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Voting Fraud - Long Threads, History, 2004 (Yet Again) & Media Lockdown
page: 4share:
Small *bump* for current topical interest.
Some queries of interest:
How many states have authorized the use of Diebold machines?
Are other machines open to such manipulation and abuse?
Seems a low-key issue at the moment, what with all the fear and terror and mudslinging and hype that fans of political sports get caught up in.
Your right to a clean vote no longer exists. Did you have any say in that?
Some queries of interest:
How many states have authorized the use of Diebold machines?
Are other machines open to such manipulation and abuse?
Seems a low-key issue at the moment, what with all the fear and terror and mudslinging and hype that fans of political sports get caught up in.
Your right to a clean vote no longer exists. Did you have any say in that?
I believe election fraud has become a new art for the politicians in power. They're definitely honing their election stealing skills. I'm sure Karl
Rove has something to do with the latest methods in election theft. Now that it's begun (or has this been happening alot longer than we know?), it's
only a matter of time before they have it so perfected, there will be no more democracy attempts. All they have to do is keep up the appearances, and
keep repeating that you're still free. Lies....
Reecently on another topic about fraudulence in the 2004 election I read a most ignorant statement from someone saying it "may be better to let
sleeping dogs lie".
This is not going to happen.
www.blackboxvoting.org...
THURSDAY Nov. 4 2004: If you are concerned about what happened Tuesday, Nov. 2, you have found a home with our organization. Help America Audit.
Black Box Voting has taken the position that fraud took place in the 2004 election through electronic voting machines. We base this on hard evidence, documents obtained in public records requests, inside information, and other data indicative of manipulation of electronic voting systems. What we do not know is the specific scope of the fraud. We are working now to compile the proof, based not on soft evidence -- red flags, exit polls -- but core documents obtained by Black Box Voting in the most massive Freedom of Information action in history.
This is not going to happen.
www.blackboxvoting.org...
THURSDAY Nov. 4 2004: If you are concerned about what happened Tuesday, Nov. 2, you have found a home with our organization. Help America Audit.
Black Box Voting has taken the position that fraud took place in the 2004 election through electronic voting machines. We base this on hard evidence, documents obtained in public records requests, inside information, and other data indicative of manipulation of electronic voting systems. What we do not know is the specific scope of the fraud. We are working now to compile the proof, based not on soft evidence -- red flags, exit polls -- but core documents obtained by Black Box Voting in the most massive Freedom of Information action in history.
Lord...
I guess no matter what, some people will be poor losers. If they win they win. If they lose...it was rigged. If other people out vote them, they are just ignorant fools who were hoodwinked.
It's the constant pointing of fingers.
I guess no matter what, some people will be poor losers. If they win they win. If they lose...it was rigged. If other people out vote them, they are just ignorant fools who were hoodwinked.
It's the constant pointing of fingers.
Originally posted by ZeddicusZulZorander
Lord...
I guess no matter what, some people will be poor losers. If they win they win. If they lose...it was rigged. If other people out vote them, they are just ignorant fools who were hoodwinked.
It's the constant pointing of fingers.
More ignorance.
Bev Harris heads a non-partisan group. You obviously haven't followed this at all, the investigation is years old not an overnight phenomenon.
Try having a look at the whole picture of the importance of auditable voting, like what SkepticOverlord is doing with the Research Project, rather than making ill-founded assumptions about win-loss and partisan issues.
yourself.
More like
[edit on 5-11-2004 by MaskedAvatar]
Originally posted by ZeddicusZulZorander
Lord...
I guess no matter what, some people will be poor losers. If they win they win. If they lose...it was rigged. If other people out vote them, they are just ignorant fools who were hoodwinked.
It's the constant pointing of fingers.
I can see how you might think that way, if you believe there was really a fair election. However, it's more likely that it wasn't, and never will be again.
This is the considered opinion of Bev Harris, who has researched electronic voting machine glitches and the potential for fraud for a number of
years.
I would concur there seems to have been a media lockdown. Is that a healthy thing, so the corrupt incumbent administration can get on with its dirty work? Or is there something still to be said for democratic rights and "count every vote and make every vote count"?
BBV: Help America Audit -- 5 Things You Can Do Immediately
Edited on Mon Nov-08-04 12:15 AM by BevHarris
I was tipped off by a person very high up in TV that the news has been locked down tight, and there will be no TV coverage of the real problems with voting on Nov. 2. Even the journalists are pretty horrified. My source said they've also been forbidden to talk about it even on their own time, and he was calling from somewhere else. He was trying to figure out how to get the real news out on vote fraud.
This is a person I've worked with off and on for nearly two years, and the voice was so somber it really bothered me.
At any rate -- and perhaps, especially important due to the tipoff above, there are things you can do to take back America.
====================
We have a different list for lawyers, computer people, statisticians. But if you are a regular person like most of us, and want to help, here's what to do.
Please distribute: If you have not done so already, sign up at Black Box Voting -- www.blackboxvoting.org... -- to audit the election and deal with vote fraud.
HELP AMERICA AUDIT: 5 Things You Can Do Right Now to Reclaim Democracy
You�re our greatest hope. If you choose to accept it, your job is to spread the word in order to build a fast-growing grass roots movement -- a voting integrity project so powerful that it cannot be mowed down.
1. BE THE MEDIA -- See below.
2. CRUNCH THE NUMBERS: Discrepancies please, and hurry. E-mail them to [email protected] . Pass the word. Need source documents, too. ASAP. Follow your nose, or join the Black Box Scavenger Hunt: Pick a county. Look at small counties, as we are seeing many discrepancies in those. Look in any state. Get the official number of registered voters, Dem and Republican. Get the number of votes cast on Nov. 2, Republican and Dem. Make a grid like this, filling in the right numbers:
# reg. voters % # votes cast %
Rep 100 33% 150 50%
Dem 200 67% 150 50%
Totl 300 100% 300 100%
We can find out a lot from this procedure, very hard data, that will make a real difference. As soon as you have finished a county, e-mail it to us. Do as many counties as you can.
3. HAVE A HOUSE PARTY: Show the film �Votergate� (the real one, which you can download for free at www.Votergate.tv .) Organize �Be the media� actions and set up investigative teams to help dig up information like you have in #2. Timeline is NOW, to get action before seating the electoral college.
4. HELP CONNECT THE WIRES: Hook Black Box Voting (.ORG) up with powerhitters you know, people who can make things happen.
5. DONATE to any of 3 organizations: Black Box Voting (.ORG), the consumer protection group for elections; or the new recount fund (information upcoming, contact DU's Hedda_Foil), or send contribution to Votergate.tv (The REAL Votergate film, by Russell Michaels, Robert Carrillo Cohen, and Simon Ardizzone. There is another by someone else, make sure you get the right one.) The real VOTERGATE is the most powerful investigative film on this topic, and consequently it has been attacked and blocked repeatedly. They deserve your support.
[edit on 9-11-2004 by MaskedAvatar]
I would concur there seems to have been a media lockdown. Is that a healthy thing, so the corrupt incumbent administration can get on with its dirty work? Or is there something still to be said for democratic rights and "count every vote and make every vote count"?
BBV: Help America Audit -- 5 Things You Can Do Immediately
Edited on Mon Nov-08-04 12:15 AM by BevHarris
I was tipped off by a person very high up in TV that the news has been locked down tight, and there will be no TV coverage of the real problems with voting on Nov. 2. Even the journalists are pretty horrified. My source said they've also been forbidden to talk about it even on their own time, and he was calling from somewhere else. He was trying to figure out how to get the real news out on vote fraud.
This is a person I've worked with off and on for nearly two years, and the voice was so somber it really bothered me.
At any rate -- and perhaps, especially important due to the tipoff above, there are things you can do to take back America.
====================
We have a different list for lawyers, computer people, statisticians. But if you are a regular person like most of us, and want to help, here's what to do.
Please distribute: If you have not done so already, sign up at Black Box Voting -- www.blackboxvoting.org... -- to audit the election and deal with vote fraud.
HELP AMERICA AUDIT: 5 Things You Can Do Right Now to Reclaim Democracy
You�re our greatest hope. If you choose to accept it, your job is to spread the word in order to build a fast-growing grass roots movement -- a voting integrity project so powerful that it cannot be mowed down.
1. BE THE MEDIA -- See below.
2. CRUNCH THE NUMBERS: Discrepancies please, and hurry. E-mail them to [email protected] . Pass the word. Need source documents, too. ASAP. Follow your nose, or join the Black Box Scavenger Hunt: Pick a county. Look at small counties, as we are seeing many discrepancies in those. Look in any state. Get the official number of registered voters, Dem and Republican. Get the number of votes cast on Nov. 2, Republican and Dem. Make a grid like this, filling in the right numbers:
# reg. voters % # votes cast %
Rep 100 33% 150 50%
Dem 200 67% 150 50%
Totl 300 100% 300 100%
We can find out a lot from this procedure, very hard data, that will make a real difference. As soon as you have finished a county, e-mail it to us. Do as many counties as you can.
3. HAVE A HOUSE PARTY: Show the film �Votergate� (the real one, which you can download for free at www.Votergate.tv .) Organize �Be the media� actions and set up investigative teams to help dig up information like you have in #2. Timeline is NOW, to get action before seating the electoral college.
4. HELP CONNECT THE WIRES: Hook Black Box Voting (.ORG) up with powerhitters you know, people who can make things happen.
5. DONATE to any of 3 organizations: Black Box Voting (.ORG), the consumer protection group for elections; or the new recount fund (information upcoming, contact DU's Hedda_Foil), or send contribution to Votergate.tv (The REAL Votergate film, by Russell Michaels, Robert Carrillo Cohen, and Simon Ardizzone. There is another by someone else, make sure you get the right one.) The real VOTERGATE is the most powerful investigative film on this topic, and consequently it has been attacked and blocked repeatedly. They deserve your support.
[edit on 9-11-2004 by MaskedAvatar]
Did Bev's site get Banged by freepers on 11-9 at 8pm PST. I hit a gateway timeout attempting to get some information to start investigating.
The votergate site ran smooth.
Hosts and Callers on Air America reported problems Ohio and Florida races as well as other places throughout the US. Most of the optical scan machines "seemed" to not be question. Where people were using touch screen seemed to produce the most problems.
The remote terminal software altering the users input on overlays not aligned with buttons on machine face causeing miss votes. And large count of non-votes on the presidential ballet. One big questions is how much hacking of the database where tabulation took place.
"Democracy Lost".
The votergate site ran smooth.
Hosts and Callers on Air America reported problems Ohio and Florida races as well as other places throughout the US. Most of the optical scan machines "seemed" to not be question. Where people were using touch screen seemed to produce the most problems.
The remote terminal software altering the users input on overlays not aligned with buttons on machine face causeing miss votes. And large count of non-votes on the presidential ballet. One big questions is how much hacking of the database where tabulation took place.
"Democracy Lost".
I added some more info tonight on The Diebold Factor thread, yes there is definately a media lock down, a quote I included on that thread you guys may
want to have a look-see. This isn't about winning or loosing, quite the opposite really. We can't just sit back and let this go folks, there is a
federal law that is going to make these machines mandatory by 2006. We have been decrying this fraud since before 2000, and now I fear we have let
these sleeping dogs lie far too long. This isn't about some post election whining, its about electronic voter fraud, and if you don't know that by
now, you haven't been doing your homework.
They just talked about it on Brit Hume. They said that it hasn't gone above the level of "internet bloggers". They said that some discrepancies
should definitely be looked into, but they aren't putting much creedence in it.
I can't remember much more.
I can't remember much more.
I have a feeling that "Media Lockdown" pertains to many more areas than just election fraud. It's just one facet to the control of information.
The whole media circus has become a tool to selective information release as in we are only told what big brother want's us to hear.
It's very hard to Deny Ignorance when all we are fed is the stuff mushrooms grow in.
The whole media circus has become a tool to selective information release as in we are only told what big brother want's us to hear.
It's very hard to Deny Ignorance when all we are fed is the stuff mushrooms grow in.
Prepared for a slap on the wrist for excessive quoting, but what's presented below here is an excellent synopsis from what many readers would regard
as one of the best on-line encyclopaedic reference points: Wikipedia.
It's the entry written for Wikipedia specificaly about the 2004 election fraud. Well written, very informative, well presented, attempts to remove partisan biases but it is SCHEDULED FOR DELETION. See that you can vote for or against its deletion at the site too.
en.wikipedia.org...
I am no expert in Memory Holes or where you would look for this article when it is deleted from Wikipedia. If anyone can safely track what will happen to it, then maybe space can be saved here at ATS ... but this material is the best eye opener I have seen for the uninitiated. People who care about democratic rights and deny fraud need to understand it, but not because I think it's a good idea.
2004 U.S. Election controversies and irregularities
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
This page has been listed for deletion.
Please see this page's entry on the votes for deletion page for justifications and discussion. If you don't want the page deleted, read the deletion policy and vote against its deletion. You may first wish to review some of the common deletion phrases. Please do not remove this notice or blank this page while the question is being considered. However, you are welcome to edit this article and improve it. Here are some possible outlets for rejected articles.
The neutrality and factual accuracy of this article are disputed. See the article's talk page for more information.
After the U.S. presidential election on November 2, 2004, some pro-Kerry sources have made allegations that data irregularities and systematic flaws occurred during the election. The overall official result of the election is not at this time being challenged by the U.S. Senator John Kerry, the Democratic candidate, who is the only possible winner if the unofficial results change. This is however not relevant to the US electoral process in which the Electoral College not the candidate has the final say, and which may 'draft' him even unwillingly to serve unless he actually refuses, in which case they may select John Edwards as President.
At the moment any change in the result of the election highly unlikely due to that fact that Bush's margin of victory was greater than the number of alleged fraudulent votes. However, some people and groups (including the media, independent candidate Ralph Nader, Kerry's brother and legal advisor Cameron Kerry, members of the House Judiciary Committee, and many Democratic groups) are currently analyzing the available data.
Dan Hoffheimer www.mlive.com.../base/politics-1/1100164141194251.xml&storylist=politics , the statewide counsel for the Kerry campaign, has said the Kerry campaign is not trying to challenge the election. "We're not expecting to change the outcome of the election," Hoffheimer said.
No comprehensive analyses have yet been produced, but there is a large volume of both primary and secondary data, and preliminary analyses, reports and observations have been made by a variety of commentators ranging from computer scientists to voting rights organizations, and many others. One preliminary attempt to analyze the issue vote.caltech.edu... from Caltech concluded that "there is no evidence, based on exit polls, that electronic voting machines were used to steal the 2004 election for President Bush." However, this analysis used exit polls that had been weighted by the final vote count, thereby assuming the conclusion.
One part of the controversy are electronic and optical-scan voting machines, which were used in greater numbers than before as a result of concerns over the reliability of manual machines raised during the 2000 election. Other reported problems relate to abnormally high voter turnout (more votes in many precincts than registered voters in said precincts), discrepancies between exit poll data and actual results especially in swing states and the complications which arose due to long lines; particularly in high-population areas and in closely contested states.
Contents
1 Key issues
2 Voting machines
2.1 Voting machine company with political ties to the Republican Party
2.2 Other criticisms of Diebold's voting machines
2.3 Evidence of electronic voting bias
2.4 Expert testimony on quality of current voting machines
3 List of complaints
4 Charts, Graphs and Statistics
4.1 Result Plots - Florida
4.2 Exit Polls
4.2.1 Discrepancies Map
4.2.2 Exit Polls vs. Machine Tallies, by State (9 States)
4.2.3 Manipulation of exit poll data
5 Vote Suppression
5.1 Long Lines
6 Minorities
7 Formal proceedings
8 Official viewpoints and responses
8.1 Republican Party
8.2 Democratic Party
8.3 U.S. media
8.4 Overseas
9 Related Articles
10 Other sources compiling this information
11 External links
12 News articles
13 Headline text
Key issues
Electronic touch screen voting machines. The reliability and accuracy has not been established, and in most cases they were not designed with a paper trail or auditability in mind. Many computer scientists have claimed the potential of these machines to be tampered with was high, citing such possibilities as the machines being reprogrammed on election day. The election incident reporting system ([ www.voteprotect.org EIRS ]) has recieved many reports from voters and election officials of votes for Kerry being recorded as votes for Bush. The fact that the CEO of one electronic voting machine company was quoted in 2003 as saying he wanted to "deliver" the next election for Bush has further fuelled suspicions of fraud.
Problems with non-electronic voting machines. In some counties there are larger statistical discrepancies than electronic voting machines. See below.
Voter suppression, intimidation, lost ballots, efforts to discredit citizens that may be validly registered. This has the aim of reducing turn out for people believed to support the other side.
Significant disagreement between exit poll data and actual results, especially in swing states (apparently not matched by similar discrepancies in most non-swing states or other election matters).
Significant disagreement between party affiliation registration statistics for counties and results for that county, especially in swing states. For example, in one Florida county that has 77 percent registered Democrats, Bush received 77 percent of the vote.
******* MODS - PERHAPS DELETE FROM HERE ON DOWN IF WE CAN IDENTIFY HOW TO GET TO THIS INFO WHEN WIKIPEDIA DELETES THE ARTICLE *******
Voting machines
In many cases there were concerns as to whether votes were fairly, reliably, and accurately recorded and reported by the electronic machines involved. The charts below demonstrate this.
Above are maps of electronic voting machine incidents reported to the EIRS. On the left are county maps of Florida and Ohio, showing the Democratic-voting counties in shades of blue proportional to the population, and on the right are maps with the machine incidents in yellow, orange, and red. Note that most Democratic-voting counties traditionally have more voters and voting machines, and thus are statistically more likely to encounter a problem. Also, electronic voting machines were primarily placed in Democratic counties.
Voting machine company with political ties to the Republican Party
In 2003 Wally O'Dell CEO of Diebold said in a letter to Ohio Republican officials that he was committed, "to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President". [1] www.motherjones.com... Diebold is the company which makes electronic touch screen voting machines used in Ohio and other states, most significantly Florida. Ohio and Florida were two of the "swing" states critical to the 2004 election.
However, it should be noted that according to one website www.qando.net... "Diebold�s election-systems division is run by a registered Democrat" and Mark Radke (Director of Marketing for Diebold Election Systems) "has an exclusively Democratic donation history"..."including the legal limit of $2000 to John Kerry in the recent campaign".
Chuck Hagel, the previous chairman of ES&S, another major manufacturer of voting machines and still a $1m stock-holder in McCarthy & Co which owns a quarter of ES&S, became a Republican candidate. Hagel's Democratic opponent made a formal protest to the state of Nebraska over the conflict of interest.
Other criticisms of Diebold's voting machines
Unreported faults and problems known to manufacturer
Oct. 27, 2004 -- The state of California has ordered that 15,000 brand new touch-screen voting machines not be used in next week's presidential election. These electronic machines were manufactured by Diebold Inc., a North Canton, Ohio-based company that also specializes in automated teller machines and electronic security.
"Of course we would have wished the situation would not have happened, but it did," Rapke told ABC News. "There was back up available. But again, with additional familiarity with the system, again, this problem would not have happened." But a former Diebold technical worker, James Dunn, told ABC News the company was aware of the software and electronic problems before the election, and never reported them. "The machine would lock up or lose its software load. A very uncommon thing and not a good thing," said Dunn. "And once that machine's locked up you're unable to produce voter cards, which means you're unable to open the election voting machine and people can't vote. But they shipped it anyway."
Poor security against hacking and other electronic fraud
The same source also claims that "Experts have raised questions about the machines' security features, which some say can be easily defeated, making it possible to manipulate the actual vote count.
"In all of my consulting work and all of my work in industry I've never seen a system that I thought was this vulnerable to abuse," said Avi Rubin, a professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, who, along with other security experts, analyzed Diebold's source code for the electronic voting machines."
In at least one case it appears a voting machine was hacked during a primary election in King County Washington and a warning was issued to disconnect all voting machines from the internet. But this would not prevent the effects of hacking totally [2] portland.indymedia.org... .
Recent historical voting anomalies
March 5, 2004 : "Harris has also posted a post-mortem [of the 2000 election] by CBS detailing how the network managed to call Volusia County for Bush early in the morning. The report states: "Had it not been for these [computer] errors, the CBS News call for Bush at 2:17:52 AM would not have been made." As Harris notes, the 20,000-vote error shifted the momentum of the news reporting and nearly led Gore to concede.
What's particularly troubling, Harris says, is that the errors were caught only because an alert poll monitor noticed Gore's vote count going down through the evening, which of course is impossible. Diebold blamed the bizarre swing on a "faulty memory chip," which Harris claims is simply not credible. The whole episode, she contends, could easily have been consciously programmed by someone with a partisan agenda. Such claims might seem far-fetched, were it not for the fact that a cadre of computer scientists showed a year ago that the software running Diebold's new machines can be hacked with relative ease. The hackers posted some 13,000 pages of internal documents on various web sites -- documents that were pounced on by Harris and others. A desperate Diebold went to court to stop this "wholesale reproduction" of company material."
(Sources for this section: 1) ABC News [3] abcnews.go.com... and 2 [4] www.motherjones.com...
Voting Machine problems (including Diebold): Electronic voting#Problems with electronic voting
Evidence of electronic voting bias
Note: As with all statistics, it is very important to consider other causes of apparent anomalies, and to provide verifiable and neutral source data that can be checked in a neutral way by third parties. All the information and sources below appear prima facie to be statistically reasonable in terms of both analysis and assumptions, and to be based upon verifiable public data.
(1) An analysis of Florida counties with 80,000 - 500,000 registered voters concluded (with a few caveats of a usual kind) that machine type (E-Touch vs Op-Scan) was a "significant predictor" of vote at the p < 0.001 level (less than one chance in a thousand of this degree of anomaly happening by chance) [5] ustogether.org... [6] ustogether.org... [7] ustogether.org... Source data and calculations [8] ustogether.org... .
(2) One thread on the "democraticunderground" website discusses Gahanna, Franklin Co. Ohio. The vote reported by the county in Gahanna precinct 1-B was 4,258 Bush, 260 Kerry, and the total votes cast in Gahanna overall were 20,736. However:
Gahanna has some 20,000 people eligible to vote and the reported turnout was around 70%. On a casual reckoning approximately 14,000 people voted, and yet nearly 21,000 votes were reported by voting machines.
4,258 Republican votes were electronically reported for Bush in Gahanna 1-B. But there were only 638 votes cast in the precinct. Furthermore the 3,893 extra individuals who are said to have queued to vote for Bush, and were therefore presumably Republican, did not appear to vote on any other matter bar the Presidency. (These other matters included the Senate race, County Commissioner, several County and State officials, and the infamous Gay Unions vote, issues of great importance in the election.)
Source: [9] (www.democraticunderground.com...), source data from govt website pdf www.franklincountyohio.gov...
(3) An analysis reported in the New Zealand press looks at the differences between exit polls and reported voting in more detail. It identifies that in a selection of non-swing states, the exit polls and final results match. However in a large proportion of what were identified before the election as key swing states (Wisconsin, Pennysylvania, Ohio, Florida, New Hampshire, etc.), the exit polls and final votes do not match.
The error was in each case a statistically anomalous and electorally critical 4 - 15% swing (change between exit polls and electronic voting) and furthermore the anomalies were not random. In each of the above swing states, this variation between what voters said they voted and what the machines reported was in favour of Mr. Bush. Source [10] www.scoop.co.nz... , article discussing here bellaciao.org... , graphs here img103.exs.cx... .
(4) An interesting article www.consortiumnews.com... comments that:
Exit polls into the evening of Nov. 2 actually showed Kerry rolling to a clear victory nationally and carrying most of the battleground states, including Florida and Ohio, whose totals would have ensured Kerry's victory in the Electoral College.
The exit polls covered both the Presidential and Senate races. The votes reported by voting machines for the Senate races were in line with the exit polls for the Senate race, however the votes reported by the same voting machines for the Presidency often significant disagreed with the exit polls for the Presidency.
It also comments that "Democratic suspicions also were raised by Republican resistance to implementing any meaningful backup system for checking the results on Diebold and other electronic-voting machines."
(5) There were additional reports of significantly large data irregularities with the "optical scan" type voting machines in at least Florida. In one county using optical scan voting machines for example, election records showed 77% registered democrats but Bush received 77% of the vote.
(6) Wired News www.wired.com... has examined this issue and reports that, "...according to academics, the internet pundits are reading the data out of context. Demographic figures and vote trends over several years show the numbers to be consistent with previous elections. According to University of California at Berkeley political scientist Henry Brady, the Republican vote share has been going up in Florida's rural optical-scan counties for years."
Wired further reports that, "[t]hree professors of government also examined the numbers after being pressured by many people, including lawyers for the Democratic Party, and concluded the same thing."
Expert testimony on quality of current voting machines
(1) Testimony of Dr. Aviel D. Rubin to U.S. Federal Election Assistance Commission, on Electronic Voting Systems, May 2004:
(Witness credentials: Professor of Computer Science, Technical Director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins University, served on SERVE security peer review group for Dept. of Defense, member of National Committee on Voting Integrity, and 2004 election judge in local county)
There is no way for voters to verify that their votes were recorded correctly.
There is no way to publicly count the votes.
In the case of a controversial election, meaningful recounts are impossible.
With respect to the Diebold Accuvote TS and TSx, we found gross design and programming errors, as outlined in our attached report. The current certification process resulted in these machines being approved for use and being used in elections.
We do not know if the machines from other vendors are as bad as the Diebold ones because they have not made their systems available for analysis.
"On the spectrum of terrible to very good, we are sitting at terrible. Not only have the vendors not implemented security safeguards that are possible, they have not even correctly implemented the ones that are easy. If I had more time I would debunk the myth of the security of the so-called triple redundancy in the Diebold machines. I would explain the limitations of logic and accuracy testing in an adversarial setting, I would explain how easy it would be for a malicious programmer to rig the election with today's DREs [voting machines], and I would describe the seriousness of the security flaws that we and others have found in the Diebold machines. These are all things that I could have done and would have been happy to do, before anybody started purchasing and using these DREs. But nobody asked."
"Since our study came out, three other major studies ... all cited serious security vulnerabilities in DREs. RABA, which is closely allied with the National Security Agency, called for a "pervasive rewrite" of Diebold's code. Yet, the vendors, and many election officials ... continue to insist that the machines are perfectly secure. I cannot fathom the basis for their claims. I do not know of a single computer security expert who would testify that these machines are secure. I personally know dozens of computer security experts who would testify that they are not."
(Source: [11] avirubin.com... )
List of complaints
A substantial number of people said they voted for one candidate but the vote was recorded for another. While some spotted this, there are fears that most may not have. [12] www.whtm.com... There were numerous reports of voting machines doing this all day but nonetheless being used all day.
(Anecdotally from websites, a common theme on this topic seems to be that claims of vote mis-statement are more often made by people who voted for Kerry but the vote showed for Bush. It's not clear whether were this to be studied, it would turn out to be urban myth or verified fact)
Machines are supposed to not lose votes in a power outage. Voters cannot tell whether vote integrity was in fact maintained as intended when power goes down, as happened at least in one polling station (Dekalb Co. GA, 15 minutes powerout) [13] www.blackboxvoting.com...
Machines are not robust against error [14] www.blackboxvoting.com... and [15] www.wired.com...
A minor abberation: At least one machine began counting back down to zero when it reached 32000 votes; manufacturers ES&S are said to have known about (but not rectified) this issue for two years since the same problem had arisen in a previous mayoral election. (Broward Co., FL) [16] news.yahoo.com.../ibsys/20041105/lo_wplg/2439900
(Also some machines malfunctioned and demo machines were used instead, hastily programmed to replace them. It is not clear to those who voted who did this or what was involved in this "programming" [17] www.blackboxvoting.com... )
Machines do not always produce an audit trail�that is, if there is a doubt as to whether the machine has accurately represented and counted votes, there may not always be a way to neutrally verify the stated result. [18] www.wired.com...
Machines do not have "open" software, so it has not been generally possible for people to confirm that the software does not mis-state votes periodically.
Unexplained 3 hour gap in electronic voting machine security audit records intended to confirm no hacking has taken place (King Co., WA.)
Discrepancies in claimed totals of provisional ballots (Ohio)
"Votes" present in at least one electronic voting machine before polls opened
Unless exceptionally well designed, computers can be "hacked" and manipulated in an undetectable manner by experts.
Other sources of lost data include hard drive crashes, inappropriate deletion, and the like, including, when audit trails are kept, failure for the totals to match the tally of votes as reported by machines [19] www.techdirt.com... .
Voting fraud is also both possible and hard to prove with some versions of electronic voting machines.
Sample source: "Experts said the company designed the machines and software so that vote totals could easily be altered without leaving a trace. Losing candidates in one race charged that when the computer acted up on election night, a CES employee inserted control cards into the machine. The plaintiffs sued to retrieve the source code, and the court, for once, consented. When computer experts examined the software, they determined that CES had changed the computer's instructions for tallying votes on election night. But because the program lacked adequate auditing mechanisms to track the nature of those changes, no one could determine if the company had rigged the election." [20] www.wired.com... for this and similar stories.
Charts, Graphs and Statistics
Result Plots - Florida
See www.ustogether.org...
Exit Polls
Exit polls have been used successfully in other countries to determine election fraud.[21] www.usnews.com... Because final published exit polls in America are matched to vote counts, they cannot be used to determine election fraud. However, in the 2004 election, pre-matched exit polls for 17 states were leaked onto the internet.
Discrepancies Map
Voting locations that used electronic or other types of voting machines that did not issue a paper receipt or offer auditability correlate geographically with areas that had discrepancies in Bush's favor between exit poll numbers and actual results. Exit polling data in these areas show significantly higher support for Kerry than actual results (potentially outside the margin of error). From a statistical perspective, this may be indicative of vote rigging, because the likelihood of this happening by chance is extremely low. A study of 16 states by a former MIT mathematics professor places the likelihood at 1 in 50,000. [22] www.bluelemur.com...
Exit Polls vs. Machine Tallies, by State (9 States)
Supporting the same conclusions of the maps above, here are bar graphs indicating the differentials between Exit Polls and Machine Tallies for nine e-voting and paper ballot states. The discrepancies appear to affect the e-voting states to a significantly greater degree than they affect the Paper Ballot states.
Source and background discussion are listed here: www.bradblog.com...
Source data and analysis: ustogether.org... ustogether.org...
Corroborating Data and Analysis: [23] www.dakotatechnics.com...
Manipulation of exit poll data
The following tables compare final exit poll data with penultimate exit poll data, note the large swing of support towards Bush, with Kerry losing votes, which is impossible if votes are only being added. National Election Pool, the consortium which conducts exit polls, has stated that the early data was inaccurate due to regulations preventing pollsters from approaching voters, barriers, (neither of which would skew the data) and the alleged perception that Democrats are more willing to answer exit polls. The consortium dismissed the possibility that their early exit poll was accurate and that vote counts were wrong, but did not provide any reasoning for this assessment. The early exit poll data was not meant to be released to the public. The data that was meant to be released to the public was first to be weighted to the actual vote count, so that the exit poll matched the actual vote count perfectly. Exit polling companies claim this is standard procedure. Critics argue exit poll data should never be weighted by final results and have requested access to the raw data.
Direct link to screenshots and data: CNN website 12.21am members.cox.net... CNN website 1.41am members.cox.net... CNN screenshot #1:
12.21 am, 1963 respondents so far
Total vote: Male 47% , Female 53% of which:
Male - Bush 47% x 49% x 1963 452
Male - Kerry 47% x 51% x 1963 471
Female - Bush 53% x 47% x 1963 489
Female - Kerry 53% x 53% x 1963 551
TOTAL - Bush 941
TOTAL - Kerry 1022
(rounding: estimates of voters in each category accurate within +/- 10)
CNN screenshot #2:
1.41 am, 2020 respondents so far (57 more than above)
Total vote: Male 47% , Female 53% of which:
Male - Bush 47% x 52% x 2020 499
Male - Kerry 47% x 47% x 2020 451
Female - Bush 53% x 50% x 2020 535
Female - Kerry 53% x 50% x 2020 535
TOTAL - Bush 1034
TOTAL - Kerry 986
(rounding: estimates of voters in each category accurate within +/- 10)
The addition of an extra 57 voters at this station was therefore reported as +93 votes for Bush by AP and CNN at least, and voters monitoring the exit polls were told authoritatively that Bush had now taken a lead from Kerry.
Note that the counts for Kerry under Male voters changed in a negative direction after additional voters were included. The net subtraction of 20 votes from the Kerry total after adding new voters seems to reflect an adjustment process.
Vote Suppression
Long Lines
Long lines, though seemingly benign - "a mere inconvenience" - may well be the most serious problem with the 2004 election. In many places, lines were over 6 hours long.
Prior to the election, there was much ado about each precinct getting enough ballots, but an equally serious matter that seems to have been overlooked by people trying to protect people's right to vote is whether the precints had a sufficient number of voting machines, such that the votes could be proccessed at a sufficient rate. Machine quantity as well as ballot quantity determines the saturation point of votes. Number of machines * Max. votes per hour per machine * hours poll is open = max. number of votes precinct is able to process. Every voter over this limit is effectively disenfranchised, just as if the precint had run out of ballots; the precinct runs out of voter-time-slots.
Although low population precincts had relatively plenty of voting machines and were well within the limits of processing capacity, high-population centers often did not, and sometimes had less than half the machines requested and were well outside the limits of processing capacity, effectively disenfranchisng an undetermined number of voters.
This may explain the discrepancy between expected voter turnout in high-population areas and counted voter turnout in these areas. Since high-population areas are predominantely Democratic, this would primarily effect the Democratic constituency, and appear on the surface to reflect inefficacy in the Democratic GOTV effort.
841 incidents voteprotect.org... of this type have been reported, 241 of which are from Ohio voteprotect.org... , and 106 of which are from Florida voteprotect.org... . 124 such incidents have been reported out of Cuyahoga county, Ohio voteprotect.org... .
Minorities
Specific concerns were raised in the course of the election in respect of votes from key minorities, such as Blacks [24] msnbc.msn.com... or Cuban Hispanics.
Formal proceedings
On November 5, Ralph Nader filed a request for a recount of the votes in New Hampshire with that state's Secretary of State. Nader's request cited "irregularities in the vote reported on the AccuVote Diebold Machines in comparison to exit polls and trends in voting in New Hampshire" and added: "These irregularities favor President George W. Bush by 5 percent to 15 percent over what was expected." [25] www.theunionleader.com... As one of the candidates on the ballot, Nader has the right to demand a recount, but is required to pay for it (because he lost by more than 1 percent of the vote). The state Attorney General's office has responded that Nader's request was not valid because no check for the expenses was submitted by the deadline. [26] www.nashuatelegraph.com.../20041106/NEWS02/111060040/-1/news
Official viewpoints and responses
As of yet, neither major political party has made an official response to the issue.
Republican Party
(none yet)
Democratic Party
Several Democratic members of the House Committee on the Judiciary have written to the GAO requesting a formal investigation. Their first letter was written three days after the election, on November 5 [27] www.house.gov... , and this was followed by a second letter on November 8 listing further matters which had since come to light [28] www.house.gov... .
House Committee website www.house.gov... for later information
U.S. media
Glitch gave Bush extra votes in Ohio www.cnn.com...
An article by Salon.com purporting to debunk many of the data irregularities. www.salon.com...
A wired news article purporting to debunk many of the data irregularities. www.wired.com...
Overseas
This article www.consortiumnews.com... written after the election summarises media viewpoints from many countries round the world.
Related Articles
U.S. presidential election, 2004
Voting machine
Electronic voting
[gerrymandering]]
voter supression
electoral fraud
Vote-rigging
(NPOV note: the presence of any link above is for those seeking further information on election irregularities in general. It is not an opinion on this specific election)
Other sources compiling this information
truthout.org
disinfopedia.org especially an article on the alleged fraud using Diebold systems www.disinfopedia.org...,_2004
External links
blackboxvoting.ORG www.BlackBoxVoting.ORG...
blackboxvoting.COM www.BlackBoxVoting.COM...
(Note, these two websites are not affiliated with each other, however both carry web pages relevant to this article))
blackboxvoting Articles and voter field reports www.livejournal.com...
Institute for Public Accuracy www.accuracy.org...
[29] euro.ecom.cmu.edu... Expert testimony as to procedures needed to make electronic voting secure
[30] www.notablesoftware.com... article written by the founder and CTO of Counterpane Internet Security Inc., on Electronic Voting.
[31] economist.com... Article by The Economist
[32] www.evoting-experts.com... e-voting experts' website and weblog, large amount of information and expert discussion (panellist credentials provided)
Keith Olbermann's blog 11/07/04 www.msnbc.msn.com...
11/08/04 Olbermann segment online home.comcast.net...
[33] www.votersunite.org... Voters Unite Listing of All Reported Irregularities
[34] www.tompaine.com... Tom Paine's article
[35] www.democraticunderground.com... Democratic Underground discussion board on the topic
Common Dreams report www.commondreams.org...
Voting reopened in NC because of mistake www.wral.com...
268,159 more votes than voters in florida ideamouth.com...
VotersUnite.org Database of E-Voting Problems www.votersunite.org...
News articles
Rutenberg, Jim. "Report Says Problems Led to Skewed Surveying Data." New York Times. November 5, 2004. [36] www.nytimes.com... - Outlines alleged problems with the early exit poll data.
AP. Democratic lawyers on "fact finding" mission in Ohio. [37] www.cleveland.com.../base/politics-1/1100164141194251.xml&storylist=politics
Shuster, David. "...The congressman demanding a Government Accountability Office investigation is not nuts" MSNBC.com [38] www.msnbc.msn.com...
"Countinghouse Blues: Too many votes." WOWT (KN) News. [39] www.wowt.com...
Fitrakis, Bob. "None dare call it voter suppression and fraud." The Free Press (OH). November 7, 2004. [40] www.freepress.org...
Fitrakis, Bob. "And so the sorting and discarding of Kerry votes begins." The Free Press (OH). November 10, 2004. [41] www.freepress.org...
Book, Sue. "Election problems due to a software glitch." Sun Journal (NC). November 5, 2004. [42] www.newbernsj.com.../GlobalTemplates/Details.cfm&StoryID=18297&Section=Local
Johnson, Mark. Winner so far: Confusion; agriculture, education races change as counties fix vote-tally errors. The Charlotte Observer. [43] www.mercurynews.com...
WCNC. .[44] www.wcnc.com...
Bronis, Jason. "Ballot counting turns into legal fiasco." News 14 Charlotte. November 10, 2004. [45] www.news14charlotte.com...
Gwin, Harold. "Democrats' leader decries voting glitches." The Vindicator (OH). November 6, 2004. [46] www.vindy.com...
"Glitch gave Bush extra votes in Ohio." CNN. November 5, 2004. [47] www.cnn.com...
Glitch Found in Ohio Counting [48] www.nytimes.com...
Voting Problems in Ohio Set Off an Alarm [49] www.nytimes.com...
Final Results Delayed in Rockland County, NY [50] www.thejournalnews.com...
Officials, printers examine flaws that slowed vote count (Nov 9, 2004) [51] rockymountainnews.com...
Equipment glitch delays Escambia County vote tally (Nov 8, 2004) [52] www.brewtonstandard.com...
Palm Beach Post article about their situation www.palmbeachpost.com...
Solvig, Erica. "Warren's vote tally walled off." The Enquirer (OH). [53] www.enquirer.com...
[54] www.consortiumnews.com... article summarising media viewpoints from many countries round the world.
Warren Co. defends lockdown decision, FBI denies warning officials of any special threat [55] www.enquirer.com...
[edit on 11-11-2004 by MaskedAvatar]
It's the entry written for Wikipedia specificaly about the 2004 election fraud. Well written, very informative, well presented, attempts to remove partisan biases but it is SCHEDULED FOR DELETION. See that you can vote for or against its deletion at the site too.
en.wikipedia.org...
I am no expert in Memory Holes or where you would look for this article when it is deleted from Wikipedia. If anyone can safely track what will happen to it, then maybe space can be saved here at ATS ... but this material is the best eye opener I have seen for the uninitiated. People who care about democratic rights and deny fraud need to understand it, but not because I think it's a good idea.
2004 U.S. Election controversies and irregularities
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
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After the U.S. presidential election on November 2, 2004, some pro-Kerry sources have made allegations that data irregularities and systematic flaws occurred during the election. The overall official result of the election is not at this time being challenged by the U.S. Senator John Kerry, the Democratic candidate, who is the only possible winner if the unofficial results change. This is however not relevant to the US electoral process in which the Electoral College not the candidate has the final say, and which may 'draft' him even unwillingly to serve unless he actually refuses, in which case they may select John Edwards as President.
At the moment any change in the result of the election highly unlikely due to that fact that Bush's margin of victory was greater than the number of alleged fraudulent votes. However, some people and groups (including the media, independent candidate Ralph Nader, Kerry's brother and legal advisor Cameron Kerry, members of the House Judiciary Committee, and many Democratic groups) are currently analyzing the available data.
Dan Hoffheimer www.mlive.com.../base/politics-1/1100164141194251.xml&storylist=politics , the statewide counsel for the Kerry campaign, has said the Kerry campaign is not trying to challenge the election. "We're not expecting to change the outcome of the election," Hoffheimer said.
No comprehensive analyses have yet been produced, but there is a large volume of both primary and secondary data, and preliminary analyses, reports and observations have been made by a variety of commentators ranging from computer scientists to voting rights organizations, and many others. One preliminary attempt to analyze the issue vote.caltech.edu... from Caltech concluded that "there is no evidence, based on exit polls, that electronic voting machines were used to steal the 2004 election for President Bush." However, this analysis used exit polls that had been weighted by the final vote count, thereby assuming the conclusion.
One part of the controversy are electronic and optical-scan voting machines, which were used in greater numbers than before as a result of concerns over the reliability of manual machines raised during the 2000 election. Other reported problems relate to abnormally high voter turnout (more votes in many precincts than registered voters in said precincts), discrepancies between exit poll data and actual results especially in swing states and the complications which arose due to long lines; particularly in high-population areas and in closely contested states.
Contents
1 Key issues
2 Voting machines
2.1 Voting machine company with political ties to the Republican Party
2.2 Other criticisms of Diebold's voting machines
2.3 Evidence of electronic voting bias
2.4 Expert testimony on quality of current voting machines
3 List of complaints
4 Charts, Graphs and Statistics
4.1 Result Plots - Florida
4.2 Exit Polls
4.2.1 Discrepancies Map
4.2.2 Exit Polls vs. Machine Tallies, by State (9 States)
4.2.3 Manipulation of exit poll data
5 Vote Suppression
5.1 Long Lines
6 Minorities
7 Formal proceedings
8 Official viewpoints and responses
8.1 Republican Party
8.2 Democratic Party
8.3 U.S. media
8.4 Overseas
9 Related Articles
10 Other sources compiling this information
11 External links
12 News articles
13 Headline text
Key issues
Electronic touch screen voting machines. The reliability and accuracy has not been established, and in most cases they were not designed with a paper trail or auditability in mind. Many computer scientists have claimed the potential of these machines to be tampered with was high, citing such possibilities as the machines being reprogrammed on election day. The election incident reporting system ([ www.voteprotect.org EIRS ]) has recieved many reports from voters and election officials of votes for Kerry being recorded as votes for Bush. The fact that the CEO of one electronic voting machine company was quoted in 2003 as saying he wanted to "deliver" the next election for Bush has further fuelled suspicions of fraud.
Problems with non-electronic voting machines. In some counties there are larger statistical discrepancies than electronic voting machines. See below.
Voter suppression, intimidation, lost ballots, efforts to discredit citizens that may be validly registered. This has the aim of reducing turn out for people believed to support the other side.
Significant disagreement between exit poll data and actual results, especially in swing states (apparently not matched by similar discrepancies in most non-swing states or other election matters).
Significant disagreement between party affiliation registration statistics for counties and results for that county, especially in swing states. For example, in one Florida county that has 77 percent registered Democrats, Bush received 77 percent of the vote.
******* MODS - PERHAPS DELETE FROM HERE ON DOWN IF WE CAN IDENTIFY HOW TO GET TO THIS INFO WHEN WIKIPEDIA DELETES THE ARTICLE *******
Voting machines
In many cases there were concerns as to whether votes were fairly, reliably, and accurately recorded and reported by the electronic machines involved. The charts below demonstrate this.
Above are maps of electronic voting machine incidents reported to the EIRS. On the left are county maps of Florida and Ohio, showing the Democratic-voting counties in shades of blue proportional to the population, and on the right are maps with the machine incidents in yellow, orange, and red. Note that most Democratic-voting counties traditionally have more voters and voting machines, and thus are statistically more likely to encounter a problem. Also, electronic voting machines were primarily placed in Democratic counties.
Voting machine company with political ties to the Republican Party
In 2003 Wally O'Dell CEO of Diebold said in a letter to Ohio Republican officials that he was committed, "to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President". [1] www.motherjones.com... Diebold is the company which makes electronic touch screen voting machines used in Ohio and other states, most significantly Florida. Ohio and Florida were two of the "swing" states critical to the 2004 election.
However, it should be noted that according to one website www.qando.net... "Diebold�s election-systems division is run by a registered Democrat" and Mark Radke (Director of Marketing for Diebold Election Systems) "has an exclusively Democratic donation history"..."including the legal limit of $2000 to John Kerry in the recent campaign".
Chuck Hagel, the previous chairman of ES&S, another major manufacturer of voting machines and still a $1m stock-holder in McCarthy & Co which owns a quarter of ES&S, became a Republican candidate. Hagel's Democratic opponent made a formal protest to the state of Nebraska over the conflict of interest.
Other criticisms of Diebold's voting machines
Unreported faults and problems known to manufacturer
Oct. 27, 2004 -- The state of California has ordered that 15,000 brand new touch-screen voting machines not be used in next week's presidential election. These electronic machines were manufactured by Diebold Inc., a North Canton, Ohio-based company that also specializes in automated teller machines and electronic security.
"Of course we would have wished the situation would not have happened, but it did," Rapke told ABC News. "There was back up available. But again, with additional familiarity with the system, again, this problem would not have happened." But a former Diebold technical worker, James Dunn, told ABC News the company was aware of the software and electronic problems before the election, and never reported them. "The machine would lock up or lose its software load. A very uncommon thing and not a good thing," said Dunn. "And once that machine's locked up you're unable to produce voter cards, which means you're unable to open the election voting machine and people can't vote. But they shipped it anyway."
Poor security against hacking and other electronic fraud
The same source also claims that "Experts have raised questions about the machines' security features, which some say can be easily defeated, making it possible to manipulate the actual vote count.
"In all of my consulting work and all of my work in industry I've never seen a system that I thought was this vulnerable to abuse," said Avi Rubin, a professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, who, along with other security experts, analyzed Diebold's source code for the electronic voting machines."
In at least one case it appears a voting machine was hacked during a primary election in King County Washington and a warning was issued to disconnect all voting machines from the internet. But this would not prevent the effects of hacking totally [2] portland.indymedia.org... .
Recent historical voting anomalies
March 5, 2004 : "Harris has also posted a post-mortem [of the 2000 election] by CBS detailing how the network managed to call Volusia County for Bush early in the morning. The report states: "Had it not been for these [computer] errors, the CBS News call for Bush at 2:17:52 AM would not have been made." As Harris notes, the 20,000-vote error shifted the momentum of the news reporting and nearly led Gore to concede.
What's particularly troubling, Harris says, is that the errors were caught only because an alert poll monitor noticed Gore's vote count going down through the evening, which of course is impossible. Diebold blamed the bizarre swing on a "faulty memory chip," which Harris claims is simply not credible. The whole episode, she contends, could easily have been consciously programmed by someone with a partisan agenda. Such claims might seem far-fetched, were it not for the fact that a cadre of computer scientists showed a year ago that the software running Diebold's new machines can be hacked with relative ease. The hackers posted some 13,000 pages of internal documents on various web sites -- documents that were pounced on by Harris and others. A desperate Diebold went to court to stop this "wholesale reproduction" of company material."
(Sources for this section: 1) ABC News [3] abcnews.go.com... and 2 [4] www.motherjones.com...
Voting Machine problems (including Diebold): Electronic voting#Problems with electronic voting
Evidence of electronic voting bias
Note: As with all statistics, it is very important to consider other causes of apparent anomalies, and to provide verifiable and neutral source data that can be checked in a neutral way by third parties. All the information and sources below appear prima facie to be statistically reasonable in terms of both analysis and assumptions, and to be based upon verifiable public data.
(1) An analysis of Florida counties with 80,000 - 500,000 registered voters concluded (with a few caveats of a usual kind) that machine type (E-Touch vs Op-Scan) was a "significant predictor" of vote at the p < 0.001 level (less than one chance in a thousand of this degree of anomaly happening by chance) [5] ustogether.org... [6] ustogether.org... [7] ustogether.org... Source data and calculations [8] ustogether.org... .
(2) One thread on the "democraticunderground" website discusses Gahanna, Franklin Co. Ohio. The vote reported by the county in Gahanna precinct 1-B was 4,258 Bush, 260 Kerry, and the total votes cast in Gahanna overall were 20,736. However:
Gahanna has some 20,000 people eligible to vote and the reported turnout was around 70%. On a casual reckoning approximately 14,000 people voted, and yet nearly 21,000 votes were reported by voting machines.
4,258 Republican votes were electronically reported for Bush in Gahanna 1-B. But there were only 638 votes cast in the precinct. Furthermore the 3,893 extra individuals who are said to have queued to vote for Bush, and were therefore presumably Republican, did not appear to vote on any other matter bar the Presidency. (These other matters included the Senate race, County Commissioner, several County and State officials, and the infamous Gay Unions vote, issues of great importance in the election.)
Source: [9] (www.democraticunderground.com...), source data from govt website pdf www.franklincountyohio.gov...
(3) An analysis reported in the New Zealand press looks at the differences between exit polls and reported voting in more detail. It identifies that in a selection of non-swing states, the exit polls and final results match. However in a large proportion of what were identified before the election as key swing states (Wisconsin, Pennysylvania, Ohio, Florida, New Hampshire, etc.), the exit polls and final votes do not match.
The error was in each case a statistically anomalous and electorally critical 4 - 15% swing (change between exit polls and electronic voting) and furthermore the anomalies were not random. In each of the above swing states, this variation between what voters said they voted and what the machines reported was in favour of Mr. Bush. Source [10] www.scoop.co.nz... , article discussing here bellaciao.org... , graphs here img103.exs.cx... .
(4) An interesting article www.consortiumnews.com... comments that:
Exit polls into the evening of Nov. 2 actually showed Kerry rolling to a clear victory nationally and carrying most of the battleground states, including Florida and Ohio, whose totals would have ensured Kerry's victory in the Electoral College.
The exit polls covered both the Presidential and Senate races. The votes reported by voting machines for the Senate races were in line with the exit polls for the Senate race, however the votes reported by the same voting machines for the Presidency often significant disagreed with the exit polls for the Presidency.
It also comments that "Democratic suspicions also were raised by Republican resistance to implementing any meaningful backup system for checking the results on Diebold and other electronic-voting machines."
(5) There were additional reports of significantly large data irregularities with the "optical scan" type voting machines in at least Florida. In one county using optical scan voting machines for example, election records showed 77% registered democrats but Bush received 77% of the vote.
(6) Wired News www.wired.com... has examined this issue and reports that, "...according to academics, the internet pundits are reading the data out of context. Demographic figures and vote trends over several years show the numbers to be consistent with previous elections. According to University of California at Berkeley political scientist Henry Brady, the Republican vote share has been going up in Florida's rural optical-scan counties for years."
Wired further reports that, "[t]hree professors of government also examined the numbers after being pressured by many people, including lawyers for the Democratic Party, and concluded the same thing."
Expert testimony on quality of current voting machines
(1) Testimony of Dr. Aviel D. Rubin to U.S. Federal Election Assistance Commission, on Electronic Voting Systems, May 2004:
(Witness credentials: Professor of Computer Science, Technical Director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins University, served on SERVE security peer review group for Dept. of Defense, member of National Committee on Voting Integrity, and 2004 election judge in local county)
There is no way for voters to verify that their votes were recorded correctly.
There is no way to publicly count the votes.
In the case of a controversial election, meaningful recounts are impossible.
With respect to the Diebold Accuvote TS and TSx, we found gross design and programming errors, as outlined in our attached report. The current certification process resulted in these machines being approved for use and being used in elections.
We do not know if the machines from other vendors are as bad as the Diebold ones because they have not made their systems available for analysis.
"On the spectrum of terrible to very good, we are sitting at terrible. Not only have the vendors not implemented security safeguards that are possible, they have not even correctly implemented the ones that are easy. If I had more time I would debunk the myth of the security of the so-called triple redundancy in the Diebold machines. I would explain the limitations of logic and accuracy testing in an adversarial setting, I would explain how easy it would be for a malicious programmer to rig the election with today's DREs [voting machines], and I would describe the seriousness of the security flaws that we and others have found in the Diebold machines. These are all things that I could have done and would have been happy to do, before anybody started purchasing and using these DREs. But nobody asked."
"Since our study came out, three other major studies ... all cited serious security vulnerabilities in DREs. RABA, which is closely allied with the National Security Agency, called for a "pervasive rewrite" of Diebold's code. Yet, the vendors, and many election officials ... continue to insist that the machines are perfectly secure. I cannot fathom the basis for their claims. I do not know of a single computer security expert who would testify that these machines are secure. I personally know dozens of computer security experts who would testify that they are not."
(Source: [11] avirubin.com... )
List of complaints
A substantial number of people said they voted for one candidate but the vote was recorded for another. While some spotted this, there are fears that most may not have. [12] www.whtm.com... There were numerous reports of voting machines doing this all day but nonetheless being used all day.
(Anecdotally from websites, a common theme on this topic seems to be that claims of vote mis-statement are more often made by people who voted for Kerry but the vote showed for Bush. It's not clear whether were this to be studied, it would turn out to be urban myth or verified fact)
Machines are supposed to not lose votes in a power outage. Voters cannot tell whether vote integrity was in fact maintained as intended when power goes down, as happened at least in one polling station (Dekalb Co. GA, 15 minutes powerout) [13] www.blackboxvoting.com...
Machines are not robust against error [14] www.blackboxvoting.com... and [15] www.wired.com...
A minor abberation: At least one machine began counting back down to zero when it reached 32000 votes; manufacturers ES&S are said to have known about (but not rectified) this issue for two years since the same problem had arisen in a previous mayoral election. (Broward Co., FL) [16] news.yahoo.com.../ibsys/20041105/lo_wplg/2439900
(Also some machines malfunctioned and demo machines were used instead, hastily programmed to replace them. It is not clear to those who voted who did this or what was involved in this "programming" [17] www.blackboxvoting.com... )
Machines do not always produce an audit trail�that is, if there is a doubt as to whether the machine has accurately represented and counted votes, there may not always be a way to neutrally verify the stated result. [18] www.wired.com...
Machines do not have "open" software, so it has not been generally possible for people to confirm that the software does not mis-state votes periodically.
Unexplained 3 hour gap in electronic voting machine security audit records intended to confirm no hacking has taken place (King Co., WA.)
Discrepancies in claimed totals of provisional ballots (Ohio)
"Votes" present in at least one electronic voting machine before polls opened
Unless exceptionally well designed, computers can be "hacked" and manipulated in an undetectable manner by experts.
Other sources of lost data include hard drive crashes, inappropriate deletion, and the like, including, when audit trails are kept, failure for the totals to match the tally of votes as reported by machines [19] www.techdirt.com... .
Voting fraud is also both possible and hard to prove with some versions of electronic voting machines.
Sample source: "Experts said the company designed the machines and software so that vote totals could easily be altered without leaving a trace. Losing candidates in one race charged that when the computer acted up on election night, a CES employee inserted control cards into the machine. The plaintiffs sued to retrieve the source code, and the court, for once, consented. When computer experts examined the software, they determined that CES had changed the computer's instructions for tallying votes on election night. But because the program lacked adequate auditing mechanisms to track the nature of those changes, no one could determine if the company had rigged the election." [20] www.wired.com... for this and similar stories.
Charts, Graphs and Statistics
Result Plots - Florida
See www.ustogether.org...
Exit Polls
Exit polls have been used successfully in other countries to determine election fraud.[21] www.usnews.com... Because final published exit polls in America are matched to vote counts, they cannot be used to determine election fraud. However, in the 2004 election, pre-matched exit polls for 17 states were leaked onto the internet.
Discrepancies Map
Voting locations that used electronic or other types of voting machines that did not issue a paper receipt or offer auditability correlate geographically with areas that had discrepancies in Bush's favor between exit poll numbers and actual results. Exit polling data in these areas show significantly higher support for Kerry than actual results (potentially outside the margin of error). From a statistical perspective, this may be indicative of vote rigging, because the likelihood of this happening by chance is extremely low. A study of 16 states by a former MIT mathematics professor places the likelihood at 1 in 50,000. [22] www.bluelemur.com...
Exit Polls vs. Machine Tallies, by State (9 States)
Supporting the same conclusions of the maps above, here are bar graphs indicating the differentials between Exit Polls and Machine Tallies for nine e-voting and paper ballot states. The discrepancies appear to affect the e-voting states to a significantly greater degree than they affect the Paper Ballot states.
Source and background discussion are listed here: www.bradblog.com...
Source data and analysis: ustogether.org... ustogether.org...
Corroborating Data and Analysis: [23] www.dakotatechnics.com...
Manipulation of exit poll data
The following tables compare final exit poll data with penultimate exit poll data, note the large swing of support towards Bush, with Kerry losing votes, which is impossible if votes are only being added. National Election Pool, the consortium which conducts exit polls, has stated that the early data was inaccurate due to regulations preventing pollsters from approaching voters, barriers, (neither of which would skew the data) and the alleged perception that Democrats are more willing to answer exit polls. The consortium dismissed the possibility that their early exit poll was accurate and that vote counts were wrong, but did not provide any reasoning for this assessment. The early exit poll data was not meant to be released to the public. The data that was meant to be released to the public was first to be weighted to the actual vote count, so that the exit poll matched the actual vote count perfectly. Exit polling companies claim this is standard procedure. Critics argue exit poll data should never be weighted by final results and have requested access to the raw data.
Direct link to screenshots and data: CNN website 12.21am members.cox.net... CNN website 1.41am members.cox.net... CNN screenshot #1:
12.21 am, 1963 respondents so far
Total vote: Male 47% , Female 53% of which:
Male - Bush 47% x 49% x 1963 452
Male - Kerry 47% x 51% x 1963 471
Female - Bush 53% x 47% x 1963 489
Female - Kerry 53% x 53% x 1963 551
TOTAL - Bush 941
TOTAL - Kerry 1022
(rounding: estimates of voters in each category accurate within +/- 10)
CNN screenshot #2:
1.41 am, 2020 respondents so far (57 more than above)
Total vote: Male 47% , Female 53% of which:
Male - Bush 47% x 52% x 2020 499
Male - Kerry 47% x 47% x 2020 451
Female - Bush 53% x 50% x 2020 535
Female - Kerry 53% x 50% x 2020 535
TOTAL - Bush 1034
TOTAL - Kerry 986
(rounding: estimates of voters in each category accurate within +/- 10)
The addition of an extra 57 voters at this station was therefore reported as +93 votes for Bush by AP and CNN at least, and voters monitoring the exit polls were told authoritatively that Bush had now taken a lead from Kerry.
Note that the counts for Kerry under Male voters changed in a negative direction after additional voters were included. The net subtraction of 20 votes from the Kerry total after adding new voters seems to reflect an adjustment process.
Vote Suppression
Long Lines
Long lines, though seemingly benign - "a mere inconvenience" - may well be the most serious problem with the 2004 election. In many places, lines were over 6 hours long.
Prior to the election, there was much ado about each precinct getting enough ballots, but an equally serious matter that seems to have been overlooked by people trying to protect people's right to vote is whether the precints had a sufficient number of voting machines, such that the votes could be proccessed at a sufficient rate. Machine quantity as well as ballot quantity determines the saturation point of votes. Number of machines * Max. votes per hour per machine * hours poll is open = max. number of votes precinct is able to process. Every voter over this limit is effectively disenfranchised, just as if the precint had run out of ballots; the precinct runs out of voter-time-slots.
Although low population precincts had relatively plenty of voting machines and were well within the limits of processing capacity, high-population centers often did not, and sometimes had less than half the machines requested and were well outside the limits of processing capacity, effectively disenfranchisng an undetermined number of voters.
This may explain the discrepancy between expected voter turnout in high-population areas and counted voter turnout in these areas. Since high-population areas are predominantely Democratic, this would primarily effect the Democratic constituency, and appear on the surface to reflect inefficacy in the Democratic GOTV effort.
841 incidents voteprotect.org... of this type have been reported, 241 of which are from Ohio voteprotect.org... , and 106 of which are from Florida voteprotect.org... . 124 such incidents have been reported out of Cuyahoga county, Ohio voteprotect.org... .
Minorities
Specific concerns were raised in the course of the election in respect of votes from key minorities, such as Blacks [24] msnbc.msn.com... or Cuban Hispanics.
Formal proceedings
On November 5, Ralph Nader filed a request for a recount of the votes in New Hampshire with that state's Secretary of State. Nader's request cited "irregularities in the vote reported on the AccuVote Diebold Machines in comparison to exit polls and trends in voting in New Hampshire" and added: "These irregularities favor President George W. Bush by 5 percent to 15 percent over what was expected." [25] www.theunionleader.com... As one of the candidates on the ballot, Nader has the right to demand a recount, but is required to pay for it (because he lost by more than 1 percent of the vote). The state Attorney General's office has responded that Nader's request was not valid because no check for the expenses was submitted by the deadline. [26] www.nashuatelegraph.com.../20041106/NEWS02/111060040/-1/news
Official viewpoints and responses
As of yet, neither major political party has made an official response to the issue.
Republican Party
(none yet)
Democratic Party
Several Democratic members of the House Committee on the Judiciary have written to the GAO requesting a formal investigation. Their first letter was written three days after the election, on November 5 [27] www.house.gov... , and this was followed by a second letter on November 8 listing further matters which had since come to light [28] www.house.gov... .
House Committee website www.house.gov... for later information
U.S. media
Glitch gave Bush extra votes in Ohio www.cnn.com...
An article by Salon.com purporting to debunk many of the data irregularities. www.salon.com...
A wired news article purporting to debunk many of the data irregularities. www.wired.com...
Overseas
This article www.consortiumnews.com... written after the election summarises media viewpoints from many countries round the world.
Related Articles
U.S. presidential election, 2004
Voting machine
Electronic voting
[gerrymandering]]
voter supression
electoral fraud
Vote-rigging
(NPOV note: the presence of any link above is for those seeking further information on election irregularities in general. It is not an opinion on this specific election)
Other sources compiling this information
truthout.org
disinfopedia.org especially an article on the alleged fraud using Diebold systems www.disinfopedia.org...,_2004
External links
blackboxvoting.ORG www.BlackBoxVoting.ORG...
blackboxvoting.COM www.BlackBoxVoting.COM...
(Note, these two websites are not affiliated with each other, however both carry web pages relevant to this article))
blackboxvoting Articles and voter field reports www.livejournal.com...
Institute for Public Accuracy www.accuracy.org...
[29] euro.ecom.cmu.edu... Expert testimony as to procedures needed to make electronic voting secure
[30] www.notablesoftware.com... article written by the founder and CTO of Counterpane Internet Security Inc., on Electronic Voting.
[31] economist.com... Article by The Economist
[32] www.evoting-experts.com... e-voting experts' website and weblog, large amount of information and expert discussion (panellist credentials provided)
Keith Olbermann's blog 11/07/04 www.msnbc.msn.com...
11/08/04 Olbermann segment online home.comcast.net...
[33] www.votersunite.org... Voters Unite Listing of All Reported Irregularities
[34] www.tompaine.com... Tom Paine's article
[35] www.democraticunderground.com... Democratic Underground discussion board on the topic
Common Dreams report www.commondreams.org...
Voting reopened in NC because of mistake www.wral.com...
268,159 more votes than voters in florida ideamouth.com...
VotersUnite.org Database of E-Voting Problems www.votersunite.org...
News articles
Rutenberg, Jim. "Report Says Problems Led to Skewed Surveying Data." New York Times. November 5, 2004. [36] www.nytimes.com... - Outlines alleged problems with the early exit poll data.
AP. Democratic lawyers on "fact finding" mission in Ohio. [37] www.cleveland.com.../base/politics-1/1100164141194251.xml&storylist=politics
Shuster, David. "...The congressman demanding a Government Accountability Office investigation is not nuts" MSNBC.com [38] www.msnbc.msn.com...
"Countinghouse Blues: Too many votes." WOWT (KN) News. [39] www.wowt.com...
Fitrakis, Bob. "None dare call it voter suppression and fraud." The Free Press (OH). November 7, 2004. [40] www.freepress.org...
Fitrakis, Bob. "And so the sorting and discarding of Kerry votes begins." The Free Press (OH). November 10, 2004. [41] www.freepress.org...
Book, Sue. "Election problems due to a software glitch." Sun Journal (NC). November 5, 2004. [42] www.newbernsj.com.../GlobalTemplates/Details.cfm&StoryID=18297&Section=Local
Johnson, Mark. Winner so far: Confusion; agriculture, education races change as counties fix vote-tally errors. The Charlotte Observer. [43] www.mercurynews.com...
WCNC. .[44] www.wcnc.com...
Bronis, Jason. "Ballot counting turns into legal fiasco." News 14 Charlotte. November 10, 2004. [45] www.news14charlotte.com...
Gwin, Harold. "Democrats' leader decries voting glitches." The Vindicator (OH). November 6, 2004. [46] www.vindy.com...
"Glitch gave Bush extra votes in Ohio." CNN. November 5, 2004. [47] www.cnn.com...
Glitch Found in Ohio Counting [48] www.nytimes.com...
Voting Problems in Ohio Set Off an Alarm [49] www.nytimes.com...
Final Results Delayed in Rockland County, NY [50] www.thejournalnews.com...
Officials, printers examine flaws that slowed vote count (Nov 9, 2004) [51] rockymountainnews.com...
Equipment glitch delays Escambia County vote tally (Nov 8, 2004) [52] www.brewtonstandard.com...
Palm Beach Post article about their situation www.palmbeachpost.com...
Solvig, Erica. "Warren's vote tally walled off." The Enquirer (OH). [53] www.enquirer.com...
[54] www.consortiumnews.com... article summarising media viewpoints from many countries round the world.
Warren Co. defends lockdown decision, FBI denies warning officials of any special threat [55] www.enquirer.com...
[edit on 11-11-2004 by MaskedAvatar]
Ya know, the best way to stop this would be to get everyone not to vote at all. That would be the ultimate protest.
... or that could be the ultimate cave-in.
I'm not certain that total abrogation of your electoral responsibilities and leaving it up to others as to whom you see in elected positions of leadership would be recorded as "protest". It's apathy.
Meanwhile it continues, investigations thick and fast:
BREAKING -- SATURDAY NOV 13 2004: Black Box Voting has launched a fraud audit into Florida. Three investigators (Bev Harris, Andy Stephenson, and Kathleen Wynne) are in Florida right now. We will initiate hand counts on selected counties that have not fully complied with our Nov. 2 Freedom of Information request by Monday (Diebold counties) or Tuesday (other counties).
BREAKING -- SATURDAY NOV 13 2004: We have reports that both David Cobb (Green Party) and Michael Badnarik (Libertarian Party) will be filing for official recounts in Ohio. Black Box Voting is also launching a fraud audit in Ohio. Gotta be replaced: Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell. Please invoke the following name change on Blackwell immediately, as he is 2004's Katherine Harris. He should now be referred to at all times as "Katherine Blackwell." Please retain this moniker for any future runs for governor. How to be your own media. Spread the word. Latest Katherine Blackwell outrage: Failure to properly account for provisional ballots, and refusing to allow citizens to see the pollbooks.
BREAKING -- SATURDAY NOV 13 2004: Black Box Voting is implementing fraud diagnostics on the state of New Mexico. Information we recently received is indicative of widespread vote manipulation. We are not going to publicize the specifics here.
BREAKING -- SATURDAY NOV 13 2004: Black Box Voting is requesting legal assistance for a specific county in Georgia. Indications of corrupt voting processes, with possible criminal actions by local officials.
BREAKING -- SATURDAY NOV 13 2004: Black Box Voting is launching a fraud investigation on Pima County Arizona.
BREAKING -- SATURDAY NOV 13 2004: Black Box Voting is launching a fraud investigation on the state of Nevada. Pro bono legal help certified to practice in Nevada, needed immediately. Multiple irregularities. Need people to take affidavits from election workers, statewide.
BREAKING -- FRIDAY NOV 12 2004: Ralph Nader to audit Diebold machines in New Hampshire. According to Nader, the current situation with voting machines warrants investigation. Several elements make voting machines "probative" for investigation, according to Nader, a consumer affairs lawyer: proprietary ownership, secret code, vested interests, a high-value reward, and lack of any real consequences, or likelihood of getting caught, for vote manipulation. "We are told that shenanigans are just politics," said Nader at a press conference on Nov. 10. "Well, it's not politics. It's taking away people's votes."
I'm not certain that total abrogation of your electoral responsibilities and leaving it up to others as to whom you see in elected positions of leadership would be recorded as "protest". It's apathy.
Meanwhile it continues, investigations thick and fast:
BREAKING -- SATURDAY NOV 13 2004: Black Box Voting has launched a fraud audit into Florida. Three investigators (Bev Harris, Andy Stephenson, and Kathleen Wynne) are in Florida right now. We will initiate hand counts on selected counties that have not fully complied with our Nov. 2 Freedom of Information request by Monday (Diebold counties) or Tuesday (other counties).
BREAKING -- SATURDAY NOV 13 2004: We have reports that both David Cobb (Green Party) and Michael Badnarik (Libertarian Party) will be filing for official recounts in Ohio. Black Box Voting is also launching a fraud audit in Ohio. Gotta be replaced: Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell. Please invoke the following name change on Blackwell immediately, as he is 2004's Katherine Harris. He should now be referred to at all times as "Katherine Blackwell." Please retain this moniker for any future runs for governor. How to be your own media. Spread the word. Latest Katherine Blackwell outrage: Failure to properly account for provisional ballots, and refusing to allow citizens to see the pollbooks.
BREAKING -- SATURDAY NOV 13 2004: Black Box Voting is implementing fraud diagnostics on the state of New Mexico. Information we recently received is indicative of widespread vote manipulation. We are not going to publicize the specifics here.
BREAKING -- SATURDAY NOV 13 2004: Black Box Voting is requesting legal assistance for a specific county in Georgia. Indications of corrupt voting processes, with possible criminal actions by local officials.
BREAKING -- SATURDAY NOV 13 2004: Black Box Voting is launching a fraud investigation on Pima County Arizona.
BREAKING -- SATURDAY NOV 13 2004: Black Box Voting is launching a fraud investigation on the state of Nevada. Pro bono legal help certified to practice in Nevada, needed immediately. Multiple irregularities. Need people to take affidavits from election workers, statewide.
BREAKING -- FRIDAY NOV 12 2004: Ralph Nader to audit Diebold machines in New Hampshire. According to Nader, the current situation with voting machines warrants investigation. Several elements make voting machines "probative" for investigation, according to Nader, a consumer affairs lawyer: proprietary ownership, secret code, vested interests, a high-value reward, and lack of any real consequences, or likelihood of getting caught, for vote manipulation. "We are told that shenanigans are just politics," said Nader at a press conference on Nov. 10. "Well, it's not politics. It's taking away people's votes."
Good! I hope they uncover the truth, for the sake of our future.
"Uncovering" is right... all the way down to trash cans.
To get to the bottom of the corruption and the extent of the fraud in specific counties, you are faced with scenarios like what is described below, even when there is a due process that must be followed in the processing of the FOI requests.
This names names, and describes what they do to stonewall the investigators and prevent them from learning the truth. It is criminal, and it is happening around many parts of the country including the battleground states....
TUESDAY NOV 16 2004: Volusia County on lockdown
County election records just got put on lockdown
Dueling lawyers, election officials gnashing teeth, Votergate.tv film crew catching it all.
Here's what happened so far:
Friday Black Box Voting investigators Andy Stephenson and Kathleen Wynne popped in to ask for some records. They were rebuffed by an elections official named Denise. Bev Harris called on the cell phone from investigations in downstate Florida, and told Volusia County Elections Supervisor Deanie Lowe that Black Box Voting would be in to pick up the Nov. 2 Freedom of Information request, or would file for a hand recount. "No, Bev, please don't do that!" Lowe exclaimed. But this is the way it has to be, folks. Black Box Voting didn't back down.
Monday Bev, Andy and Kathleen came in with a film crew and asked for the FOIA request. Deanie Lowe gave it over with a smile, but Harris noticed that one item, the polling place tapes, were not copies of the real ones, but instead were new printouts, done on Nov. 15, and not signed by anyone.
Harris asked to see the real ones, and they said for "privacy" reasons they can't make copies of the signed ones. She insisted on at least viewing them (although refusing to give copies of the signatures is not legally defensible, according to Berkeley elections attorney, Lowell Finley). They said the real ones were in the County Elections warehouse. It was quittin' time and an arrangment was made to come back this morning to review them.
Lana Hires, a Volusia County employee who gained some notoriety in an election 2000 Diebold memo, where she asked for an explanation of minus 16,022 votes for Gore, so she wouldn't have to stand there "looking dumb" when the auditor came in, was particularly unhappy about seeing the Black Box Voting investigators in the office. She vigorously shook her head when Deanie Lowe suggested going to the warehouse.
Kathleen Wynne and Bev Harris showed up at the warehouse at 8:15 Tuesday morning, Nov. 16. There was Lana Hires looking especially gruff, yet surprised. She ordered them out. Well, they couldn't see why because there she was, with a couple other people, handling the original poll tapes. You know, the ones with the signatures on them. Harris and Wynne stepped out and Volusia County officials promptly shut the door.
There was a trash bag on the porch outside the door. Harris looked into it and what do you know, but there were poll tapes in there. They came out and glared at Harris and Wynne, who drove away a small bit, and then videotaped the license plates of the two vehicles marked 'City Council' member. Others came out to glare and soon all doors were slammed.
So, Harris and Wynne went and parked behind a bus to see what they would do next. They pulled out some large pylons, which blocked the door. Harris decided to go look at the garbage some more while Wynne videotaped. A man who identified himself as "Pete" came out and Harris immediately wrote a public records request for the contents of the garbage bag, which also contained ballots -- real ones, but not filled out.
A brief tug of war occurred, tearing the garbage bag open. Harris and Wynne then looked through it, as Pete looked on....
(read on at www.blackboxvoting.org... )
To get to the bottom of the corruption and the extent of the fraud in specific counties, you are faced with scenarios like what is described below, even when there is a due process that must be followed in the processing of the FOI requests.
This names names, and describes what they do to stonewall the investigators and prevent them from learning the truth. It is criminal, and it is happening around many parts of the country including the battleground states....
TUESDAY NOV 16 2004: Volusia County on lockdown
County election records just got put on lockdown
Dueling lawyers, election officials gnashing teeth, Votergate.tv film crew catching it all.
Here's what happened so far:
Friday Black Box Voting investigators Andy Stephenson and Kathleen Wynne popped in to ask for some records. They were rebuffed by an elections official named Denise. Bev Harris called on the cell phone from investigations in downstate Florida, and told Volusia County Elections Supervisor Deanie Lowe that Black Box Voting would be in to pick up the Nov. 2 Freedom of Information request, or would file for a hand recount. "No, Bev, please don't do that!" Lowe exclaimed. But this is the way it has to be, folks. Black Box Voting didn't back down.
Monday Bev, Andy and Kathleen came in with a film crew and asked for the FOIA request. Deanie Lowe gave it over with a smile, but Harris noticed that one item, the polling place tapes, were not copies of the real ones, but instead were new printouts, done on Nov. 15, and not signed by anyone.
Harris asked to see the real ones, and they said for "privacy" reasons they can't make copies of the signed ones. She insisted on at least viewing them (although refusing to give copies of the signatures is not legally defensible, according to Berkeley elections attorney, Lowell Finley). They said the real ones were in the County Elections warehouse. It was quittin' time and an arrangment was made to come back this morning to review them.
Lana Hires, a Volusia County employee who gained some notoriety in an election 2000 Diebold memo, where she asked for an explanation of minus 16,022 votes for Gore, so she wouldn't have to stand there "looking dumb" when the auditor came in, was particularly unhappy about seeing the Black Box Voting investigators in the office. She vigorously shook her head when Deanie Lowe suggested going to the warehouse.
Kathleen Wynne and Bev Harris showed up at the warehouse at 8:15 Tuesday morning, Nov. 16. There was Lana Hires looking especially gruff, yet surprised. She ordered them out. Well, they couldn't see why because there she was, with a couple other people, handling the original poll tapes. You know, the ones with the signatures on them. Harris and Wynne stepped out and Volusia County officials promptly shut the door.
There was a trash bag on the porch outside the door. Harris looked into it and what do you know, but there were poll tapes in there. They came out and glared at Harris and Wynne, who drove away a small bit, and then videotaped the license plates of the two vehicles marked 'City Council' member. Others came out to glare and soon all doors were slammed.
So, Harris and Wynne went and parked behind a bus to see what they would do next. They pulled out some large pylons, which blocked the door. Harris decided to go look at the garbage some more while Wynne videotaped. A man who identified himself as "Pete" came out and Harris immediately wrote a public records request for the contents of the garbage bag, which also contained ballots -- real ones, but not filled out.
A brief tug of war occurred, tearing the garbage bag open. Harris and Wynne then looked through it, as Pete looked on....
(read on at www.blackboxvoting.org... )
Activity seems to leave just a little time for website updates.
I wonder what it is that the corrupt counties hope to achieve in the refusal to hand over records in response to lawful and actionable FOI requests? For most observers this is akin to an admission of guilt...
UPDATE due Tuesday Nov 23 -- A significant development, announcement late afternoon or evening.
BREAKING -- MONDAY NOV 22 2004: Florida counties stonewall records requests. While some Florida counties have been attentive to the public interest and have promptly complied with our public records requests (scroll down for the Nov. 2 records request, for critical audit diagnostics), other counties have stalled, stonewalled, failed to comply in a timely manner, or outright refused to provide the records. Stay tuned for who they are and what happens next.
I wonder what it is that the corrupt counties hope to achieve in the refusal to hand over records in response to lawful and actionable FOI requests? For most observers this is akin to an admission of guilt...
UPDATE due Tuesday Nov 23 -- A significant development, announcement late afternoon or evening.
BREAKING -- MONDAY NOV 22 2004: Florida counties stonewall records requests. While some Florida counties have been attentive to the public interest and have promptly complied with our public records requests (scroll down for the Nov. 2 records request, for critical audit diagnostics), other counties have stalled, stonewalled, failed to comply in a timely manner, or outright refused to provide the records. Stay tuned for who they are and what happens next.
You know something? I am starting to think that our Martian friend may be right.
I am curious, however, as to why this is getting little or no consideration. It certainly warrants more attention than �Bombs in the Building: World Trade Center 'Conspiracy Theory' is a Conspiracy Fact�, a 26 page thread. .
Looking at the evidence, it does appear that something is amiss. Aside from those who dismiss this outright (primarily because their candidate won), I wonder if it is a matter of people wanting to put the election behind them or if there may be an impression that it is too big to be plausible. The more I read, the more I believe there may be some real substance to this claim.
BG
I am curious, however, as to why this is getting little or no consideration. It certainly warrants more attention than �Bombs in the Building: World Trade Center 'Conspiracy Theory' is a Conspiracy Fact�, a 26 page thread. .
Looking at the evidence, it does appear that something is amiss. Aside from those who dismiss this outright (primarily because their candidate won), I wonder if it is a matter of people wanting to put the election behind them or if there may be an impression that it is too big to be plausible. The more I read, the more I believe there may be some real substance to this claim.
BG
It's the end of the first week of December 2004.
Many members of ATS are preparing for holidays. Some are lobbing grenades at "the other side" in tit for tat arguments over their favorite political team that can do no wrong. Most are not using the "F" word - "F" for FRAUD.
In Ohio, the presidential election is not over. Lots of civil disobedience programs to go along with recounts in the state that matters by people who actually care to audit and find there is still soem semblance of democracy in the US. Or democracy might otherwise go by the wayside.
This really is a great blog, commendations to the author:
www.fairnessbybeckerman.blogspot.com...
Biased content sample:
"SPECIAL NOTE: Ohio is the single swing state in which there are major litigations and a recount pending, and enough electors to change the outcome of the presidential race. Thanks to the valiant fight going on in Ohio, the 2004 Election is not over. Thousands of volunteers are needed in Ohio to assist the Green Party and the Libertarian Party with the Recount, and tens of thousands of demonstrators are needed to call the attention of the national media to the outrage that was committed there. So I urge everyone to stay focussed on Ohio. Generalized activities geared to long range election reform, or 'anti-inaugurals' to blow off steam, are a luxury; specific actions, geared towards getting justice in Ohio NOW, are a necessity. Although this calendar mentions events going on in other states, I urge everyone who is not in Ohio to make it his or her first priority to come to Ohio to participate in the protests and/or the Recount. If you participate in events in other states, I strongly urge you to focus the attention of the event towards the very provable Ohio election crimes, and if you wish to contribute financially, please concentrate on the organizations that are doing important work on the ground in Ohio, such as C.A.S.E., the National Voting Rights Institute, and the Green Party Recount."
Unbiased content sample:
"Fact: Thousands of Ohio citizens had difficulty voting on November 2nd. Despite thousands of complaints, a planned recount, statewide public hearings, several lawsuits, a Congressional investigation and the outcry of voters rights groups, this situation remains unresolved.
America's election system is badly flawed. So flawed, that a Cal Tech/MIT study of the 2000 Election,
www.votewatch.us... discovered that as many as one in 18 citizens was disenfranchised due to procedural and/or technological anomalies. The 2004 election was no different! All citizens must have equal access to voting and the electoral process in order to ensure our democracy."
Many members of ATS are preparing for holidays. Some are lobbing grenades at "the other side" in tit for tat arguments over their favorite political team that can do no wrong. Most are not using the "F" word - "F" for FRAUD.
In Ohio, the presidential election is not over. Lots of civil disobedience programs to go along with recounts in the state that matters by people who actually care to audit and find there is still soem semblance of democracy in the US. Or democracy might otherwise go by the wayside.
This really is a great blog, commendations to the author:
www.fairnessbybeckerman.blogspot.com...
Biased content sample:
"SPECIAL NOTE: Ohio is the single swing state in which there are major litigations and a recount pending, and enough electors to change the outcome of the presidential race. Thanks to the valiant fight going on in Ohio, the 2004 Election is not over. Thousands of volunteers are needed in Ohio to assist the Green Party and the Libertarian Party with the Recount, and tens of thousands of demonstrators are needed to call the attention of the national media to the outrage that was committed there. So I urge everyone to stay focussed on Ohio. Generalized activities geared to long range election reform, or 'anti-inaugurals' to blow off steam, are a luxury; specific actions, geared towards getting justice in Ohio NOW, are a necessity. Although this calendar mentions events going on in other states, I urge everyone who is not in Ohio to make it his or her first priority to come to Ohio to participate in the protests and/or the Recount. If you participate in events in other states, I strongly urge you to focus the attention of the event towards the very provable Ohio election crimes, and if you wish to contribute financially, please concentrate on the organizations that are doing important work on the ground in Ohio, such as C.A.S.E., the National Voting Rights Institute, and the Green Party Recount."
Unbiased content sample:
"Fact: Thousands of Ohio citizens had difficulty voting on November 2nd. Despite thousands of complaints, a planned recount, statewide public hearings, several lawsuits, a Congressional investigation and the outcry of voters rights groups, this situation remains unresolved.
America's election system is badly flawed. So flawed, that a Cal Tech/MIT study of the 2000 Election,
www.votewatch.us... discovered that as many as one in 18 citizens was disenfranchised due to procedural and/or technological anomalies. The 2004 election was no different! All citizens must have equal access to voting and the electoral process in order to ensure our democracy."
November 2 Truth: Fight For Democracy Rally
seekerof
Fact: Thousands of Ohio citizens had difficulty voting on November 2nd.
Despite thousands of complaints, a planned recount, statewide public hearings, several lawsuits, a Congressional investigation and the outcry of voters rights groups, this fact has been dismissed or underreported by the mainstream media. Even Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell claimed the Ohio election was a huge success, saying, "We came through with flying colors." Washington Times, 11/04/04
We need thousands of people to attend the FIGHT FOR DEMOCRACY RALLY to draw attention to voter issues AND to support the Congressional probe of allegations of irregularities in the November 2nd presidential vote.
America�s election system is badly flawed. So flawed, that a Cal Tech/MIT study of the 2000 Election discovered that as many as one in 18 citizens was disenfranchised due to procedural and/or technological anomalies. The 2004 election was no different! All citizens must have equal access to voting and the electoral process in order to ensure our democracy!
seekerof
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Federal law trumps state and local law every time
Social Issues and Civil Unrest: 8 hours ago
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Federal law trumps state and local law every time
Social Issues and Civil Unrest: 8 hours ago, 14 flags
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