Election Fraud Blog

Now is certainly not the time to give up, or even back down the slightest bit in the election reform movement.  This seemingly landslide victory by the Democrats would have been even larger had it not been for dirty tricks and suppression on the part of Republicans.

Greg Palast’s “HOW THEY STOLE THE MID-TERM ELECTION” states, “Two million legitimate voters will be turned away because of wrongly rejected or purged registrations. Add another one million voters challenged and turned away for ‘improper ID.’ Then add yet another million for Democratic votes ‘spoiled’ by busted black boxes and by bad ballots. And let’s not forget to include the one million ‘provisional’ ballots which will never get counted. Based on the experience of 2004, we know that, overwhelmingly, minority voters are the ones shunted to these baloney ballots. And there’s one more group of votes that won’t be counted: absentee ballots challenged and discarded. Elections Assistance Agency data tell us a half million of these absentee votes will go down the drain. Driving this massive suppression of the vote are sophisticated challenge operations. And here I must note that the Democrats have no national challenge campaign. That’s morally laudable; electorally suicidal. Add it all up — all those Democratic-leaning votes rejected, barred and spoiled — and the Republican Party begins Election Day with a 4.5 million-vote thumb on the vote-tally scale.”

Brad Friedman of the BRAD BLOG reported on several “irregularities” throughout the day, such as:

• MELTDOWN ’06: USA Today Reports ‘Voting machine problems bedevil multiple states’
• MELTDOWN ’06: Missouri Election Integrity Org Says More Reports of Touch-Screen Vote Flipping…
• MELTDOWN ’06: Myriad Problems Reported to Local News Outlet in Chicago… 
• MELTDOWN ’06: Diebold Voting Machines Failing to Start Up in Utah, Voters Being Turned Away…
• MELTDOWN ’06: AP – ‘Polling places turn to paper ballots after glitches’
• MELTDOWN ’06: ‘Voting Nightmare’ Reported by Denver Post
• MELTDOWN ’06: Orange County CA Candidate Says Machines Down, No Paper Ballots Available…

Also, many thousands of complaints were logged on the Election Incident Reporting System (1-866-OUR-VOTE).  5140 complaints to be exact, and growing.

There was also the last minute Republican dirty trick of the Rovian Robo-Call.  According to TPMMuckracker.com, these calls (of which there appear to have been many thousand), have occured in at least 20 separate congressional districts, and were paid for by the RNCC.  From TPMMuckracker: “In a letter dated Nov. 6, Michigan Reps. John Conyers and John Dingell ask attorney general Alberto Gonzales, FCC chairman Kevin Martin and FEC chairman Michael Toner to probe whether a sudden rash of last-minute phone calls paid for by the National Republican Congressional Committee violated any of a number of federal and state laws and requirements. Conyers is the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, while Dingell is the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.”

Then you have Laura Ingram suggesting right wingers jam the Democratic voter information line. 

At this point you might be asking, “how did the Dems win?”.

Here’s how – the media started (albeit barely) to do their job!

HBO’s Documentary “Hacking Democracy” was aired prior to the election.  Also, Lou Dobbs had been extensively covering e-voting insecurity for at least a couple months prior.  The blogosphere (Democratic Underground and BradBlog in particular) has been more active than ever with this issue as well.  Basically, if they had tried to swing this election too far, it would have been painfully obvious.

Also, the Dems just weren’t going to put up with it this time.  There are at least a couple of congressional races that the Democratic candidate has NOT conceded, Clint Curtis’ campaign against Tom Feeney being one, with Curtis vowing to make sure every vote is counted. Francine Busby is another who is not conceding until all votes are counted.  Why should she trust the official result, what with the machine “sleepovers” in her district.  Also, election activist Bob Fitrakis is not conceding his Green Party gubernatorial bid in Ohio, he knows better than to just give up in that state.

Lastly, the turnout was considerably larger than expected, and the election protection presence on the ground was much more evident, both factors making fraud more difficult.

In conclusion, there were many problems that still occurred, and many that were prevented, but we CAN NOT rest on this victory.  Now is the time, with a Democratic majority, to make major gains in the area of election reform.  With Dennis Kucinich’s HR 6200 for hand counted paper ballots, with results posted at the precinct level, and with friend of democracy Congressman John Conyers Jr. the head of the House Judiciary Committee, we can definitely get some work done to repair our democracy.

by Organik for ElectionFraudBlog.com

Tell Congress to Pass the

Emergency Paper Ballot Mandate of 2006

Here’s the Bill Calling for Emergency Paper Ballots at Every Polling Place in America this November!

THE LET AMERICA VOTE ACT – Legislative Language

Yesterday I called on Congress to pass an emergency measure to require Emergency Paper Ballots be made available at the polls during this November’s general election. I spelled out several reasons for this last-ditch, “Hail Mary” attempt to try and mitigate just some of the myriad problems and disenfranchisment that will occur at polling places this year thanks to new, poorly designed, malfunctioning, unsecure electronic voting machines now deployed across the nation.

Never mind the electronic voting machine fraud that is likely to occur. Never mind the proven inaccuracies of these god-awful machines. Never mind the ease at which they are now proven to be hackable. My concern right now — this late in the game — is simply to assure that voters who show up at the polls and are legally registered to vote, may actually be able to cast a vote at all!

In primary after primary this year, voters have been told to “come back later” or, at best, given a provisional ballot (which may or may not ever be counted) when voting machines either failed to work or, frequently, weren’t even present by the time voters showed up to vote. That is voter disenfranchisement, pure and simple, and it affects voters of any and all political stripes.

Common sense (one would think) would dictate that State and County Election Directors would mandate Emergency Paper Ballots for voters to use in the event of machine unavailability. Though the Secretaries of State in several states so far this year (Texas, Arkansas, etc.) have issued emergency orders for such Emergency Paper Ballots, remarkably, many states and counties didn’t bother and thousands of legally registered voting citizens were sent home in the bargain.

The legislation required by Congress to mandate Emergency Paper Ballots (I call it the “LET AMERICA VOTE ACT”) is incredibly simple. In yesterday’s article, I included a three-sentence piece of legislation. Below, is a more fully-formed draft legislation based on those three sentences as sent to me orginally by Bob Wilson of the Illinois Ballot Integrity Project.

Along with additional tweaks by myself and a few others, my complete suggested legislation can be read — in it’s entirety — in about 30 seconds. It’s posted in full below.

If Congress cares (and if you help them to do so!), I’m quite certain that this measure can be passed by both houses of Congress and signed by George W. Bush with Terri Schiavo-like speed.

I’d think our democracy is worth at least as much. And I know it’s certainly worth trying for!

Some have responded to my call for this LAVA legislation (“Let democracy flow!”) by pointing out that the method of counting and/or auditing these Emergency Paper Ballots must be included in the legislation. My answer to them is that I agree with their point! However, at this late in the game (with only some 5 or 6 legislative days left before Congress recesses prior to the election) I don’t want to give any Congress member any reason to oppose this act!

In other words, with the time we have left, if all we can do is assure that at least there will be a piece of paper on which a registered voter may cast a vote this November — if they bother to show up — then we will be doing a service to democracy. It’s an incredible fact, but even something as simple has that has not been the case in many places this year. Last week’s Maryland primary, were thousands were forced to go without voting at all when the machines failed to work, was a prime example!

Some have said there is no time to get this bill passed. I don’t care. Let’s get it passed anyway. If it fails, at least we will have a “paper trail” to point back to on November 8th when everyone else is wondering what went wrong and if anybody had tried to do anything about it while there was still time. Those of us who give a damn will have done everything we could.

I continue to speak to folks in Congress about sponsorship of this bill, and I urge all American citizens to contact their Congress Members — as well as their state and local officials — to demand that non-provisional Emergency Paper Ballots be made available at the polls this year!

You can contact your Congress person here (and you can contact local media here.)

(The URL for this article is: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3502. Feel free to point them to it!)

Let’s get to work! This effort is about all we have left legislatively at this point! Please spread the word everywhere. My complete suggested language for the LET AMERICA VOTE ACT is posted below…

LET AMERICA VOTE ACT

(EMERGENCY PAPER BALLOT MANDATE OF 2006)

WHEREAS significant failures of electronic voting machines have occurred in various jurisdictions during primary elections held in Illinois, Texas, Georgia, Maryland and other states during 2006, and

WHEREAS such failures have forced legitimate, registered voters to have been turned away from the polls by the thousands so far in 2006 primary elections simply because neither voting machines nor paper ballots were available for use when the voters arrived at their polling place, and

WHEREAS the probability exists that such failures will continue and the adverse results of such failures will be multiplied and increased in magnitude by the additional number of voters participating in the November 7, 2006 General Election, and

WHEREAS the potential exists for massive disenfranchisement of American voters in the November 7, 2006 General Election, by such failures of electronic voting machines,

NOW THEREFORE be it enacted that:

A. For the November 7, 2006, General Election, each election jurisdiction shall be required to prepare and print Emergency Paper Ballots of the proper ballot style for all races and propositions which shall be contested in that jurisdiction.

B. Such Emergency Paper Ballots shall be printed in sufficient quantity to guarantee that every voter who may require one, either as requested or as a result of voting machine unavailability, shall be able to receive such an Emergency Paper Ballot.

C. As with all provisional ballots, such Emergency Paper Ballots shall be printed in all languages specified for ballots in that jurisdiction.

D. Any voter eligible to vote in the jurisdiction in which he or she requests an Emergency Paper Ballot shall be entitled to receive and cast such Emergency Paper Ballot, regardless of the type of ballot that shall have been specifiied in that jurisdiction through operation of law, without further qualification, request, proof or furnishing of reason for such request.

E. Such Emergency Paper Ballots shall be official ballots for purposes of casting, tabulating, audits, redundant counts and recounts, and shall not be considered provisional ballots.

F. Emergency Paper Ballots shall be cast and tabulated in the same manner as all other ballots cast on November 7, 2006.

G. The associated costs to states for this mandate will be reimbursed out of Help America Vote Act funding.

H. This Act shall terminate and cease to have effect on February 28, 2007.

Tell Congress to Pass the

Emergency Paper Ballot Mandate of 2006

From the Brad Blog 

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

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

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

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

Somewhat confident that Bush won fair and square… 20.0%

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

Other/not sure………………………………………. 2.4%

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

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

Survey Excel file available here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Importance of this Survey

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

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

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

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

What does this mean? Some preliminary thoughts.

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

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

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

Corporate Media: Asleep at the Switch

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

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

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

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

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

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

MichaelCollins @ electionfraudnews.com

***APPENDIX***

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

END

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

Don’t be a Sitting Duck for the Secret Ballot



Verify Election Results

Run Parallel Elections

Collect Voter Affidavits

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

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

another must watch: 911 Cover Up

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

“...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. 

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

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

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

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

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

WOULD YOU TRUST THIS MAN WITH YOUR VOTE?

meet Shawn Southworth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

a) The lost presumption of innocence;

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

c) Government lawlessness;

d) Destruction of our environment;

e) The promise of endless war;

f) Free speech zones;

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

h) Government run media;

i) Secret prisons, torture and war crimes;

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WE DO NOT CONSENT – The new blog and online book (free download)

Also see The GuvWurld Blog — http://guvwurld.blogspot.com AND The Voter Confidence Resolution — http://tinyurl.com/amryg

Posted on Democratic Underground by GuvWorld 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is it — 2006 is the test.

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

BB: Of course!

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

BB: That’s so dangerous.

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

THIS IS IT!

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

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

MP: Correct.

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

MP: You mean sit on it?

BB: Yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MP: That’s it!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 One-Two Punch: Disenfranchise Voters & Miscount the Votes
A. Disenfranchisement: Suppress the Vote!
B. E-Voting Problems: Many Different Systems, Different States, Different Elections
C. What You Can Do
D. Voting Systems: Election integrity requires openness & transparency.
E. The Elephant in the Room
F. Common Cause Recommends
G. Online Videos & Interactive
H. Books
I. The BEST Websites & Online Resources