Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News Thursday 7/21/05

[MelissaB]

All members welcome and encouraged to participate.

Link to previous Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News thread:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x384868


All previous daily threads are available here:
http://www.independentmediasource.com/DU_archives/du_2004erd_el_ref_fr_thr_calenders.htm




Please "Recommend" for the Greatest Page after it has several replies.

[MelissaB]

1. Missouri Approves Touch-Screen Voting Product

Missouri Approves Touch-Screen Voting Product

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) -- The secretary of state's office has approved the first company to offer touch-screen voting machines in Missouri.

The approval means AccuPoll can start marketing its equipment to local election authorities. A couple of other vendors are also nearing final approval to sell their machines.

A federal law sets a deadline of next January first for polling places to have at least one voting machine for use by people with disabilities. The secretary of state says AccuPoll's touch-screen machines would meet that requirement.

The machines will create a paper printout so voters can check to ensure their votes were recorded correctly.

More: http://www.ksdk.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=82209

[MelissaB]

2. CT: Six Contenders For Secretary Of The State Solicit Support

This article discusses the candidates, but I can't copy and past enough for each candidate, so I abbreviated this.

Six Contenders For Secretary Of The State Solicit Support

By John Voket

(This is the first of a two-part story on Democratic candidates for the secretary of the state's office who conducted a recent information forum in Newtown.)

At a historic and arguably one of the most critical times in the history of Connecticut's secretary of the state's office, six Democratic contenders are vying for the opportunity to replace current officeholder Susan Bysiewicz, who has declared her candidacy for governor. Those six candidates introduced themselves to local Democratic party faithful and other members of the public at a Thursday evening forum last week at Edmond Town Hall.

...snip


(Next week, The Bee will focus on answers each of the six secretary of the state candidates provided to questions about several key issues related to that office including concerns about the future of electronic voting integration across the state.)


More: http://www.newtownbee.com/News.asp?s=News-2005-07-21-13-24-29p1.htm

[MelissaB]

3. Tom Paine: Timing And Turnout In Ohio

Timing And Turnout In Ohio

Walter Mebane
July 21, 2005

Walter Mebane is professor of government at Cornell University. He was a member of the team that produced the DNC Ohio 2004 study. Before that, he worked as part of the National Research Commission on Elections and Voting created by the Social Science Research Council to monitor, analyze and report on problems and successes in the 2004 election.

On June 29, 2005, John Tanner of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), wrote to Nick Soulas, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, Franklin County, Ohio, to report the results of "an investigation into the November 2, 2004 general election in Franklin County, prompted by allegations that Franklin County systematically assigned fewer voting machines in polling places serving predominantly black communities as compared to its assignment of machines in predominantly white communities." While far from a glowing evaluation, the conclusion Tanner stated must have pleased Ohio officials: "Franklin County assigned voting machines in a non-discriminatory manner. Accordingly, there was no violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. 1973, and we are thus closing our file." Headlines two days later broadcast that gist. "Department of Justice finds no racial disparities in Ohio voting," went an AP story. "Justice Clears Ohio in Voting Booth Bias," said another.

The truth is not so simple. The DOJ report concedes there were more registered voters per voting machine in precincts that had many African-American voters than in precincts that did not. In fact, using data from Franklin County, I calculate that the quartile of precincts with the largest proportion of African-American voters had 23.7 percent more registered voters per voting machine than the quartile of precincts with the smallest proportion. One might think that fact would end the argument, but the DOJ notes that different results appear when one looks at the number of ballots cast. The DOJ reports states that "the allocation of voting machines actually favored black voters because more white voters were voting on each voting machine than black voters." Indeed, in the quartile of precincts with the smallest proportion of African-American voters, there were 3.7 percent more ballots cast per machine than in the quartile with the largest. This is the basis for the DOJ's conclusion.

The Turnout Question

It is easy to see the big hole in the DOJ analysis. The Democratic National Committee's study of the 2004 election in Ohio (Democracy at Risk: The 2004 Election in Ohio) finds that throughout the state, failures in election administration caused racial disparities in voters' election day experiences. African-American voters reported waiting an average of 52 minutes before voting, while white voters reported waiting an average of 18 minutes. Three percent of voters who went to the polls left their polling places and did not return due to the long lines. Throughout Ohio, reductions in voter turnout are associated with inadequate provision of voting machines. The DNC study finds that turnout is typically two to three percent lower in precincts that were allocated fewer machines.

...snip

Should the DOJ have exonerated Franklin County? The argument they used to do so ignored an important fact: The allocation of voting machines reduced voter turnout more among African American voters than among white voters. Probably the simple truth is that Franklin officials made their voting machine allocation decisions using the spring data on active voters, doing little or nothing to respond to the new voter registrations. Was that negligence malicious? Was it criminal? I am not a lawyer, but a clever attorney might argue that the Franklin County machine allocations had a rational and nondiscriminatory basis in the April data. That might legally exculpate them. But the DOJ did not take this approach. The least one can say is there was shamefully negligent administrative failure that deprived thousands of voters of their right to vote.

More: http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050721/timing_and_turnout_in_ohio.php

[MelissaB]

4. PA: Bucks urged to vote out machines

Bucks urged to vote out machines

Grass-roots group: Old lever-style boxes are trustier than new.

By Hal Marcovitz
Of The Morning Call

A citizens group called on the Bucks County commissioners Wednesday to turn down state aid to replace the county's voting machines, and instead provide stopgap measures to make the Eisenhower-era devices comply with the 2002 U.S. Help America Vote Act.

''Voters are very scared about the integrity in our system,'' said Brad Kirsch of Warminster, a member of the Bucks County Coalition for Voting Integrity. ''I don't see why we have to go out and spend money for machines that may need frequent replacement.''

Members of the coalition have argued that electronic voting machines can produce questionable results because they do not create physical records of the votes cast on each device. On the county's lever machines, mechanical gauges record each vote.

About 20 members of the coalition staged a brief protest before the commissioners meeting, held at the Bucks County Horse Park in Nockamixon Township.

More: http://www.mcall.com/news/local/all-b1_2commishjul21,0,6516901.story?coll=all-newslocal-hed

[MelissaB]

5. NC: Must you possess before you can consume?

Must you possess before you can consume?

By MATTHEW EISLEY AND LYNN BONNER, Staff Writers

...snip

Voting machine woes

Carteret County booted the UniLect touch-screen voting machines that caused so much trouble last year. But UniLect still has a home in Burke County, at least for this year.

Greer Suttlemyre, Burke's elections director, said he expects state officials will ban UniLect machines. When that happens, the county will look for something else, he said. But the county does not have immediate replacement plans.

"The county does not have the money to buy new equipment," Suttlemyre said.

Carteret's machines were under scrutiny because one of the counters dropped 4,438 votes in the fall election. The lost votes helped keep a close race for state agriculture commissioner unresolved for months.

A state group that wants the state to require paper backup for electronic voting machines says there were problems with the Burke machines, too. The group points to the nearly 11 percent of Burke voters who used the touch-screen machines that did not record votes for president, and the higher than average non-votes for governor, senator and other statewide races.

Pennsylvania banned UniLect touch-screen machines in three of its counties because testers found machines failed to record votes.

State elections officials compared the presidential voting results from Burke machines with Burke paper ballots last winter and found no problems with the machines.

An elections report attributed the missing votes for president to voters not heeding warnings that their vote for president was not included in the straight-ticket vote.


More: http://www.newsobserver.com/politics/story/2613098p-9048287c.html

[MelissaB]

6. NJ:The battle of the ballot boxes begins:Voting machine makers vie for bid

The battle of the ballot boxes begins: Voting machine makers vie for bid

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

By PAUL BRUBAKER
of The Montclair Times

Six voting machine vendors will face off to try to win the approval of Essex County Elections Superintendent Carmine P. Casciano in an open forum before Essex County freeholders and the public that Casciano arranged in an agreement he made with local voting rights activists.

Casciano scheduled the machine demonstrations for Wednesday, July 27, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at his office, 33 Washington St., Newark, after a surprise pact he made with Montclair voting-rights activist Katherine Joyce during the freeholders’ meeting on Wednesday, July 13.

Just before the freeholders authorized $7.5 million for the purchase of new voting machines, Joyce agreed that she and other members of the Essex County Task Force on Voting Rights would not attempt to repeat what they did in June: Convince a majority of freeholders to vote down the funding.

In exchange, Casciano, who will ultimately decide which machine Essex County will buy, agreed to hold the open demonstration offering vendors the opportunity to prove they have the best machines.

However, Casciano has all but sealed a contract with one of the companies that will showcase its machines, Sequoia Voting Systems Inc., based in Oakland, Cal.



More: http://www.montclairtimes.com/page.php?page=10130

[MelissaB]

7. NC: One-stop Voting

Wednesday at the General Assembly

...snip

One-stop Voting

_ A House committee, split along party lines, agreed to allow voters to cast ballots the same day that they register during the early voting period for elections. State law now requires that a person must be registered 25 days before a primary or an election in order to cast a ballot. The bill, which would take effect with the 2006 elections, would require a person arriving at a one-stop site to show a picture ID or other proof of identity. The person would complete a registration form attesting as a U.S. citizen living in the county for at least 30 days. The person could vote immediately by early absentee ballot, but only on that day. Otherwise, the registration would be voided. The bill was approved by a vote of 9-7, thanks in part to three Democratic "floaters" — House members allowed to vote on any committee. Some GOP committee members complained the bill could make voting more complicated, burden overworked county election officials and loosen voting restrictions.


More: http://www.wvec.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D8BFFVUO1.html

[MelissaB]

8. Redistricting measure off Calif. ballot

Redistricting measure off Calif. ballot

STEVE LAWRENCE

Associated Press


SACRAMENTO, Calif. - A judge kicked Arnold Schwarzenegger's redistricting measure off the special election ballot Thursday, a crushing blow for a proposition that was held up as a centerpiece of the governor's campaign to reform state government.

The judge ruled that supporters violated California's constitution by using two versions of the initiative in the process of qualifying the measure for the ballot.

"The differences are not simply typographical errors," Judge Gail Ohanesian said. "They're not merely about the format of the measure. They are not simply technical. Instead they go to the substantive terms of the measure."

The proposal, Proposition 77, is one of three initiatives that the Republican governor is pushing in the Nov. 8 election. It would take the power to draw legislative and congressional districts away from the Legislature and give it to a panel of three retired judges.


More: http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/news/nation/12191128.htm

:bounce: :bounce:

Thanks to quaoar here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1947229

[MelissaB]

9. Schwarzenegger more unpopular than ever, poll finds

Schwarzenegger more unpopular than ever, poll finds

Thu Jul 21, 2005 3:17 AM ET

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's approval rating dropped to a new low even before a controversy developed about his hefty side income from fitness magazines, according to a poll released on Thursday.

Only 34 percent of adult Californians approve of the job Schwarzenegger is doing as governor, compared with 51 percent who disapprove, according to a survey by the Public Policy Institute of California.

...snip

"Californians don't feel that the state is headed in the right direction," said Mark Baldassare, research director of the nonpartisan institute, adding that Schwarzenegger has had difficulty convincing Californians to support his proposals.

A year before, the institute found 57 percent of Californians approved of Schwarzenegger's job as governor and 29 percent disapproved.

More: http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-07-21T071643Z_01_N20165678_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-POLITICS-SCHWARZENEGGER-DC.XML

[EFerrari]

20. Yes!

:bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce:

[MelissaB]

10. NY Daily News: Bush vs. Gore is the litmus test

Bush vs. Gore is the litmus test

Sidney Zion

Don't bother John Roberts about Roe vs. Wade. Make him tell us what he thinks about Bush vs. Gore.

That's the key question, and the answer will advise the Senate and the country as to his bona fides, advertised as a jurist who will read the Constitution as written and never legislate from the bench.

It should interest both sides of the Senate, and conservatives and liberals everywhere. In a pure sense, conservatives more, for they have promoted judicial self-restraint and states' rights forever.

And what decision in our history was more contemptuous of both than Bush vs. Gore? That 5-to-4 ruling, which ran against everything the Rehnquist Five stood for, put George W. Bush in the White House. It was nothing less than a judicial coup d'état, and it embarrassed principled conservatives as it outraged liberals.

Al Gore might have been President if the court had ordered a statewide recount of all the ballots that had been rejected, a total of 175,010.


More: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ideas_opinions/story/330083p-282082c.html


"Might"...


Thanks to Gloria here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1946606

[MelissaB]

14. Roberts gave advice during Fla. recount

Roberts gave advice during Fla. recount

July 21, 2005

TALLAHASSEE - Judge John G. Roberts Jr., the president's nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, made a brief appearance in Florida during the 2000 presidential recount - but he never signed up to represent any of the parties involved in dozens of lawsuits that erupted.

Roberts was one of several constitutional experts who visited Florida, a spokesman for Gov. Jeb Bush said. At the governor's invitation, Roberts traveled at his own expense and met once with the governor to share what Roberts believed the governor's responsibilities were under federal law in a presidential election dispute. Roberts was not paid for his advice.

<snip>

The Washington Post reported Wednesday that Roberts gave "private legal advice" to the governor during the recount as a long-standing member of the Republican National Lawyers Association, while others reported that Roberts gave the governor advice on how to declare his brother the winner.


Thanks to DoYouEverWonder here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1642519

[MelissaB]

18. Did Roberts work on the Bu$h Recount Team

during the 2000 Election?

Roberts donated $1000 to the campaign and then another $1000 for the recount, so we have proof that, at the least, he supported the cause.

Supposedly he also traveled to Florida to work behind the scenes. This is very troubling since many illegal activities were conducted by this team.

One of the most blatant acts was the infamous Miami Riot. Mini riots like Miami were conducted at other Board of Elections around the state.

Then we had Bolton barging into the middle of a recount demanding that they stop. They did.

These are just two examples of shenanigans that went on and in the end the Supreme Court, which this man now might become a member of, selected the President of the United States. Some of us believe that this is the day America died. Do you want to have someone in the Supreme Court who was an active participant? I don't.


Thanks to DoYouEverWonder here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4145252



Oh, what a tangled web we weave...

[pat_k]

21. Yes, Yes, Yes !!!

I'm delighted to see this in the press. It's a notion I've been pushing here and there.

[MelissaB]

11. Bush, Schwarz dismal approval ratings, and election fraud

I'm cross-posting from another DU forum, because I think what I had to say there is important to this forum in particular:

(The other forum is about Schwarzenegger's 34% approval rating.)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1642436

----------

Peace Patriot (#43)

Why is it that, when Bushites steal elections, some people always jump on the voters, or Americans in general, as stupid, clueless, uncaring, etc., etc.? Why make that assumption, right off the bat? Why not give some attention to the actual mechanisms by which unpopular Bushites with extremist minority views gain their power (i.e., the election system itself, for instance), and to what these supposed "stupid" voters actually believe?

I think we underestimate just how important it is to the Corporate Rulers and War Profiteers that majorities in American elections do not win. Our vote is an extremely important power--it is a power that, when used collectively, has the potential to regulate Corporations, and to significantly curb their activities, including the RIGHT to de-charter them and dismantle them. We, the people, are the sovereign power in the U.S.--or so our founders said. The war, and exploitation, and environmental destruction that is occurring in the world is mostly emanating from our shores, driven by Corporations whom we have the inherent right to control.

Ergo, Americans are more propagandized, and more disinformed, than any other people on earth. And with all this, still...STILL, 58% of Americans opposed the war in Iraq BEFORE the invasion. I will never forget that stat. And, if you look at ALL the polls over the last year or so, what do you find? Americans disapprove of every major Bush policy, foreign and domestic, way up in the 60% to 70% range. Iraq. Social Security. The deficit. Torturing prisoners. You name it. And that is not even to mention Bush's current 42% approval rating--or the utterly dismal and unprecedented 49% on the very day of his inauguration.

So, Americans are not so stupid. I think what Americans are, for the most part, is DISENFRANCHISED.

I am familiar with all of the election 2004 evidence, and I know that that election was stolen. (WHERE is Bush's support NOW? Where are the voters of Karl Rove's "invisible" get out the vote campaign? WHERE ARE THEY?) (Sorry to shout, but I think the evidence is SCREAMING at us.)

Anyway, I think 2004 was just outright stolen--by Diebold and ES&S, the two rightwing companies and major Bush supporters who own and control the vote tabulation with SECRET PROPRIETARY SOFTWARE. I think Ohio was added in (Rove Plan B)--overt suppression of Dem voters; massive violations of the Voting Rights Act--because Kerry's win was bigger than expected (approx. 10% margin.) (Plan C--phony "terrorist alerts"--which was well set up in "the news" prior to the election--wasn't needed, except in Warren County, Ohio, where a phony "terrorist alert" was used to eject all observers from the vote count.)

The Schwarzenegger coup was a bit more complicated. The key, I think, is to be found in our loss of Dem Sec of State Kevin Shelley, who was driven from office on trumped up charges after suing Dieobld for their lies about the security of their machines, and decertifying their touchscreens (election theft machines) prior to the 2004 election. He also provided Californians with a paper ballot option. (And, among other reforms, forbade "revolving door" employment in his office--one of the ways that Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia have corrupted our election system.)

One of the key things that was happening when Shelley was destroyed is that he had demanded to review Diebold's source code, via his lawsuit against them. (We don't have that right--to review their code--as per contract between the state and these private companies--you know that, don't you? Not even our Sec of State!)

Schwarzenegger now has his own lapdog appointee as Sec of State (Bruce McPherson), who will most certainly respect the "trade secrets" of the Bushite election machine companies who own our election system.

Back up to 2003. Shelley had just been elected, and had not had much time to figure out what was going on with California's election system. Bang, he's hit with an unusual Recall election. His predecessor, Repub Bill Jones, and Jones' chief aide, Alfie Charles--both now working for Sequoia--had authorized Sequoia and other electronic voting in Calif. Electronic voting was very new--full of bugs (still is)--and scandalously insecure and unreliable. Shelley simply did not have time to fully understand or do anything about these problems before the Recall vote.

The Recall election was extremely odd. The election period was extraordinarily short. There was no primary, in which party voters and citizens in general got to vet the candidates. There were 125 candidates on the ballot! Time magazine and Larry King jumped in, and gave Schwarzenegger--already trading on his acting fame alone--millions and millions of dollars in free publicity (Time put him on the cover, for godssakes, just before the election!). And Cruz Bustamante, whom voters had chosen as Lt. Gov. in the normal election (the one Gray Davis and Bustamante had just won), was put in the awkward position of having to rule about his own status. (If Davis lost the Recall, shouldn't the Lt. Gov. succeed him? --I sure thought he should. THAT'S WHY I HAD VOTED FOR HIM. THAT'S his JOB--to step in, if something happens to the Gov.)

So, the Democratic leadership was just flummoxed. They should never have permitted that Recall to occur. It was an extremely manipulated and wrongful event. And Shelley had had barely enough time to find out where the pencil sharpener was--let alone ride herd on all the new electronic systems, and all the unusual decisions and circumstances.

With 125 candidates on the ballot, it would take only a programming kindergartner to shave votes to Schwarzenegger in whatever amounts he needed. Further, the short campaign prevented the public from finding out about Schwarzenegger's meeting with Ken Lay of Enron and other Bushites in Los Angeles in May 2001. Investigative reporter Greg Palast, who found out about that meeting, believes that the Recall was cooked up there--to stop Bustamante and Davis from recovering the $9 billion that Enron/Lay had stolen from Calif. If voters had known about the Schwarz/Enron connection--or even if they had been generally aware of the Enron theft--they would have been far less likely to blame Davis for the budget problems.

The news monopolies, of course, provided no help to the voters at all. And in that situation, with word of mouth and alternative news as the only vehicles for the truth, it takes TIME for the truth to get around. And, in the Recall election, there was no time.

So, I believe that the Recall was a test-run of the election theft machines, combined with a poorly informed electorate. (--whereas I believe that 2004 was a straight-up election theft, with the voters determined to oust the Bush Cartel).

Fast-forward: Shelly is now gone, and California has NO PROTECTION against Bushite ownership of our election system. Like the U.S. as a whole, we are in a very serious situation here, with Schwarz about to rig a second special election and destroy the big Democratic majority in the state with redistricting.

And here is yet another problem--possibly the worst: We have BI-PARTISAN corruption in the electronic elections business. And it IS a business now--a big business, involving lots of money. Elections are not a public matter any more. They are run by BUSHITE CORPORATIONS (who WON'T TELL US what's in their SECRET programming code!)

We have elections officials, both Dem and Repub, at the local level who are much too entangled with the private election machine business, if not outright corrupt. Check out this hogfest at the Beverly Hilton, planned for this August--a week of fun and sun for election officials from around the country, sponsored by Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia. It will burn your eyeballs!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x380340

One of the featured speakers at this event is L.A. county elections head Connie McCormack, a Democrat, and an advocate of paperless voting and Diebold, whose best friend Deborah Siler is the former chief Diebold salesperson in Calif. (--now asst. registrar in Solano County). McCormack was THE leader of the campaign to destroy Kevin Shelley.

Lavish lobbying. Future jobs offers. The heady power of controlling huge amounts of money in big business deals over electronic voting systems (systems that are endlessly costly to the taxpayers, because of continuing servicing and upgrading needs) And the heady power of being "the expert" and "the professional" who knows all the gobble-de-gook of electronic voting--versus the peon voters who don't have a clue how their votes are counted any more. (McCormack had the nerve to sneer at electronics specialist Kim Alexander, a voter advocate--"she's not a professional.")

McCormack led other county election officials in FIGHTING Shelley's reforms. It is the Sec of State's job to ride herd on these officials--ESPECIALLY with these new electronic systems--and to insure the integrity of the vote, and they fought him every way they could. McCormack told a legislative committee she wanted to "bulldoze" the Sec of State's office to get the touchscreens approved. He was holding up fed money--to pressure them to comply with security and auditing requirements.

I won't go into the details of how the SF Chronicle and other news monopolies drove Shelly from office. It's one of these Bushite-type black ops/secret dossier tales--murky, opaque, weird--where you can't figure out where things are coming from, and the story just doesn't add up. Shelly "misusing" fed election funds? No way! The witchhunt against Shelley stank to high heaven; Shelley did nothing wrong, and had no money--no legal fund--to defend himself with. Tells you something about Shelley--one of the last honest elections officials we will ever see in the U.S. of A.

There were anomalies in the 2004 election pointing to corruption and election fraud in Republican counties in Calif. Kerry won the state by a 10% margin, Barbara Boxer by a 20% margin. That might not be so unusual, except that Boxer's margin vis a vis Kerry all came in the most rightwing counties in the state--meaning that a whole bunch of people voted for Boxer...and Bush!? And only in Repub counties. I think about 3% to 5% of the Kerry vote was stolen in Calif's Repub counties, to pad Bush's wholly manufactured national popular majority.

But, to me, that is a given these days: Repub election fraud, wherever they can get away with it. What is more disturbing is people like McCormack, Democrats who are shills for Diebold--because I think they have sacrificed the voters and election integrity for careers in electronic voting and all the attendant perks.

The result is that we have a President and a Governor of California with whom the majority of the citizens disagree on just about everything; a Congress that is unresponsive to the will of the majority; and a democracy that is at death's door.

How can we fix this?

a) paper ballots/hand counts at the precinct level

or at the least

b) paper BALLOT (not "paper TRAIL") backup of all electronic voting machines, strict auditing (a 5% to 10% automatic recount), strict security (a long list of needs), and NO secret, proprietary programming code!

In general, we need to purge the Dem Party of electronic voting business corruption--county, state, federal--and BAN Bushite voting machine companies from our elections. Throw their machines into the Pacific Ocean (our "Boston Harbor"!). And start over.



Thanks to Peace Patriot here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x384992

[MelissaB]

12. A DUer I met at Andy's memorial has been arrested!

I met her at Andy's memorial. She helped organize Andy's memorial.
I suspect she's being targeted for her activities concerning voter verified paper trails. She definitely was one of Andy's insiders.



Wednesday, July 20, 2005 • Last updated 2:13 p.m. PT

Former King County Elections superintendent arrested

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

SEATTLE -- Former King County Elections Superintendent Julie Ann Kempf has been arrested for investigation of forgery, theft, criminal impersonation and assault.

Kempf, 40, who was fired in 2002 for what officials called a "pattern of dishonesty," was booked into the King County Jail just after 5 p.m. Tuesday and released less than an hour later, jail records show. The arrest was first reported in the Seattle Weekly on Wednesday.

Sgt. John Urquhart, a King County sheriff's spokesman, did not immediately return calls from The Associated Press seeking comment Wednesday, and Dan Donohoe, a spokesman for the county prosecutor's office, said the investigation was being handled by the state Attorney General's Office.

Janelle Guthrie, a spokeswoman for the Attorney General's Office, confirmed the case had been referred there, but said she could not comment further.


More: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/aplocal_story.asp?category=6420&slug=WA%20Elections%20Arrest&searchdiff=&searchpagefrom=


---------------------------------------------------------------------

Former King County Elections Superintendent Julie Anne Kempf was booked into jail Tuesday, July 19, on investigation of forgery, theft, criminal impersonation, and assault on a police officer, Seattle Weekly has learned.

The probe that led to her arrest is related to events that occurred after she left her county job in December 2002, but it involves recent incidents connected to the elections office.
No formal charges have been filed, and details are sketchy. But sources say Kempf, 40, allegedly sent current King County Elections Director Dean Logan an e-mail, pretending to be someone else. She is also suspected of inserting false documents into a file of public records while she was reviewing them, allegedly constituting forgery. Sources also say she stopped payment on a check that she had used to pay for the documents and, during an investigative interview attempt last week, allegedly tried to hit a sheriff's detective with her car.

King County Sheriff's spokesperson John Urquhart noted that it is department policy not to identify targets of probes but said, "I can tell you that we've had an ongoing investigation related to this, and that the suspect in this case was booked into jail last evening, then released after the person was fingerprinted and photographed." King County Jail records confirm the investigative charges as well as Kempf's booking and release around 5 p.m. Tuesday. Urquhart also says the person involved in the arrest allegedly assaulted a police officer: "When we tried to interview her on July 11, she was in a car at her residence. The detective had his ID out, showed his badge, and she drove off. He had to jump out of the way to avoid being hit by the vehicle. We have no doubt she saw him."
Kempf, who could not be reached for comment, was fired as King County's superintendent of elections in 2002 for what a dismissal letter described as "a pattern of dishonesty ranging from fabrication to significant distortion of important facts and events." She allegedly lied about why absentee ballots were mailed late for the November 2002 election, according to a county report back then, and was accused of backdating documents and delaying the public release of completed ballot counts, temporarily omitting 1,500 votes in one election.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
(This link doesn't take me to the story the OP posted. It takes me to this one.)

Ballot Pox

by Rick Anderson


On July 16, a few days before she was booked into the King County Jail and released, former King County elections superintendent Julie Anne Kempf was telling a funeral crowd about the funk she was in after her firing in 2002. At the memorial service for Seattle voting activist and cancer victim Andy Stephenson, Kempf indicated that today she considers herself something of a whistle-blower. But back then, her dismissal by the county and subsequent accusations that she had established a "pattern of dishonesty" in administering an election had left her crushed. Essentially, Stephenson saved her life, Kempf told the other mourners. He came to her home and bugged her about election-reform issues. He got her involved again.

Kempf, 40, is now involved another way, and it's not clear what's going on. She was arrested Tuesday, July 19, on investigation of forgery, theft, criminal impersonation, and assault on a police officer; she allegedly tried to hit a King County sheriff's detective with her car. The allegations are linked to the elections office she used to supervise, but not much more is known. She is not commenting, and the case is still in the investigative stage. County officials say that, to avoid a conflict of interest, oversight of the probe has been handed off to the state attorney general's office, which also isn't commenting.

Pursuit of a criminal case against Kempf strikes some as a county attempt to silence a critic, and it's recirculating some bad blood from the 2004 gubernatorial election debacle. King County elections officials are officially silent: "We have no comment," said spokesperson Bobbie Egan. But one elections official said privately, "The claim our office is pushing this is laughable. We have nothing to do with the investigation." Ditto from County Executive Ron Sims' office. "The sheriff and the attorney general, not us, are handling the investigation," says spokesperson Carolyn Duncan, adding that the probe is "not something that's being done frivolously."

It was only in recent months that Kempf had begun to resume a higher media profile, speaking out about the 2004 election. Particularly noteworthy was an April interview with KVI-AM talk-show host Kirby Wilbur. Though she was fired for lying about the cause of November 2002 ballots being mailed late, Kempf told Wilbur: "I had incorrect information that had been passed on to me by some of my staff and vendors. I disseminated that information to the press, believing it was the truth, and a few days later learned it was not correct." She wanted to call a press conference to set the record straight, said Kempf, and approached her boss, Elections Director Bob Roegner. "I was told no, that he and the county executive wanted to sit on the information and just sort of see where it all fell out. Well, of course it became a major crisis, because it gave the appearance that the elections office had consciously lied to the people of King County. And I was the one that was tagged as being a liar . . . and the way to solve the problem was to fire me, and everything would be well." The thing is, Kempf added in the KVI interview, "If you have a problem in King County , don't speak about it frankly. Come up with a political solution" instead. Duncan, Sims' spokesperson, responds that Kempf has "established her track record. People will have to make their own judgments."


More: http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0530/050720_news_kempf.php



Thanks to Generic Other here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4152243

[MelissaB]

13. There's No BASIS for Confidence in Election Results; Activist CRACKdowns

Three days after the Andy Stephenson Memorial in Seattle, another activist is arrested for "investigation" of charges that go to "honesty" and "credibility".

This article explains reasons why such wild reactions are being experienced by activists in the elections fairness area, and establishes in clear terms through historical explanation why in American elections the vote counting emperor not only has no clothes, he has no wardrobe and lives in a glass house.

When it comes to elections, it is the government that has to prove the results it keeps data (ballots and exit poll data) secret on, not the public that has to prove an irregularity in the process specifically made secret or unavailable to the public. The final stages now being implemented of the elimination of checks and balances in elections through the massive replacement of paper ballots with invisible electronic ballots means that elections officials can never provide a basis for a rational confidence in election results, just as a court would never accept an expert opinion that refused to disclose data or methods of analysis to cross examination.

AT THIS HISTORICAL JUNCTURE WE MUST ALWAYS REMIND EVERYONE THAT THERE IS NO SCIENTIFIC BASIS FOR CONFIDENCE IN ELECTION RESULTS BECAUSE BOTH THE DATA (BALLOTS AND EXIT POLL DATA) AS WELL AS THE METHOD OF ANALYSIS (COUNTING) ARE NOT DISCLOSED, CONSEQUENTLY ONLY THROUGH IRRATIONAL OR TRUST-BASED INFERENCES CAN WE CONCLUDE THAT CONFIDENCE IS APPROPRIATE FROM A SCIENTIFIC PERSPECTIVE. THE BALLOT DATA AND ANALYSIS OF VOTES METHODOLOGY WILL REMAIN SECRET INTO THE INDEFINITE FUTURE WITHOUT A REVERSAL OF POLICY, THUS WE CAN NOT AND ARE NOT ALLOWED TO VERIFY THE EXISTENCE OF DEMOCRACY IN THE UNITED STATES AS AN EMPIRICAL MATTER.

{NO DATA DISCLOSURE} + {NO ANALYSIS/COUNTING DISCLOSURE} = NO BASIS FOR CONFIDENCE IN RESULTS.

Now for how this ties in with bizarre crackdowns on activists recently:

==================================================

Recent coverage of the life and controversial death of politically progressive paper-ballot activist Andy Stephenson has focused both on how Stephenson tried to keep democracy real by advocating paper ballots, (in opposition to the recent federally funded slide into virtual reality through mass purchases of e-voting machines), and on how a vicious smear campaign was waged against Stephenson’s “credibility” while he was dying and desperately seeking treatment. I’d like to address factors more fundamental than the extensive disinformation campaign against Andy that consisted of entire websites, hate mail to friends and campaigns dedicated to claiming that the anti-election fraud activist was himself a “fraud”, because friends were raising money for his cancer surgery when he was allegedly not even ill with cancer or anything else. See, e.g., http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0529/050720_news_mossback.php

Whatever the motives might be for the continuation of this campaign to discredit Stephenson even after Stephenson’s well documented death at Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle, critics seemed to delight in saying that someone who had warned us about fraudulent American elections was himself a fraud. This certainly undermines trust in the active citizen community working on these issues.

After trust issues always comes fear. Within three days of Stephenson’s July 16, 2005 memorial service in Seattle, a whistle blowing or “perjuring” former Elections Director present at Andy’s memorial and who the media never tires of reminding us was fired in 2002 (two days after a Seattle Times editorial critical of the elections department) was arrested.

But the arrest and press releases or leaks were only for “investigation” of various possible charges allegedly constituting a “pattern of dishonesty”, including allegedly adding pages to a public disclosure file she was inspecting apparently as an activist (called “forgery”), allegedly sending an email to a current elections official under a different identity (called “impersonation”), stopping payment on a check for public documents, and “tried to hit” a police officer by allegedly driving away after being shown a badge in such a manner as to force the officer to step aside to avoid being hit. This “investigation” not only merits arrest short of charges, but also apparently merits a story on the AP Wire, printed in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and the Seattle Weekly, and supervised by the State Attorney General’s office.http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0530/050720_news_kempf.php
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/233447_kempf21.html

All major details of crimes she has not been charged with are dutifully printed, together with very old news of her firing controversy.



Whatever the motives of these “critics” to examine so harshly the “credibility” of certain election activists, anyone else who dismisses concerns about (or mentions the lack of confidence in) the accuracy of American elections as the work of “distrusting” “conspiracy theorists”, seems to misunderstand something extremely fundamental about the American system of democracy: it’s not about the need for trust and acceptance, it’s about checks and balances. Which is to say NOT trusting BIG power at all, in a way.

But the all-important checks and balances of elections have been destroyed over the last century or more. The ship of elections is listing badly, and the hard-working and largely faithful crew of election volunteers and officials is too often ready to take offense at anyone who points out the system is poorly designed or malfunctioning, yet all the good intentions in the world by the crew can not save a ship designed or fated to sink. It’s not about being “distrustful” of the technology Andy Stephenson personally happened to know a lot about. Rather, the more one knows about technology, the more one realizes that the utter change-ability of computer electrons is not a solid foundation upon which to continue to build democracy.

When it comes to elections, the checks and balances can not be provided by the government itself, and can only be provided by the public and/or by activist members of the public, because the government itself (which obtains or loses its power and tax money from elections), does not have the ability to check and balance itself from that position of conflict of interest. Only a tyrant counts the votes for his own “election”, so the government can never administer elections all by itself, and call it good. In fact, the very definition of tyranny is when a political enemy counts the votes unchecked, and a definition of corruption is when you and your own friends count the votes unchecked.

But the process of destabilizing elections and eliminating their checks and balances started long ago and with the best of intentions. For example, in the New England town hall around the time of our Constitution, voting would often be by a show of hands, with each voter able to count total votes for themselves if they wished. The advent of the so-called Australian ballot in the late 1800s (which included the innovative secret ballot) was a welcome protection against possible retaliation based on one’s votes, but ballot secrecy is equivalent to putting blindfolds on each voter in the town hall so that they can not see the raised hands of neighbors, with the votes counted by un-blindfolded government officials. Because an audit trail can never connect a particular ballot to a voter without violating ballot secrecy, and because the government both operates the elections and gains and loses its tax money and power via elections, it is a wonder that the public professes any basis for confidence in election results at all, especially when you consider that no one is ever allowed anymore to count the ballots for themselves, or even to see them.

Given the foundation of elections is so open to fraud unless there are serious checks and balances provided by public observation of the vote counting, taking the additional step as our nation is now of adding vastly more computers into the voting mix acts to replace paper ballots with electrons, thereby making the process of vote counting literally invisible, and consequently extremely wide open to alteration without leaving any significant evidence.

Given these structural problems and lack of checks and balances anymore in elections, one can only accept computerized voting or scanning of ballots based on pure faith, because no data is disclosed (the ballots) nor are the precise methods of analysis either disclosed, observable or repeatable.

While paper ballots are also imperfect and subject to ballot box stuffing and other risks, at least they tend to create witnesses and evidence and typically yield only single vote rewards for the unscrupulous, while computerization of the vote allows a single motivated individual to alter an entire election without leaving any substantial evidence. Thus, it is not a valid objection to say "paper ballots have problems too" because the problems are smaller, they don't spread, and they leave evidence....

With defense budgets in the trillions, government contracts in the billions, and campaign costs in the millions, many seem to think it inconceivable that anyone would mess with a US election. This is inexplicable, but apparently due to an irrational assumption that there is a lack of anything substantial at stake in American elections, or perhaps the irrational assumption that the apparent lack of any really important issues in American elections like war, abortion, or a worldwide permanent war on terror would minimize any actual tampering risk, though if these political risks were to be assumed to exist, someone on one side or the other of any of these issues could easily believe that allowing such a critical issue as a worldwide battle between Christianity and Islam to be decided or defeated by the vagaries of 30-second addled voters combined with the lies of the folks on the other "wrong" side of the issue would be a profound travesty of justice, thus completely justifying the nonviolent offense of election rigging instead of the more traditional political assassination or neutralization campaign against political enemies. In fact, rigging such an important election would become a joyous occasion for such a zealot, not a badge of shame as people seem to assume would be the case. Besides, there were at least 50 million people in the continental USA alone on each side of the REPUBLICAN/DEMOCRAT divide, each of whom had motive, and knew

WHO TO FAVOR (their candidate for president)
WHAT they needed (votes)
WHEN they needed them (on Election Day, November 2, 2004)
WHERE they needed them (swing states, particularly Ohio, Florida, New Mexico, Nevada, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Iowa)
WHY they needed them (the Electoral College)

and many knew HOW to do it: change tabulator results, etc.

In fact, given the above numbers with motive and knowldge, the idea that it is "conspiracy theory" to think that someone, even someone in a foreign country or for fun, might want to affect the election for control of the world's richest country and sole military superpower is ludicrous assuming even a rudimentary knowledge of world history. Attacks on such hypotheses reflect either a fundamental failure to think, an intentional plan to discourage independent thought in the area, or a plain indication that one lacks the freedom in the USA to make educated guesses based on partial information, which itself raises grave concerns about the ability of America to compete in the world of science, since science involves the formation of "conspiratorial" hypotheses that things might work together this way or that way, based on analysis of known fact combined with intuition, followed by the testing of those hypotheses and the explanation of methods to others to see if they can repeat the same experiment with the same results.

In any event, whether correct or incorrect, there is no substantial scientific or political basis to have confidence in American elections as presently constituted, and it is IMPOSSIBLE for elections officials to PROVE them reliable without reinstituting the checks and balances they claim have been safely discarded and replaced by misleading government or secretary of state “certification” of voting machines and the "testing" of the same as to its ability to handle an election day of almost 200 votes by casting 1 or 2 test votes, just like test drives ensure the lifetime performance of an automobile.

The complete obviousness that government certification of lawyers or doctors or any other professional together with their testing is not even remotely close to a guarantee of proper behavior or performance does not stop elections officials from regularly and confidently reciting that the emperor's certification and this limited testing is a modern day improvement rendering our Constitutionally based systems of checks and balances utterly obsolete.

But Andy Stephenson, after spending the last years of his life asking for information about elections and not being able to find any basis for confidence in the reported and “certified” results, was still typically a luminous and optimistic person, determined to overcome the massive weakness in our country's democratic election defenses by making the government "show its work" like anyone else in court, in school, or on the job. One can't convict a speeder with a radar gun without showing (if challenged) that the gun is properly calibrated and how it works, and having that process be subject to cross examination. Every court case in which expert witnesses appear will require those expert witnesses to show their work, both the data they used and the methods of analysis chosen.

But in democracy, the government regularly re-elects itself with Wizard of Oz machinations that they will never disclose to regular citizens, using ballot data they never show, “confirmed” (or not at all confirmed) by exit poll data for which conclusions are published and then changed to match election "results", but the data for which is “proprietary” and therefore also never disclosed. Unfortunately, the very gullibility of the American public in accepting this process is aided by a love of country and a reticence to criticize it, yet the one most faithful to his automobile is the one who spots the problems and goes about fixing them before all is lost.

With $6 billion in new federal funding for e-voting machines under HAVA which passed Congress in 2002 to be spent by January 1, 2006, corporations now increasingly claim the heart of our elections (vote counting) and over 2/3 of the total vote in this country, as a computerized software private property interest and as a corporate trade secret that the government is obliged to help them keep secret. This state of election affairs is completely beyond concerns about corporate "influence" or corporate "power"; this is literally corporate ownership of the heart of democracy itself, made the private profit slave of a corporation, instead of serving the public interest which occasionally calls for something other than profit as a motive.

Given the private property now claimed at the heart of democracy itself and the focus on profitability, one would think the government would have the sense to auction off the right to count votes in secret to the highest bidding corporation, in order to maximize the return to the taxpayer for the literal sellout of our democracy.

Certainly, a “modest proposal” by a foreign nation to abstain from attacking our cities, factories and taking our mineral resources in exchange for the minor favor of merely counting our votes in secret would be met by immediate recognition of what this really means, rejection of the "offer" and repulsion by force as needed, yet in our day and age taxpayers are handsomely paying tax dollars to private corporations to assume this extraordinary privilege and immunity of secret vote counting, with the government allying with these private corporations to defeat the public’s right to know what’s going on in its elections, and to operate as a check and balance on the counting of the vote. It is a "conquest by contract" in which mere purchases of voting equipment purport to vitiate our history, constitution, democracy, and checks and balances without so much as a poor debate by a legislature ignorant of the Constitution. The Founders were SO distrustful to think that congress might do something unconstitutional!

COnsider now the radical secrecy in which the government is now attempting to operate elections as a strong contrast with the openness and friendliness of Andy Stephenson, who maintained his style and spirit to the end, despite having every reason in the world to call bullshit on the real democracy he loved, and swore would never die on HIS watch.

We should be much more concerned with the credibility of the side of the debate that is saying “trust me” with wealth or power than the activist side of the debate that asks for public debate on election security and insists on checks and balances, a central term in which power was delegated from the people to the government in the first place.

Until the media re-learns these things and ceases ignoring the concerns of active citizens and being inexplicably crippled as a check and balance to big government and big corporations, the media and our elections will continue to receive a grade of “F” for Fear and Favor. Like Soviet "journalists", they now seem to fancy themselves “responsible” for not making “irresponsible” public questions.

The loss of freedom, the loss of the meaningful right to vote, and the loss of checks and balances may all happen on our watch, not because many truly wish them dead, but because they are *being called something else*, or made fun of, and then dismissed or killed, like when checks and balances are renamed “distrust”, and when exercising right of any citizen to inquire and/or exercise the freedom to theorize (defined as the reconciliation of available facts into an educated probabilistic judgment) about what has deliberately been made secret is laughed off as “conspiracy theory” by journalists eager to triangulate themselves into some centrist credentials in a craven form of self-protection or proof to their employers that they will not question corporate or governmental secrecy, but will instead ridicule those would would think or inquire. All of this comes at the expense of the dynamic of active and voluntary association to solve problems that de Tocqueville considered essential to the unique American character and so prevalent among americans, because one is ridiculed for venturing off into the unknown territory instead of achieving a form of respect at least as a pioneer, even if dead wrong, as many a pioneer's fate.

Whether the two activists of Mr. Stephenson and Ms. Klempf are perfect or instead a work in progress on the moral level, they are two active folks I’ve seen or heard about who “got it”, and were trying to live these American ideals of voluntary problem-solving association in order to protect and improve their country’s democracy. One ended up cruelly dead, the other publicly jailed for an "investigation" and labeled dishonest.

In no way do the humiliating punishments meted out to these activists fit the “crimes” even if all the allegations had been true, but there are compensations. These compensations are (1) we got the NEWS (defined by Bill Moyers I think as something somebody in power wants to keep hidden) and all they got is the rest, which is just PR.

When the PR is failing as badly as it is now, the powers that be tend to feel threatened and lash out. But in the end nothing can stop the common sense argument that secret corporate vote counting is wrong, nor can anything stop the desire of an awakened American public to rid itself of anything and anyone that would claim the treasonous right to own as private PROPERTY for profit and without regard to the public interest, our democracy itself, and furthermore without any right of supervision or control by the public.

The only thing worse than selling your soul or your democracy, is allowing it to be possessed or owned for purely selfish purposes in the first place.

P. Lehto
Attorney at Law
[e-mail]
(the only way my "credibility" is at issue in the above essay is to the extent you fail or refuse to exercise your God-given right as an American to think for yourself)

Plaintiff, Lehto & Wells v. Sequoia Voting Systems, et al.
Pleadings at:
<www.votersunite.org/info/lehtolawsuit.asp> ;


Thanks to Land Shark here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4154880

[MelissaB]

15. MUST READ: A STATISTICAL MYSTERY; STRANGE DEATH OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

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


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

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

OpEd in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Nov. 24, 2004

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


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

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

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

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

more...
********************************************


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

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

www.globalresearch.ca
24 January 2005


snip

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

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

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

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

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

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

more...



Thanks to TruthIsAll here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4154682

[MelissaB]

16. Georgia voters are Diebold guinea pigs

Yesterday, thanks to Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, a new window opened on the facts of electronic voting. We discovered the State of Georgia agreed to use Georgia voters as guinea pigs and Diebold's beta test of electronic voting.

We learned yesterday that Georgia's 2002 election was fraught with errors, mistakes and a massive failure of the Diebold voting system.

The 2002 General Election in Georgia was the "beta test" of Diebold's touchscreen voting system and Georgia's elected officials agreed to the test, paying Diebold $54 million dollars in taxpayer money for the "honor."

More: http://www.dembloggers.com/story/2005/7/19/232324/915

Video included!


Thanks to Bill Bored here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4148506

[MelissaB]

17. Toon about freedom of the press

Thanks to blondeatlast here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4162056#4162070

[MelissaB]

19. Fed Court Upholds Volusia County Decision NOT to Use Diebold Touchscreens

Court Upholds Volusia County Decision to NOT Use Diebold Touchscreen Voting Machines

Florida County at Center of Battle Between Several Disabled Rights Groups
Emergency Appeal Filed by Group Who Received $1 Million Donation from Diebold


The BRAD BLOG has learned, a Federal District Court has ruled against the National Federation for the Blind (NFB) who had filed suit against Volusia County, Florida earlier this month to force the county to use paperless Electronic Voting Machines in the upcoming fall elections there.

The NFB has decided late in the day to file an emergency appeal to that Federal District Court decision.

This debate, and the decision by the District Court in Orlando, could have far-reaching applications in the national debate concerning touchscreen voting machines for which the NFB has been an advocate nationwide.

The objectivity in regard to the NFB's national campaign for paperless touchscreen voting machines, or DRE's, has been questioned by several groups due to the NFB's receipt of a $1 Million contribution from America's largest voting machine company, Diebold, Inc...

Full Story, Complete Court Order and more on NFB's $1 Million Donation from Diebold:
http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00001616.htm



Thanks to Amaryllis here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x385051