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Edited on Sat Jan-14-06 12:53 PM by OPERATIONMINDCRIME
Some Important Stuff In Here:
Q: bob please comment on HCPB.
A: I believe that HCPBs must be mandatory and counted at the precinct level. I was an international election observer and author of the report on El Salvador's election in 1994 and I witnessed far more voters at my precinct voting on paper, and their votes were easily counted by hand. No partisan private corporation should be allowed to count the ballots.
Q:I'd love to hear about your DC trip in December.
A: I was in DC Dec. 7 to brief the Progressive Caucus. There were about 12 reps in attendance and about 50 staff members. There was a noticable shift in attitude from modest interest to a keen understanding among the representatives and staff as a result of the GAO report results.
There is ongoing discussion about having field forums throughout the United States. People should write to Rep. Conyers' office to let him know you will support these forums and you'll hold one in your town. There's hope that we'll get them broadcast on C-SPAN and other outlets.
Rush Holt stayed for the entire briefing and has an excellent grasp of the subject and perhaps the best bill. He took a copy of my recent book.
I also met with McKinney, Jackson, Jr., and Lynn Woolsey in their offices and taped interviews for a documentary. I went to Cleveland shortly after that and taped an interview with her. She was great in the interview and we will be posting the video on the freepress.org soon.
Q: What would be focus of field forums?
A: The focus of the field forums would be to bring the tens of thousands of pages of evidence from the 2004 election fraud into public view, as well as showing the video material which is often the most damning. We would also demonstrate the vulnerabilities of the evoting system and document in factual terms with charts and graphs the political connections between the evoting companies and the Repub Party. It also would force the mainstream media because the Congressional reps would be in attendance, to cover the forums.
Q: Election fraud in Cleveland 2004
A: Cleveland vote counting: My co-authors Wasserman and Rosenfeld and I are just finishing up a book of documents about the stolen election of 2004 for the New Press. One chapter deals with counting the vote and we have specific analysis from Richard Hayes Phillips and others on Cleveland. Its clear there was a suppression of votes in the urban area.
I'd like to take a look at your analysis. I see you've forwarded it. I'd like to get it into the book or into another project we are working which is a digital archive which will contain sworn statements and testimony as well as credible social science analysis.
I think we have to continue to print this material as much as possible and post it prior to the 2006 election. I have recently made a public records request for all 88 counties in Ohio to preserve the ballots from the 2004 election, the Hackett election and the 2005 election.
We are working with J30 and other groups in Ohio to make sure all suspect counties are counted. If you forward your analysis, we would be happy to have people we work with look at it and post it on the freepress.org.
I also think we need to ask for a HAVA moratorium and start a direct campaign for paper ballots all over the country. I think this begins by pressuring local board of elections to ensure voter verfied paper ballots in every jurisdiction.
Q: Any chance that we could kick HAVA out along with its author?
A: The criminal charges in Ohio related to Coingate and the current congressional scandal involving Rep. Ney should force him and many other Repubs from office. In the end, as the dots are connected, people will realize that the money laundering in Ohio was deliberate and criminal. And the ties to the Bush family are well documented.
Most of this was put in place by a former intelligence office, Paul Mifsud, who co-managed Daddy Bush's campaign in 1980 and 88. He was Voinvoich's Chief of Staff. If we can tie all of these corruption scandals into HAVA, and show that it was a deliberate attempt to undermine democracy, then I think we can dump it.
Q: Any recourse for Ohio if those devastating bills pass there?
A: Short of mass agitation on the street and civil disobedience if it passes, I don't see how the Democratic Party gets around the implications of HB3. It will disenfranchise the key Democratic blocks - blacks, the elderly, poor, college students - who played such a key role in the 2004 election.
The best recourse would be through the courts. I think sustained and aggressive litigation combined with hardline attacks on the Repub Party as racist and criminal could overturn it.
Most likely we would have to run constitutional amendment campaigns and raise money throughout the U.S. to counter the right wing propaganda machine.
Q: Rebecca Mercuri. has just sent out an email advocating the use of a lottery ball type machine to pick random precincts for VVPB audits. What is your take on VVPB Mandatory audits?
DO you like the sliding scale-- if a race is close- use a higher % audit etc.
A: I believe with the nature of the machines, that there's going to have to be a higher percent in close elections. The problem we saw in Ohio was that the county boards essentially were allowed to interpret random as NON-random and their obvious reliance on private technicians to select precincts to recount.
That why the trial slated for August on the recount is so important.
I support any truly random method of selection. In Lucas County where we have witnesses who said Diebold helped pick the precincts for recount and one had no votes on the memory card and Diebold changed the memory card -- this is what we have to prohibit.
Q: My question is about the Cincinnati Enquirer and Warren County lockdown: Since the Cincinnati Enquirer for whatever reason did not adequately investigate the lies told by various members of Warren County regarding the so called terror threat that caused them to bar independent observation of the vote tabulation. Could the Toledo Blade investigate this story or do newspapers respect territory?
A: The Toledo Blade could easily report on Warren County if it wished. The key thing to remember about Warren Cty is that employees were told on Thursday that there might be a homeland security threat on the Tuesday election day in 2004. The purpose of the lockdown I believe was not so much to keep the observers out, but as an excuse to divert the ballots to an unauthorized warehouse under the control of a Repub Party hack.
That's when Bush picked up 14,000 extra votes. I have a map of the location of the warehouse and have a witness, should we get this back in court, to testify.
Q: Is instant run-off voting a viable solution to the current exclusionary system? I have tried to get my Sec of State (Oregon) to give it a shot but they keep citing establishment clause issues. In my opinion, since it is several elections being held on one ballot that there is no violation of the one person one vote issue. Am I missing something?
A: Are they referring to the Oregon constitution or the US Constitution? I don't see how instant runoff voting, if adopted by the people, would in any way violate the US Constitution, which mandates merely a "republican" form of government.
I will look into this more. I am a fan of instant runoff voting.
Q: Do you think awareness is changing from "Well, maybe we should make sure the technology is reliable" to "Why the hell are private companies counting our votes with secret software?" ? Even Kerry seems to be getting the message.
A: You're right. Kerry said on Ed Schultz's show that we shoudn't be allowing private companies to secretly count the ballot. That the bottom line battle at this point. It's basic, it's simple.
Yes, I think there a major shift among certain people in the Democratic Party including Kerry and Dean to believe that the private companies should be driven out of the process.
Q: The 3893 extra votes in a Gahanna. Any Explanation Yet?
A: First, the machines were put out well in advance of election day at the New Life Church, a church affiliated with Jerry Falwell.
Some machines went out up to a month in advance.
A Repub. computer expert I spoke with believed the machine was hacked at the site, but they of course claimed it was a "prank."
The numbers were too easy to uncover.
My thought is that the number was deliberately high to add to a high vote total, which resulted in Kerry conceding, because he thought he was losing by 138,000 + votes.
Recall that in certification alone, Kerry picked up 19,000 votes, just from fixing all the election day errors.
Officially, the explanation given by the Franklin County Board of Elections was that there was a "transmisson" error from one of the six sites that the data was taken to and transmitted to the Board. I asked a question in a recent article, was the NSA or any of these other agencies that were spying on data during this period, involved in monitoring (or changing) the electronic transmissions on election night?
A subcontractor who worked for the Sec. of State said there's real-time transmission of data between Blackwell's office and the county boards. There's at least four federal/state agencies who have back doors into the system.
Q: What is our best tack in counties with DREs already as we are (stuck with Sequoia) in Pinellas County, Florida??
A: I think we need extensive public records requests as to how the machines actually operate. I think citizen groups should be formed to test all the equipment. I think all public meetings of the elections boards must be attended and the public officials must be constantly grilled on the details and inner workings of the system. There should be immediate demands to put all proprietary computer code into escrow.
Moreover, there should be referendums demanding an acutal verified voter paper ballot, hand-counted at the precinct level.
Q: Why is the democratic party so reluctant to discuss election fraud?
A: I've spoken to many Dems on this issue, in fact am corresponding with an official from a major northeaster state. There's a tremendous fear that elected officials will be marginalized if they bring up the fraud issue.
The mainstream media and the Repubs will use the socialization of the American people to attack anyone who suggests election fraud. This is the benchmark issue. Oddly, major Repubs know that election fraud is taking place. Kevin Phillips writes in "American Dynasty" that the Bush family is incapable of running an election without a CIA manual.
Q: What is the status of exit polls in 08. The firs indication that something is amiss would be the exit polls. Do you think that it would be a good idea for some independent organization to start their own polling firm.
A: After the 2004 election, the consortium announced that it wouldn't do exit polling in the future. It is my theory that the massive "polling errors" by the Columbus Dispatch and Akron Beacon Journal in the 2005 election about the four election reform issues, has also discredited the two most accurate polling organizations in Ohio.
We must begin to raise money and encourage a nonprofit group of social scientists, not beholden to the corporate media, to begin polling operations for the 2008 election.
Q: why in your opinion is the opposition silent?
A: The Repubs know that if they stick to their talking points -- that nothing happened and there were no irregularities -- that the Dems won't have the spine to directly take on the issue. Except the Congressional Black Caucus, who deserve a lot of kudos.
The Repubs have also deliberately shifted the focus to "voter fraud" and put out the racist code words: NAACP paying people in crack to register the vote -- to further repress the vote.
We have to insist that the voting process meets international standards of basic transparency. That demand must be the starting point for real election reform, or the Repubs continue to win.
Q: Why not a class action lawsuit against Diebold ????
A: Hi Gary! Good to hear from you, old friend.
Class action against against Diebold still leaves us with partisan Repub companies. The remedies would be small and would not hurt Diebold that much. It may have value in scaring some of the other companies.
I personally think there are civil actions that can be taken in various states including Ohio.
Q: Multiple
A: I think in the states where we can get mail-in voting, it is clearly preferable to evoting, although we have to make sure that full transparency prevails here as well. We're turning up numerous irregularities with absentee ballots in OH, e.g., the double-counting of Bush ballots in 2004 in Sandusky.
Optiscans have their own problems, although preferable to evoting. You've got the problem of over-calibration where in Toledo, thousands of ballots were rejected because of stray marks on the paper invalidated the whole ballot. Or, the wrong markers were put out in Toledo and they didn't scan.
Also the software could direct the vote count to be flipped, and then you have other situations where these voting results are sent to central tabulators that are also vulnerable.
I agree with your assessment of Leon County. It is a benefit in disguise if they have to go to paper ballots there.
Q: Why are OH punchcard ballots precinct codes printed not punched?
A: This is a key question and we're currently involved in trying to find out why this is true. Our initial inquiry in Warren County leads us to ask why wasn't the actual precinct code punched into the cards? I suspect it makes it easier to cheat or to stuff pre-punched ballots if there are no punched precinct codes.
Q: do you think gore will say monday that the election was stolen from him???
that the * boys are stealing elections??
A: I believe Gore will boldly state the obvious. That we're having a fundamental shift towards an authoritarian government. I hope that he has the courage to say what Jimmy Carter said last year -- that the 2000 election was stolen. But he will probably focus more on the spying and torture issues and the environmental treaties Bush refuses to sign.
Q: Citizens everywhere are fed up and know that this issue is the big, fat pink elephant sitting in all our living rooms. They are sick and tired of our elected leaders not speaking out about this. But what about MoveOn?? Do you know why they haven't picked up this torch and run with it on the NATIONAL level???
A: I think they've created a huge political operation and they want to play it safe by sticking to consensus bread and butter issues as they see it.
They're afraid of being marginalized also. We really owe Vanity Fair, Harper's and In These Times and the bloggers a great debt of gratitude for being able to confront the election fraud issue. True Majority is moving in our direction and has been sponsoring forums, including a recent one on Dec. 14 that Mark Crispin Miller and I spoke at.
The Dean people, DFA and PDA have both been good on the issue. I recently spoke in MI before the DFA.
Q: related to your candidacy for governor:
If I may ask,
What issues other than the election system are at the top of your list?
How do you anticipate your candidacy affecting the governor's race in general?
A: I promised not to write about this matter on this blog. There may be other forums about that.
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