The Gruesome Truth Is American Elections CAN & ARE BE RIGGED

[kpete]

To The American Media: Time To Face The Reality Of Election Rigging

by Jonathan Simon
April 11, 2011

........

How does the Big Lie flourish and prosper? By being criminal beyond belief. By operating in safety behind a towering "never happen here" wall of denial. By a foolish assumption of immunity. By being too big a story to be a story within the bounds of journalistic decorum.

The gruesome truth is that American elections can be rigged and are being rigged because the American media treats election rigging as something that--all evidence notwithstanding--could never happen here. Period, end of story, move on.

................

But America is the Beacon of Democracy dammit--it could never happen here. So Americans are instructed--by you, the media--to accept on pure faith that those in control of, or having access to, our privatized and concealed voting systems will devoutly serve the public trust rather than any conflicting private or partisan agenda. Any evidence that this faith is misplaced is ignored. Too dangerous. Too destablizing. Too disturbing. Too un-American. And yet, without this evidence, everything is just hypothetical, vulnerable, possible, and there is no imperative for change.

So we now bring forth a synopsis of the "evidence," knowing well that it has been as indigestible as shards of glass. We know of no easy way to make it go down. We know only that we continue to ignore it at our great peril. The grave of a democracy is a mass grave--there's room for all of us.

.......

the rest:
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2011/4135



The Little Old Lady Speaks Up:
I am 80 years old and I don’t understand anything about computers. I don’t know where the numbers Kathy was showing me ultimately came from, but they seemed to add up. I am still very, very confused about why the canvass was finalized before I was informed of the Brookfield error and it wasn’t even until the press conference was happening that I learned it was this enormous mistake that could swing the whole election. I was never shown anything that would verify Kathy’s statement about the missing vote, and with how events unfolded and people citing me as an authority on this now, I feel like I must speak up.
http://www.orchidforchange.com/parties/waukeshadems.com/ht/display/ArticleDetails/i/1343504



...............

and check this out FROM 8 MONTHS AGO:

Officials dispute reliability of Waukesha County clerk's election data system
Laurel Walker of the Journal Sentinel
Aug. 13, 2010
Nickolaus and Cummings both said the problem stems from when Waukesha County moved its network from an old, outdated Novell server - the processing unit that multiple personal computers tap into for shared services - to a Microsoft platform. Among other things, the conversion saved the county $500,000 a year, Cummings said.

Nickolaus' election system, however, depended on the old platform, so technicians restored a lone Novell server for her use, without a backup....a major upgrade to the election system was recommended, but Nickolaus has said it's unnecessary.
http://www.jsonline.com/news/waukesha/100595954.html


AND

Gore Won Florida!
If every county in Florida - not just the Republican ones - had state-of-the-art voting machines that allowed voters to correct their mistakes, Al Gore would have won by 46,466.

http://archive.democrats.com/display.cfm?id=181

[zeemike]

1. And should anyone suggest it is a fraud they will be accused of

Conspiracy theroy..and it will come not only from the right but also from the left because they have been trained to fear the label of CT.
And so it continues and will continue until elections are just a new TV reality show.

[flamingdem]

2. Yes. This is the Catch-22 - and it's hard to get enough movement against it for that reason nt

[eowyn_of_rohan]

4. Those who don't agree this is true are Willfully Ignorant at best.

And part of the problem as well. I'll probably get flamed but I don't care.

[Greybnk48]

6. I was immediately "scolded" by two co-workers

who accused me of proposing irrational, conspiracy theory because I cited a post on FB from Kos that suggested irregularities in Waukesha. There are some on DU that seem frenetic in denying the prospect of election fraud in WI. There's a fine line between being reasonable and being a pushover. Collectively, we were polite and well behaved in 2000, and again with the war--for me, never again.

[joeunderdog]

23. If you believe that transmitted credit card info can be stolen...

then you also know that your votes can be stolen. Same thing.

It's really that simple.

[robinlynne]

30. and I think elections are stolen more frequently....

[chervilant]

34. Yes, and

when I went to bed on election night 2004, at about 11:30 pm, the exit polls were projecting John Kerry as our next president. When I awoke, Dubyah was in like Flynn.

Electronic touch screen voting machines should be made illegal.

[robinlynne]

36. yep. I rememeber that night in the exact same way.

[snot]

40. Yes: Kerry was up 3%, and when I woke, Bush was up 3%; AND

so I googled and learned that the VNS system, which had been re-vamped by the networks after its exit poll-based projections came in off the mark in the 2000 elections; but now that system was supposed to be more accurate than ever -- that that system had crashed at ca. 4am. And when it came back up, Bush was ahead.

And I got some of that info from a NYT article. And by the time I went back a few days later, the article had been scrubbed.

[tblue37]

66. And then they decided to deep-six all exit polling, because

the discrepancies were too revealing.

[defendandprotect]

74. +1 --

[Dont_Bogart_the_Pretzel]

61. Spot-on

[hobbit709]

3. It's all in the programming of the computers.

That's why they are against going back to paper ballots that are hand counted with impartial observers.

[BeFree]

8. Yep... bears repeating

That's why they are against going back to paper ballots that are hand counted with impartial observers.

There is great power in counting votes. And over the last 20 years that power has been consolidated into the hands of a few. Anyone who denies this simple matter is <deleted>.

[eridani]

31. There are no impartial observers, and people are no more trustworthy than machines

What we need is CHECKS AND BALANCES. No stakeholder is impartial, but if you have a wide enough assortment of them watching the process and each other, that helps establish a transparent process. Also, hand counting (while the gold standard for counting just one race) is simply not as accurate if more than three races are counted concurrently. However, we need to prove that the opscan system has not been hacked or developed problems, which is why exxtensive handcount audits must be performed also.

The simple fact of using two different systems increases reliability, just as getting similar age estimates of petrified wood from counting tree rings and performing carbon dating increrases confidence in the results.

[snot]

41. But worth noting: it's a lot harder to rig elections w/o electronics.

You have to have more people involved, acting in more places; it's more expensive, and there's greater potential for slip-ups, discovery, etc.

[eridani]

43. Not really. Paper ballot elections have been stolen since elections were invented

A small number of people in total control of the chain of custody is not at all unusual. Lever machines stopped the worst abuses, but people figured out ways of filing gears to periodically skip vote tallys in the opposition-dominated polling places. The stakes in winning elections are high enough that just making things more difficult is uesless.

Paper balloting, if used alone, needs to be audited by a DIFFERENT method. One possiblity that John Washburn of WI has recommended is weighing ballots (taking care to have high quality paper stock with little variability, obviously). That technology works just fine for counting coins at banks.

[Wilms]

47. Lever machines did stop the worst abuses.

And a shaved gear left evidence. And a shaved gear in one machine is one thing. Much harder to shave many machines.

The lever was brilliant. It had to be killed.

[savannah43]

71. Go here re Diebold::

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0406-27.htm

[Wilms]

5. Elections certainly CAN be rigged. Whether or not they actually ARE is tougher to prove.

What IS a given, is that MOST elections are "verified" only by computer. Which is to say, they AREN'T verified.

That's an important fact. And it avoids all the endless BS about exit polls, which are no substitute.

[kpete]

10. thanks Wilms

They "AREN'T Verified".

voting is the soul of democracy
EVERY VOTE IS SACRED!!!

[BeFree]

12. well

Karl Rove hates exit polls, too.
Strange bedfellows, eh?

Anyway, how 'bout those calling people like us a CTer?
Ya think they have that right to laugh at people who question the modern era of vote counting?
Or are they just total idiots to not recognize what to us is so evident?

[Wilms]

48. Fuss about all you want over unverifiable exit polls.

Others among us, Rove notwithstanding, want verified elections.

[BeFree]

58. Among us?

Are you claiming that I do not want verifiable elections?

The point is that Rove hates exit polls. Why is that ya think?

[Wilms]

62. I could care less what Rove thinks.

I'm talking about verified elections. Exit polls have nothing to do with them except the fact that they're a distraction.

[glinda]

38. Right. They are not.

[patrice]

7. We NEED paper ballots, marked by hand, and counted in public on a national voting holiday that

starts on a Friday and ends the following Tuesday morning. Everyone gets a receipt/duplicate ballot and can walk into their regional counting place and request to see their ballot. When I say this to my Republican and Red Neck friends, all of them are delighted by the idea.

I think Freedom is worth, at least, that.

But, we also need REAL campaign finance reform . . . (fat chance!).

[upi402]

9. Are you absolutely insane?

I think not. What we're doing is absolutely insane. We're disenfranchised and our Dem majority didn't do a damn thing when they had a chance.

[patrice]

13. I'm glad we agree about this!

:hi: AND - It would be GREAT fun! A Super-Duper Patriotic Celebration of WE THE PEOPLE! :hi:

[drm604]

15. You never want to give people proof of how they voted.

If you do that then you'll have people paying for votes, and employers threatening the jobs of people if they don't produce a receipt proving that they voted as the employer wanted.

[upi402]

16. Social Security numbers and account numbers are generally very safe

There are rare exceptions where hackers get them, and an employee screws up. But all in all, voting would be much cleaner with paper trails and monitoring. The media is the biggest form of vote buying by marketing on earth. Direct vote buying couldn't come close.

[drm604]

26. The post I replied to suggested duplicate ballots. n/t

Bad idea.

[Bluenorthwest]

18. You better panic then, because the blue States of Oregon and

Washington vote by mail only, meaning our ballots are our to record as we wish. Of course, any sane voter already votes 'absentee' which also gives you paper and the ability to record that paper. And we elect Democrats, of course.

[drm604]

24. Oh, Oregon and Washington do it, and we have absentee ballots,

obviously that means it's not a problem.

Sorry, I think it's a bad idea.

[Wilms]

50. Agreed. Absentee isn't so great.

Chain of custody, vote buying, and trouble auditing, are among the problems.

But don't tell that to anyone from OR.

[slackmaster]

21. Because no paper-based voting system has ever been rigged

:dunce:

[snot]

42. YES. Other countries do it; we can, too.

[defendandprotect]

75. +1000% --

[Poboy]

11. R'd

[Initech]

14. I read somewhere that it's easier to rig a voting machine than a Vegas slot machine.

And I even saw one where hackers had Tetris playing on one. :scared:

[wildbilln864]

17. k&r! nt

[wildbilln864]

19. cognitive dissonance...

"The gruesome truth is that American elections can be rigged and are being rigged because the American media treats election rigging as something that--all evidence notwithstanding--could never happen here. Period, end of story, move on. "

also fits false flag terrorist operations IMHO. :shrug:
sorry for the off topic post but saw the similarity

[Bluenorthwest]

20. I've never used a voting machine.

Also never miss an election.

[Wilms]

51. YOU never used a "voting machine".

But the people who counted your votes probably did.

You have to examine the ENTIRE process.

[marions ghost]

22. WHICH party does the rigging?

90% of the time in recent years?

I'll give ya one guess...

[2banon]

87. it appears to be the rethugs..

I've been looking at this problem since 2004, and the more we look deeper and deeper into this issue, we discover what a massive problem it is.. and then we are left scratching our heads as to why party officials refuse to investigate.

It's really important to the PTB that any question be thoroughly quashed or at least marginalized or else risk uprisings right here in the good ol'e U.S. of A, the pinnacle of democracy so called.

A mass uprising due to distrust of our election system would completely destablize this country which must be prevented at all cost, and the media is naturally on board with the message: nothing to see here, nothing to report. Move on with the next Charlie Sheen story or whatever.

[joeunderdog]

25. Is it me, or did this country take a BIG swing to Right

just after Diebold made the scene?

It's almost like they arrogantly push through their RW extreme agendas knowing full well that they will win the next election anyway...

[defendandprotect]

76. Voting computers began to come in during late-1960's ... !!!

Was there really ever a "Southern Strategy" -- or was there only ever

GOP computer voting?

[wiggs]

27. Conyers was all over election integrity after 2004. Anyone ask him why he

didn't pursue the issue after 2006? Or any of the dems...you'd think that what happened in 2000 and 2004 would cause some alarm. Not to mention all the independent studies showing how vulnerable our system is to corruption and hacking...not to mention RW ownership of the vote machine companies...not to mention proven voter caging, phone jamming, false voting flyers, etc etc.

I used to suspect that exposing the vulnerability and lack of credibility would lead to national and international loss of faith in America as a beacon of democracy...and that's why dems weren't moving on election issues. Too many embarrassments...presidents elected that shouldn't be, senators too. But to me that's even more reason to fix it for the future. They didn't...now with a split congress 2012 will be another election with fuzzy math...guaranteed.

[defendandprotect]

77. Ironic Dem Party is so disinterested in computer voting?

They are the long term victims of the steals --

and Hartmann did confirm that a Democrat told him that computer voting was a

taboo subject by order of Dem Party because they didn't want the public to get

the idea that our elections weren't honest -- because they may stop coming out

to vote!!

Lamest crap I've ever heard!!

[2banon]

86. Interesting that, about Conyers, isn't it? n/t

[robinlynne]

28. state of the art voting machines? You mean paper ballots, counted publicly by 3 people, right?

[WillyT]

29. K & R !!!

:kick:

[Melissa G]

32. More from first article...

Study after study--from Princeton, to Johns Hopkins, to NYU's Brennan Center, to the California Secretary of State's office, to the GAO itself ( see http://tinyurl.com/3hz7xj2 ) --conclude that this counting process is obscenely vulnerable to insider manipulation and outsider hacking. So have many studies examining computerized voting abroad--which is why countries such as Germany, Ireland, and Holland have begun turning back to human counted ballots. There is consensus verging on unanimity among the experts.

[bertman]

33. So TRUE!! And the Democrats RAN FAST AND FAR AWAY FROM any

investigation into the 2000 and 2004 elections. They would not touch it with a ten-foot pole.

Does anyone think it will change now?

[livefreest]

35. The grave of a democracy is a mass grave--there's room for all of us.

i think you should repost this regularly

[Mosaic]

37. Americans are fools

Fools to trust republican owned voting machines. The world thinks we're stupid and we are. Fight, get it on the media, do something!

[defendandprotect]

78. +1000% ---

[glinda]

39. Kick for being the main action to make change possible.

:think: :thumbsup: :think:

[xchrom]

44. A decade after 00 and this is still one of our most pressing issues.

It's cryin fuckin shame.

[fasttense]

45. So when is the march on DC for our voting rights?

Anyone? Anyone?

As long as we are free to complain with absolutely no affect on our government, nothing will ever change.

Let's surround the capitol and White House until our voices are heard.

[piggy2000]

52. We are becoming no better than a third world country when it comes to elections..

Let's start by creating a facebook page! What shall we call it?

[Wilms]

64. Actually, many third world nations are better.

The Carter Center provides election monitoring in quite a few.

http://www.cartercenter.org/peace/democracy/index.html

[defendandprotect]

79. +1 --

[lonestarnot]

46. K & R!

[Terry in Austin]

49. The two-story outhouse -- perfect! -nt

[spooked911]

53. Bradblog has been all over this for the past several years-- there clearly is massive fraud

but it just doesn't get the attention it needs, and the media dismiss it like a crazy conspiracy theory-- just one reason they disgust me.

[mod mom]

84. Jonathan Simon has been hands on involved for years:

Jonathan Simon, a graduate of Harvard College and New York University School of Law, is a member of the Bar of Massachusetts. As a result of his prior experience as a political survey research analyst for Peter D. Hart Research Associates in Washington, he became an early advocate for an exit poll-based electoral "burglar alarm" system, independent of media and corporate control, to detect computerized vote shifting in Election 2004. In the absence of such a system, he was nevertheless able to capture and analyze critical official exit poll data briefly posted on the web prior to its election-night disappearance, data which served as an initial basis for questioning the validity of Election 2004. Dr. Simon is a member of Alliance for Democracy and We Do Not Concede, and has worked closely with several key election integrity organizations, including National Ballot Integrity Project and National Election Data Archive. He has authored or coauthored several papers addressing statistical anomalies and other evidence of computerized election fraud, and has collaborated with Bruce O’Dell in the development of an effective handcount sampling protocol to be deployed as a check mechanism where computerized vote tabulation is used. Because he believes that restoration of fair and honorable elections will depend upon exposure of the systemic fraud currently nullifying American democracy, and because he is deeply skeptical about the impact of proposed federal electoral reform legislation, Dr. Simon has focused much of his effort on the introduction of working hand-counted paper ballot voting methods and/or airtight handcount sampling protocols at the state and local levels.

http://electiondefensealliance.org/jonathan_simon

[colsohlibgal]

54. Absolutely

Just as with 9/11, anyone who doesn't blindly accept the official narrative is labeled as some kind of tin foil hat wearing nut. It's just one great con and multitudes of sheep type people buy it.

Gore did win and nobody can really dispute that - the Supreme Court Coup ruling was that it was more important to get Dubya declared president elect quickly than to get it right. It was an installation, a coronation.

On top of that I'm with a host of others two think there is a 99.999999% chance that the Bush/Kerry and Cleland/Demint election results were flipped. Instead of questioning the results, which flew in the face of the polling, they questioned the historically very accurate polling numbers. The rush to computer voting is curious - how could they think that system was tamper proof, it's been proven it is not. We need to get back to paper ballots, public counting, and strict policing of ballot chain of custody.

I am also at least curious about the Feingold loss and some other important results - and beyond that I wonder about some other permanent solutions maybe being employed to get certain political figures out of the way.

Oh and 9/11 - how anyone can look at what happened and not have serious questions about the whole thing is beyond me.

[Aaria]

55. Duh, How do you tink we got where we are. Elections are easy to steal.

All you need is the Media. These people will do the bidding of the highest bidder or of the political party of their choosing. "Let just say The R is winning by 1% over the D"

Throw in a crooked pollster, or just lie and say that the polls say the R is winning by 1%

Now rig the machine to show the R winning by 1% and who will question the outcome. the Media surely won't report any Hanky Panky.

After the flip the soft ware erases itself and look the recount even confirms the out come.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEzY2tnwExs

As Stalin once said. " I doesn't matter who votes, just who does the counting."

[defendandprotect]

80. Well, yes -- stolen elections over 50 years ... and

50 years of rw political violence which took not only our president

but our people's government --

an later any liberal leadership fighting for human and civil rights!!

[tritsofme]

56. Being at DU has taught me that every election lost by a Democrat is an indication of voter fraud

How else could voters disagree with me?

[BeFree]

57. That's crazy talk

Obscene, even.

What you should have learned by now is that there is no assurance that votes are counted as cast.

But you know that, right? Or are you one of those who thinks the republicans wouldn't steal votes?

[tritsofme]

59. In order to believe these silly vote fraud conspiracies, you would have to believe either

A: Democratic candidates are completely incompetent at every single level. They have elections stolen from them left and right, but are completely oblivious. You guys are way smarter and figured it out though.

B: Democratic candidates are complicit in the "election thefts". If they are aware of the "thefts" an do nothing, then this is the only conclusion.

As no major Democratc candidate or officeholder has addressed the vote fraud conspiracy other than to dispel it, the only implication is that they are in on it.

Or I suppose a third option, this is just crazy conspiracy junk.

[BeFree]

60. O

You don't believe that republicans would, or never have, stole an election?

[tritsofme]

63. Do I think elections are systemically stolen? No, I think that is nonsense.

Do I think Florida 2000 was very shady? Yes of course. It doesn't follow that every election since then has been stolen.

Care to address my points?

[BeFree]

70. Address your points?

I already said it sounds like crazy talk.

No, Dems are not complicit. But they have allowed the voting machines to be installed since 2002.

The problem is that if they raise a ruckus, then they can be said to be questioning their own elections. And given the trepidation and queasiness left over from the bush years, rocking the boat is not a politically wise thing to undertake. Of course it is chicken of them. But complicit? No.

The real issue here is the voting machines and the people like this Nickolous who work elections. People like Harris of Florida, and that SoS guy in Ohio in '04. Machines like the ES&S that has proven a hundred gawd damn times already to have messed up elections.

That's what this is about and implying that none of that is true or that they wouldn't when they damn sure can.... well, I addressed that already didn't I?

We've done this before, right Tristofme? What exactly is your point? I mean, you know mine, what is it that you want to say to people who are worried their votes are being stolen or miscounted?

[Name removed]

67. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[defendandprotect]

81. What about a Dem Party which harbored Koch Bros. DLC wing for decades ...

and which has failed in any way to challenge or acknowledge problems of

GOP voting computers?

[2banon]

89. Election Rigging and Voter Fraud are Two Different Things..

Please be clear.

Election rigging is a conspiracy to steal elections vis a vis controlling the system/process counting results.

Voter Fraud is individual falsification of some form. Falsifying residency, that kind of thing. They happen but are generaly insignificant in overall results.

Election Fraud/Rigging/Engineering that is the problem at issue here.

[Brigid]

65. I thought everybody had known of this possibility since 2000.

That was the stuff of third-world banana republics. Does that automatically mean every election is stolen just because my preferred candidate did not win? No. But we can and must do much better in securing the election process in this country.

[defendandprotect]

82. 2000 should have been a huge wake-up ... but not for Democratic Party -- !!!

Amazing how they have ignored GOP Diebold hackable computers!!

Doesn't either mean that we haven't had decades of stolen elections!!



http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=439&topic_id=873871&mesg_id=896273

[AsahinaKimi]

68. Its amazing what has happened in this country

The Republicans will do anything to win, even if it means rigging the ballot box. What the hell is next? They have already attempted and in some cases succeeded in disenfranchising voters. 糞垂れ!! 卑劣漢! ばか野郎!


gomen ne for my swearing
Kimiko
yori.

[zalinda]

69. What I find mind numbing, is that we need something

like 'Radio Free Europe', but for the US. The average American knows little about what is going on in the government. They only know that the government sucks.

zalinda

[deaniac21]

72. They are be rigged fo' sho'

[defendandprotect]

73. Many think our stolen elections begin in 2000 -- yet voting computers came in during late-1960's ...

Was there ever a "Southern Strategy" or has there only ever been stolen elections?

Rightwing political violence -- assassinations -- should not be forgotten --

They took not only our president, but our people's government.

They took future presidents and national leaders for human and civil rights --

Those who would stand against fake wars for profit -- and torture.



See: Votescam -- The Stealing of America -- written by two journalists in Florida who

actually investigated the unlikely and unverifiable election results from computer voting

in Florida during the late 1960's --

http://www.constitution.org/vote/votescam__.htm

[L. Coyote]

83. Not that anyone does anything about it, even when proven

The 2004 Ohio Presidential Election: Cuyahoga County Analysis
How Kerry Votes Were Switched To Bush Votes
http://jqjacobs.net/politics/ohio.html

[eowyn_of_rohan]

85. I hate it when people-EVEN HERE-treat this as conspiracy theory

It should be banned to treat it as such on DU :grr:

[2banon]

90. it's an attempt to sweep it under the rug..

don't look here or it could go viral.

oh my! Questioning our election systems is sowing distrust in the legitimacy of the results and therefore the false premise of our "democracy" will be completely exposed and by golly we simply can't have that!

It might lead to a full blown unprising! oh my!

[L. Coyote]

88. ?? "CAN & ARE BE RIGGED" ??