If no one is organizing a Parallel Election, then voters can on their on initiative send the candidate of their choice a card or letter indicating that they voted for them.  That might spur more candidates to action. You may not win an election challenge in a court of law, but the court of public opinion is more important in the long run.

If we want a real democracy we must take our elections out of the corporate boardroom and back into the public square.  We cannot continue to hide behind the secret ballot.  Remember John Hancock’s large and flamboyant signature on the Declaration of Independence?  He did that in the face of certain hardship and possible death.  It’s now our turn to sign up and be counted. 

I’m Lynn Landes.  And thanks for watching. 

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QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS:

1. Is there any evidence that voting machines have been rigged?  Yes. Lots of it.  An extensive history of voting machine irregularities can be found in the following:
   
    
   • Election 2004-Voters Unite.org
   • The Conyers Report – Read Excerpts
   • Black Box Voting, Ballot-Tampering in the 21st Century (Chapter II) by Bev Harris (2003)
   • Accuracy, Integrity, and Security in Computerized Vote-Tallying, by Dr. Roy Saltman (1988)
   • my own list
   • Check out Florida in 2004 – does anyone really believe that so many Democrats crossed over to vote for George Bush?
     
      
2. Has anyone confessed to rigging voting machines?  Yes.
   • http://www.justaflyonthewall.com/ Also see: Programmer Built Vote Rigging Prototype at Florida Congressman’s Request– Clint Curtis affidavit
   • Conyers Report excerpts – how Triad technicians reset computers to cheat a recount of votes

   • Cincinnati Bell security supervisors ordered wire-taps installed on county computers before elections in the late 1970s and early 1980s that could have allowed vote totals to be altered, a former Bell employee says in a sworn court document. Leonard Gates, a 23-year Cincinnati Bell employee until he was fired in 1986, claims in a deposition filed Thursday in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court to have installed the wire-taps. (1989) Pandora’s Black Box & http://www.votefraud.org/expert_strunk_report.htm (contains case number)

   The easiest way to rig elections nationwide is for voting machine company-insiders to program the firmware (permanently installed software in touchscreens and ballot scanners) to favor one political party over another. That way they don’t need to know the candidates’ names nor their position on the ballot. They can even rig the top of the ticket only, in which case the winning candidate can claim a crossover vote in a opposing party’s district, as may have happened in Florida 2004 – See Lynn’s data table
   
    

3. Don’t some voters need these machines, such as non-English language voters and disabled voters?  No.  Voters who want a ballot in their own language should be able to order such a ballot in advance of any election.  Secondly, voting machines present the same violation of voting rights for disabled voters.  And contrary to popular belief, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) does not require election officials to purchase electronic voting machines.  Besides, anecdotal evidence suggests that these machines are difficult for the disabled to use.  Election officials and voting machine companies admit that it takes the sight-impaired voters ten times longer to use a touchscreen machine than able-bodied voters.  However, there is a way for the sight-impaired to vote privately and independently.  They can use tactile paper ballot with audio assistance.  Tactile ballots are used around the world and in some states such as Rhode Island.  Unfortunately, many disabled voters are unaware of these kinds of ballots.  That may not be an accident.  Two organizations for the blind, The American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) and The National Federation of the Blind (NFB), are ardent supporters of paperless touchscreen voting machines.  They also have received over $1 million dollars from the voting machine industry, according to news reports.
   
    
4. Can you conduct Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) using paper ballots?  First, I do not support IRV or proportional voting because they are unnecessary, complicated, and cannot be easily observed.  But, yes,  Britain, Ireland, and Australia have used paper ballots to conduct Instant Run-Off Voting.  However, some advocates of IRV are aggressively promoting the idea that voting machines are necessary. Regarding proportional voting, it is the wrong answer to the obvious problem presented by “at-large” elections where the winners take all.  Instead, political entities (such as townships) should be divided into voting districts (which many already are), thereby allowing the development of Democratic, Republican, etc. strongholds which could result in more equitable representation.
   
    
5. Aren’t machines faster than a hand count and isn’t that important?  They should be, but often they’re not.  Machines breakdown routinely, thereby taking longer to report election results.  In Maryland in the 2004 election, 9% of machines observed by a voting rights group, broke down.  Essentially, a speedy hand count is based on a sufficient number of poll workers per number of registered voters and the length of the ballot.  Canada uses 2 election officials per approximately 500 registered voters.  In addition, election officials don’t need to depend on volunteers.  Citizens can be drafted to work at the polls on Election Day, as is done routinely with jury duty.  The right to direct access to a ballot and meaningful public oversight of the process supersedes the perceived convenience of voting machines. 
   
    
6. What about states that have really long ballots, including initiatives and referendum?  Most countries keep their ballots brief.  For instance, in America state and local judges could be elected by legislative bodies instead of the voters. But, there are other issues.  The initiative/referendum movement is called Direct Democracy.  However, it is really an end-run around the legislature.  Some activists think this is a good idea, but others disagree.  California’s ballot has become a nightmare.  Clearly, those with the money get their issues on the ballot. And consider this.  The initiative/referendum movement allows those who control the voting machines to also control which candidates win and what legislation gets passed. 
   
    
7. Aren’t voting machines more accurate than a hand count?  There is no way to know. There is no way to test the accuracy of voting machines during the actual voting process on Election Day.  Citizens vote in secret.  The machines count those votes in secret.  If ballot scanners are used, then election officials can run an audit to check accuracy.  But, few states require audits.  Even with an audit, election officials decide where and when the audits occur.  Public participation and oversight is not meaningful. Any test done prior or after an election cannot ensure that during the election the machine did not manipulate votes, either by accident or design.  The accuracy of voting machines is often correlated with the number of overvotes and undervotes it records.  One could have nothing to do with the other.  There is no way to know the intention of the voter, or if a voting machine is filling in votes that the voter deliberately left blank. Although a lever and touchscreen machine can prevent overvotes, all in all, “The difference between the best performing and worst performing technologies is as much as 2 percent of ballots cast. Surprisingly, paper ballots—the oldest technology—show the best performance.” This is the finding of two Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) political science professors, Dr. Stephen Ansolabehere and Dr. Charles Stewart III, in a September 25, 2002 study entitled, Voting Technology and Uncounted Votes in the United States.
   
    
8. Which is more expensive, voting by machine or paper?  For legitimate elections, expense can never be a consideration.  That said, paper is cheap and requires no special servicing, storage, or trained personnel, while a single voting machines can cost thousands of dollars and require servicing, storage, and trained personnel.  Furthermore, election officials never need to rely on volunteers to staff the polls.  Citizens can always be drafted as they are for jury duty, at little or no cost to the tax payer. 
   
    
9. Shouldn’t we allow absentee voting for overseas military at least?  No.  Again, think in terms of jury duty.  There are certain rights and responsibilities of citizenship that require your personal appearance.  In addition, the polling place provides the voter protection from intimidation and allows poll watchers the opportunity to detect vote fraud or system failure.
   
    
10. If someone wins by a large enough margin, isn’t that a sign that the election wasn’t rigged?  No. It only stands to reason that if someone is going to rig an election, it will be done by a sufficient number of votes to avoid triggering a recount. Otherwise, this could happen: In August of 2002, in Clay county Kansas, Jerry Mayo lost a close race for county commissioner, garnering 48% of the vote, but a hand recount revealed May won by a landslide, earning 76% of the vote.
    
     
11. If the voting machines are being used at my polling precinct, is it better to vote by absentee?   Most absentee ballots are not counted by hand, but instead scanned by computers. The same corporations (ES&S, Diebold, Sequoia, etc) that dominate the touchscreen market, also control the ballot scanners.  In addition, some counties, like King County Washington, have even outsourced the mailing of their absentee ballots to private industry. 
    
     
12. Can’t elections be rigged by stuffing ballot boxes, as well?  Yes, but it is a detectable kind of vote fraud, whereas voting by machine, early or absentee is nearly impossible to detect.  The problem of stuffed ballot boxes may be more fiction than fact.  In his book, The Right To Vote, The Contested History of Democracy in the United States, Alexander Keyssar, of the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, writes, “…recent studies have found that claims of widespread corruption were grounded almost entirely in sweeping, highly emotional allegations backed by anecdotes and little systematic investigation or evidence. Paul Kleppner, among others, has concluded that what is most striking is not how many, but how few documented cases of electoral fraud can be found. Most elections appear to have been honestly conducted: ballot-box stuffing, bribery, and intimidation were the exception, not the rule.”
    
     
13. Doesn’t the federal government regulate the voting machine industry?  No. There is no federal agency charged with regulatory oversight of the elections industry. There are no restrictions on who can count our votes. Anyone from anywhere can count our votes. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) doesn’t even publish a complete list of all the voting technology companies whose business it is to count Americans’ votes.   see: voting companies info
    
     
14. Can a voting machine company be owned by foreigners and run by felons?  Yes. Sequoia is the third largest voting machine company in America and is owned by a British-based company, De La Rue. Diebold is the second largest voting machine company in the country. It counts about 35% of all votes in America.  Diebold employed 5 convicted felons as senior managers and developers to help write the central compiler computer code that counted 50% of the votes in 30 states. Jeff Dean, Diebold’s Senior Vice-President and senior programmer on Diebold’s central compiler code, was convicted of 23 counts of felony theft in the first degree. Dean was convicted of planting back doors in his software and using a “high degree of sophistication” to evade detection over a period of 2 years. see: fraud & irregularities
    
     
15. Isn’t that a threat to national security? Yes.
    
     
16. What was the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) all about? It established the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) to distribute billions of dollars to the states to upgrade their voting systems, but failed to mandate any meaningful standards.  http://www.eac.gov/law_ext.asp 
    
     
17. Doesn’t the federal government certify the voting machines?  No. The federal government has a loose set of technical guidelines for voting machines that are voluntary and may be actually harmful.  The Federal Voting Systems Standards (FVSS) used by the three NASED’s approved Independent Test Authorities (ITA) to “certify” companies are outmoded guidelines and voluntary, and not all states have adopted them.  According to industry observers, the FVSS guidelines allow one in ten machines to fail.  There is no enforcement of these guidelines, such as they are. 
    
     
18. Who, then, certifies the nation’s voting machines? The FEC coordinates with the industry-funded National Association of State Election Directors (NASED), a private non-profit group, to have machines inspected certified by industry-funded private contractors.  NASED selects and approves the testing laboratories. Only prototypes of the machines and software are available for a very superficial inspection.  The inspection is conducted by three private companies who are not themselves subject to any regulation.  Technical Issues & Standards  “An unelected person named R. Doug Lewis runs a private non-profit organization called “The Election Center.”
    

    Lewis is possibly the most powerful man in the U.S., influencing election procedures and voting systems, yet he is vague about his credentials and no one seems to be quite sure who hired him or how he came to oversee such vast electoral functions. Lewis organized the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS, now heavily funded by voting machine vendors); he also organized the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) and, through them, Lewis told (author Bev) Harris he helps certify the certifiers.”  “Wyle Laboratories is the most talked-about voting machine certifier, probably because it is the biggest, but in fact, Wyle quit certifying voting machine software in 1996. It does test hardware: Can you drop it off a truck? Does it stand up to rain? Software testing and certification is done by Shawn Southworth. When Ciber quit certifying in 1996, it was taken over by Nichols Research, and Southworth was in charge of testing. Nichols Research stopped doing the testing, and it was taken over by PSInet, where Southworth did the testing. PSInet went under, and testing functions were taken over by Metamore, where Southworth did the testing. Metamore dumped it, and it was taken over by Ciber, where Southworth does the testing. Here is a photo of Shawn Southworth:” scoop.co.nz

WOULD YOU TRUST THIS MAN WITH YOUR VOTE?

meet Shawn Southworth

the industry guy who “certifies” America’s voting technology

17. But, wouldn’t it take a vast number of people to rig an election?  Not with today’s technology.  One programmer working at either ES&S or Diebold could write code that could manipulate votes across the country.  If a voting machine has computer components, it can be rigged or accessed through the firmware, software, wireless, modem, telephone, and simple electricity.  Main tabulating computers can be rigged in a similar fashion. Lever voting machine are also easily rigged, although it would be more labor intensive. Still, anyone with the keys to the county warehouse where the machines are stored could rig the machines. Labels can be switched, gears shaved, odometers preset, or printouts preprinted.

18. Can’t we detect vote fraud through exit polls?  Exit polling is conducted by one organization that is hired by the major news networks and the Associated Press.  Since they first started “projecting” election night winners in 1964, the major news networks have never provided any ‘hard’ evidence that they actually conducted any exit polls, at all.  The late authors of the book, VoteScam: The Stealing of America, concluded that some of the major news networks, including the polling organization that they hire for election night reporting, have been complicit in vote fraud. see: exit polls

19. If someone wins by a large enough margin, isn’t that a sign that the election wasn’t rigged?  No. It only stands to reason that if someone is going to rig an election, it will be done by a sufficient number of votes to avoid triggering a recount. Otherwise, this could happen: In August of 2002, in Clay county Kansas, Jerry Mayo lost a close race for county commissioner, garnering 48% of the vote, but a hand recount revealed May won by a landslide, earning 76% of the vote. http://www.ecotalk.org/BevHarrisBook2.pdf (page 45)

20. Aren’t you just a conspiracy theorist?  No. In the words of Greg Palast, “I’m a conspiracy expert.”  Election officials have outsourced and privatized a uniquely public function. Corporations have gained near total control over the process of voting. Corporations also control the process of reporting exit polls.   Both processes are completely non-transparent.

by Lynn Landes for EcoTalk.org

1. Own the media (done)

2. Own the voting machines (done)

3. Purposely bias polls, and use the media to convince people that the vote is legitimate. (done)

4. When things are really looking bad resort to “Plan B”.

Bad is defined as:

• The general populace has really had enough of your bullshit
• Democrats have finally caught on that you actually have rigged the voting machines

Plan B:



1. Announce far ahead of time that the voting machines are rigged, and if you lose, it is because the democrats have rigged the vote. Say this a lot (with the help of the media), so it appears that the democrats are in control of the voting machines. (in process)

2. Just before the elections, heighten the terror alert, or drag out some scapegoat of a plot to put in the news.

3. Rig the election as usual, and the media pundits will rationalize for you how security concerns changed voter choices in the final days (the best part is the pundits will be unwitting participants, they don’t even need to know the real truth)

4. The democrats will not be able to claim the vote was rigged, because it now appears that if anyone could rig the vote, it was the democrats (see step 1 of Plan B)

How do we “defuse” Plan B? The democrats need to start speaking up now, and loudly about who owns the voting machine companies, and the linkages to the GOP.

Posted on Democratic Underground by Pobeka

http://wedonotconsent.blogspot.com/2006/06/talking-points-memo-on-elections-for.html

Since the start of this month there has been more high profile, corporate media coverage of our “election” charades than perhaps any other period during the Bush regime. Could this be a sign we are approaching a bona fide tipping point, after which things will be totally different? Well, I want to believe it, but I think we first need the progressive media to get on the same page about some talking points.

1. Secret vote counting guarantees inconclusive outcomes. Whether it is paperless DREs or optical scanners with interpreted or proprietary code, votes are being “counted” in secret, without even a chance for voters, elections officials or the media to examine the process or verify the results.

2. Unverified voting means there is NO BASIS for confidence in the results reported. Blind trust is required to accept current election results.

3. The media should not report what it cannot prove or independently verify. We now have faith-based reporting about faith-based elections.

4. The Consent of the Governed is being assumed, not sought, under current election conditions. According to the Declaration of Independence, the “just Power” of government derives from the Consent of the Governed.

5. Here is a partial list (in no particular order) of additional items to which we must say: We Do Not Consent.

a) The lost presumption of innocence;

b) Spying on Americans and an overall loss of privacy;

c) Government lawlessness;

d) Destruction of our environment;

e) The promise of endless war;

f) Free speech zones;

g) Depleted Uranium (Mr. Bush’s slow-motion holocaust);

h) Government run media;

i) Secret prisons, torture and war crimes;

j) and We Do Not Consent to secret vote counting machines.

The larger question that should emerge from these talking points is: Has the Consent of the Governed been withdrawn, YET? Presented this way the question takes a tone of inevitability – not if, but when! This is how we pave a path to a tipping point.

This set of points varies in at least one very dramatic way from the high profile corporate coverage recently given to election integrity. For examples, start with Rolling Stone publishing Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s hefty recitation of the of the travesty of the 2004 “election” in Ohio, plus the ensuing TV appearances (CNN, Fox, MSNBC – all .wmv videos), and the online rebuttals and rejoinders (Farhad Manjoo at Salon.com, Paul Lehto, Bob Fitrakis, and even Bobby Kennedy himself). In all cases, progressive people are arguing over past events that can’t be changed with people who are not even open to having their minds changed.

What would be better is educating progressive media about these powerful forward-looking arguments. Icons such as Thom Hartmann, Peter B. Collins (.mp3 of my interview last week), and Randi Rhodes can help us teach the public at large in a way that enables understanding of our current condition while fostering an appropriately strong and unified response. The talking points above allow us to discuss that which can be agreed upon, namely, what are the conditions for the elections we’re about to have. The lesson, however, is that such conditions ensure inconclusive outcomes which should never be expected to produce unanimous acceptance. By narrowly defining a common view of the problem we become poised to take united action.

The Voter Confidence Resolution (VCR) is a document reflecting all the talking points above. The City Council of Arcata, CA was the first to adopt the VCR, and Palo Alto, CA will soon be considering its own version. Each community is encouraged to use Arcata’s language as a template, keeping the main talking points and customizing other areas, including an election reform platform. This inspires local debate about sensible standards that should aim at delivering conclusive election outcomes and creating a basis for confidence in the results reported.

In Hartmann’s recent AlterNet article about the RFK piece, he very bluntly says: “George W. Bush is not the legitimate president of the United States.” But Hartmann doesn’t go much beyond encouraging us to “speak out” in response. There is no doubt that Hartmann personally knows many people who have already been among the most outspoken. Our efforts have not been in vain, but they could be more successful with a common message and call to action. And it was with this in mind that I saw the need for this talking points memo. It is worth noting that when I recently discussed these same ideas with Brother Thom on his radio show, this is what he said:

“Its a great start getting out there and saying, ‘Nope, sorry, we’re not going to play this game.’ I think we need to do more of that.

* * *Additional recent major media election integrity coverage has included Jack Cafferty and Lou Dobbs (.wmv) on CNN. Big thanks to VoteTrustUSA and BradBlog for instigating and covering the coverage. Also see Why Old Election Numbers No Longer Matter, originally published 8/17/05 in the GuvWurld Blog, also appearing on page 9 of my new book We Do Not Consent (free .pdf download). Finally, Mark E. Smith offers a perspective worth considering in Global Warming vs. Election Integrity.

The Electronic Voting Machine Company Qui Tam Cases Explained… ‘Citizen media is replacing mainstream media…and a lot more successfully than anybody dreamed.’

An Exclusive Interview for The BRAD BLOG as Guest Blogged by Joy and Tom Williams…

Mike Papantonio and Bobby Kennedy co-host Ring of Fire on Air America. The two attorneys have filed qui tam lawsuits against the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) companies for defrauding the government. We previously posted an exclusive interview with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. about this case.

Papantonio is a Florida attorney who has already gone after a number of big corporations for the American people. He is named partner and head of the Mass Tort Department at his firm. He has handled many famous cases throughout the nation, including asbestos, breast implants, Dalkon Shield, Fen-Phen, hemophiliac-AIDS, L-Tryptophan, railroad disasters and the Florida Tobacco litigation. He is listed in Best Lawyers in America and Leading American Attorney. He is also the author of In Search of Atticus Finch, A Motivational Book for Lawyers; Clarence Darrow, The Journeyman; Resurrecting AESOP, Fables Lawyers Should Remember and a co-author of Closing Arguments — The Last Battle. In addition to all this, he is a popular lecturer in the legal field.

We would like to say something about what a dynamic and articulate man he is, and how much we think he’s doing for our country, but, really, res ipsa loquitur, the thing speaks for itself, and this is no accident. Mike Papantonio is a hard-working, extremely generous, friendly and personable — and dedicated — man. One would be hard-pressed to find a better duo for the difficult job ahead. The Kennedy/Papantonio alliance is a particularly brilliant one. Mike took the time to talk to us about aspects of the qui tam cases they have set in motion already…

BRAD BLOG: Can you tell us about these qui tam cases?

MIKE PAPANTONIO: What we’re doing with these qui tam cases is really not much different than the approach we used in the national tobacco litigation. We’ve put together that same kind of team, not the same people, but the same kind of people who are used to working with complex litigation. Because of that, there’s a benefit to the U.S. attorney saying, “Well, you know, we don’t know if we really want to do this.” And once they say that, those are the golden words that will allow us to go in and handle the case ourselves. Exactly like we’ve done with tobacco, asbestos, virtually every major pharmaceutical case in the country, it’s always originated with the same kind of lawyers. And those are the kind of lawyers that do fairly complex stuff.

BB: I want to thank you for doing those cases, by the way, Mike.

MP: Thank you for saying that, sometimes it just takes a while to register, to where you say, well you know, I didn’t want to have to do this, but apparently we have to. That’s how I feel about this right now.

BB: How do you feel about the idea that you might be saving our Democracy?

MP: Morris Dees is a civil rights lawyer and a very good friend of mine. As a matter of fact he started the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery. If you talk to someone like Morris, and you ask him, what is it that brought some closure, some beginning for closure to the civil rights movement, he’d say it was really no one event; it was kind of a collection of displaced separate events. That’s always stuck with me, because with anything that’s worth doing, it’s rare that you will accomplish it with one event that you are able to manage, or one success that you are able to gain. It rarely works like that. I think there are some similarities here, just like I thought the same thing with tobacco. When we first started talking about tobacco, everybody thought we were pretty much nuts, because we were taking on some of the biggest corporations in the world. But it wasn’t just our effort, it had been the effort of people who’d gone before us, and all we did was take what they’d already done for us and make it a little bit better — a small reinvention of the wheel, in a way that just helped the wheel roll a little better. It’s the same thing here.

I think of Lowell Finley. Lowell Finley is a great lawyer who’s handled these voter cases a long time, but he’s had to handle them by himself. First of all there’s the economics of it, and if all you are doing is going to court and arguing with some Judge, about the fact that he ought to enjoin the further use of the company, the product, or that he ought to put limitations on how the product’s used, that doesn’t really get you where you need to go, and it costs you instead of the company. The only thing that corporate America understands is when they have to say to their stockholders, or to their partners in their businesses, “Hey, we have to write a big check now and it could put us out of business.” That’s all they respond to. Having done complex litigation for 25 years, I’ve never seen any other formula. You know, in a perfect world we could throw them in jail.

In Japan, for example, if you are following this latest story — I think it has to do with an auto case where they didn’t tell the consumers the truth — the consumer doesn’t really get to sue them the same way they do in the States, but the good news is that they throw them in jail. So that’s where I wish we were. I would gladly give up the multi-million-dollar recoveries from all the pharmaceutical cases, from everything we’ve done, for the last 25 years. If I knew we had a law that said, “Well, you guys can’t really sue them for money but we can have these creeps thrown in jail,” I’d gladly give up every dime. But, unfortunately, in the US, the only avenue we have to punish these companies is to take their money away. And so that’s the method of operation that we’ve used in pharmaceutical cases, in asbestos cases, and tobacco cases, and roll-over cases — all of those consumer cases are only driven by the fact that greed is such a driving force with corporate America that they only react when you take some of their ill-gotten money away from them.

BB: So it’s not only the machine fraud. The Republican Party has been involved with all kinds of methods to disenfranchise voters, from intimidation, to destruction of Democratic voter registrations, and all kinds of other things that result in people not having their votes counted, or not being able to vote. Is there any possibility of a class action lawsuit down the line for the American people because they had their election stolen?

MP: I don’t really see that. I understand class action suits very, very well, and I don’t really see that as a possibility. It’s not likely that you’re going to have a case where you say the same offense that prevented person A from voting also prevented person B and person C, where you can show those three events are exactly the same. And unfortunately in a class action suit there are certain hoops that you have to jump through, like similarity in action, numerosity, all of these things that you really have to be specific about to get to the class action threshold. There may be some small cases, for example, where the Indians are disenfranchised, in a particular area — yes, that has a ring to it. Or where the Hispanics in a certain state are disenfranchised — that has some appeal to it. I don’t think that we are ready to get there yet with these. The trick to any particular litigation is to lay out the best strategy you can with what you have.

When I look at this, the best strategy that I’m able to come up with, and Bobby’s able to come up with, is a strategy that forces us into a room with the people who are making these decisions — so I’m able to sit across the table from those people and ask them some tough questions. That: a.) forces them into committing perjury; and b.) exposes them as being the criminals that they are. I think that the best way to get there, is to do it by way of qui tam lawsuits and I may be wrong, but sometimes you have to stick with your strategy and that’s where we’re headed with it.

BB: Bobby was talking about how widespread this machine tampering is getting. It suggested to me that since these machines don’t tamper themselves, and since the Republicans don’t do things ad hoc, there may be a room filled with high level people who are sitting around analyzing data, plotting strategies, coming up with numbers and giving instructions, and if you could find out who those are wouldn’t you have a massive conspiracy case?

MP: Yes, you would. Tom, I keep hearing of people afraid to say that there’s any design, that everything that happened in Ohio must have just happened to be coincidental, disjointed events. I’m not afraid to say I think there is something that has more of a design to it.

For example, there is no question Feeney, down in Florida, met with people who were trying to put together a system to game voting. Here you have a Republican Congressman, this guy who represents Floridians, who represents Americans, and he’s sitting down trying to figure out how he can defraud Americans of their right to vote. Now, you’ve got to find that here too. Does it all fit together? It might.

[Ed Note: We have been reporting on Florida vote-rigging whistleblower Clint Curtis for the past year and a half. He is the programmer who has alleged Republican Congressman Tom Feeney asked him to create a software prototype to flip votes on electronic voting machines. A summary of our coverage is posted here. Curtis is now running for Congress in Florida’s 24th district in hopes of unseating Feeney this fall. The Clint Curtis for Congress website is here.]

I think for something as critical as this is, you have to have a very methodical approach, just the same kind of an approach I would use if I were going to sue Merck for a defective product for 10,000 people. But that’s not new stuff. If you were to follow me around in a given month, you would see that I use the same methodology almost all the time, because it’s proven methodology, and that’s the way this has to be approached. It’s easy to get your attention pulled in so many directions that you forget that you still have a methodology that you need to follow. So all of these things are issues. You say to yourself, “My God, I know this is happening,” but you have to be patient. You have to say to yourself, “I gotta get there.”

BB: That’s not to say in following your planned strategy you might not turn up a lot of things in the woodwork during the process.

MP: Yes, I think you will. I think we’ll turn up exactly what you’re talking about in the process. And then at some point, that’s something that will become useable. Right now with the way that politics are situated in Washington, if you were to turn up the fact that Dick Cheney, for an example – just for an example – if Dick Cheney and Karl Rove had sat down and said, here is the master strategy that’s even better than Lee Atwater’s Southern Strategy, and here’s how we are going to create this Republican machine that’s never going to go away — if they were to have said that, and I actually had documents to show that they said it, that ordinarily would work…. But with the present environment, with the media that we are confronted with, and with the Justice Department, (not so much the Justice Department, but the people who are running the Justice Department, because we have very good U.S. Attorneys who are career people and they don’t like this anymore than we do) — unfortunately, until we take back Congress and then take back the White House, we could have all the smoking guns you want, but the infrastructure to do anything with it is not there.

Every time I talk about this Democrats get mad, but it’s just absolutely the truth: Had Bill Clinton gone after and really sustained his investigation into the Iran-Contra affair for the full two years that he was there with a Democratic Congress, had he aggressively gone after the people he needed to, we wouldn’t have had Wolfowitz, we wouldn’t have had Rumsfeld, we wouldn’t have had Richard Perle, we wouldn’t have most of the Neocons that are running things right now. They would be in jail. But he didn’t do it. So the question is, if we can get Congress back one more time, and we can gain control of the infrastructure that puts thugs in jail, then we can have some change, but it has to begin in November, it has to happen.

This is it — 2006 is the test.

But until we have either the House or the Senate, we don’t even have a bully pulpit. We have a press that is a completely dismal failure. And there’s a clear reason why they’re a dismal failure. Want to hear it?

BB: Of course!

MP: In the next 900 days, they have the last opportunity to enhance the 1996 Telecommunications Act. Michael Powell, if you will remember, took a shot at it last year, and he was very close, a lot closer than anybody thought. If they can get there, then what you are going to have is that Viacom, or NBC, or Rupert Murdoch is going come to your home town, and own your newspaper, own your radios, own your televisions, own everything, so that the one message that, say, Rupert Murdoch wants to deliver is delivered on virtually every venue available to you.

BB: That’s so dangerous.

MP: It’s awful. But the corporate media understands that this is it.

THIS IS IT!

Really, they’ll never again have this opportunity to have such a bumpkin President, such a lapdog bunch of Congressmen, and such a bottom-feeding kind of Administration. They’ll never have this again. They are afraid they will lose this opportunity by actually telling the stories, that people like you are telling. They are afraid to tell the story about the fact that 80,000 votes were shifted from John Kerry’s name to George Bush’s name in Ohio; or, that in the same state of Ohio, in one district, there were only 800 people who were registered, but 4000 votes showed up on the ledger.

BB: About qui tam: I understand that when you file, the government has the option of taking the case, instead of the citizen who files. Is that true?

MP: Correct.

BB: Is there any chance that the government might take the case and then go ahead and spike it?

MP: You mean sit on it?

BB: Yes.

MP: Yes, that’s exactly everybody’s fear, and that’s what we are trying to work around right now. The answer is, yes, that could very well happen, and we’re doing the best we can to not allow it to happen. Interestingly enough, within 60 days they have to make a decision, the decision if they are going to take the case, and they have a right to have one extension, they can get one continuance for that decision, so that’s one thing we have to be very conscious of.

BB: That can leave the disclosure until after the election then.

MP: Oh, absolutely. We’re trying to do what we can in that regard too.

BB: It’s too bad it couldn’t have been filed a little bit earlier.

MP: We had to have the facts. You have to have the relator, you have to have the whistleblowers, without those you can’t really do anything.

BB: I want to thank you for doing this. I really appreciate it.

MP: Well thank you, and I appreciate what you’re doing. I’m very optimistic about what you’re doing, because I think there’s a real rise in the citizen media. Citizen media is replacing mainstream media, and I think it’s doing it a lot more aggressively, and a lot more successfully than anybody dreamed. If you look at the numbers right now, 60% of Americans don’t trust the news. 60% say that they don’t even believe that the news can be adequately reported because government or corporations don’t allow it to happen. So what happens out there, is that the market always takes care of itself. There is some truth to that. And the market right now is moving rapidly towards the same kind of citizen media that you’re involved with. It’s one of those events that I talked about earlier, which coalesces with other things that are happening, so citizen media does get a story like this out, and it’s very effective. It’s amazing.

So when you run this story, somebody somewhere might read it and they might say, “Well I have information,” and they call someone or they call us, and you have a whole new dimension to the case that develops. Every day, somebody inside one of these voter corporations is mistreated, becomes disgruntled, finds their conscience, gets fearful that they are going to be arrested — because all those things do happen — and every time another of these key people decides to do the right thing, we have a better chance of getting to the whole story, so what you’re doing has a dramatic effect.

BB: Well I hope so, I just want to save this country.

MP: [Laughing] Well, I thank you for that. I will keep you posted as this story develops. It’s not something that happens right away. I think people may believe things are going to happen so rapidly that it’s going to be a huge flash, it’s more like a smoldering fire. And that’s not such a bad thing.

BB: No, because sometimes a smoldering fire will do a lot more damage in the long run than a flash. I’m hoping that this will actually change the consciousness in America so that when everybody goes to vote they look carefully at what’s going on around them. If we can at least get it out there that these voting machine companies are being sued, then maybe there will be more attention paid during the 2006 election, even if the case hasn’t been concluded.

MP: Joy, let me ask you something. Just put yourself in the position of an insider. The number ten guy with a huge voting machine company. All of a sudden, you understand that we’re already going fairly aggressively against one of your competitors. And you as number ten person in that company have firsthand knowledge that the company is committing fraud, and that the fraud is resulting in people being disenfranchised — just totally being disenfranchised from the right to vote. If you are that number ten guy, and as you listen to the story unfold, there ought to be a certain pucker factor. That fear factor is what you should react to, rather than being somebody that is brought into a lawsuit or a criminal case. The thing to do is to come forward now, and let people know up front that, yes, you know about it, and, yes, you’re willing to help correct it.

BB: And that’s part of the message we need to get out….

MP: That’s it!

BB: You were saying the other day it’s “like the civil rights issue” I think this is the civil rights issue.

MP: Oh yes, it is the civil rights issue; it’s the heart of the civil rights issue. It’s what people were murdered for, why they had to march in lines where they had dogs sic’d on them, and tear gas thrown at them, and bullets shot over their heads, or sometimes into their bodies. There’s no difference from what’s happening here, it’s just that people don’t understand or react to the racial aspect of it. Because it’s not simply a racial issue, it’s a class issue.

BB: Exactly, it’s the poor, as well as minority groups, as well as anyone who might commit the crime of voting while Democrat.

MP: If you think that this is happening in upper middle class neighborhoods, where white people drive 15 minutes to vote, you’re wrong. The problem was in the places where people had to take buses, and walk and take taxicabs to go vote, and then they would have to stand in line for four hours.

BB: And they might not even be in the “right” line in the same polling precinct. In Ohio there were frequently two polling precincts in one place, like a high school gym, and people would get in the wrong line, wait four hours, and then have to go to the end of the other line.

MP: Yes… and, then when they get there, their name isn’t even on the voting roll. So those are the nuances. We have to handle the direct issue right now. The direct issue is, even when they got there, the voting was probably gamed after they voted.

BB: Do you think that ChoicePoint is pulling people’s names off the rolls in 2006 as they did in 2000 in Florida?

MP: Oh, I just don’t know that yet. There’s no way to tell yet.

BB: This whole story is so intricate and so complicated, if they game the system again in 2006, it’s going to be a lot harder to tell because there are so many small races compared to the big major races for President….

MP: You hit a very good point. The point is: What about the developer who wants to have two of his friends put on the county commission so he can build a new high-rise? Nobody wants the high-rise, but, if he can get his friends put on there, my God, he might stand to make $15 million. Isn’t that just as much of a threat? The local issue is not quite as important as the national, but it’s pretty damned important.

BB: And, if the poll workers can take these machines home and have a sleepover with them, you can have one person put in a nasty chip, and change the whole outcome of the race!

MP: And without any evidence at all, so there would be no way to tell.

The Tip of the Iceberg of the Crimes Committed by Mexican Electoral Authorities Is the Fraudulent Vote Count of 2006

By Al Giordano

Part II of a Special Series for The Narco News Bulletin

July 8, 2006

Commercial Media organizations are reporting that Felipe Calderòn won Sunday’s presidential election by 0.58 percent of the vote and will govern Mexico for the next six years, beginning on December 1.

It would not be the first time that the Commercial Media has been wrong.

Many of those reports have claimed that Wednesday’s first official count of precinct results in Mexico – 130,000 pieces of paper that claim to represent the vote tallies – was a “recount.”

It would not be the first time that lazy “pack journalism” got a major international story wrong.

The truth: No recount occurred on Wednesday, or before, or since. What occurred – we repeat – was only the first official count of precinct tallies.

A Narco News investigation has found that in the small sample of precincts – less than one percent – where a recount was allowed, the shift in numbers away from Calderón was so drastic that, if recounts of all the ballots followed the same trend, the official results would invert and Andrés Manuel López Obrador would become the clear winner of the presidency by more than one million votes:

The Million-Vote Fraud

Part I of this series documented the election night dishonesty by Mexico’s Federal Electoral Institute (IFE, in its Spanish initials) when it withheld 3.3 million votes (about eight percent of the total) from public view while claiming that its Preliminary Elections Results Program (PREP) had tabulated 98.5 percent of the vote.

Our report then showed that the inclusion of 2.5 million of those votes – when, under significant public pressure, IFE finally disclosed them – significantly reduced the agency’s original claim that Calderón had won by 377,000 votes: that total fell to a 257,000 vote margin in one swoop. Wednesday’s first official count reduced that margin by another 13,000 votes, even as the IFE refused to conduct hand-counts of more than 99 percent of the ballots.

An electoral arbiter acting in bad faith, with an interest in preventing an accurate tally, would, in response to such hemorrhaging (the daily freefall, since Monday, of Calderón’s alleged margin of victory), act hastily in a manner that would prevent transparent completion of a careful count.

On Thursday, in such haste, IFE chairman Luis Carlos Ugalde inexplicably usurped the legal role reserved for the judicial electoral tribunal (known as the Trife), by rushing to declare Calderón the official victor.

As Mexico’s leading newsweekly, Proceso, concluded from its own investigations:

“The decision by the IFE to leave the announcement of its PREP results in suspense, in spite of the fact it could have done so before midnight on Sunday, confirms that this agency has been an ally of the federal government in its goal of avoiding, at all costs, the arrival of Andrés Manuel López Obrador to the presidency.”

For authentic journalists, Mexico’s post-electoral conflict is one of those gigantic news stories that happens few times in the course of a lifetime: Not merely a story about how a state-of-the-art electoral fraud was perpetrated in a major country of 100 million people, but, more historically, the story of how that fraud will be laid to waste.

This news story will unfold for weeks, probably for months, before it is resolved. The first battle is already underway: the struggle to count the votes.

It is objectively false to report, as major news organizations have done, that there was a “recount” of votes on Wednesday. There was no such thing. What occurred was the first actual counting of reported precinct results, something that occurs days after every election, and the results demonstrate the overwhelming evidence that a full recount is necessary in order to achieve an accurate result.

On Wednesday, there was partial recount of less than one percent of the ballots: a partial recount that lowered Calderón’s supposed margin of victory by more than six percentage points, or more than 13,000 votes. In the context of the fraudulent results discovered in this sample of recounted ballots, it can therefore be projected that a recount of just 18.7 percent of the ballots would tie the race. A full recount – if the votes in the ballot boxes have not been tampered with or disappeared (as has already occurred in various parts of the Republic when marked ballots have been discovered in municipal dumps and garbage cans on the streets) – will show a victory by candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador by more than one million votes: 1,056, 900, more closely estimated.

López Obrador’s campaign is, in fact, seeking a recount of only those precincts where it found indications of fraud: a lot of them: 43,000, more or less. This extrapolation – if those precincts are counted vote-by-vote – would give his candidacy a victory of 243,000 votes.

Is it any wonder, then, that Calderón, his National Action Party, and Mexico’s Federal Electoral Institute (IFE, in its Spanish initials), oppose and resist a full or partial recount even at the cost of their own legitimacy? (In spite of their legaloide claims that “the law” doesn’t allow a full recount, Articles 41 and 99 of the Mexican Constitution – we will translate the relevant constitutional passages in this report – do not just allow a full recount: they require it.)

The true and legal victor in last Sunday’s elections, former Mexico City Governor López Obrador, will make his case today, Saturday, to his supporters and to the nation of how exactly this election fraud was carried out against him and them. He will have to do so against the gale-force winds of a boycott of the true facts by much of the mass media (especially the Mexican television duopoly of Televisa and TV Azteca), and the complicity of the country’s electoral authorities in the maintenance of their own false decrees. He will begin this daunting task today, Saturday, at 5 p.m. Central Time, directly to a multitude of his supporters that he has called to the Mexico City Zócalo – the Mexican town square in front of the National Palace – at an event which he has titled an “informational assembly.”

Despite the newsworthiness of the moment, even its value as a “ratings booster,” this opening statement by the prosecution will not likely be televised. Still, the facts will travel to every corner of the country and world by word-of-mouth, organization, and, significantly, via the Internet, which has an important role to play in this chapter of history.

Many observers have compared the post-electoral conflict in Mexico 2006 to that of 2000 in the United States. While there are indeed parallels (as well as distinctions) to be drawn, there is a very important difference in the equation, and it is societal: That part of the electorate in the United States that was robbed did not see any way to fight and overturn the fraud, or simply was too gullible or afraid to do so. In Mexico, however, the path exists, a critical mass of the Mexican populace understands exactly what was done to them and is ready to assume the ultimate risks to overturn the crime. At stake for global capital and its increasingly simulated “election” processes not just in Mexico but throughout the planet is the manufactured belief that nothing can be done. As occurred a century ago, with the Mexican revolution of 1910, Mexico is on the verge of, as Zapatista Subcomandante Marcos has often said, “amazing the world again.”

Guanajuato as Florida

The north-central Mexican state of Guanajuato – home turf of President Vicente Fox and an importantísimo electoral base for his and Calderón’s PAN party – is where official results from the state’s 6,122 precincts (less than five percent of the national vote) gave Calderón a margin of more than 700,000 votes. That is to say, even according the highly suspicious official results, López Obrador won the rest of the country by almost half a million votes. This was a state where electoral fraud was carried out – and continues to be covered up – on a systematic basis.

There, in Guanajuato, the official results from 640 of those 6,122 precincts show discrepancies and irregularities which include more votes cast than are voters in the precinct, more votes cast for Calderón than votes cast in the precinct, electoral officials that refused to count the votes in public, discrepancies between the actual result and the reported result, missing or suspect vote tally reports, each of them sufficient to trigger, under law, a vote-by-vote recount in the first instance; on Wednesday, despite motions to count the votes in each of those 640 precincts, Guanajuato election officials allowed only eight to be recounted.

Those eight precincts – representing 0.13 percent of the state’s vote – reduced Calderón’s margin by 253 votes, or an average of 31 votes per precinct. If the remaining 632 precincts with irregularities were to show a similar shift, López Obrador’s count would increase by 19,592 votes. If all 6,122 precincts, counted by hand, were to show a similar shift, Guanajuato alone would change the national tally by 189,782 votes. From five percent of the Republic, Calderón’s official margin of victory would, according to our math, be reduced nationwide by 77 percent, from 244,000 to just 55,000 votes. That is just one state with just five percent of the nation’s population.

Claims by IFE and others that the selection of civilian precinct authorities (something akin to jury duty) makes bias and fraud impossible are absurd. Corruption, in Mexican elections, is a two-way street with a long history. For every bribe or “dispensa” (food, construction materials, etcetera) handed out by a corrupt official to rent a vote or a voter ID card, there is a voter willing to do his part trade his vote (or his credential) for money or material things. The same goes for overzealous citizen poll staffers: A culture of corruption is not cured in a single election or in a six-year presidential term. It can only be countered by legal recourses such as the one that exists, or should: a vote-by-vote recount.

The perpetrators of this fraud, the PAN party, complained for decades about the very heavy-handed tactics used by the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to rob elections from the PAN. But once in power, the PAN adopted those same anti-democratic tactics for its own use. In a place like Guanajuato, where the culture itself is heavily PANista, more than ten percent of the precincts fell victim to such obvious fraudulent activity that poll-watchers from other parties challenged the irregularities on election night and again on Wednesday during the official count. In others, in this heavily PAN-dominated state, there simply were no opposition observers in the room on Sunday to make the challenge (the same occurred in other highly populated PAN-governed states like Jalisco and Nuevo Leon). The bias of the jurors (and, during Wednesday’s official count, by IFE employees) was made evident by the refusal to open the ballot boxes and count, vote-by-vote, even in 632 precincts where clear and challenged irregularities had occurred with sufficient evidence to force a hand count.

This kind of stonewalling by the PAN, in its electoral strongholds (not just in Guanajuato but also in Jalisco (and its capital of Guadalajara), Querétaro and throughout Northern Mexico, (including Nuevo Leon and its capital Monterrey), and the IFE all over the country indicates that the participants in this fraud are well aware that their victory is one of theft and criminality. Every step since Sunday they have sought to prevent a full recount under the eyes of the press and public. Human nature is human nature: people’s bias and partiality plays a role in the vote counting, too, wherever it can. None of this analysis requires a conspiracy theory (not to say there hasn’t been a conspiracy, either; in Mexican politics, it would be strange if there was not): It is sufficient to trust in human nature and its untrustworthy elements, not to mention human error.

And this is precisely why a full recount is necessary. Those who oppose it or prevent it from happening reveal exactly why it must happen to clear up the significant public distrust of these results. If the pro-Calderón forces (including IFE) oppose that sunlight, that opposition strongly suggests that that they have reasons to prefer the darkness. Their refusal to permit it, if their opposition to a vote-by-vote recount prevails in these opening stages of the post-electoral conflict, assures that Calderón, if he makes it to inauguration on December 1, will face an impossible task of trying to govern an angry and organized population that does not consider him to have won legitimately. That the PAN is willing to risk even that is the best indication that it knows it “won” illegitimately, only through fraud.

As for Guanajuato – Mexico’s “Florida” in this year’s electoral fraud – Fox and the PAN party did not invent the anti-democratic tactics that they have embraced there and elsewhere in 2006. They learned how to cheat from the PRI, when it governed that state, and where the PRI used the same techniques against Vicente Fox when he ran for governor in 1991.

Vicente Fox, in his own autobiography (pulled off the shelves today by El Universal columnist Katia D Artigues), wrote of how he confronted the 1991 election fraud against him as candidate for governor of “Mexico’s Florida,” Guanajuato:

“After a 250-day campaign, the official results gave the victory to (PRI candidate) Ramón Aguirre with 53% of the vote. The PAN and I were in second place with 35% of the votes. The signs that a monumental electoral fraud had been perpetrated in Guanajuato were so evident that I immediately called for civil resistance. On August 21 in Irapuato, before 4,000 PAN sympathizers, I denounced the existence of more than 700 precinct results filled with immoralities. I detailed that in 506 of the 3,000 precinct results scrutinized there were more votes cast than voters…

“We began a march of 60 kilometers to the city of Guanajuato which we called the ‘walk for democracy’ to demand that the state electoral tribunal annul the results of at least 700 precincts. As part of these civil resistance actions, we blockaded highways, took over the international airport, surrounded the city of Guanajuato, took over city squares in Celaya, Irapuato and Dolores, filling them with citizens, housewives, students and elders, who denounced the electoral fraud. Our spirit was too overwhelming and to stop us, a horde of drunken PRI party members tried to destroy the state congressional building…”

Fox’s 1991 civil resistance led to a compromise in which then-independent (now PAN member) Carlos Medina Plascencia was installed as interim governor. (And that little piece of history explains why, as Narco News reported on June 30, Fox has positioned PRD founder Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas to become interim president if his party’s 2006 electoral fraud comes similarly crashing down as occurred to the PRI in Guanajuato in 1991.)

Revealingly, at the same present moment in 2006 when the PAN is attacking López Obrador’s announcement that he will file a legal complaint with the Trife electoral tribunal, the PAN itself is doing the same to challenge the local results for three seats on the Mexico City Council. What they say is that López Obrador should not appeal the results or spark civil resistance. But what they – the PAN – themselves have done is exactly what he – Obrador and the PRD – and his supporters are likely to do this summer and fall.

Vote Shaving, “Ant Style”

With a 244,000 “official” margin in the nation’s 130,000 precincts, the IFE-claimed margin comes down to less than two votes per precinct: less than two per ballot box, as many precincts contain more than one. An electoral fraud can be carried out simply by “shaving” or adding a few votes here and there: this pattern is already documented to have helped Calderón on the IFE PREP totals, and that IFE’s own website furnished the visible proof may explain why IFE – for all its claims of transparency – has not put the Wednesday “official count” results up by precinct online. Even as IFE has declared Calderón the winner, it has refused to account, precinct by precinct, where it got its current set of numbers.

Take a look at this photo of the “acta” (the signed precinct result) in Tabasco precinct number 0245, ballot box #2, and compare it with the result that IFE reported on its PREP system: The acta says that López Obrador received 236 votes: IFE’s PREP results, though, showed him with 203; a reduction of 33 votes from a single ballot box.

Photo of PREP result from Tabasco (click to enlarge):

Photo of the “acta” from the same precinct:

Or, here, in the State of Mexico, in precinct 1019: The photo of the acta gives 188 votes for Obrador, but only 88 – a difference of 100 – were reported by IFE:

Photo of PREP result from the State of Mexico (click to enlarge):

Photo of the “acta” from the same precinct:

In other districts, there was a pattern of one vote shaved from López Obrador between the acta and the PREP results, or one vote added to Calderón. Narco News has reviewed similar photos of that phenomenon from Baja California precinct 0105 (62 votes for Obrador, 61 reported), and from Baja California precinct 0548 (190 votes for Calderon, 191 reported).

Here are some others; this report only cites those that we have been able to review via photographs of the original actas: Veracruz precinct 2073: 188 votes for Obrador, 186 reported, two votes disappeared. Morelos precinct 0061: 194 votes for Obrador, 190 reported, four votes disappeared. Mexico City precinct 2411: 139 votes for Obrador, 134 reported, five votes disappeared. Querétaro precinct 0375, ballot box #1: 103 votes for Obrador, 102 reported, one vote disappeared. State of Mexico precinct 0855: 208 votes for Obrador, 197 reported, 11 votes disappeared. State of Mexico precinct 0297: 167 votes for Obrador, 159 reported, eight votes disappeared. Mexico City precinct 0444, ballot box #2: 322 votes for Obrador, 318 reported, four votes disappeared..

We have not seen a single photograph of the opposite occurring: of votes taken from Calderón or added to Obrador.

This election fraud tactic is known in Mexico as “estilo hormiga,” or “ant style.” In an election this officially close, there is no question that, if undetected, small shovelfuls of votes diverted or hidden can make the difference in the national result.

That IFE chairman Ugalde rushed to pronounce a winner on Thursday before his agency publicly disclosed the precinct-by-precinct tally counts is cause for concern: No citizen, candidate or party is able to confirm that the actual results from the hard count match the IFE final tally. In the context of this pattern of “ant style” differences with the PREP results on Sunday, and IFE’s dishonesty (see Part I of this series) in hiding 3.3 million votes from the PREP results while claiming 98.5 percent had been counted in them, Ugalde’s panicked rush to declare a winner without providing transparency in the result seems all too much like a repeat of his suspicious Sunday performance.

Do the Ballots Still Exist?

Earlier this week, Narco News shared reports and a photo of ballot boxes and ballots from the Obrador stronghold of Nezahuacoyotl, discovered in a municipal garbage dump. Similar sightings (photographed and notarized) have been unearthed in Veracruz and Mexico City (also bases of Obrador’s support). Here is a photograph from today’s La Jornada of three completed ballots found adrift all alone in a Mexico City garbage can: two of those votes are for Obrador, the third is for PRI candidate Roberto Madrazo.

Lost ballots found in the garbage. Foto: D.R. 2006 La Jornada

What might explain IFE chairman Ugalde’s rush to pronounce judgment and opposition to a vote-by-vote recount is the possibility that these are not isolated cases; that if a full recount is ordered, but the ballots no longer exist in safe keeping, all the IFE and mass media claims of a “clean” electoral process will find themselves in the garbage dump of history. More personally, IFE officials could go to jail. Again, the only way to find out would be to conduct a full vote-by-vote recount of the kind that IFE and the PAN so vehemently oppose.

Wednesday’s hard count of precinct results was bizarre to behold. Your correspondent published, via the Narcosphere, the hour-by-hour results reported by IFE.

Interestingly, from the noon hour Wednesday when we first began tracking and logging the results, when 25 percent of the precinct counts had been reported, and hours later, when 65 percent had been tabulated, López Obrador consistently polled ahead of Calderón by 2.42 to 2.76 percent of the vote (a percentage consistent with our projection that López Obrador won by about one million votes); both candidates had almost no fluctuation to their totals. The manner in which that tally suddenly changed course is bizarre from a mathematical or statistical perspective.

As the latter third of the results came in beginning at 4:44 p.m. on Wednesday, Calderón’s vote percentage began to creep upward as López Obrador’s creeped downward by equal and opposite amounts. During this count of the final 35 percent of the tallies, interestingly, PRI candidate Roberto Madrazo’s percentage remained steadily the same as it had all day (within half-a-percentage point, landing at 22.26 percent) as did that of the also-rans Patricia Mercado and Roberto Campa. All day and night – see the accompanying graph – three candidates remained with their totals in a straight line, but in the final stretch only Obrador and Calderón percentages diverged from the consistency of the first two-thirds of the tallies.

Calderón partisans (including IFE and the mass media) explain the final shift as one of northern Mexican regions coming in last. But Madrazo’s vote, in particular, was uneven nationwide. This was shown by IFE’s PREP results in the breakdown among the five regions by which the vote count was organized.

Madrazo’s regional totals were 24.09 percent in Region 1 (Northern Mexico) and 23.12 percent in region 2 (North-Central Mexico), the regions from where Calderón supposedly got his late surge in Wednesday’s precinct count: nearly one and two points above his national average of 22.26. Had the final tallies in Wednesday’s precinct count really come in from the North and North-Central regions, a statistically significant upward shift would have been registered from Madrazo as well. That it did not casts important doubt upon the claims by IFE and television media that a regional vote saved the day for Calderón at the eleventh hour.

Again, these are from the already discredited PREP results, but it is significant how divergent Madrazo’s tally is region by region, and particularly how he finished higher in the two northern regions than in the combined three central-southern regions. And yet the sudden divergence early Thursday morning between Calderón and Obrador – according to IFE’s still undocumented conclusions – did not statistically change Madrazo’s total as it would have had it mainly come from Calderón’s northern base regions.

Suspicions about computer-generated fraud – rooted, in part, in the fact that IFE’s computer systems were partly designed by companies and partners of Calderón’s brother-in-law Diego Hildebrando Zavala – have been raised anew by the statistical anomalies and inconsistencies both in the PREP counts and hard counts claimed by the IFE, particularly the lack of fluctuation in Madrazo’s hard count tally at the very moments when a radical shift occurred from Obrador to Calderón. And the fact that IFE chairman Ugalde rushed, at 4 p.m. Thursday, to declare a winner without having transparently reported the region-by-region and state-by-state results (at press time, IFE still has not published them) smells as rotten as the legal fact that Ugalde is not empowered by any law to declare a winner but that he inexplicably did so anyway: that task belongs, legally, to the judicial branch of government, the Trife tribunal. Ugalde’s illegal hurry suggests motive to literally play fast and loose with the facts, as he has done.

As Article 99 of the Mexican Constitution, establishing the Electoral Tribunal (Trife) and its Supreme Court, clearly states: “The (Trife) Supreme Court will conduct the final count of the election of President of the Mexican United States.”

So why did Ugalde, arrogantly and illegally, steal that role for himself? What was his hurry? What was his fear of waiting, as the law provides, for the Trife to declare the winner?

The Constitution has some other interesting things to say that are relevant to this post-electoral conflict…

The Constitution Requires a Full Recount

Article 41 of the Mexican Constitution states:

“The people exercises its sovereignty through the Powers of the Union, in cases of their responsibility, and through those of the States, regarding their internal regimens, in the respective terms established by the present Federal Constitution and those of the States, which in no case may contradict the stipulations of the Federal Pact…

“III. The organization of federal elections is a responsibility of the State that is conducted by a public, autonomous agency named the Federal Electoral Institute, provided with legal power and its own resources, in whose formation the Legislative Branch, the national political parties and the citizens participate under the terms provided by law. In the exercise of this governmental function, certainty, legality, independence, impartiality, and objectivity are the guiding principles…”

This article requires, among other things, that the government provide “certainty” as to election results (as well as “legality” and “impartiality”). The mere existence of widespread public uncertainty (as well as illegal and biased activity by the IFE) provides the supreme electoral Tribunal with absolute legal grounds to reassert conditions that would restore public certainty. The Trife therefore has the power, and responsibility, to require a recount as the obvious and only means to restore that certainty.

And if a conflict surfaces between the IFE and the Trife as to interpreting those factors, Article 99 of the Mexican Constitution is very clear:

“The Electoral Tribunal will be, with the exception of the requirements of Article 105 of this Constitution (author’s note: which says that the national Supreme Court may only resolve, in the electoral arena, Constitutional conflicts between individual states, or between states and the federal government), the maximum jurisdictional authority in the material and specialized organ of the Judicial Branch of the Federation…

“The Electoral is responsible for resolving, definitively and finally, according to this Constitution and under law questions regarding…

“II. The legal challenges that are presented about the election of President of the United Mexican States that will be resolved once and for all by the (Trife’s) Supreme Court…”

This article clearly states that, in case of conflict between IFE’s interpretation and that of the Electoral Tribunal, the Tribunal has final power and say. Thus, the Constitution – see Article 41, especially the part about the requirement for “certainty” – must be interpreted as determinative over any IFE regulation.

That’s the law. It allows for, and requires, public “certainty” in presidential election results: something that does not exist today regarding Sunday’s vote. A recount is the only path available with which to establish that certainty in the 2006 election results.

But that presumes that the hype is true: that Mexico counts with honest institutions transparently upholding the rule of law.

Your reporter witnessed, in 1999, that same Supreme Electoral Tribunal – the Trife – fail to comply with its mandate at an hour when the voters of Guerrero were denied certainty of a gubernatorial election plagued with evidence of fraud. At that moment, the Trife ignored the public uncertainty, and allowed the PRI candidate to triumph in a situation very similar to today’s, in which the Guerrero state IFE granted, by a dubious one percent of the vote plagued with similar irregularities, against a candidate of the PRD for governor.

That was then. This is now. If the Trife decides to repeat its dark history, this year on the national level, what argument shall be left that the Mexican people can or should have faith in their institutions? The Trife will decide one matter – whether there shall be an authentic recount of the votes – but, in doing so, it will also determine the legitimacy of the Mexican Federal State. If it opts again to ratify illegitimacy, by denying a recount, nobody should claim surprise if the people respond accordingly, and take that power away from the corrupted institutions of the Mexican State.

To be continued…

from The Narco News Bulletin