Citizen-gathered evidence shows an increasing likelihood of electoral fraud

Posted in '06 Election, Bev Harris, Black Box (Electronic) Voting, General, TAKE ACTION! on October 10th, 2006

It’s going to be up to us to make the case. We can’t solve a problem if we refuse to look. Citizens are fed up with black box elections, and are mustering up evidence of improper behavior that will swing the pendulum back in the direction it belongs.

Examples of the astonishing evidence uncovered by candidates and extraordinary citizens follows.

At first, we proved that the machines “theoretically’ could be tampered with. Then, in experiments in Leon County and Emery County, citizen-led investigations machines could ACTUALLY be tampered with.

At first, public records requests from Black Box Voting and others proved that election results were not authenticatable using available audit records. And now, Black Box Voting and citizens are coming up with audit records that show strong indications of improper behavior.

Be aware that we are not going to see a Perry Mason moment. Proof of corruption will be incremental, but it will come.

In 2006, your job will be to embark on the biggest citizen evidence-gathering expedition in history, to take this past the tipping point and achieve real change. Nothing will do but a reversal of the pendulum, back to citizen ownership and oversight of our own government and its electoral processes.

Let’s take a look now at some of the evidence citizens — and Black Box Voting — are uncovering:

1. Memphis: Candidates in Memphis asked Black Box Voting for help securing public records from the Aug. 3, 2006 election. Black Box Voting recommended getting a copy of the Diebold GEMS database, along with the Windows event log. What we found shocked us: The sheer number of legal and security violations in the event log were horrifying, and it also showed that Shelby County — or someone — was accessing the file during the middle of a Temporary Restraining Order prohibiting this.

– A remote access program called PC Anywhere was found resident in the system

– Evidence of insertion of an encrypted Lexar Jump Drive was present

– Evidence of attempts to alter or write HTML files (used to report results) was present

– Apparently without a firewall, the GEMS system was opened up to the County Network

– A prohibited program, Microsoft Access, which makes editing the election chimpanzee-easy, was installed on the system AND USED shortly after the election.

To read more about Memphis, click here: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/44242.html

2. Alaska: In early 2006, the Alaska Democratic Party asked Black Box Voting for help. The election numbers simply didn’t add up. BBV’s Jim March urged them to fight for the right to obtain the Diebold GEMS database, which Diebold had until then been asserting proprietary rights over. After months of hard-fought battling, they prevailed. That database was released publicly at Black Box Voting here: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/2197/44183.html



You can open it yourself in Microsoft Access, and when you do, choose the table called “audit.” In this table you will see evidence that someone was changing things as recently as July 2006 — after the matter was in court, before the file was released. The changes are substantial, and involve redefining ballot and candidate items, along with a reference to a second memory card.

If you don’t have MS Access, here is a pdf copy of that controversial log: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/2197/44278.html

3. In Georgia, Cynthia McKinney contacted Black Box Voting. Very odd things were happening in the 2006 primary and the runoff election that followed — Democrats were being served up Republican primary ballots on the Diebold touch-screens, McKinney’s name was left off some ballots, but reportedly appeared on other ballots nowhere near her district. The electronic poll books — something Georgia voters never asked for and a whole new source of glitches — were malfunctioning regularly.

Black Box Voting advised McKinney to seek the troubleshooter and pollworker logs. What we found on these shocked us — in an election reported as “smooth” by the press, was evidence of dozens and dozens of voting machine malfunctions, electronic pollbook glitches, and most disturbing of all (given the dire consequences available based on the Hursti and Princeton studies), the seals for dozens of voting machines were missing, broken, and mismatched — yet the machines were used anyway.

To view a list of the problems in Dekalb County, Georgia, click here: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/44150.html

4. In Ohio, Richard Hayes Phillips examined ballots from the 2004 presidential election. They’d been kept locked up for 22 months, and he was under immense pressure to look at as many as he could before they were destroyed. What he found shocked him: Patterns of tampering, as evidenced by statistically impossible overvotes, strategically placed and favoring George W. Bush.  He listed his findings here: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/2197/44285.html

This is the tip of the iceberg. The missing ingredient is, and has been, the active oversight of the citizenry. In 2006, please join the movement as an active participant in overseeing and authenticating your election. We’ll help. Start here:

Citizen Tool Kit: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/toolkit.pdf

Bev Harris

Founder

Black Box Voting 

From BlackBoxVoting.org 

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CANDIDATES: WAIT TO CONCEDE!

Posted in '06 Election, Black Box (Electronic) Voting, General, Parallel Elections, TAKE ACTION!, Video on August 22nd, 2006





Don’t be a Sitting Duck for the Secret Ballot



V
erify 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),  VoterGateThe Big Fix 2000

another must watch: 911 Cover Up

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


“...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. 




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:

     

  2. Has anyone confessed to rigging voting machines?  Yes.

    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

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FIRST RFK JR. VOTING MACHINE WHISTLEBLOWER LAWSUIT NOW FILED IN FEDERAL COURT! NEW DETAILS!

Posted in General, RFK Jr. on July 13th, 2006

Attorney Papantonio on Mike Malloy Show: ‘We’re gonna shut down some of these companies’!
Excoriates ‘Indolent Democrats’ and ‘Lazy Media’ for Not Taking Action; Lauds BRAD BLOG for Putting Issue on ‘Radar Screen’…

The first of several federal whistleblower qui tam (fraud) suits have now been filed against one of America’s major electronic voting machine companies, The BRAD BLOG can now report.

Florida attorney Mike Papantonio who, along with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. hosts Ring of Fire, weekends on Air America Radio, was a guest on Mike Malloy’s radio program last night (complete audio linked at the URL below.) He discussed the upcoming whistleblower suits that he and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are filing against several of the voting machine companies. Pap was loaded for bear.

During the interview, he gave several new details on the federal fraud suits now being filed, which include several whistleblower plaintiffs whose stories were originally reported here at The BRAD BLOG, as mentioned last week in a quick item here with some fresh details of our own. Pap reported last night that the “dream team of lawyers” they’ve assembled to take on these evil, irresponsible, anti-American companies includes a bunch of those who took on the tobacco companies in a successful quarter billion dollar suit — so they’re not likely easily intimidated we’d think.

Papantonio is a senior partner at Levin Papantonio Thomas Mitchell Echsner & Proctor, P.A., a Pensacola lawfirm. RFK Jr. is also an “of counsel” member of the firm.

Speaking of the level of fraud to be revealed by the suits, which must be sealed by law for 60 days as the Attorney General decides if they will join the complaint, Papantonio told Malloy: “When you hear the details, when you hear the caliber of the fraud…you…it’ll make Americans feel like their living in a damned banana republic, a third world country. I have never heard such outrageous facts.”

“And you know what?,” he continued, “We’ve had our investigators look at it. We verified everything. And when you hear it, you’re gonna say, ‘Not in America.’ …Bad news is: Yeah, it is in America.”

The fraud suits, Papantonio said, are “a way to get at their money, and that’s the only thing these people understand.”

“At the end of the day, we’re gonna shut down some of these companies,” Papantonio said. “Some day these hacks are gonna be across the table from me, and they’re gonna have to answer the questions that nobody else has been able to ask them.”

Pap excoriated the DNC, “the indolent Democrats and the lazy media,” for not participating in any of this and decried the fact that he and RFK Jr. were essentially forced to take action on their own given the Dems failure to do anything.

He also spoke of the voting machine “sleepovers” about which we’ve been reporting here in detail of late. As well, he had several kind words for this website and several other election integrity groups. “Unless you had these organizations out there like Black Box Voting or BRAD BLOG, people like that paying attention to this, this wouldn’t even be on the radar screen,” he said…

FULL STORY, COMPLETE AUDIO INTERVIEW:
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3065


Brad Friedman
THE BRAD BLOG – The uprising continues…
http://www.BradBlog.com
VELVET REVOLUTION – The revolution begins…
http://www.VelvetRevolution.us

The BRAD BLOG – http://www.BradBlog.com <> The BRAD SHOW – http://www.BradShow.com <> VELVET REVOLUTION – http://VelvetRevolution.us

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Democratic Underground BOOKMARKS

Posted in Democratic Underground, General on January 28th, 2006
A Full Recount Would Show that López Obrador Won Mexico’s Presidency by Mo Laotra Sun Jul-09-06 10:27 AM
BRAD BLOG: 2 New Suits Against Diebold & Friends, New Busby/Bilbray Stuff! BradBlog Thu Jul-13-06 02:41 PM
Mexico: Rightist “winner’s” Brother-in-law Wrote VOTE COUNT Software – WOW autorank Wed Jul-12-06 04:33 PM
LA Times asks the $50,000 Question, Bush: War Criminal? Vyan Sun Jul-02-06 10:17 AM
Bradblog: New lawsuit seeks immediate decertification of Diebold!! Stevepol Thu Jul-13-06 07:47 AM
“The Stolen Election of 2004” by Michael Parenti mod mom Fri Jul-14-06 07:28 AM
Greene Co OH ’04 Recount Irregularities Detailed Under Oath mod mom Sat Jul-08-06 03:38 AM
Salon: Mexico 2006: Florida all over again? kpete Fri Jul-07-06 10:41 PM
LIVE NOW: DU’s TruthIsAll on the Mike Malloy Show (+ post) kster Sat Jul-08-06 05:27 AM
Citizen Clinton Speaks Out: Former President Raises Cain – Almost althecat Thu Jul-06-06 01:12 PM
KY: Grand Jury Refers Election Probe to Special Panel Wilms

Sun Jul-02-06 09:27 AM

 

                        



Rolling Stone: Kennedy: company insiders are prepared to testify (2006) ProSense Sat Jul-01-06 12:48 PM
Washington Post, “A single person could swing an election.” Botany Thu Jun-29-06 01:35 PM
A call to investigate the 2004 election ProSense Wed Jun-28-06 10:53 AM
Long Version of Clinton’s REMARKS (thanks to MCM for finding!) mod mom Sat Jul-01-06 03:04 AM
Here we go again. Grand jury probes election inconsistencies in KY. Stevepol Sat Jul-01-06 06:57 AM
CA: Tally is Rising in Registration Fraud Wilms Wed Jun-28-06 08:20 AM
over 1000 metric tons of the deadly U238-isotope serryjw Fri Jun-23-06 06:11 PM
New Report Shows 17 States at High Risk For Compromised Election Results sfexpat2000 Sat Jun-24-06 05:56 AM
Hey, everybody! Las Vegas is going BANKRUPT!!! IdaBriggs Sun Jun-18-06 12:18 PM
“Emergency Townhall Meetings” CA-50 Here we go! kansasblue Fri Jun-23-06 05:05 PM
Scoop: Bush Election Theft Saga Heats Up In Ohio Wilms Tue Jun-20-06 07:15 PM
Best sites & resources for election fraud NEWBIES ? IndyOp Sat Jun-17-06 10:22 PM
NYT Bob Herbert: Kerry ‘almost certainly’ won Ohio in 2004 drm604 Wed Jun-14-06 07:48 AM
1/2 of Bush victory margin in New Mexico in 2004 ghost votes MissWaverly Fri Jun-16-06 01:39 PM
CA-50 2nd Edition, I look at the April 11th Special Primary FogerRox Mon Jun-12-06 10:12 AM
Most charges dropped in phone jamming RW election fraud unpossibles Fri Jun-16-06 07:45 AM
Greg Palast: African-American Voters Scrubbed by Secret GOP Hit List kpete Fri Jun-16-06 10:30 AM
Courageous Schakowsky (D-IL): WAS 2004 ELECTION STOLEN? “ONLY ANSWER YES” IndyOp Fri Jun-16-06 12:19 PM
It Only Takes One Man To Steal an Election (And It’s Not Who You Think) McCamy Taylor Thu Jun-15-06 08:58 AM
Yurica Report in support of RFK article: A Vast Political Misfortune Ojai Person Wed Jun-14-06 07:20 PM
AUTORANK Kennedy’s Challenge – Salon, Mother Jones & the Tortured Dialogue althecat Thu Jun-15-06 09:36 AM
Massive voter suppression in South Carolina election today? IndyOp Wed Jun-14-06 02:29 PM
DNC contacts Brad–they’re looking into Busby/Bilbray race in CA emlev Wed Jun-14-06 08:55 PM
NYT Bob Herbert (via RawStory): Kerry ‘almost certainly’ won Ohio in 2004 eomer Mon Jun-12-06 06:43 PM
Illegitimate election-Key RFK Source-Responds to Criticism of 04 Election kpete Thu Jun-15-06 06:29 PM
NO, THIS IS **IT** FOLKS!: Bill Bored Sun Jun-11-06 10:14 AM
From the ERD: RECORDS FOR 150,000 COLO. VOTERS MISSING rumpel Sun Jun-11-06 11:26 PM
Dr. Ron Baiman: Something Smells Fishy in San Diego – cross post from GDP bleever Sun Jun-11-06 05:09 AM
bradblog: BUSBY/BILBRAY ELECTION IN DOUBT Wilms Sat Jun-10-06 09:47 AM



Debunking the Debunker CrisisPapers Wed Jun-07-06 08:47 AM
Howard Dean on Diebold: “These machines are a problem” kpete Sun Apr-23-06 02:55 PM
Cramdown, Stripdown, Lockdown Democracy In The USA – By DU’s Own Autorank althecat Sat Apr-22-06 02:52 PM
Phone records… people in election phone jamming called White House! AGENDA21 Tue Apr-11-06 11:03 AM
28,000 votes stolen from Kerry in Lucas County (Toledo); Noe @ Work Botany Sat Jun-10-06 03:26 AM
WHAT in the Heck does this RFK, Jr. guy WANT anyway?? Man-o-man!!! Land Shark Wed Jun-07-06 05:50 PM
Debate over Rolling Stone Article ignores what’s Important to USA Land Shark Tue Jun-06-06 05:23 PM
Rolling Stone Editorial: A Call for Investigation (Election 2004) ProSense Sat Jun-10-06 08:55 PM
Ken Blackwell must be stopped BobcatJH Wed May-10-06 09:43 PM
6th Circuit opinion (4-21-06) Holds Op-SCan & P-cards Unconstitutional!!! Land Shark Tue Apr-25-06 06:13 PM
Scoop, NZ: The Theft Of The 2004 Presidential Election seafan Fri Jun-09-06 12:45 AM
THIS IS **IT** FOLKS. garybeck Sun Jun-11-06 08:33 PM
Dr Ron Baiman: “CLEARLY A CRIME WAS COMMITTED IN OHIO” mod mom Mon Jun-12-06 06:55 AM
Candidate Clint Curtis Praises RFK Jr – Calls For Fed Investigation kpete Sun Jun-11-06 07:51 AM
Machines change votes in Iowa BeFree Fri Jun-09-06 09:10 PM
Results of Close Busby/Bilbray U.S. House Special Election in Doubt feelthebreeze Thu Jun-08-06 09:54 PM
So Dark the Con of Ken:Blackwell Sins In ’04 Coming Back To Haunt Him Algorem Wed Jun-14-06 05:25 AM
Brand new e-voting machines fail in early voting hours in Kern Co., CA. Cleita Thu Jun-08-06 12:14 AM
Fitrakis responds to Tokaji’s analysis of RFK Jr: mod mom Mon Jun-12-06 08:58 PM
Cliff Arnebeck’s response to Farhad Manjoo article: mod mom Thu Jun-08-06 11:14 AM
Fitrakis responds to Manjoo’s Salon article: mod mom Thu Jun-08-06 09:21 AM
USA TODAY: Spate of Lawsuits Target e-Voting Wilms Mon Jun-05-06 06:42 AM
RFK, Jr & Salon’s Manjoo & DU Election Reformers Agree On: IndyOp Mon Jun-05-06 11:08 PM
Bush – Most Hated President Ever Stole Both Elections WillYourVoteBCounted Mon Jun-05-06 02:56 PM
Diebold video, 46 seconds, at “Current TV” website. Eric J in MN Wed Jun-07-06 09:48 PM
Bobby Kennedy JR. on ’04 election theft in feature Rolling Stone article Amaryllis Thu Jun-01-06 06:41 AM
Convicted Phone Jammer now teaching @ GOP Campaign School mod mom Wed May-31-06 11:27 AM
Preemptive election theft: Is Turdblossom working the CA-45th? kpete Mon May-29-06 10:25 PM
Paper Ballots, Hand Counted, are the “Gold Standard” Around the World Wilms Mon May-29-06 10:17 PM
NM: Court Says That State Should Have Allowed (2004) Recount Wilms Mon May-29-06 08:43 PM
4 STEPS TO HOW THE GOP STOLE THE ’04 ELECTION (and will repeat again) mod mom Sun May-28-06 05:51 PM
Gore: No Intermediate Step Between SCOTUS Decision and Violent Revolution Wilms Thu May-25-06 05:53 AM
“2004 Presidential Election – Compendium of Attempts to Dismiss Vote Fraud papau Wed May-24-06 04:27 AM
UNDISPUTED – HURSTI HACK IS BOTH NEW MATERIAL AND TOTALLY DEVASTATING kster Fri May-26-06 07:46 PM
Exit Poll Margin of Error in North Carolina 2004 BeFree Tue May-23-06 04:11 PM
Will MSNBC put this ON TV ? kster Tue May-23-06 03:35 PM
ANOTHER 100+ Machines Fail in Allegheny County (Pittsburgh)! Amaryllis Wed May-17-06 01:51 PM
Paul Weyrich GOP strategy: Our election wins increase as # voters decrease IndyOp Tue May-16-06 08:28 PM
Its the Voting Stupid ! Blogged by John Conyers,Jr. Twist_U_Up Tue May-16-06 01:04 AM
Update on David G. Mills’ Tennessee Lawsuit on the Unconstitionality of Pa Febble Mon May-15-06 09:32 PM
New York Times — Black Box Voting study “biggest ever” patriothackd Sat May-20-06 05:12 AM
BradBlog/John Gideon: Diebold’s Deliberate Security Vulnerability Wilms Fri May-12-06 05:26 AM
Poll: 2004 Election Was Stolen; according to viewers of all news except Kip Humphrey Thu May-11-06 08:17 PM
Harri Hursti Report II – Diebold touch-screens Steve A Play Sun May-14-06 09:24 AM
May 10 – 4 Arizona Voters Sue Secretary of State WillYourVoteBCounted Thu May-11-06 04:30 AM
Local Boards of Elections Blocking Thousands of New Yorkers from Voting eomer Wed May-10-06 03:06 PM
BREAKING: SEC INVESTIGATION OF DIEBOLD UNDER WAY! BradBlog Wed May-10-06 09:40 AM
AMERICAN BLACKOUT-a must see film: from FL to GA to Franklin Co OH mod mom Tue May-09-06 05:01 AM
$13 Million No-Bid Sweetheart Deal with Diebold Draws Fire from activists Amaryllis Wed May-10-06 07:57 AM
(Ohio) Vote counting goes on up north MelissaB Sun May-07-06 06:27 PM
BBV: more dirt on Diebold, possible lawsuits, heroic officials lauded Stevepol Tue May-09-06 02:22 AM
NEWLY DISCOVERED DIEBOLD THREAT DESCRIBED AS ‘N ATIONAL SECURITY RISK’ Amaryllis Fri May-05-06 08:31 PM
WANTED: This person voted over 6,000 times on 11/2/04 garybeck Wed May-03-06 06:36 PM
Brad: National media finally covers 2006 electoral meltdown Amaryllis Fri May-05-06 05:39 AM
Brad: Indiana and West Va file legal actions against ES&S Amaryllis Sat Apr-29-06 01:26 PM
Help with Ohio Parallel Election (contact info) mod mom Thu Apr-27-06 12:54 PM
Blackwell Distributes Voter Lists with SS Numbers mod mom Tue Apr-25-06 10:16 AM
(Bradblog) Friedman briefs Feingold on election fraud ! kansasblue Mon Apr-24-06 08:10 AM
Clear paper ballot counter, transporter and storage box kster Mon Jun-05-06 09:12 PM
Cramdown, Stripdown, Lockdown Democracy In The USA Wilms Mon Apr-24-06 06:18 AM
Free Press uncovers evidence of ballot tampering in Warren County, Ohio Wilms Sun Apr-23-06 04:51 PM
Wed Dec-31-69 04:00 PM
HOPE? Slew of lawsuits hit the voting machine companies garybeck Fri Apr-28-06 10:34 AM
FreePress: Evidence of Ballot Tampering in Warren Co Ohio in ’04 mod mom Wed Apr-26-06 07:16 PM
Brad: OR SOS Bradbury sues ES&S; says “we will not be coerced” Amaryllis Fri Apr-21-06 02:09 AM
Asked @125 judges if confident every vote counted…no hands went up Wilms Wed Apr-19-06 05:53 AM
PA Lawsuit: John Gideon and Joe Hall Illuminate Wilms Mon Apr-17-06 06:55 PM
Update from Alaska… Blue_In_AK Thu Apr-13-06 06:22 PM
MUST READ! – E-VOTING 2006: The Approaching Train Wreck (+) kster Tue Apr-11-06 02:52 PM
HOLT’S RESPONSE!: MARK IT UP! Bill Bored Thu Apr-13-06 09:07 PM
Motion Filed Before Judge Carr Seeking Reconsideration in Recount Case eomer Sun Apr-09-06 09:38 AM
Election Day troubles could be part of ‘international conspiracy’ kpete Sun Apr-09-06 09:58 AM
With voting machine company now bankrupt, CEO speaks out: kster Sat Apr-08-06 11:58 AM
Recount FIXED in Ohio for 04 Presidential Contest me b zola Thu Apr-06-06 04:43 PM
Shocking Diebold Conflict of Interest kpete Fri Apr-07-06 04:05 PM
No Voting Machines for Leon County: You Won’t Believe Why kster Tue Apr-04-06 07:35 AM
Susan Sarandon calls for outside monitoring of US elections due to fraud Amaryllis Tue Apr-04-06 06:14 PM

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2004 Election Theft.com: State by State

Posted in 2004ElectionTheft.com, General on January 28th, 2006

(AK AZ CA CO FL GA IL IN IA MD MN MO NE NV NH NJ NM NC OH PA TX UT VA VT WA WI WY)

Alaska:

Arizona:

California:



Colorado:



Florida:


Georgia:

Illinois:

Indiana:



Iowa:

Maryland:



Minnesota:



Missouri:



Nebraska:



Nevada:



New Hampshire:

New Jersey:

New Mexico:

North Carolina:

Ohio:

Pennsylvania:



Texas:

Utah:



Vermont:

Virginia:



Washington:

Wisconsin

Wyoming:

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2004 Election Theft.com: Other Sites

Posted in 2004ElectionTheft.com, General on January 28th, 2006

Blogs:

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Evidence? We Don’t Want Your Stinkin’ Evidence!

Posted in General, Main Stream Media, TAKE ACTION! on January 24th, 2006

January 24, 2005
By Ernest Partridge, The Crisis Papers

Like biologists with evolution and atmospheric scientists with global climate change, those who warn us that our elections have been stolen and will be stolen again must now be wondering, "just how much evidence must it take to make our case and to convince enough of the public to force reform and secure our ballots?"

The answer, apparently, is no amount – no amount, that is, until more minds are opened. And that is more than a question of evidence, it is a question of collective sanity.

In his new book Fooled Again, Mark Crispin Miller not only presents abundant evidence that the 2004 election was stolen, but in addition he examines the political, social, and media environment which made this theft possible.

When I first read the book immediately after its publication, I confess that I was a bit disappointed. What I had hoped to find was a compendium of evidence, from front to back. To be sure, Miller gives us plenty of evidence, meticulously documented. But evidence tells us that the election was stolen. Miller goes beyond that to explain how and why it was stolen, and how the culprits have managed, so far, to get away with it.

So on second reading, I find that it was my expectation and not Miller’s book that was flawed. We have evidence aplenty, to be found in John Conyers’ report, and the new book by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman, in addition to the Black Box Voting website among numerous others. Soon to be added is Prof. Steven Freeman’s book on the statistical evidence of election fraud. What we don’t gain from these sources is an understanding and appreciation of the context in which this crime was committed. This we learn from reading Miller’s book.

If, in fact, the last two presidential elections have been stolen, and if in addition there is a preponderance of evidence to support this claim, then this is the most significant political news in the 230 year history of our republic.

So what is the response of the allegedly "opposing" party to the issue of election fraud? Virtual silence. And of the news media? More silence. Case in point: the media response to Mark Crispin Miller’s Fooled Again. As he reports: "There have been no national reviews of Fooled Again. No network or cable TV show would have the author on to talk about the book. NPR has refused to have him on… Only one daily newspaper – the Florida Sun-Sentinel – has published a review."

Force the question of election fraud and demand an answer, and the most likely response will be a string of ad hominem insults – "sore losers," "paranoid," "conspiracy theorists" – attacks on the messenger and a dismissal of the message. We’ve heard them, many times over.

Persist, and you might get as a reply, not evidence that the elections were honest and valid (there is very little of that), but rather some rhetorical questions as to the attitudes and motives of the alleged perpetrators and to the practical difficulties of their successfully accomplishing a stolen national election. Questions such as these:

  • How could the GOP campaign managers believe that they could get away with a stolen election?
  • Why would they dare risk failure, and the subsequent criminal indictments and dissolution of their party?
  • What could possibly motivate them to subvert the foundations of our democracy?

The answer to the first two questions is essentially the same: they believed and they dared because they controlled the media and thus the message. Miller’s sub-text throughout his book is that the great electoral hijack has been accomplished with the cooperation, one might even say the connivance, of the mainstream media, without which the crime could never have succeeded.

Immediately following the election, the critics were shouted down with such headlines as these: "Election paranoia surfaces; Conspiracy theorists call results rigged" (Baltimore Sun), "Internet Buzz on Vote Fraud is dismissed" (Boston Globe), "Latest Conspiracy Theory – Kerry Won – Hits the Ether" (Washington Post), and in the "flagship" newspaper, the New York Times: "Vote Fraud Theories, Spread by Blogs, Are Quickly Buried." (Miller, 38.)

Even more damaging than the slanted "reports" in the media, was the silence. The Conyers investigations? Ignored. The scholarly statistical analyses of exit poll discrepancies? Ignored. Evidence that Bush cheated in the debates with a listening device? Dismissed. The recent GAO report on e-voting vulnerabilities, and the Florida demonstration hacking of computer vote compilation? Ignored. And most appalling of all: the media blackout last week of Al Gore’s eloquent speech, warning of the threat to our Constitution and our liberties posed by the Bush regime.

And all this merely scratches the surface of media malpractice. For more, read the book.

The motivation to steal the election, says Miller, combined religious (or quasi-religious) dogma and self-righteousness and a perception of the opposing Democratic party, not as the loyal opposition, but as the enemy – deserving not defeat, but annihilation. ("You are either with us or against us," says Bush). Together, this adds up to what Miller calls "The Requisite Fanaticism." He writes:

It is not "conservatism" that impelled the theft of the election, nor was it merely greed or the desire for power per se… The movement now in power is not entirely explicable in such familiar terms… The project here is ultimately pathological and essentially anti-political, albeit Machiavellian on a scale, and to a degree, that would have staggered Machiavelli. The aim is not to master politics, but to annihilate it. Bush, Rove, DeLay, Ralph Reed, et al. believe in "politics" in the same way that they and their corporate beneficiaries believe in "competition." In both cases, the intention is not to play the game but to end it – because the game requires some tolerance of the Other, and tolerance is precisely what these bitter-enders most despise… (Miller 81-2.)

Reiterating a theme that is prominent in his writing, Miller points out that the psychological pathology most conspicuously at work in the right’s demolition of politics is projection: the attribution in "the enemy" of one’s own moral depravity:

The Bushevik, so full of hate, hates politics, and would get rid of it; and yet he is himself expert at dirty politics: an expertise that he regards as purely imitative and defensive. Because his enemies, he thinks, are all "political" – dishonest, ruthless, cynical, unprincipled – he is thereby "forced" to be "political" as well, in order to "fight fire with fire." As we have seen, this paranoid conviction of the Other’s perfidy suffuses and impels the propaganda campaigns of the right, and it was especially important in Bush/Cheney’s drive to steal the last election. Indeed it was their firm conviction that they had to steal the race, in order to frustrate the Democrats’ attempt to do it first. (Miller, 82.)

This is just a brief sampling of Miller’s astute political and psychological analysis of the "why" and the "how" of the stolen elections of 2000, 2002 and 2004. That analysis, which takes up about a third of the book (Chapters 3 and 4), adds an invaluable dimension to our understanding of the political disaster that has befallen our Republic, and that analysis suggests guidelines in the struggle to avoid the theft of the upcoming elections of 2006 and 2008.

I have written at length about what might be done if we are to restore the ballot box to the voters. These crucial steps come immediately to mind, as I read Miller’s Fooled Again.

Briefly, we need a media, we need an opposition party, we need an aroused public, and we need a miracle. But take heart: history tells us that political crises have a way of producing miracles.

The mainstream media (MSM) must be discredited and an alternative media established in its place. The internet offers a voice to an opposition that is excluded from the mainstream, and a few independent publications and broadcasts remain, however feeble in comparison to the MSM. If a sizeable portion of the public deserts the mainstream, and directly informs the publishers and broadcasters why they are doing so, the media, and particularly their sponsors and advertisers, will take notice. Recently, some of the media have become more critical of the Bush regime and the GOP Congress, but it is, by and large, too little and too late.

So either the commercial media must resume the role of watchdog of government power, as intended by Jefferson and Madison, or it must be made irrelevant. The Russian dissidents late in the Soviet era have given us an example: if you have no media, create one, even if it is suppressed by the government. It was called "Samizdat" – a painstaking process of typing several carbon copies of forbidden manuscripts on condition that the recipients would do likewise. Similarly, the Iranian dissidents during the reign of the Shah copied and distributed audio tapes of revolutionary speeches. In the computer age, there are huge advantages: Internet publication and, f the Internet is taken from us, CDs and minidiscs. For now, the Internet is our Samizdat.

The Democratic party is the only potentially effective opposition party in sight. But at the moment, it is a toothless tiger. We must tell that party that it must either lead the struggle to restore electoral integrity or step aside. When the Clintons, Cantwells, Liebermans and Feinsteins run for re-election, they must be opposed in the primaries by authentic progressives. Even if those progressives lose, but with a creditable showing, the "establishment" Democrats will nonetheless get the message. Next time you get a solicitation notice from the DNC or the Senate or Congressional Campaign Committees, tell them "no dice" unless they deal with the election fraud issue. Then tell them that instead of a contribution, you are purchasing Miller’s book and donating it to the local library.

As for the public, remember that more than half the public is awake, aware, and opposed to the Bush regime. Of these, a small but significant minority is convinced that election fraud is a serious problem. But that dissenting public lacks a voice, cohesion and leadership. This is a recipe for potentially sudden change: like fuel and oxygen, lacking the third necessity – heat of ignition. A message, from a Tom Paine or a Jefferson, or leadership from a Washington, a Gandhi, a Mandela or a Sakharov, can ignite the fire that will consume this evil regime. Or not. That depends on whether concerned citizens sit by and wait for others to act, or instead take some initiative and join the struggle – writing to Congress, talking to any and all associates that will listen and perhaps a few that won’t, contributing to alternative media, copying and distributing dissenting essays, and generally raising hell.

And finally, miracles: they are, by nature, unpredictable. Some possibilities: A few corporate and financial elites will finally come to realize that where Bush is leading, they don’t want to follow, and they will join the opposition. (There are a few intimations of this already). Similarly, perhaps a few journalists, and even some Republicans, will finally if belatedly decide that they would prefer not to live in a dictatorship. Bushenomics is bound to lead to an economic collapse that is certain to wake up the public. And even now, some state Attorney General or some District Attorney may be preparing an indictment for election fraud against an e-vote company executive that could break this conspiracy wide open.

But don’t wait for miracles to happen – make them happen.

If we are to take back our country, we must first take back our vote. Mark Crispin Miller’s book will tell you what has happened, how and why it has happened, and what must be done about it.

Will we, the people, take up the challenge? On that question rests the fate of our republic, of our liberties, and of "our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor."

Dr. Ernest Partridge is a consultant, writer and lecturer in the field of Environmental Ethics and Public Policy. He publishes the website, The Online Gadfly and co-edits the progressive website, The Crisis Papers. He is at work on a book, Conscience of a Progressive, which can be seen in-progress here. Send comments to: crisispapers@hotmail.com.

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FEC probes rapper P. Diddy, not Blackwell; VIDEO – Diebold admits GEMS defects

Posted in Black Box (Electronic) Voting, General on November 16th, 2005

DIEBOLD ADMITS TO THE GEMS DEFECT (VIDEO CLIP)

On Oct. 17 2005, an ordinary citizen in Cleveland, Mr. Wright, asked 

what may turn out be the most important question of the year. What 

is Diebold’s explanation, he wanted to know, for the VBA Script hack 

of the GEMS central tabulator performed by Dr. Herbert Thompson? 

Here is the videotape showing Diebold Election Systems Chief Engineer 

Pat Green admitting that Diebold knew of the defect since 2004: 

http://www.bbvdocs.org/videos/GEMSDefect.mpg (8,860 KB) 

Black Box Voting has learned that the August 18, 2004 

CompuWare Report was hidden from the public by Ohio Secretary 

of State Ken Blackwell). Here is the tampering risk assessment, 

which Blackwell had in his hands BEFORE the Nov. 2004 election, 

but withheld from both the public and the Election Assistence Commission 

(the federal oversight committee charged with ensuring the security of 

elections in all states, not just Ohio: 

http://www.bbvdocs.org/reports/GEMS-RISK.pdf 

(full report: http://www.bbvdocs.org/reports/diebReasses081804.pdf)

This leads to the crucial question: If Diebold knew, and if Ken 

Blackwell knew, why wasn’t the Election Assistence Commission told, 

why were no other secretaries of state told, why didn’t Blackwell tell 

the Ohio election officials using GEMS, and why weren’t the mitigations 

deemed necessary by CompuWare ever implemented? 

FEC TO INVESTIGATE RAPPER "P. DIDDY" SEAN COMBS

But Ignores Blistering GAO Report on Insecure Voting Machines 

— No Scrutiny of Election Violations — 

According to a press release 

(http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/8/13160.html,

)issued by the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC), a conservative 

“ethics” watchdog group that specializes in filing complaints against 

progressive politicians and groups, the FEC has notified the NLPC 

that it will take up a complaint against rapper Sean Combs for his 

2004 “Vote or Die Campaign.” The NLPC Web site says the case 

has been assigned “Matter Under Review number 5684.” The 

NLPC hypes the so-called investigation, though the FEC letter itself 

appears more tepid, almost a form letter: 

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/FECCombs.pdf 

Black Box Voting, a minority-governed nonpartisan elections watchdog, 

says the FEC has better ways to spend its time and your dime. The FEC 

claims they are not staffed for many investigations. If that’s the case, 

why is a P. Diddy investigation on their priority list at all? 

The FEC is not investigating Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell 

who withheld critical security information. Public records requests

submitted by Black Box Voting have revealed that neither Blackwell nor 

Diebold corrected the GEMS defects before the 2004 election. These

defects remain uncorrected in nearly 800 jurisdictions. 

The FEC is not investigating the findings of the General Accounting 

Office voting system security report, released Oct. 21, 2005, which 

cites multiple security problems with the voting systems currently in 

use. Among the problems cited by the GAO Report: flaws in voting 

system security, access, and hardware controls, weak security 

management practices by vendors, and multiple examples of 

failures in real elections.  Full GAO report:

http://www.bbvdocs.org/reports/GAOReport_ElectionSecurity_102105.pdf

The Help America Vote Act allocated $4 billion to buy voting machines 

that taxpayers never asked for, many of which have turned out to be 

defective. The FEC is not investigating. 

A false claims lawsuit filed by Black Box Voting founder Bev Harris 

and investigator Jim March recovered $2.6 million for California taxpayers 

from Diebold Election Systems because of its poor voting machine 

security and improper testing and certification. The FEC never investigated 

whether such false claims affect any of the other 31 Diebold states, 

even after the California secretary of state requested a criminal investigation, 

citing Diebold’s lies to state authorities. More on false claims suit:

(http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/6738.html)

In October 2005, Black Box Voting revealed documents showing that

 in 2002, Diebold made misrepresentations to the Georgia secretary of 

state. (http://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/GA-falsehoods.pdf)

In August 2005, Diebold submitted a letter to the Arizona secretary of state

(http://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/AZ-sos-moreland.pdf

which contained serious misrepresentations pertaining to a security 

problem called “the GEMS defect.” One would think that making false 

claims to three secretaries of state in four consecutive years (2002, 

2003, 2004, and 2005), might represent a concern, but the FEC is not 

investigating this. 

(full Georgia sales presentation:

http://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/GApresentation.pdf)

The FEC is investigating Sean Combs for allegedly flying in a private 

jet while conducting a “get out the vote” drive. The complaint alleges 

that people who spoke at his rallies made statements beneficial to a 

candidate (John Kerry). What the FEC has never investigated is 

Republican Senator Chuck Hagel’s $5 million stake in Election Systems 

& Software, the company that counted Hagel’s votes 

(http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-3.pdf)

when he ran for office in 1996 and 2002. Nor has the FEC investigated 

Wally O’Dell, the Diebold CEO who promised to “deliver the votes to 

Bush in 2004.” 

VOTING MACHINE PROBLEMS AND PROCEDURAL VIOLATIONS HIT HARD NOV. 8 

2005 elections, casting doubt on Ohio and Detroit elections and revealing 

civil rights violations in Los Angeles. 

On Nov. 8, 2005 in Texas, new touch-screens could not choke out a 

result, so technicians for a vendor “manually retrieved” the votes from 

inside the computer. The FEC has asked no follow up questions about 

why a vendor’s technicians are handling votes at all, since they are not 

certified or sworn elections officials, nor has the FEC inquired how touch-

screens with no paper ballots that can’t find their own votes managed to 

pass testing and certification, or how a technician can reach into a touch-

screen to “retrieve” votes. 

http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/8/13130.html

In Ohio, the Nov. 8, 2005 election produced staggeringly impossible 

numbers, but the FEC is not investigating why more votes showed up 

than voters, nor why the election reform ballot issue voting machine 

results were exactly opposite of the pre-election polls. 

http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2005/1559

In Detroit’s Nov. 8, 2005 election, procedures broke down in 26 precincts 

causing nine electronic ballot boxes to go missing. These were not all 

recovered until two days later. At that time, thousands of other bogus 

votes were counted. However, the FEC is not investigating. 

http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/13139.html

Los Angeles citizens aren’t permitted to watch their votes being 

counted, a clear violation of California law. Black Box Voting was 

told the results “came out the same as expected” so we should not 

be concerned. Regardless of whether the votes “come out right,” 

hiding crucial vote-tallying processes is a civil rights violation, and 

powerful Los Angeles County Elections Registrar Conny Drake 

McCormack has a history with minority vote suppression and rights 

violations. 

Before taking the position in Los Angeles County, Registrar 

Conny Drake McCormack was the target of a Texas legislative 

effort referred to as the “Get Conny Drake bill,”(See footnote 1) 

an unsuccessful effort to find a way to fire elections officials who 

engage in voting violations targeting minorities. She had allegedly 

been withholding ballots in African-American districts. On another 

matter, regarding voting machines, she was found by the Department 

of Justice to have violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965. She was 

also subjected to a two-year election fraud probe by Texas attorney 

general Jim Mattox on another matter. While still under investigation 

in Texas, Conny Drake McCormack took over elections in San Diego

(replacing Ray Ortiz after he was indicted), then became elections 

chief in Los Angeles County, where she has arranged for votes to 

be counted on a customized, home-brewed tallying system, hidden 

from public view. 

On Nov. 8, Black Box Voting observed Los Angeles County election 

workers conducting a bait and switch. 

(http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/13095.html)

While the press and the public were instructed to look in a window 

to a room containing optical scan machines, results actually came out 

of a different set of computers in another room, which was hidden from 

view. The press was told that the system is certified and tested, but Black 

Box Voting cannot find that the Los Angeles tallying system, customized 

under Conny Drake McCormack, was ever examined by federal testing 

labs or the state of California as required by law. Though she is now 

the most powerful elections official in California — and one of the most 

influential in the nation — the FEC is not investigating Conny Drake McCormack. 

For more information on things the FEC is not investigating, see investigations

(http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/1954.html

and News (http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/8/114.html)

at Black Box Voting (.ORG) 

(Footnote 1) Dallas Morning News, Mar. 31 1987: Elections Chief Resigning 

After Troubled Tenure 

…"bumpy roads … include Attorney General Jim Mattox’s continuing 

investigation into vote-fraud allegations … Ms. McCormack weathered 

investigations by the U.S. Justice Department, the Texas secretary of state’s 

office and the Dallas County district attorney’s office … legislation dubbed

the "Get Conny Drake (her maiden name) bill’ … Top Democratic officials 

called for her ouster. Roy Orr, a commissioner at the time, called her "a jerk 

at the wheel’ and "a typical bureaucrat.’ John Wiley Price, now a commissioner, 

called her a liar and a racist. 

———–

Black Box Voting is a nonprofit, nonpartisan 501c(3) elections watchdog. We 

are fighting for your right as a citizen to view and oversee your own voting

process. Our focus is on increasing your access to the elections process,

obtaining crucial public records to document what is going on in elections, 

and exposing procedural problems that corrupt the integrity of the election.

Black Box Voting is supported entirely by citizen donations. You can support

this important work by clicking here: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/donate.html

or by sending to 330 SW 43rd St. Suite K, PMB 547, Renton WA 98055

———–Black Box Voting

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Citizens Request Recount in San Diego Mayoral Race

Posted in General on August 18th, 2005

Miriam Raftery

"Enron by the Sea" shows strange electoral anomalies – a 4 percent shift – ODDS OF SUCH A DISCREPANCY OCCURRING BY CHANCE ALONE ARE LESS THAN 7/100 OF 1%, STATISTICIANS REVEAL.

San Diego Democratic mayoral candidate, Donna Frye, may have been robbed of her mayoral seat in the July 25 local election as citizens’ audit parallel election vote shows shift of 4 percent, Raw Story has learned.

Frye, who served three years as a council woman in San Diego, California, previously ran as a write-in candidate in November 2004, but was deprived of San Diego’s top seat due to the city’s Registrar of Voters, Sally McPherson, blocking the count of 5,547 ballots on which voters had written Frye’s name, yet failed to also fill in bubbles. The disputed ballots would have given Frye a victory by 3,439 votes.

Enron by the Sea

Republican Dick Murphy assumed the mayoral office as a result of the uncounted ballots, only to resign amid multiple scandals that have engulfed San Diego’s City Council.

His successor, Acting Mayor Michael Zucchet, a Democrat, held office for less than a day before being indicted on charges of conspiracy, extortion and wire fraud related to accepting payments from a Las Vegas strip club operator in exchange for relaxing the City’s "no touch" policy.

The mayoral musical chairs, coupled with the indictments of several city council members on charges of bribery, as well as a city deficit running close to $2 billion, has earned the city the infamous nickname of "Enron by the Sea."

Following Zucchet’s indictment a special election was held on July 25 of this year to name a successor. The official count showed that Frye had captured over 45 percent of the vote – double the amount of any other candidate. San Diego law, however, requires a run-off election between the two top vote-getters if no candidate receives at least 50 percent of the vote. The run-off race is set for November of this year. The election, however, was scheduled to replace Murphy regardless of the outcome of Zucchet’s trial.

Diebold’s Un-Accu-Vote

Now, a nonpartisan citizens’ group that conducted a parallel election has requested a recount of 11 precincts. This time, the issue isn’t unmarked bubbles, but the accuracy of Diebold Accu-Vote optical scan voting machines and the Diebold GEMS central tabulator used to count votes.

The Citizens Audit Parallel Election (CAPE) asked voters exiting polls to vote again and sign a log book attesting to the accuracy of their second vote. Sealed parallel election ballots were counted at KGTV’s studio with a TV camera crew filming the counting process.

Nearly 50 percent of all voters participated in the parallel election, which included five polling places representing 11 precincts. The sample included more conservative than liberal precincts, with participation as high among Republicans as among Democrats. The tandem election results showed what most feel to be startling results.

"There is a shift of four percent of the vote, consistently," Joe Prizzi, (engineer and physicist,) reported at a press conference held by CAPE in front of City Hall. Frye received 50.2 percent of the votes cast in the parallel election – enough for an outright victory if those results reflect the outcome citywide. CAPE also found that the official count added approximately 2 percent to each of Frye’s two Republican opponents, Jerry Sanders and Steve Francis.

In addition, CAPE examined the only other ballot measure, a proposition over a war memorial cross on public land. The proposition’s vote total also appeared to have been padded by 4 percent in the official election tally, which was certified Friday August 19 by San Diego County’s newly appointed Registrar of Voters, Republican Mikel Haas.

Math is non-partisan

A team of statisticians from California State University- Northridge – have analyzed the data from CAPE, concluding that the probability of luck or chance as the cause of the observed four percent deviation is less than one in 1,300 – or .000678.

Activists suspect fraud. "I am troubled by the prospect that we are losing our democracy very quickly. We’ve been voting on machines that were never intended to be tools of democracy," said Brina-Rae Schuchman, media spokesperson for CAPE, noting that Diebold machines utilize "secret software."

CLICK HERE TO SEE CHART

Delivering the election – not just in Ohio

The nation’s first parallel election was conceived by Ellen Brodsky, an election official in Coconut Creek, Florida. Held at a single precinct during a May 2005 special election on a gambling initiative, the Florida parallel election drew a 67 percent participation rate and revealed significant discrepancies, leading to revelations of programming issues with touch-screen voting machines.

San Diego’s far broader parallel election was the brainchild of Judy Alter, an emeritus professor in the department of world arts and culture at UCLA who participated in the New Mexico recount after the 2004 presidential election. In Santa Fe, Alter detected a shift of third-party candidate votes into the Bush/Cheney column.

"That pattern has now been identified in eight states," Alter told Raw Story in an exclusive interview, adding that numerous other indications of electronic fraud have been found. "This is why I’m leading Study California Ballots, because we have to actually count," Added Alter.

CAPE filed a request with the Registrar on August 16 to recount the 11 precincts included in San Diego’s parallel election. The request was filed by Schuchman on behalf of Donna Frye, although the Frye campaign was not consulted.

The San Diego Registrar has seven days to call a meeting of all candidates and other interested parties to devise procedures for the recount. "If any discrepancies are found, California law requires that a citywide recount of all precincts be conducted," Alter said.

Asked about CAPE’s recount request, Registrar Mikel Haas, responded, "They have every right to do this. We’re going to run this by the book." He declined, however, to state how much the partial recount would cost, although noting that cost would depend upon procedures agreed on in the upcoming meeting.

Alter is less confident that Haas will play it by the book, stating that "I believe he is overcharging us." She also believes CAPE should only be assessed $400 ($100 for each of the four election employees) per day. "Now he’s going to charge us $2,500–and he’s telling us that he’s charging us for electricity and the room for the meeting he is going to call, and for all the expenses to staff it," Alter contends.

Citizen Arrested for enacting his rights

CAPE isn’t the only group to accuse Haas of withholding public information. Jim March of Black Box Voting and a Republican maintains that the Registrar refused his request during the election to obtain audit logs, which would show whether records were kept of each user who accessed the Diebold GEMS central tabulator.

In an interview with the East County Californian before the election, Haas stated that he would allow citizens to observe the central tabulator counting votes. But on election night, March found the tabulator screen had been placed eight feet away, behind glass and readable only through binoculars, literally. According to March, an activist who was with him brought binoculars and was able to clearly make out the screen. March’s request to have the screen moved closer was refused, so he entered the secured tabulating room.

March was arrested and charged with a felony count of obstructing an election official. The charge was later dropped. "This was a violation of my civil rights," said March, who plans to sue County election officials for violating his right under California law to observe an election and his right to access public records.

Computer experts hired by Black Box Voting to penetrate voting systems in Leon County, Florida (with permission of an election official) demonstrated the ease of reprogramming Diebold optical scan voting machines and changing votes through the Diebold central tabulator – the same voting systems used in San Diego during the recent election.

Informed of these facts, Haas nonetheless allowed hundreds of San Diego poll workers to keep voting machines at home overnight – including programmable memory cards protected only by seals that could easily be removed with pliers and resealed.

March and other observers contend that San Diego’s central tabulator was hooked up to the Internet on election night. An Internet connection would violate Diebold’s own procedures manual, which states: "The GEMS server should not be connected to any network that has an external Internet connection." State certification required that manual procedures be followed.

"If that manual isn’t followed, it’s an illegal installation," says March. "They ran a completely illegal election."

Caught with tabulater plugged in

Asked by this reporter if the central tabulator was hooked up to the Internet, Haas replied, "Yes. That’s so we can get our results out to the Internet, so people can see. It’s firewall protected."

But after being informed that hooking the tabulator up to the Internet would potentially render the election illegal, Haas backpedaled and said he may have been mistaken about the tabulator’s Internet connection. "I’m not that technical," he noted, then suggested that perhaps the machine was transmitting results to a secondary unit.

Activists plan to monitor the recount, but the potential for problems remain. "We are very worried about tampering," Alter admitted. "That’s why we want the count videotaped."

Those fears evoke comparisons to Clermont County, Ohio, where Raw Story reported that a recount of the 2004 presidential election revealed that stickers were placed over the Kerry/Edwards oval on opti-scan ballots. Those ballots were then fed into machines after the hand recount. Witnesses have stated that beneath the stickers, the Kerry/Edwards oval was selected.

Subtler forms of tampering might include substituting entire batches of ballots, described Alter, who plans to monitor the recount.

Soon, San Diego’s Registrar hopes to eliminate the opti-scan system entirely and retrofit warehoused TSx touchscreen machines with paper trails–if the new Republican Secretary of State, Bruce McPherson, opts to recertify the TSx system previously decertified by Democratic Secretary of State Kevin Shelley.

McPherson is lobbying Republican Governor Schwarzenegger to veto SB 370, which would make paper trails the official votes of record. SB 370 has already passed the State Senate and is now about to pass the Assembly. Sources close to the McPherson confirm that he is still lobbying the governor to veto.

Alter, meanwhile, is organizing citizen volunteers to hold parallel elections statewide for the fall special election called by Governor Schwarzenegger.

"I’m not stopping," the election reform advocate concludes. "This is just a moving train."

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified Mr. Prizzi as currently affiliated with an academic institution. Prizzi, an engineer and physicist, is not.

from the raw story 

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Pastor: “I don’t need to know how the machines were hacked” (EAH report)

Posted in General on July 10th, 2005

MEDIA CONSPICUOUSLY ABSENT FROM HOUSTON ELECTION ASSESSMENT HEARING

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Amaryllis on Democratic Underground 

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