How The Election Integrity Story Broke Here On DU - An Interview With Althecat On Oped News

[althecat]

From: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0907/S00129.htm
&
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Interview-with-Scoop-s-Ala-by-Joan-Brunwasser-090707-183.html

US Election Integrity IV with Scoop's Alastair Thompson - Part 1

By Joan Brunwasser

Election Integrity Ed., OpEdNews

First Published at OpEdNews - July 7, 2009

Welcome to OpEdNews, Alastair. You're an unknown quantity to many of our American readers. Yet your creation, Scoop.co.nz, been around for over ten years. Can you describe what Scoop is and what you do?

Joan, it's a pleasure to be answering questions about Scoop here on OpEdNews. We have watched this site grow over several years to occupy a similar place to that which Scoop started to stake out when we launched in 1999

… snip …

And, (and this will be the bit that your readers are most interested in) we also publish free and frank commentary and some press releases from around the world. In this area of publication, we concentrate on stories which are either being ignored in the mainstream or which are receiveing insufficient attention. Our US coverage for example has concentrated on subjects like: the lies that started the Iraq war, corporate malfeasance and criminality, impeachment, unanswered questions in the official 911 narrative, and the weaknesses in the US election system - particularly in relation to electronic voting machine vulnerablities.

…snip …

How did you become interested in examining the underbelly of American elections?

Through 2002, we had been following the drumbeats to war and publishing dissident views on the subject. Perhaps because of our coverage of that and issues like Unanswered Questions we were added to the press release distribution list of BlackBoxVoting.org founder and director Bev Harris.

In October 2002, we published a press release "Republicans Make the US Elections Voting Machines" from Bev Harris.

On the eve of the 2002 midterm elections, ES&S demanded removal of the article "Voting Machine Company Demands Removal Of Articles". We did not comply and instead published several more releases from Bev Harris.

On 12 November a week after the midterms, I personally decided to look a bit deeper into the record and published "American Coup: Mid-Term Election Polls vs Actuals" a report which found a pattern of inconsistencies around the critical senate and gubernatorial races which occurred in that election round.

That article, and several of the Bev Harris releases, were picked up by several big US websites - notably by Mark Karlin at Buzzflash.com and achieved very high levels of traffic. Little did we realize what was to come next.

Don't stop there, Alastair.

Well, the first thing that happened is that the story was hard to get traction around. Not only was it hard to get anyone to report anything about the subject, but criticism for us daring to attack the credibility of election results came thick and fast. But there was also considerable support. It was a fun time.

William Rivers Pitt was one of the first off the blocks to touch on the subject and Faun Otter had already written on it. Scoop started following the story closely and publishing anything we could find.

Then, in February 2003, we had a breakthrough - Bev Harris found an open FTP site with all the source code to the Diebold voting machines. These reports were closely followed by a report in the Guardian Newspaper and this fantastic report out of Baltimore. Salon's Farhad Manjoo joined the beat a few days later.

Scoop was rapidly becoming a clearing house for information on this new and fascinating area of inquiry. Bev Harris was telling me she was onto some really big material, (she rang to tell me) but then went a bit quiet. In March, elements of the Democratic Party finally woke up to what was going on.

But the big break was still ahead - it was to do with the breakthrough in February and the cache of Diebold source files.

Let's pause here, Alastair. Our readers are invited to join us shortly for the second part of this interview.

*************

PART 2

From: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0907/S00130.htm
&
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Interview-with-Scoop-s-Ala-by-Joan-Brunwasser-090709-918.html

At the end of part one of our interview, you left off with Bev Harris's breakthrough discovery about Diebold. Please don't leave us hanging, Alastair!

In June 2003, (after the war started) Bev contacted me by phone. She had been trying valiantly to get computer scientists to look at the source code she had uncovered with no success. She was also becoming a little concerned for her own safety. Her own inquiries into the source code had confirmed that the machines and tabulators were foolishly hackable but getting someone official on the record to say so was proving impossible. Most scientists were afraid that if they broke the easily cracked zip passwords on some of the files they would be opening themselves up to felony prosecution under the DMCA .

We decided to proceed to publish Bev's findings as they stood.

On July 8 2003 we did so in a one-two punch. First up was my commentary on Bev's findings "Bigger Than Watergate" and then, seven minutes later, Bev's expose report "Inside a US Election Vote Counting Program" which explained in detail just how easy it is to hack a US election without being detected, if you have access to the tabulation computer.

In the first story, a link was also published to a copy of the cache of Diebold source files data.

Over the next few days, the story went ballistic. It was linked off of Slashdot.org and copies of both stories were posted on hundreds of websites across the US and the world - including Buzzflash.com and Whatreallyhappened.org. It was even translated into German and Robert Cringely of PBS picked it up.

Meanwhile, the cache of data files was downloaded hundreds of times - often by military computers - but most importantly by a group of scientists at Johns Hopkins University. And on July 25, they published their report, "Analysis of an Electronic Voting System."The source of the files they used is acknowledged in the footnotes.

The academic paper which examined the vulnerabilities of Diebold's touchscreen software was reported in the New York Times, "Computer Voting is Open to Easy Fraud, Experts Say" and suddenly it was game on . (You can see just how widely the NYT story was picked up here.)

I then introduced myself to the election reform crew at the Democratic Underground which was then the clubhouse for the team researching this stuff, and we prepared to do battle to get something done about this mess.

Well, having worked the election integrity beat since 2005, I'm not so confident that we've actually made much progress over the years. Media exposure is an important first step. But we're still working toward getting widespread recognition of the dangers of computerized voting to democratic values. What progress can you point to?

Precisely.

Actually, knowledge is only a small part of the solution, and, since 2002, we have seen three sets of compromised elections.

And probably most sad of all - nothing concrete is being done even now - and given the track record of the election fraudsters, I would fully expect the 2010 midterms to be compromised.

And when you realise that the corrupt election system is also being used to run primary races, you may quickly figure out why even with control of the House and the Senate, Obama is finding it tough going getting his agenda in place.

In the aftermath of the original revelations of 2003, I expected there to be significant and rapid moves to fix the problems. But precisely the opposite happened - election officials dug in and defended their machines - they called the election integrity movement names and attempted to sideline us.

Meanwhile, the media were little better, and even after the 2004 election, they were poking the borax - though at least then they did in fact report the idea of stolen elections on the front pages.

Unfortunately, politicians and naysayers have persistently maintained the view that unless there is a smoking gun they will not believe what they want not to believe.

The tragedy is that there is a smoking gun - one that emerged in the aftermath of the events described above.

After the source code leak, two more sets of leaks followed in the summer of 2003. First, the Diebold memos (made famous by the Swarthmore College civil disobedience action). These memos contained some interesting additional information about the Volusia County incident in the 2000 election.

In October 2003, I published my version of this story "Diebold Memos Disclose Florida 2000 E-Voting Fraud" based on information provided by Bev Harris. Bev's version of the same story can be found in her book on the subject.

This story proves election fraud has happened.

The timing, scale and nature of the discrepancy is such that it unquestionably played a part in the premature award of the 2000 election to George Bush by network news anchors on election night. It cannot be explained by any other credible explanation except computer hacking. It is the smoking gun.

Thank you, Alastair. We'll pause here with the smoking gun. When we come back, we'll talk about the 2004 presidential election, online independents, Scoop's mission statement, and the stable of Americans that write for Scoop. I hope you'll join us.

*****

Interview Continuing at OPED News Over The Next Few Days….

See..
http://www.opednews.com/

NOTE: The interview has three more parts to come and features a few more well known names from around here and the Election Reform Discussion Forum.

[althecat]

1. Visually - A story which changed the way we looked at elections....

forever...

Google News tracks the Diebold story... circa 2003

[yowzayowzayowza]

2. "...poking the borax..."

"poke borack/borax—tease, make fun of, ridicule, especially covertly."

http://www.artistwd.com/joyzine/australia/strine/p-4.php

New one on me!!

[althecat]

4. I often forget about the difference in idiomatic language..... but hey its all English...

[tbyg52]

3. K, R, and thank you! nt

[gkhouston]

5. K&R. This is something worth reading and remembering because a lot of

the problems are still with us.

[althecat]

12. yes... nearly all of them.... but at least we have our eyes open now...

These are issues that are addressed in the subsequent parts of this IV.

[EFerrari]

6. Al! Our tireless election reformer! K&R

:kick:

[althecat]

19. Thanks...

[truedelphi]

7. The Election Integrity issue is my initial reason becoming a member here.

K & R.

[althecat]

27. Cheers TD

:kick:

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

8. Its disgusting to see Bev Harris promoted on anniversary of Andy Stephenson's death

Considering her efforts at destroying his reputation and telling people that he
was faking illness. She did this publicly posting it on her website when we were trying to raise money for surgery to save his life. Oh, and she fired him right after his sister died and right when he got ill. So he didn't have health insurance.

June, 2005
Bad stuff for Black Box
The Life and Tragic Times of An American Activist
By Carol Sterritt

On May 12th, Andy Stephenson believed that he was heading for life-saving surgery. Who stopped his needed medical operation from taking place? And why does this matter so much to so many voting rights organizers?

Shortly after the election, Stephenson got word that his sister had died. He headed back to Texas for her wake and burial. Meanwhile, Harris was engaged in a battle for prime time news coverage. To many participants in the election investigations, it seemed that the fraud involved in the Presidential election should be loudly trumpeted by the media. However, this was not the case. Rumor was wild on the Internet that the press had been Òlocked-downÓ on this issue. Since less than fifty days earlier, the White House had helped to exile veteran reporter Mary Mapes and her boss, Dan Rather, from CBS news, the mainstream media was only too eager to fall in line with whatever the President wanted and the truth be damned.

The only small glimmer of hope was Keith Olbermann of MSNBC News, who had a news program on Cable TV. He alluded to voter fraud on more than one show. He put out feelers that he would be open to hearing from Harris. OlbermannÕs people called Stephenson about the need to reach Harris. There was a mix-up in Stephenson contacting Harris. And somehow or another, Harris and Olbermann came to blows.

The incredible fallout for all of this was the following posting, on the extremely popular Black Box Voting website: ÒÐDecember 14th, 2004-- The six-member Board of Directors of Black Box Voting has unanimously voted to terminate the employment of Associate Director Andy Stephenson, for:
- Repeatedly lying to various members of the board of directors
- Misrepresenting results of investigations
- Mishandling telephone communications and withholding information
- Temper tantrums and hanging up on members of the organization
- Outburst at the Florida Supervisor of Elections meeting, offending public officials
- Failing to assist, show up, or even call while Kathleen Wynne and Bev Harris repeatedly reached him to request assistance when they were accosted by Volusia County police. Black Box Voting apologizes for these problems. (After tomorrow afternoon, this message will be moved to the discussion forums.)Ó

The reputation-ruining announcement was read by tens of thousands of people.
Rumors circulated on the Internet. It was whispered that Stephenson had embezzled; he had blown off important meetings; he had failed Bev Harris in basic ways. To people who had dealt with Stephenson for much of the past four months, there were suspicious naggings. He had just seemed too good to be true. Intelligent, generous, jovial, witty and brash. A kind word when you needed one. Impeccably honest. And of course, that Southern charm tempered by a most progressive heart. Was perhaps all of this a carefully constructed front? It seemed that his very goodness worked against him.
But sometimes goodness is simply goodness. Within a week or so, most activists sided with him. They felt revulsion that the many clearly trumped up charges were publicly aired. Some felt that most of the charges were projections. ÒHarris is claiming ANDY has temper outbursts!?!Ó one activist emailed me incredulously.

Stephenson didn't protest the denunciations. Instead, he was stunned. He issued no statement of rebuttal. He offered no defense. He was devastated by his sisterÕs death on the one hand, and by a loss of energy from the many overly long days when he had pursued the prize of preventing the theft of the Presidency. Late in December, when I finally spoke with Bev Harris, she remarked, ÒAnd he was handling all of the Olbermann phone calls Ð not passing them on to me. Because HE wanted to be on the TV show with Keith. And HE was determined to beat me out of that.Ó

http://www.coastalpost.com/05/06/01.html

[althecat]

11. RIP Andy Stephenson

He was a great guy badly treated.

The timing of this post was unfortunate - and for that I apologise.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

13. Bev Harris tried to destroy Andy and she also threatened DU with lawsuit

Her name doesn't deserve elevation.

Bev has harmed so many - its an insult to see her elevated here.

What a nasty person she is, she put all sort of nasty crap on her website about
Andy, accusing him of faking illness, publicly firing him.

Then she "cleaned" her website of her filth when she realized it wasn't helping
her and revealed her true nature.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

14. NO. It was far more than terrible. It was IMORAL and it was FATAL for Andy

and I will never forgive that women for her part in that.

Her friendship with the freepers didn't help Andy, did it?

How about their website scamdy.com ?

[althecat]

16. deleted

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

9. I remember when Harris threatened to sue DU - and she's being promoted here?

Harris accused many of filing Qui Tam suits, when it turned out that SHE was filing one

I know at least one person she accused of being in the evoting issue for the purpose
of filing a qui tam suit to make money.

Then it turns out that while Bev was accusing these folks, several of them good activists,
it was BEV who was filing a quit tam suit.

She also burned bridges with Keith Olbermann when we really needed public exposure of the
e-voting problem, at a time when few in media would listen.

Dec 14, 2004
Bev Harris: The Wheels Fall Off
A very interesting exchange took place between Harris, the founder of BlackBoxVoting.org, and Air America's Randi Rhodes on Randi's show today.

Randi has been a staunch supporter of Harris' efforts to uncover voter fraud in Florida, even going so far as to contribute $50 of her own money, and to urge her listeners to kick in a dollar apiece. Randi was a true believer.

That is, until today.

http://www.hoffmania.com/blog/2004/12/bev_harris_the_.html

Harris hurt alot of people

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

10. Bev Harris BANNED from Democratic Underground - why promote her here?

Site Bars Black Box Voting Head
Bev Harris, founder of Black Box Voting, has been banned from posting on Democratic ...

In a written statement, site administrators said Friday that they barred Bev Harris, founder of Black Box Voting, because her postings on the site "have made positive discussion of verified voting increasingly difficult."

Democratic Underground said Harris' postings have been belligerent at times to other members of the forum and that she used the website to threaten its operators with lawsuits.

"We no longer believe that it is productive to allow her to use DU as a platform to promote herself while simultaneously trashing us, our moderators and others who have been previously supportive of her cause," site administrators wrote in the statement.

www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2004/12/65928

The harm she did outweighed the good she had done.

[althecat]

15. deleted

[proud2BlibKansan]

17. "The harm she did outweighed the good she had done."

Amen.

It's repulsive to see anything she did praised here.

[althecat]

18. Interview Part 3 - Michael Collins the 2004 Election, and Online Independent Media

From: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0907/S00132.htm

Scoop's Mission, the 2004 Election, and Online Independents

US Election Integrity IV with Scoop's Alastair Thompson - Part 3

By Joan Brunwasser
Election Integrity Ed., OpEdNews
First Published at OpEdNews - July 11, 2009


Welcome back, Alastair and our readers, for the next installment of our conversation. When we left off, you were just discussing the "smoking gun" from the 2000 presidential election. Where to from there?

And then, there was 2004.

In 2007, Michael Collins (who has been writing for Scoop ever since the 2004 election) wrote a fantastic piece based on inconsistencies in the official count in 2004. This sparked my writing- Bigger Than Watergate II - a.k.a. Election 2004 vs George On The Block & The White Ghosts Of NYC and the publication of Michael Collins' The Urban Legend.

This article concluded for me the debate around the 2004 election in which George Bush - already hopelessly unpopular managed to receive more votes than any Presidential candidate ever. That he managed to do so in urban neighborhoods just makes the entire story of the 2004 election bullcrap.

In recent years, Michael Collins has been a stalwart on the subject of election fraud but we have published articles by lots of people and often carry the reports of the inimitable Brad Friedman.

--- A fairly complete set of Scoop coverage of the issue (including archives back to 2002) can be found here.---

In the lead up to the 2008 elections, we ran an advertising giveaway campaign to support election integrity efforts and launched this archive. We expect it will come back to life in a big way next year.

Unfortunately, this is not a story which is even remotely near finished.

You live thousands of miles from America. Why do you care so much about our compromised elections? (It's a bit ironic since, over here, it's like pulling teeth to get the media to deal with the subject seriously).

I think the answer to that is the context in which this story arose. In 2002, we were living in a post 9/11 world full of fear. The US was marching toward war - a war which was going to affect everybody on the planet.

Scoop had always had a fairly broad global outlook. And, in the aftermath of 9/11, we had already started helping US dissidents express views about their own country. While now there are loads of websites like RawStory and OpEdNews which are working in this area, back then, there were only a handful and for whatever reason Scoop had found itself involved fairly deeply in the alternative online news space with regards to the US.

So, when the idea emerged that the administration of George Bush - which seemed determined to destroy peace at whatever cost - might not have been legitimately elected, (and perhaps, more importantly, could not be restrained by the electorate because the electoral machinery was being hacked) we jumped on it.

And then there is the simple scoop in it all.

Thanks to Bev Harris, we had the scoop. And while most publishers in the US were too fearful to publish, we wanted the scoop; so we did.

And since then, we have had the great enjoyment of working with loads of fantastic Americans and publishing their work from the likes of Mark Crispin Miller, Paul Lehto to Lynn Landes, Thom Hartmann, Nancy Tobi, Cliff Arnebeck, John Gideon, Ellen Theisen, Ernest Patridge, Greg Palast and, of course, your good self, Joan Brunwasser. (Plus, of course, the previously mentioned Michael Collins and Brad Friedman). It has been a pleasure to assist a bunch of dedicated and true patriots in a mission which is so important to the entire planet.

Finally, there is the perspective that comes with distance. Not only am I far away from harm and the fear that comes with working with such difficult matters. I think, in a significant way, it has been easier for me, as an outsider, to cover this issue as a publisher precisely because it is not my own electoral system which is broken. So, I do not have quite such an emotional block in dealing with the issue that so many US based media appear to have.

I found this gem at your website. It looks to be your mission statement:

"Scoop believes in the power of information to transform lives. It believes in the power of the internet to resolve conflict. And it believes in the power of compelling ideas to propel themselves into political consciousness if they are able to get exposure and be debated. Scoop is, necessarily, a forum that is neither censored through its own prejudices nor controlled by a multinational media conglomerate. Therefore Scoop's mission is: To be an agent of positive change."

Comments?

Well yes, that's it, in a nutshell. Our mission as it has refined itself over a decade of doing what we do. And we believe it most fervently.

The internet is the best thing - perhaps the only thing - that has the ability to counteract the forces of corporate and elite power which are enveloping the globe and preventing us from reaching our full potential as humanity. Online freedom of expression is growing in power as the internet grows. We can see this most recently in Iran and during the last election cycle in the amazing Obama campaign.

However, it is not all of the internet which is doing this. Rather, it is the online independents who are working on a shoestring. Websites like OpEdNews, Buzzflash, consortiumnews, gregpalast.com and SmirkingChimp and the people who write for them and who blog and post in forums and vote on digg and reddit who are enabling the internet to achieve its potential.

We shall overcome in the end - and it will be the internet which will enable it to happen. To quote DemocraticUnderground member Ungmoose "God bless the internet and Al Gore for inventing it."

Well, it's nice to see you haven't lost your sense of humor. When we resume, Alastair lays out his views on how to accomplish meaningful election reform. I hope you'll join us.

* Link to part one of Interview with Alastair Thompson

* Link to part one of Interview with Alastair Thompson

*************

Author's Bio: Joan Brunwasser is a co-founder of Citizens for Election Reform (CER) which exists for the sole purpose of raising the public awareness of the critical need for election reform. We aim to restore fair, accurate, transparent, secure elections where votes are cast in private and counted in public. Electronic (computerized) voting systems are simply antithetical to democratic principles.

CER set up a lending library to achieve the widespread distribution of the DVD Invisible Ballots: A temptation for electronic vote fraud. Within eighteen months, the project had distributed over 3200 copies across the country and beyond. CER now concentrates on group showings, OpEd pieces, articles, reviews, interviews, discussion sessions, networking, conferences, anything that promotes awareness of this critical problem. Joan has been Election Integrity Editor for OpEdNews since December, 2005. Her articles also appear at RepublicMedia.TV and Scoop.co.nz.

[GuvWurld]

21. Scoop's mission is: To be an agent of positive change

Congrats on the recognition, Al. I've really enjoyed these interview segments and seeing you get some overdue credit. Despite having worked with you in the past, I never realized your mission statement was so directly aligned with how I've practiced and defined advocacy journalism. That link goes to my glossary, found at my new blog, Manifest Positivity, and also in my new free e-book, We Do Not Consent, Volume 2 (.pdf). What do you think of my definition and how you feel about applying the term to what you do?

Peace,
Dave

PS: Right now is a soft launch of both new book and blog. Paperbacks will be printed in a few weeks and I'll be promoting both more thoroughly.

[althecat]

23. That's really cool

Dave,

I think Advocacy Journalism is defintely part of what we do. The other (and probably larger part) is to simply provide a mechanism through which people can communicate with each other, the media and their political leaders. Simply be providing a very effective channel for such communication we become an agent for positive change by speeding up the learning process and improving the levels of understanding in the political process.

Regards
Alastair

[EFerrari]

20. Kick

[DemReadingDU]

22. The Election Integrity issue is how I came to DU

There was no way Bush could have legally won in 2004.

[althecat]

24. Definitely...And It's why I came to DU too

I think there is a lot of DUers who were turned on by the issue. A few who weren't also mind. :)

[EFerrari]

25. Kick

[althecat]

26. A Prescription for Healthy US Elections - Hand Counting, Paper Ballots, Vigilance & Unity

Alastair's Prescription for Healthy US Elections

US Election Integrity IV with Scoop's Alastair Thompson - Part 4

By Joan Brunwasser
Election Integrity Ed., OpEdNews
First Published at OpEdNews - July 14, 2009

Q: We resume our conversation with Scoop's Alastair Thompson. You may be far away (New Zealand) but you get it about election fraud, stolen elections, and broken election systems. We in America who are working towards meaningful election reform feel like we've essentially been banging our heads against the wall for the last five years. Any advice for us?

A: Having watched this process now for seven years, I have some strong views on this.

Q: Okay, Alastair. Take it away.

A: Firstly, there is the question of what you should be seeking.

Since the beginning of this debate, there have been arguments about what technology is acceptable. In particular voter verified paper ballots , paper trails and optical scan systems. And then there are arguments about audits and recounts.

We now know that none of these systems can protect actual election integrity.

Optical scanning machines are hackable - Harri Hursti showed that conclusively.Paper supplements to voting machines simply do not work - the printing machines jam, the paper records get lost and most importantly it is impossible to get a proper recount performed.

For the same reason - the human and legal problem of recounting - I have no confidence in audit systems used around optical scan ballots though this would be much better than what you have now.

Basically, in order to function an election system must deliver a reliable result on the night or shortly thereafter. The result should not be capable of being manipulated except through a massive conspiracy. If you set the bar high for the fraudsters then they will stop.

In terms of understanding the solution to the problem, you need to also consider the problem from a cautionary perspective.meaning, the solution to the problem needs to deter an active criminal conspiracy from its evil ways. If you simply assume that the system is vulnerable but not actually under attack you will find the wrong answer.

On the basis of this analysis, I have come to the conclusion that the only method of voting and vote counting that works is: hand counted paper ballots, counted at the place of voting on the night of voting.

Yes, this requires thousands of poll workers but it works perfectly well everywhere else in the world - why not the USA?

And to make it easier to vote I would also suggest you make election day a public holiday.

So that is where I think you need to go - next question is how to get there. And here is where it gets horribly difficult.

The first problem: Not understanding the enemy.

Because there are so many people who do not believe elections have been hacked, and perhaps simply as a defense mechanism against the enormity of realization that democracy is being attacked at its very core, even staunch election integrity activists sometimes miss the wood for the trees.

The ability to control who is elected at a micro level is the ultimate form of political control. It makes Jim Crow, ballot stuffing intimidation and other forms of election fraud pale into insignificance.

It is an enormously profitable venture and one which will be being extremely well organized and it will have its tentacles into everything. It will be growing more powerful and more sophisticated with every electoral cycle and it will be growing ever harder to detect.

The solution:

Do not buy into the bullshit about whether this is a real or imaginary threat. If the system is as vulnerable, as we know it to be - and if we have criminal conspiracies of the kind that occurred in Ohio in 2004 preventing recounts then you know that this is real. Act on that knowledge. Assume that everything you do is being actively undermined by sophisticated vested interests - a criminal conspiracy - and be very determined about sticking to your game and ignoring distractions and disruptions. Defeating this enemy will be hard and it will require a massive political will from the grassroots up; the political superstructure is already unreliable.

The second problem: Lack of common purpose

Meanwhile what we actually have is an election reform movement is unfortunately somewhat riven with internal arguments - many of them around the issues raised above. And people have dug themselves into trenches around these points. Hand counted paper ballots are impractical and impossible. Auditing is the answer, etc.

As long as there is no clarity of demand from the public it is astonishingly easy for the politicians and corporate cowards to dodge the issue. Recall what happened with the Holt Bill.

Clearly some kind of unity of purpose is required. This means discipline and compromise.

The solution:

Hold a national meet-up of election reform outfits and hammer out a consensus - it may not be one everybody agrees to but that's what politics is about. And progress is better than no progress.

The third problem: A cycle of interest

We have all seen what happens in this movement. Around an election, and especially in the weeks immediately after it, everybody gets upset and excited.

Months pass and interest wanes people get frustrated and by the time the next election comes around it is too late to do anything about it.

The solution:

As a movement, aim for a realistic timetable for change and then pursue that doggedly. 2010 is probably too early for real change to be implemented, so aim for 2012; aim to pass a bill which fixes the 2012 presidential election in 2010. That way, the "there is not enough time" tossers can jump in a lake.

And I have more thoughts, but those are the biggies.


Q: Well, this certainly gives us a lot to think about. When we return for the last installment of our interview, Alastair will talk about the fourth estate, and the role of independent online media.

--

Part One of my interview with Alastair (also at Scoop here) [br />Part Two of my interview with Alastair (also at Scoop here)
Part Three of my interview with Alastair (also at Scoop here)

*************

Author's Bio: Joan Brunwasser is a co-founder of Citizens for Election Reform (CER) which exists for the sole purpose of raising the public awareness of the critical need for election reform. We aim to restore fair, accurate, transparent, secure elections where votes are cast in private and counted in public. Electronic (computerized) voting systems are simply antithetical to democratic principles.

CER set up a lending library to achieve the widespread distribution of the DVD Invisible Ballots: A temptation for electronic vote fraud. Within eighteen months, the project had distributed over 3200 copies across the country and beyond. CER now concentrates on group showings, OpEd pieces, articles, reviews, interviews, discussion sessions, networking, conferences, anything that promotes awareness of this critical problem. Joan has been Election Integrity Editor for OpEdNews since December, 2005. Her articles also appear at RepublicMedia.TV and Scoop.co.nz.

[althecat]

28. US Election Integrity IV (5)- American Media's Failure To Report On Voting Vulnerabilities

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0907/S00202.htm

Alastair's Take on American Media

US Election Integrity IV with Scoop's Alastair Thompson - Part 5

By Joan Brunwasser
Election Integrity Ed., OpEdNews
First Published at OpEdNews - July 16, 2009

My colleague, Nancy Tobi read this interview - all four installments - and commented: "I wanted to hear more about the mystery of the American media ignoring this huge issue, more about the role of the alternative media. Does Thompson consider himself a 'citizen journalist' or a professional journalist? While his thoughts on how to repair our elections are interesting, I'd like to hear his thoughts on the fourth estate and the role they are no longer playing as check and balance, etc." I went back to Alastair, who graciously agreed to take a whack at answering Nancy's questions in the final portion of our wide-ranging interview.

That's a curly one.

Firstly I am a professional journalist in NZ - I started out in newspapers in 1989 and set up my first online news outlet in 1997. The freedom of online journalism is wonderful.

As for reporting on a wider level, we are a fast dying profession both here in NZ and, I hear, in the US. As a result, frustration with the media inattention is very understandable and commonplace both here and in the US, albeit for different reasons.

Our media is different than the US - it is for starters far less resourced - here, investigative journalism has almost disappeared and the same excuse cannot be made in the US. The failure to investigate this story in particular is very sad and peculiar.

As I was looking back through the record as I was answering Joan's questions, I noticed that Farhad Manjoo from Salon started writing about this subject fairly early on in 2003. Kim Zetter from Wired also did a good job from the get go. However, there were issues with the style of both of their reporting which I think point to the problem that the election reform movement has with the media.

There is a disconnect.

We (and I put myself inside the movement now) expect the media to be interested in this story simply because it's a good story. What better story can their be than wholesale election fraud? It's the scoop of the new century, surely! Why not put a team of crack reporters on the trail, pump the numbers, pull in some scientists and get this story fixed? It is the sort of story that could make dozens of careers. That's why I called the original pieces I wrote on the subject "Bigger than Watergate".

Meanwhile, that's not the way the media see things. Not at all.

There are exceptions - Greg Palast and Robert F. Kennedy in particular, and Dan Rather - but even they have been wary about the electronic (hacking) vote fraud theory. It's a hard one to prove.

But leaving aside the aforementioned - who have tried hard - most MSM reporters approach the story on the basis that they need to first convince their editors that the story is not the paranoid ravings of a bunch of crazy nutjobs. And in doing so they have to come across very skeptical and distanced from the subject matter, be the devil's advocate.

And so from this perspective - and I count Zetter and Manjoo in this group - they essentially wait for the movement to prove to them that election fraud really is happening.

Problem is even if the smoking gun is exposed and plain to see - as it is in the Volusia County incident and in the Ohio recount conspiracy (and in terms of vulnerability of opti-scans, the Hursti hack) - they can't tell the story how it is.

Why do you think this is?

There are a bunch of reasons.

Firstly, because they have no air cover from the higher ups, their editors, etc. And they have no air cover because the real elites do not want this story reported. We could speculate as to why that is the case. Bottom line is - the lack of real democracy in the USA apparent to everybody - in terms of low voter participation, terrible voting conditions (weekday voting, queues) and organized disenfranchisement and intimidation. This is something which the power elites in both parties could have tried to fix over the past 100 years or so, but have chosen not to address.

These same people are the masters of the editors, they own the papers. It's not direct, but it is implicitly understood by editors that if they want to rock the boat they have to have a water tight case.

Add in the fact that many in the media establishment hate the blogosphere because it is destroying their industry and you have a recipe for the front page coverage in the NYT which followed the 2004 election where they effectively mocked blog theories about crooked elections without bothering to do any inquiry at all. Notwithstanding the fact that they had been running an election machinery campaign for months leading up to the election.

Which brings us to the role of the independent online media.

The fact that this issue has become part of the background to all elections in the US is down solely to the efforts of the online army involved with investigating, reporting and pushing this issue into public consciousness.

The fact that thousands of people are now mobilized and working hard to fix the election system is great.

And the fact that fantastic reporters like Brad Friedman have taken up the baton is extremely encouraging. But there are far too many stories and far too few people chasing them. And those that are chasing them are far too poorly resourced.

So, where does that leave us?

On the one hand, I suspect that for real substantive change to come it will take a very courageous MSM news organization to do their job properly. To investigate this story - scoop the opposition - and shame them into getting on the case. With a wave of media coverage calling for the fixing of democracy, then maybe real change might come.

However, I am not holding my breath waiting for this to happen. Though I would love to see (or even better, be involved with) a genuine effort to investigate past elections including election officials, voting machine manufacturers and contractors.

If anything, the media landscape is even less conducive to courageous behavior now than ever before - investigative budgets in newspapers are being annihilated - and in economic crises we have a target rich environment for investigative teams to pursue.

And so we are left doing it for ourselves - just as we have done from the beginning of this journey. And from an organizational point of view it most certainly makes no sense to count on the cavalry coming to save us.

Rather, if change is going to come, it is most likely to come through what has been building over the past seven years. A grassroots community democracy movement supported by independent online journalists and bloggers.

There has been a huge amount of progress made to date. And a long and difficult path ahead.

Well, that wraps it up. We've certainly covered a lot of ground in your analysis of both American elections and the state of journalism over here. Anything you'd like to add?

Nope...

Thanks for putting in a good word for us "online independents." It's been a true pleasure getting to know you better over this extended interview. Keep up the good work at Scoop, Alastair.

It's been fun for me, too. War stories and all that...

Part One of my interview with Alastair (also at Scoop here)
Part Two of my interview with Alastair (also at Scoop here)
Part Three of my interview with Alastair (also at Scoop here)
Part Four of my interview with Alastair (also at Scoop here)

*************

<a name=a>] Author's Bio: Joan Brunwasser is a co-founder of Citizens for Election Reform (CER) which exists for the sole purpose of raising the public awareness of the critical need for election reform. We aim to restore fair, accurate, transparent, secure elections where votes are cast in private and counted in public. Electronic (computerized) voting systems are simply antithetical to democratic principles.
CER set up a lending library to achieve the widespread distribution of the DVD Invisible Ballots: A temptation for electronic vote fraud. Within eighteen months, the project had distributed over 3200 copies across the country and beyond. CER now concentrates on group showings, OpEd pieces, articles, reviews, interviews, discussion sessions, networking, conferences, anything that promotes awareness of this critical problem. Joan has been Election Integrity Editor for OpEdNews since December, 2005. Her articles also appear at RepublicMedia.TV and Scoop.co.nz.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

29. Promoting Bev Harris = Zero Credibility.

[lonestarnot]

30. Bev Harris is apparently a crap pile.

:evilgrin:

[Kurovski]

31. Kick.

I regret that I wasn't here in time to rec. Thank you, Alastair! :thumbsup:

[althecat]

32. No worries Kurovski.... nice to see you

:bounce:

[EFerrari]

33. I came to DU to read that story.

:yourock: