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The following is a letter that I sent to Governor Phil Bredesen, Harold Ford, Jr, and our Tennessee Democratic Party chairman, Bob Tuke, several weeks ago. It tells a chilling story of what we discovered when we successfully got the central vote tabulator impounded in Memphis after the primary, and examined its innards. The amount of illegal software on the machine was mind-boggling, the number of times that the tabulator had been accessed after the primary to introduce new software was unbelievable, and the complete lack of concern of our State Election Coordinator and the Shelby County Election Commission spoke volumes.
While the Rethugs get their panties in a knot because of a handful of missing Smartcards (which I'm not that crazy about either), here is the real story of how easy it is going to be to steal the election in Memphis, in most other counties in Tennessee that have had Diebold shoved down their throats, and in too many other places around this once great nation.
I am sending this thread to Keith Olbermann in hopes that he will cover the real story of how the votes will be flipped in the birthplace of the blues on Tuesday. Peace out.
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Date: October 15, 2006
To: Governor Phil Bredesen
Congressman Harold Ford, Jr.
Bob Tuke, Chairman, Tennessee Democratic Party
From: Bernie Ellis, Organizer
Gathering To Save Our Democracy
Subject: The upcoming election train wreck in Tennessee and a plea to prevent it
As a life-long Democrat and someone who believes strongly in the power and
genius of the "consent of the governed" as the basis for establishing the
legitimacy of our government, I am writing to make you aware of what will
likely be the largest scale election fraud ever perpetrated in Tennessee
and to ask you to do something to prevent it. As someone who personally
registered 909 voters in the 2004 election, I am committed to free, fair
and verifiable elections; and I am confident (and very disheartened) that
the 2006 election in Tennessee will be none of the above.
Anyone who has paid attention to issues of election security over the past
few years can cite hundreds of examples of where this unverifiable voting
equipment has caused problems. Here in Tennessee, our own recent primary
gave us ample examples of the unreliability of this equipment. Equipment
failures, both hardware and software, occurred in many counties, most
notably in Williamson county. In addition to the equipment failures that
we are aware of, we are completely unaware of problems that may have
occurred (intentionally or unintentionally) to affect the accuracy of the
reported vote count. However, efforts by four candidates in Shelby
ounty -- Shep Wilbun, Sondra Becton, Vernon Johnson and Otis Jackson --
to challenge the propriety of their primary have surfaced evidence that
should concern all of you very much. These four candidates filed suit to
gain access to the voting equipment used in Shelby County and the vote
totals recorded there. Here is a small sampling of the chilling findings
of the review conducted there by a qualified computer software and
hardware analyst:
"Shelby County ran its August 3, 2006 election in a fashion that violated all basic security procedures.... Evidence from election official declarations and discovery documents obtained in litigation reveals that:
- Illegal and uncertified Lexar Jump Drive software was loaded onto the Diebold GEMS central tabulator, enabling secretive data transfer on small USB "key chain" memory devices.
- Other uncertified software of various kinds was loaded onto the system and, according to the event logs examined, was used. This opened the door for hand-editing of both vote totals and the reporting of election results.
- Evidence of actual attempts to manipulate election reporting results was found.
- Shelby County election officials opened the central vote totals repository to widespread network connections via the internet from all county government computers and, through them, from the internet.
- PC Anywhere, a software program which would allow opening the central tabulator to remote outside control and manipulation, was found on the central tabulator, and no explanation was given for the presence of this uncertified and highly risky software on the tabulator.
- MS-Office 2000 Professional software was also loaded on the central tabulator. One of the software programs contained therein, MS-Access, can be used to change vote totals on the software used by the tabulator without leaving traces that these manipulations had occurred."
This is only a small taste of what has been found in Shelby County through
discovery that indicates that every county using Diebold equipment in
Tennessee is ripe for (undetectable) election fraud in our general
election. When called to testify about these problems, Brook Thompson
dismissed all of them as unimportant and thereby showed himself to be a
servant of the voting machine companies (and their Republican owners),
rather than a servant of the citizens of Tennessee. Now it is up to the
three of you to do something to prevent the theft of our next election
and - through that theft - the maintenance of illegitimate control of our
government by the radical right-wingers now in power.
At this point in the campaign, every Democrat paying attention should be
excited by the prospect of what we should expect on November 7. Nationwide
polls suggest that Democrats will take back control of one or both houses
of Congress, with the projected shift in power on a scale seldom
experienced in this country. Democrats lead Republicans in all aspects of
polling on both policy and character-related questions and President
Bush's approval ratings are in the tank. And yet, with the clear prospect
that the Republicans will lose their stranglehold on Congress and, with
that loss, that in-depth investigations of numerous violations of national
law and international treaties (and even impeachment proceedings) will
follow soon after, President Bush seems oddly unconcerned and both he and
Speaker Hastert have spoken with confidence that the Republicans will
retain control of the Congress and all branches of government. Why on
earth, in the face of such deep and widespread disgust with the Republican
party, can Bush seem so unconcerned?
I would suggest that it is the same reason why Bush remained in the White
House in 2004, in the face of exit polls that showed that the American
people had overwhelmingly rejected Bush and elected John Kerry as
President. It is the same reason why Senator Max Cleland reached election
night (2002) with a 15 point lead in Georgia's polls, only to wake up the
loser. It is the same reason why you, Congressman Ford, will be favored by
a majority of Tennessee voters (perhaps a sizable majority) the night
before the election, only to wake up yourself also a loser.
"The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the
votes decide everything." Joseph Stalin
As all of you know, our group, Gathering To Save Our Democracy, has worked
hard over the past two years in Tennessee to get Tennessee counties to
choose voting systems that use or produce paper ballots, so that if there
is any reason to question the results of an election, something (paper
ballots) will be available for recounts. Despite our best efforts,
Tennessee's State Election Coordinator, Brook Thompson,
and our Secretary of State, Riley Darnell, have succeeded in
insuring that Tennessee's coming election will be the most insecure and
unverifiable election in our state's history. Those two state officials
(neither one of them either intellectually or morally qualified to serve)
have not only replaced verifiable voting systems with proprietary,
unverifiable touch-screen machines, but they have succeeded in making
Diebold the most prevalent voting machine provider for our Tennessee
counties.
What can you do? Here are four suggestions:
1) Familiarize yourself with the Shelby County situation. Go to
www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/board-auth.cgi?file=/1954/44242.html and
get the full report of what was learned in Shelby County. This site should
link you to depositions and affidavits filed there.
2) Explore any remedies that are available to us right now that would
allow Tennesseans to vote on emergency paper ballots in the upcoming
election. Nothing less is acceptable, anything less will insure that
Congressman Ford will not represent our state as our next rightfully
elected Senator.
3) Go public with your concerns. Encourage everyone to vote but tell them
that the known security problems associated with this highly risky
equipment are just too dangerous to use that equipment for anything as
important as our next election, that emergency paper ballots are our only
safe recourse.
4) Begin immediately to investigate Brook Thompson's ties to Diebold and
the other unverifiable voting equipment vendors he has foisted on our
state. As you may remember, Brook's predecessor was convicted of bribery,
back when the stakes (and the money) were not nearly so big. An
investigation of Brook Thompson, and why he has placed the integrity of
our elections at such grave risk, is long overdue.
Think about it this way: Governor Bredesen, there is nothing to prevent
every vote for Governor in Davidson and Shelby Counties from being
recorded for your opponent, with your having no recourse to ask for a
recount, other than the patent absurdity of that result. There is much
less to prevent votes from being shaved in every county from Congressman
Ford and shifted to his opponent, particularly since a loss in a race that
is being marketed as "close" would not seem quite so absurd. Regardless of
the apparent absurdity or plausibility of either result, they are both
possible with this new equipment. And the recourse for either result would
be equally as unsatisfactory - since nothing will exist to recount in
either event.
There is a fifth option you (and we) might have to explore. Google "the
battle of Athens (TN)" and read about how a group of World War II
veterans, faced with the prospect of a stolen election in McMinn County
after the war, stormed the National Guard armory, grabbed rifles and
dynamite, and fought a day-long battle with a corrupt sheriff and his
deputies to rescue their ballot boxes and throw the rascals out. Please
prevent a reprise of the Battle of Athens in our state, if for no other
reason than the next time, there will be no ballot boxes to rescue. You
must act preemptively to save our democracy. We're happy for you to get
around in front of our parade - we'd be thankful for the company and the
leadership. After all, it's only the legitimacy of our government we are
asking for. Thanks for your attention and your swift action.
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