2004 Stolen Election
The Rise of the Voting Machines
on this page:
- vote fraud is not a "conspiracy theory"
- best websites tracking vote fraud
- original analysis: "Another Stolen Election"
- the complicity of the Democrats
- faith based voting machines
- best commentaries on the stolen election
Rumor is that President Bush's brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, may run for president. Rumor is? According to Florida voting machines, he's already won.
-- Jay LenoFlorida Gov. Jeb Bush says he wants to be president. Well that's good, somebody will have to pardon his brother.
-- David Letterman
Vote Fraud in Ohio Lost ballots and Diebold's counting Gotta get real ballots Vote Fraud in Ohio written in response to the stealing of the 2004 election through rigged voting machines, voter intimidation and stolen ballots |
Crosby Stills Nash and Young Tin soldiers and Nixon's comin'. Gotta get down to it. Four dead in Ohio written in response to National Guard's murder of four students at Kent State University, May 1970, who were peacefully protesting the illegal bombing of Cambodia |
| vote fraud is not a "conspiracy theory" |
1. It's a violation of the Voting Rights Act to prohibit people from voting, especially based on their skin color. This is not a problem limited to Ohio in 2004 and Florida in 2000.
2. There is no way to verify what happens inside touch screen voting machines. Imagine if Michael Moore made voting machines, promised to deliver Ohio to the Democrats, and then put these auditless machines everywhere. Would the Republicans tolerate that situation?
3. People in Ukraine protested vote fraud that was caught via exit polls. The former President of Georgia was ousted a few years ago in a similar scandal. Perhaps exit polls are less trustworthy in the US.
4. There will probably be some claims of vote fraud that turn out not to be true -- but the fact that there was tampering is indisputable. It is likely that Karl Rove's forces will plant some fake evidence to discredit the whole issue, just as they did with the 9/11 scandal, Bush AWOL story and others. It's interesting that the Washington comPost, NYT, Fox, The Nation, Salon.com all denounced "conspiracy theories" about election fraud after the 2004 stolen election.
5. In 2004, there were places in several states where there were more votes than voters in precincts. The full extent of the fraud will never be known, but there's more than enough to get an indictment.
6. There are numerous reports in several states that touch screen machines selected Bush when voters pressed for Kerry, but there were not claims that Bush voters had their machines select Kerry instead. Computers are neither smart nor stupid - they are merely programmed to do specific tasks.
7. There is sufficient evidence to document systematic Republican campaigns to disenfranchise voters, to manipulate the results, to use fraudulent voting machines and other strategies to rig the outcome. All of the tactics that were used have not yet been exposed, but there is more than enough proof that the election was rigged to prosecute the perpetrators and nullify the claim that Bush supposedly won in 2000 and 2004.
The
complicity of the Democrats in Bush's "win" |
- Kerry was a terrible candidate and campaigned poorly
- The Democrats stayed silent about Cheney's
complicity in 9/11
(the most important issue in the 2004 election) - The Democrats will not discuss the reality of Peak Oil (the reason for the War on Iraq) or how we could spend the remaining oil on solar panels, not battleships
- The Democrats let Bush steal Florida
in 2000
A Democrat controlled Senate, not the Supreme Court, made Bush "President" - The Democrats stayed silent about the theft of the Senate in 2002 via voting machines in Georgia and the "plane crash" of Senator Wellstone
- The Democrats let Republicans use their "touch screen" voting machines for the 2004 election in key "swing states"
| Another Stolen Election Diebold determinator: the rise of the (voting) machines by Mark Robinowitz |
published originally in Eugene Weekly
On Election Day 2004, I asked to see Lane County, Oregon’s new ballot scanning machines, made by Sequoia corporation (of England). While watching the ballots being fed into the machines, a Democratic Party poll watcher told me the exit polls did not match the election results in the “swing states” using paperless ballot machines.
There is now ample evidence to confirm this discrepancy -- and that Senator Kerry won the 2004 Presidential election in both the popular vote and Electoral College. Exit polls in Ohio, Florida, Iowa, New Mexico and Nevada predicted a Kerry win, yet Bush was declared the winner. In several other states, the point spread was significantly different between the polls and the results, helping ensure that Bush was given the popular vote. (The 2000 election fraud was embarrassing for Bush, and claiming that millions more voted for him than for Kerry, despite a stronger Democratic voter registration drive, provides a veneer of legitimacy for what is about to happen.)
The Democratic Party let this theft happen. There was ample warning from computer experts, investigative journalists and leaked documents that showed how paperless voting is an invitation to vote fraud. The head of the Diebold corporation, the most famous “touch screen” manufacturer, had pledged to ensure that the state of Ohio would go for Bush -- and paperless machines were used in some of their counties.
In 2002, the Georgia Governor and Senate races were predicted to favor the incumbent Democrats, yet the touch screen ballot machines determined that they lost (the first election in that state with this technology). Bev Harris, author of “Black Box Voting,” found numerous problems that strongly suggest these outcomes were rigged. Despite this evidence, on October 25, National Public Radio ran a story on touch screen machines quoting a Georgia elections official who claimed there were no problems in their initial use.
In the last Congressional session, a few brave leaders introduced a bill to require paper trails for all voting systems, but it was ignored by the Democratic leadership. Why did the Democratic Party allow the Republicans to install insecure computer ballots in key states -- the Republicans wouldn’t allow the Democrats to do this.
There have been numerous stories of voters using touch screen machines who pushed Kerry but the machine tallied Bush. Some of these voters were able to get the machine to acknowledge their choice, others were not. There is no way to verify that the final totals reflect the voters’ choices (no recounts are possible). Diebold makes automated teller machines (ATMs) for banks -- if their ATMs confused withdrawals for deposits, no bank would dare purchase their products. How can Diebold accurately count our financial transactions, yet is unable to accurately count votes for Democrats?
Your vote may have been ignored, but your dollars are counted. If everyone votes with their money to support media institutions that investigate scandals, not those that parrot propaganda, democracy could have a chance.
Many states had voter intimidation problems, some subtle, others blatant. Some of these tactics are intentional incompetence, such as absentee ballots mailed out too late to be received. In some Democratic strongholds in Ohio, potential voters had to wait all day in the rain to be able to vote, yet nearby Republican districts had short lines since they had enough voting machines. Republicans tried to disenfranchise African American voters in Kansas City through fake change of address cards sent to the Elections department. A precinct in Ohio was caught having more votes for Bush than voters. Similar “more votes than voters” problems were also found in other states. A gambling referendum “passed” in a Florida county when a bunch of votes magically appeared at the last minute. A friend in Boulder, Colorado told me about a church in a Democratic area that pretended to be a polling station the day before the Election -- voters who believed their claims of “early voting” were not counted.
These manipulations, coupled with the fact that Kerry ran such a lousy campaign that many Bush-haters agonized about voting for him, ensured that the results could be fixed in advance. If Kerry’s campaign had been better, it would have been harder to change the results.
The Democratic Party has thousands of lawyers and $45 million in funds to challenge vote fraud, and Senator Edwards wanted to contest the outcome. Kerry rushed to concede before all the votes were counted and the flood of complaints of vote fraud and disenfranchisement were noticed. Perhaps a future historian will uncover why Kerry surrendered. Was he threatened with a “Wellstone plane crash”? Bribed? Or was the election a farce to create an illusion of democracy, since Kerry and Bush are both members of the occult Order of Skull and Bones, and Kerry, Bush and Cheney are distant cousins?
Most industrial democracies use paper ballots, counted by hand. This might not appeal to those with a naive fetish for technology, but it is the most accurate vote counting method, and the hardest to tamper with. (Optical scanning of paper ballots can also be tampered with, since the software is a proprietary trade secret not subject to public scrutiny.)
A deeper problem was the Democrats’ “Bush Light” strategy -- trying to replace Bush without discuss the deeper scandals. Many Democrats proclaimed that “Bush Lied” about Iraq, but few said why the US seized Iraq, even though the whole world knows it was about oil. Two thirds of the Earth’s remaining oil supply is in the Persian Gulf area, and it would be nice to have public discussion of whether we will use it for renewable energy systems and relocalizing production, or to have World War IV to control what is left.
The vote fraud story risks becoming like the evidence of US government complicity in 9/11 -- explained in detail on the internet, yet totally ignored by the media. However, the evidence is being assembled even faster than documentation of the 9/11 scandal, and is becoming the greatest Constitutional crisis in our country’s history. The Congressional Government Accounting Office has been asked to investigate. Some media voices are daring to question the outcome -- such as actress Susan Sarandon on Bill Maher’s HBO show last Friday. Protests are happening all over the country, and the documentation of fraud is piling up all over the web.
Cheating in the Electoral College should be grounds for expulsion. Under the Constitution, questions of legitimacy of a State’s Electors can be debated by Congress when they ratify the outcome. The film “Fahrenheit 9/11” shows the effort by the Congressional Black Caucus to have a debate on January 6, 2001, when Bush was confirmed as President despite the fraud in Florida. It takes a Senator and a Representative to allow this debate, but no Senator dared to support the right of all citizens to vote.
"I spoke to President Bush, and offered him and Laura our congratulations on their victory. We had a good conversation, and we talked about the danger of division in our country and the need, the desperate need, for unity for finding the common ground, coming together. Today, I hope that we can begin the healing. .... I leave this campaign with a prayer that has even greater meaning to me now that I've come to know our vast country so much better and that prayer is very simple: God bless America."
-- Senator John Kerry, November 3, 2004"This party is stronger than its ever been. We're in the best financial shape, he says. We now have, unlike four years ago, millions and millions of new supporters of this party. We're debt-free for the first time ever and were beginning to build towards 2008."
-- Terry McAuliffe Democratic Party National Chairman (perhaps the most delusional comment in the aftermath of the election, although the Democrats will have more money in their coffers if they don't challenge the stolen election of 2004)"The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and cooperation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life."
-- Adolf Hitler, My New World Order, Proclamation to the German Nation at Berlin, February 1, 1933"The Holocaust is an unparalleled example of power run wild, which is to say that once evil on this scale picks up enough momentum, once it establishes itself in a system of functioning structures, it cannot -after a certain crucial point - be stopped by any counter force within itself. The greater the concentration of power, the greater the paranoia it generates about its need to destroy everything outside itself. The worst thing that can be said of vast power is not that it inevitably corrupts its agents, but that after some point its deployment becomes greater than the will of the men who serve it. What can be destroyed, will be destroyed - a lesson the Holocaust confirms and which we, with our B-52's and nuclear submarines, our talk of ‘death yields’ and ‘overkill,’ might wish to remember."
-- Terrence Des Pres, introduction to Jean-Francois Steiner, "Treblinka," New York: New American Library, 1979, p. xii
www.freepress.org/departments/display/11/2004/825
Sad News!
by Bosacker
November 4, 2004
The votes are cast, our public spoke,
and chose once more, a bitter joke.
I'm depressed to see this fooled country
choose to end up despised and broke.
Democratic Party surrenders to Republican One Party State -- one Senator (Barbara Boxer) supports investigation of vote fraud in Ohio (frauds in Florida, Iowa, New Mexico, Nevada, North Carolina, New Hampshire and other states were not as closely examined).
January 6, 2005 is not the end of efforts for real elections and democracy, but merely one episode of a multigenerational effort to realize the promises of freedom in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and other noble statements of intent. Bush's stolen elections were hardly the first rigged races in US history -- and there are many ways to tamper with the outcome beyond touch screen voting machines.
Since most Democrats joined with the Republicans to ratify the frauds in Ohio, Florida and several other states, the main question is whether those still interested in democracy should seek to take over the scandalous fraud of the Democratic Party, or give up any illusions that it is reformable and seek to create a real Second Party (not even a "Third" Party). There's probably not enough energy to do both (take over the D's and create a real opposition separate from the D's),. Which option is more practical may take a little time to see, given the outrage likely among the Democratic Party's constituents to their capitulation to the Cheney-Bush-Rove regime.
One small benefit from the stolen 2004 election -- a lot more people now realize the US is not really a democracy, that "elections" on the federal level have become merely a means of ratifying undemocratic selections of national leadership. And no one even bothers with the pretense of electing members of the covert parts of the federal government, which is beyond legislative or judicial oversight.
Many of the voters who voted for Kerry with great regret realized he was a flawed candidate for President. Now, we see the final, bitter proof of just how flawed he really is:
Votergate Resource Center - Pass it On!
www.miamedia.com/votergate
Kerry the Wimp Runs Away from the Electoral Vote on Jan 6
"Small group of House Democrats to contest formal electoral vote
count"
House Democrats plan a long-shot effort to prevent Congress from counting
Ohio's pivotal votes when lawmakers tally the electoral vote on Thursday.
"Kerry is traveling in the Middle East and will not attend Thursday's
joint session."
In a written statement, spokeswoman April Boyd seemed to provide little
support for Conyers' effort. "Senator Kerry conceded the election
on November 3rd. ... He has been very clear all along that voting irregularities
must be examined, not because it would change the outcome of the election
but because it's critical to our democracy," Boyd said.
www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?
file=/news/archive/2005/01/04/national1856EST0699.DTL
Implications
of the Stolen Election |
From Jamey Hecht, assistant editor, From the Wilderness
Dear Friends,
I won't put you through any torrential flood of evidence that Ohio, Florida, and New Mexico were stolen. A glance at two or three websites shows that in a minute, and we've all glanced. Kerry has kissed the fascist shoe just as Gore did last time -- Edwards wanted to keep (i.e., start) fighting, but the same forces that kept him, and Howard Dean, from being on top just blew him out like a candle. I have no faith whatsoever in mass demonstrations like the one Medea Benjamin (whom I admire) has organized.
Instead, let's take a look at a few bits of information about what we can expect.
Here are some headlines from today's
<http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=af4r8ns8Imlg&refer=top_world_news>
http://www.prudentbear.com/:
<http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=aOvZxqpw8tiE&refer=us>
Dollar Weakens Against Euro as Bush Leads Kerry in Election - Bloomberg (11/3/2004 8:41 AM)
<http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=af4r8ns8Imlg&refer=top_world_news>
U.S. 10-Year Treasuries Decline as Kerry Concedes the Election - Bloomberg (11/3/2004 8:42 AM)
<http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109943605081162803,00.html?mod=todays_us_page_one>
For the Winner, a U.S. Economy With Some Stubborn Problems - WSJ ($) (11/3/2004 6:38 AM)
<http://biz.yahoo.com/rb/041103/economy_mortgages_1.html>
Mortgage Applications Climb Last Week - Reuters (11/3/2004 6:03 AM)
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19650-2004Nov2.html>
Mr. President, Have an Economic Reality Check - Pearlstein, Wash. Post (11/3/2004 5:50 AM)
<http://www.ntrs.com/library/econ_research/weekly/us/pc102904.pdf>
Households run record deficits - Kasriel, Northern Trust (11/2/2004 3:30 PM)
Samsan Bakhtiari, an ASPO member and FTW contributor whose professional titles in the Iranian Oil sector are too numerous to list here, thinks the EURO is in trouble. Bakhtiari posted the following on his website two days ago:TRANSITIONS, TRANSITIONS Tehran, November 1, 2004.
"On the other side of the Atlantic, the EU is also facing turbulent transitions in these special times of imminent 'peak oil'. The 'EU Commision' fiasco remains unresolved and the 'EU Constitution' signed with fanfare at Rome on October 29 is not out of the woods yet --- as it faces eleven national referenda (mostly in west European countries) and thirteen parliamentary ratifications, with Germany still undecided. It is difficult to imagine the Constitution jumping all these hurdles, especially that 'peak oil' might well strike as the process unfolds, thus sending all of the EU member states to more down-to-earth preoccupations and possibly even bringing to an abrupt end the life of the 'Euro' as part of the global monetary earthquake bound to occur then --- an earthquake opening up a 'Pandora Box' of nightmarish financial scenarii....."From my perspective, I guess that this next Bush term will be about petrodollars, a single central issue that comprises two factors: PEAK OIL and DOLLAR HEGEMONY. The nightmare scenario foreshadowed in Crossing The Rubicon is, essentially, World War Three.
But there are hopes, and I like to watch them flicker on the wall like pretty pictures thrown there by a magic lantern. I certainly hope the euro survives; I hope that Russia and China overcome their differences and complete mutually beneficial oil and gas pipelines; I hope the Chinese relationship with Venezuela solidifies to generate more and more economic and geopolitical power; I hope Korea unifies by getting the Americans out as US forces are drained into Iraq; I hope the US troops in Iraq refuse to fight; I hope the ocean of fake credit moves from the housing bubble into renewable energy that might actually produce something; I hope India and Japan continue to sell off their billions worth of US Treasury bills, so that the dollar starts to flash red and the U.S. war machine grinds to a desperate halt. It may be hard for the psychotic Permanent Warfare State to keep borrowing the requisite 2 billion dollars per day when the rest of the world stops lending it.
Nothing will get better without a price, and the price is human suffering. Whatever policy diminishes the harm is the better policy. The deliberative task is to percieve what's most harmful and what's not; what is meaningful necessary sacrifice and what is cyncical exploitation for private gain. We'll be hearing this word "SACRIFICE" more and more. I expect that in August or September 2005, Bush will make a sanctimonious demogogic speech from the oval office announcing a draft. It will use the word "sacrifice" twenty-five times. It will also include the phrase "call upon all Americans."
Finally, here's a piece of the soundtrack for the next four years: www.supadubya.com. I can't stop listening to it.best,
Jamey Hecht
Assistant Managing Editor,
From The Wilderness
-------------------------------------------------
www.jameyhecht.com
www.fromthewilderness.com
www.oilempire.us
www.gnn.tv/users/user.php?id=46
looking over the edge
by Michael Kane
9/11 Truth Activist, Journalist, & Musician
OHIO STOLEN
2004-11-03 16:26:30
Greg Palast and Randi Rhodes reported today that the state of Ohio was stolen by the Republicans in election 2004. Ohio was the critical state that tipped the balance, giving the presidency to Bush.
Turns out one county in Ohio, equipped with electronic voting machines, reported NEGATIVE 25,000 votes.
Wha?!?
That’s what at least one election official in Ohio said. The votes from that County are lost. Not counted. GONE!
Republicans in both Ohio and Florida fought for 2 years to prevent a legal requirement for the black box machines to produce a paper ballot. Ohio finally said they would require a paper ballot, but not until 2006.
Gee, I wonder why they wanted to wait?
There is more fraud, but that is the most glaring example. Stay tuned to GregPalast.com for updates. Greg has not yet reported this at his website. I have only heard this reported on Randi Rhodes radio show this evening. Ohio in 2004 is the Florida of 2000.
But what did you really expect?
We should have been ready for this. These fascists who have taken over the country, who pretend to be conservatives but truly are not, never planned on leaving. I could just hear Dick Cheney now saying, “hey! At least we LET YOU vote.”
I was worried the Bush Administration might actually stage a terror attack on Election Day to lower voter turnout. Turns out I was way wrong. They didn’t need to use such a risky tactic.
In the final analysis, let’s look at the facts. Bush/Cheney have 4 more years where, it is almost certain to say, the gloves are going to come off. I bet you didn’t know they were wearing gloves. The war agenda will move forward full steam ahead. But what is most important, beyond whether Bush or Kerry got elected, is the reality of peak-oil will soon be felt upon the world.
"The war that won’t end in our lifetime," to quote Dick Cheney, is in fact an energy war. The reality of peak oil is not one that Kerry could have saved us from -- especially since he refused to ever discuss it. Keep your ear to the ground, and find real news here
www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/110804_stolen_election.shtml
The stolen election of 2004: welcome back to hell
By
Larry Chin
Online Journal Associate Editor
November 5, 2004 - Using a variety of criminal methods that they have perfected over the past four years, the George W. Bush-Dick Cheney-Karl Rove syndicate stole another election, and extended their illegal occupation of the White House. Experienced, informed and unblinking observers were not fooled by any aspect of this utterly predictable goose-step towards full dictatorship.
But to those who are "shocked" as they watched the election night numbers mysteriously slip away amidst controversy; those who are struggling to understand "what happened", let this cold realization serve as bracing edification.
Welcome to hell. Welcome to the horrifying reality that whistleblowers have suffered and fought through every day, over lifetimes. No more illusions. This is reality.It Is a Rigged Game
The US political and economic system, exemplified by Bush-Cheney, is deeply criminalized. It is designed to profit by killing things. It thrives on war and oppression. It is sustained by collusion, fraud, lies, cover-up, and the indoctrination and manipulation of minds. It does not, and never has, represented its people. Its operatives heed no laws. They "make" law. These facts must be burned into the consciousness of every decent human being.
http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2004/11/vote-again.html
Thursday, November 18, 2004
The overwhelming evidence from Ohio and Florida confirms that there was
systematic vote fraud and voter suppression on a massive scale. Recounts
won't help. You can't recount the votes cast on computer voting machines
with no paper trail, and you sure can't recount the votes from those voters
who never had a chance to vote. The only possible fair solution is to
have another voting day in each state, closely supervised by a huge team
of international observers and completely videotaped. Anyone who says
that a re-vote is legally and practically impossible has to be prepared
to admit that there is absolutely no reason to believe that the results
of the Florida and Ohio votes reflect the will of the electorate, and
thus to admit that the current President cannot even claim to be duly
elected, let alone have a 'mandate'. One might even question
whether taxes should be remitted to an illegitimate central government.
Americans, led by the disgusting American media, are trying to whistle
past the graveyard, pretending that the problems are minor and would not
affect the result. This is clearly nonsense. Not only is the result of
this particular election in grave doubt, but the entire status of the
United States as a democracy will be in a shambles unless drastic action
is taken to clean up this mess.
Sunday, November 07, 2004
Given the increasing evidence of massive vote fraud centering around the
use of computer voting machines, isn't it past time to do something serious
about it? The whole history of computer voting companies in the United
States - the fact that they all appear to be interconnected, both to each
other, and to high-level Republican operatives, and the fact that the
main owners are religious fruitcakes who advocate a truly nutty religious
future for America (Howard F. Ahmanson, Jr. may now be the most powerful
man in the country, and the nuttiness proposed by R.J. Rushdoony called
Christian Reconstructionism is America's grim fate which people should
be studying and watching for the Bush Administration to bring into effect),
and the fact that the CEO of Diebold, 'Wally' O'Dell, famously stated
that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes
to the President" - all lead to the inescapable conclusion that the American election debacle was a successful electronic conspiracy to
deliver the United States into the hands of religious fascism. It is rather pathetic to watch the Democrats raise millions of dollars,
pick a plausible leader and what they felt was a winning platform, fight
through an exhausting campaign, battle the misrepresentations of the press,
and carry on throughout the election as if they had a fighting chance
to win, when all the while the whole election was determined by some back-room
computer programming. It isn't as if this was some kind of secret. Blackboxvoting
(and see also the Bev Harris site here,
and the damning Diebold memos) has been all over this issue for months,
and all the Democrats did in response was a few too-little-too-late legal
challenges which had no chance of success. You would almost think they
were trying to lose. Now that those Americans who are not part of the
group I call the 'haters' have had their country stolen from them, isn't
it time to vent anger in a creative way? Diebold can manufacture ATM's
which process billions of dollars but never lose track of a penny, but
seems to have the damnedest time getting computer voting machines to count
Democratic votes. Isn't it time, as I suggested earlier, to boycott banks
which use Diebold ATM's?
posted at 1:25 AM permanent link
Friday, November 05, 2004
Isn't it funny that the one thing Kerry expressly promised his supporters
he wouldn't do - make an Al Gore-style premature concession speech - is
exactly what he did? Had he waited as little as twenty-four hours, information
would have been available that would make his decision to concede much
more difficult. It is almost as if he was in a hurry to concede before
such information came out.The argument is made that they were trying not
to appear as sore losers to preserve the chances of Edwards and Hillary
in the next election, but the people who didn't vote for them are never
going to vote for Hillary, the voters who didn't turn out aren't going
to be inspired by this craven collapse, and their core supporters feel
betrayed again. The Democrats keep conceding to save their chances for
the next election, but of course the next election never comes. Had they
made an issue out of this election, at the very least they could have
inspired a debate on the major issues of vote suppression, intimidation,
'spoiled' ballots in minority neighborhoods, and receiptless computer
voting. As it is, the Republicans just gain experience to do these things
and more in the next election.
The most pathetic thing, perhaps, is the announcement by the Kerry campaign
that they had an army of lawyers and millions of dollars ready to work
on the recounts, and the recounts never came. They were all ready to counter
Rove's strategy in the last election, and, as usual, he was a vote fraud
step ahead of them, never intending to have to resort to a recount by
stealing the election in such a way that the issue never came up. Even
the much publicized Republican efforts at voter intimidation may have
been a ruse to hide the real crimes which were taking place inside computer
voting machines.Is this premature concession by Kerry some kind of Skull
and Bones thing, a 'gentleman's' agreement between the two Bonesman that
they wouldn't engage in unseemly quibbling over who won, but just let
the first guy to steal the election have it?
posted at 1:47 AM permanent link
http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2004/11/two-causes-for-tragedy.html
Thursday, November 04, 2004
The American election was a great tragedy, both for the American people and for the world. It will be the direct cause of untold suffering, death, and destruction. It is impossible to overstate how terrible an untrammeled Bush is going to be, and the full extent of the damage won't be known for years. The Democrats are already starting to turn themselves into knots over their loss. They had a perfectly presentable candidate who twisted most of his policy positions around to satisfy all but the most right-wing of right-wingers, and who was facing a blundering idiot with an unparalleled legacy of disastrous political decisions. How could Kerry possibly lose? Two reasons:
1. People aren't entirely prepared to admit it, but there really
is an underclass of very unhappy white people in the United States who
are still fighting the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, and the
Civil War. The dissatisfaction in their lives is caused by the
powerlessness they feel in the face of the fact that they fall further
behind with each generation. The Republicans manage these people with
great skill, and use the full force of the media to direct all their anger
and hatred to liberalism. The fact that many of them are evangelical Christians
is more a symptom of the same malaise that it is the cause of their hatreds.
Nutty religion is their opium. While many of them are terribly misinformed
and stupid, I don't think it is entirely fair to say that they misunderstand
their class interests. They have come to the conclusion that they are
going to be screwed regardless of which party is in power, and they prefer
to be screwed by a group that doesn't appear to hold them in contempt.
Indeed, you get the impression that their hatred is so great that they
are taunting the liberal attempts at policy solutions to their problems,
almost saying we hate your contempt for us so much we'll prove it by voting
against our own interests.
2. The computer voting machines were fixed. This will be proven
when differences between the recorded votes for Bush and the exit poll
results are found to be higher in a statistically significant way in areas
where computer voting machines were used. This will have to be carefully
studied, as the Republicans were very clever and not greedy. They only
manipulated the results in the key states and only to the extent they
needed to win. The Democrats have only themselves to blame for this mess,
having had plenty of notice of the problem and failing to complain about
it until it was too late.
Both of these factors were necessary to the Bush win, and neither would have been sufficient in itself. So you can simultaneously blame the hating underclass, and absolve the majority of the American people. To put it another way, were it not for crooked voting machines, Bush's posse of haters wouldn't have been enough to gain the victory. What should the Democrats do about it? There appear to be two conflicting proposals, neither of which seems right, and no doubt the subject of my next posting.
From: Amy Pincus Merwin <amy @ informproductions.com>
To: Election Fraud Interest Group
Friends,
We knew four years ago that the election was stolen and given
to Bush by the Supremes. We knew over two years ago that vote fraud would
be possible in this year's election via the touch screen voting machines,
and in my opinion so it was. It is also my opinion that the fraud was
so varied that we will not be able to prove it definitively, but the following
accounts depict how it was done on a large scale without seeming to be
anything but incompetence. Ken Blackwell, Ohio Secretary of State, will
go down in history as culpable in Ohio in 2004 as Katherine Harris was
in Florida in 2000. To satisfy our curiousity we may want to watch to
see how his political career proceeds to understand how he (a former Democratic
activist) benefits.
http://www.electionprotection2004.org/archives/cat_ohio.html
http://www.electionprotection2004.org/edaynews.htm
Greg Palast's info
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/kerry_won.php
http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=392&row=0
Excellent touch screen voting info:
http://www.verifiedvoting.com
Also, check out Bev Harris' website below to learn about how the 'exit
poll' was so inaccurate as to predict huge victory for Kerry that the
CNN pundits wondered whether exit polling should be used in the
future.
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/
http://blackboxvoting.org/#breaking
This is the best predictive website regarding this corrupt administration
and their goals in regards to limited natural resources:
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/
This is what their plans are:
http://www.newamericancentury.org
If you can join Congressperson Dennis Kucinich this weekend in Berkeley,
CA.
http://www.dopcampaign.org
Some questions that I'd like to see answered:
Where were touch screen voting machines used and what was the exit polling
in those precincts compared to the 'results'?
Where are the exit polling results recorded so that we can review them
in comparison to the actual vote?
What outstanding questions do you have?
Some other resources to check out:
<http://www.infozine.com/news/stories/op/storiesView/sid/4154/>
"Presidential Votes Miscast on E-Voting Machines Across the Country"
describes how machines have recorded votes for different candidates than
voters thought they were choosing. ...
http://www.blackboxvoting.org
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON Nov 3 2004 -- Did the voting machines trump exit polls?
There's a way to find out.
Black Box Voting (.ORG) is conducting the largest Freedom of Information
action in history. At 8:30 p.m. Election Night, Black Box Voting blanketed
the U.S. with the first in a series of public records requests, to obtain
internal computer logs and other documents from 3,000 individual counties
and townships. Networks called the election before anyone bothered to
perform even the most rudimentary audit...
Among the first requests sent to counties (with all kinds of voting systems
-- optical scan, touch-screen, and punch card) is a formal records request
for internal audit logs, polling place results slips, modem transmission
logs, and computer trouble slips....
Responses from public officials will be posted in the forum , is organized
by state and county, so that any news organization or citizens group has
access to the information. Black Box Voting will assist in analysis, by
providing expertise in evaluating the records. Watch for the records online;
Black Box Voting will be posting the results as they come in....
Personally, I'm trying to channel my hurt into anger, and my anger into
doing something. But I am terrified for my kids and everyone's kids, and
the future of our planet.
I've videoed Bush once and Cheney two times. In January 2002, I
sneaked a videocamera into a Lewis and Clark Law School dedication and
videoed Scalia (this is probably the only video of Scalia lecturing in
public, as he does not allow reporters to bring in either video or audio
tape), in other words I've seen these people in person, in action, and
they sincerely frighten me.
In my opinion, they planned this since Reagan, by energizing 'the
moral majority' to get into offices from school boards to city councils.
Those people are now the election officials and Secretaries of State and
are running these elections. Combine those people in positions of controlling
the elections with the Republican owners of the electronic voting machines
and you can see how they've succeeded.
We needed to have been organizing to the same extent over the past 10-20
years, but we haven't. Now our battle is ten times as hard, because they
are controlling the House, Senate, White House and they will choose the
members of the Supreme Court. They will impact not only our lives, civil
liberties, environment, economy, jobs, etc. but the Supremes' decisions
will impact our children and our children's children for at least seven
generations. I say seven generations will feel these effects because with
the impact of global warming and the free reign the corporations will
have under this administration to do whatever they want the planetary
environment will be destroyed--all for the short term enrichment of a
few, the last drops of petroleum, and the belief that 'the American way
of life' is sacrosanct.
If you're freaked about what has happened so far, just wait until this
'mandate' further entrenches a system of authoritarian government, free-reign
corporations, and a fundamentalist, Christianity-rationalized religiousocracy.
And did I forget to mention the ongoing, oil/natural resources wars
that our children will be drafted to fight, so the thieves can have their
American way of life?
Amy Pincus Merwin
InForm Productions and Radio
amy@ informproductions.com
Representative John Conyers to challenge fraudulent Ohio Electors on January 6, 2005!
"Dear Senator Boxer,
"As
you know, on January 6, 2005, at 1:00 P.M, the electoral votes for the election
of the president are to be opened and counted in a joint session of Congress,
commencing at 1:00 P.M. I and a number of House Members are planning to
object to the counting of the Ohio votes, due to numerous unexplained irregularities
in the Ohio presidential vote, many of which appear to violate both federal
and state law. I am hoping that you will consider joining us in this important
effort to debate and highlight the problems in Ohio which disenfranchised innumerable
voters. I will shortly forward you a draft report itemizing and analyzing
the many irregularities we have come across as part of our hearings and investigation
into the Ohio presidential election.
"3
U.S.C. §15 provides when the results from each of the states are announced,
that "the President of the Senate shall call for objections, if any."
Any objection must be presented in writing and "signed by at least one
Senator and one Member of the House of Representatives before the same shall
be received.The objection must "state clearly and concisely, and without
argument, the ground thereof. When an objection has been properly made in writing
and endorsed by a member of each body the Senate withdraws from the House chamber,
and each body meets separately to consider the objection. "No votes
. . . from any other State shall be acted upon until the [pending] objection
. . . [is] finally disposed of." 3 U.S.C. §17 limits debate on the
objections in each body to two hours, during which time no member may speak
more than once and not for more than five minutes. Both the Senate and
the House must separately agree to the objection; otherwise, the challenged
vote or votes are counted.
"Historically,
there appears to be three general grounds for objecting to the counting of electoral
votes. The language of 3 U.S.C. §15 suggests that objection
may be made on the grounds that (1) a vote was not "regularly given"
by the challenged elector(s); and/or (2) the elector(s) was not "lawfully
certified" under state law; or (3) two slates of electors have been presented
to Congress from the same State.
"Since
the Electoral Count Act of 1887, no objection meeting the requirements of the
Act have been made against an entire slate of state electors. In the 2000 election
several Members of the House of Representatives attempted to challenge the electoral
votes from the State of Florida. However, no Senator joined in the objection,
and therefore, the objection was not "received." In addition,
there was no determination whether the objection constituted an appropriate
basis under the 1887 Act. However, if a State - in this case Ohio - has
not followed its own procedures and met its obligation to conduct a free and
fair election, a valid objection -if endorsed by at least one Senator and a
Member of the House of Representatives- should be debated by each body separately
until "disposed of".
"Sincerely,
John Conyers, Jr."
www.newstatesman.com/site.php3?newTemplate=NSArticle_NS&newDisplayURN=200411290018
Did Dubya rig the election?
Michael Meacher, MP
Monday 29th November 2004
Former UK Environment Minister Michael Meacher, Member of Parliament, has
written an article exploring in some detail many of the major areas of evidence
that strongly indicate the US election was criminally manipulated. It is fair
to say he is probably the most prominent official in the UK or US to write in
such detail about this.
MP Meacher wrote an excellent article in September 2003 detailing much of the
evidence that 9/11 was allowed to happen by the Bush regime in order to provide
the pretext for seizing the Middle Eastern oil fields.
www.infernalpress.com/Columns/election.html
How George Bush Won the 2004 Presidential Election (an article written
in 2003 about fraudulent voting machines)
"The 2004 election will be the first to use nation-wide electronic voting. With the purging of voter lists, secrecy surrounding voting machines, the lack of a verifiable paper trail combined with voting machine companies with strong Republican ties and funding from the radical right, a Bush victory is all but inevitable. Welcome to the machines."
from 2003, a prediction that was very accurate:
Right now the most critical action item I believe is the next presidential election. For it is being set up right now to be the most naked power grab the world has ever seen. The overwhelming majority are going to vote Bush out of office. However, fraudulent push polling will appear out of thin air showing staggering support for Bush. The push polling and other techniques will not work this time. And that is why the focus in the Rove inner circle is almost assuredly, "How are we going to steal this 2004 election?" The Republicans with their CIA counterparts already have their plan in place by now. Absolutely - Positively, Rove has a theft plan because he knows that it is a STATISTICAL IMPOSSIBILITY at this point that Bush could be re-elected. We all hate bush. He is un-electable in 2004. With this economy and this bullshit war that very few support all statistical data points to a shift to the Democrats in 2004. (almost 80% are going to vote for whatever shmuck that the Democrats throw up) But do know something? Deals are being cut now and the end run for the election theft of 2004 is a completed deal. What ballot boxes that are left will be sequestered (This is why Homeland security came around - you'll see the interesting role Homeland security will play at the polling places come next election. The media is going to go along for the ride and report ZERO voting irregularities yet nearly every single independent news entity will be receiving tidal waves of evidence of massive election fraud. The major media (CIA) will then conduct a poll which says that Americans are tired of all these unpatriotic people contesting elections all the time and that these unpatriotic people who can't take losing a fair election should go to another country or something. I mean after all Bush is our protector. www.voxfux.com/archives/00000085.htm
Howard Dean acknowledges that electronic touch screen voting machines
should not be used
So why did the Democrats allow their use in key battleground states?
votescam.com/notreadyforprimetime.htm
Electronic Voting - Not Ready For Prime Time
http://www.sitnews.us/HowardDean/060104_dean.html
By Howard Dean
June 01, 2004, 2004
www.madcowprod.com/mc6912004.html
The Big Fix 2004: How to fix a Presidential Election
Pt. I: Convicted Felons, ‘Shadowy Financiers' Own Companies Counting Votes
November 15 2004-Venice,FL.
by Daniel Hopsicker
An investigation into the surprisingly-sordid history of America’s “election services industry” has revealed that executives and owners of the two largest companies, E S & S and Sequoia Pacific, have been convicted of bribery and suborning public officials in more than a dozen states.
And while a felony conviction may be enough to prevent you from voting in Florida, convicted felons can take heart in the fact that the “blemish” on their record in no way disqualifies them from owning companies counting the votes. ....
www.madcowprod.com/11242004.html
Election Company has Long Criminal History
Thugs, Racketeers Counting American Votes
“An electronic voting system is to a mechanical one what a nuclear bomb is to a hand grenade... If someone manages to sabotage it, the results can be catastrophic."
November 24 2004-Venice,FL.
by Daniel Hopsicker
Dear Friends,
Below is a letter to Democratic House Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi that was published
in USA Today - or at least on their web site, it's not clear. In it the writer
describes a very revealing bit of footage captured by Pelosi's daughter Alexandra
in her 2003 film Diary of a Political Tourist.
It has been said that Rep. Pete King (R- NY 3) (Long Island) had been drinking
prior to his 2003 comment. It is interesting to also note this excerpt from
his bio on his House web site:
Calling Rep. King a "profile in courage", the Long Island newspaper,
Newsday, has said "King's outspoken integrity sets him apart... He says
and means what he says - a rare trait in Washington." The New York Daily
News says of Rep. King, "Straight talk is King's strength."
Best,
-------------------------
Excerpt of letter:
Your daughter, Alexandra, caught a moment in her latest film, "Diary of
a Political Tourist," that sent chills down my spine! It bears a closer
look. I'm sure you remember in the summer of 2003(!), at the annual White House
BBQ, Alexandra queried a few of her former, Republican, traveling companions,
asking if Bush is 'beatable'?. Pete King answered her, knowingly, dismissively;
"It's already over - the election's over. We won!" Alexandra asks,
"How do you know that?" King replies "It's all over except
the counting - and we'll take care of the counting." In former
times, I'd view that as political posturing or just bluster - but the way he
says it is downright sinister! He telegraphs that he knows something we don't!
He telegraphs that the Republicans have figured out how they're going to steal
the election!
All messages are published with permission of the sender. The general topic of this message is Gov't Operations: Subject: The election
To: Rep. Nancy Pelosi
November 9, 2004
I'm writing to find out if you've read Greg Palast's new article entitled "Kerry
Won"? Since you and I both know the Republicans stole this election, I'd
like to ask you to do something about it. I'm outraged! We knew they were going
to do this! How could this happen - AGAIN?
It's noble to take the high ground but when the other guy cheats, you have to
play a little hardball! Kerry shouldn't have conceded with this thing looking
ever more like out and out fraud! The whole thing was rushed even though we
knew - or should have known - what those scumbags were up to - so I say, NOT
SO FAST! Why be afraid to hold up the process when the chicanery involved is
so blatantly obvious? How much evidence do we need to open an investigation
and put a stop to the Republican's juggernaut?
Your daughter, Alexandra, caught a moment in her latest film, "Diary of
a Political Tourist," that sent chills down my spine! It bears a closer
look. I'm sure you remember in the summer of 2003(!), at the annual White House
BBQ, Alexandra queried a few of her former, Republican, traveling companions,
asking if Bush is 'beatable'?. Pete King answered her, knowingly, dismissively;
"It's already over - the election's over. We won!" Alexandra asks,
"How do you know that?" King replies "It's all over except the
counting - and we'll take care of the counting." In former times, I'd view
that as political posturing or just bluster - but the way he says it is downright
sinister! He telegraphs that he knows something we don't! He telegraphs that
the Republicans have figured out how they're going to steal the election!
I really feel that this is THE issue now! The stakes have never been higher!
I believe the fate of our beloved country hangs in the balance! If we don't
act right now - decisively - we may never be able to reclaim the integrity of
our democracy. We cannot let them get away with this! I'm mad as hell and I
say - NOT THIS TIME! It's going to take a concerted effort by the Democrats
to bring the truth to light! Go for it, because that light, that truth, is what
will save us! I beg you, for the sake of all the uncounted voters and the disenfranchised,
please be at the forefront of that effort! Don't abandon them! Don't abandon
us!
Now, at least, the Congress has a chance to take some action (That's where you
and your colleagues come in!). After January, the Congress will be less friendly.
Hmm...makes me wonder if some of the numerous Republicans who just won their
races were elected by the same method used to 'elect' Bush?
A groundswell could, and needs, to come out of this - preferably before the
swearing in ceremony! We need to launch a thunderous protest - one so massive,
it cannot be ignored! That, too, will require strong leadership. Please help
provide it!
If you find the smoking gun - or even some really good evidence - we have a
chance to take back the country! Object to the election! Refuse to accept it!
Start the investigation now! It's not too late! A fixed election is a discredited
election - and should be voided! It's null! It's a sham! Is this America or
some two-bit, third world country? Is this our country or have the lunatics
taken over the asylum? They got away with it before because the good people
of this country were just too stunned to respond! We can't let them get away
with it again! Steal the election once - shame on them! Steal the election twice
- shame on us!
Please answer me - I'd just like to know you read this.
All the best,
Santa Monica , CA
www.ecologynews.com/ecologynews101.html
Kerry-Bush Election Determined By The "Margin of Systemic Vote Fraud"
EcoNews Service
Vancouver, B.C. (November 2, 2004 @ 9:07 PM PT) - The systematic gap in vote
totals between exit polls which show Kerry leading, for example, by 2 or 3 points,
followed by the "actual" vote totals, which show Bush winning by 3
or 4 points, is the actual "margin of systemic vote fraud" via Diebold
chip or other systemic fraud.
GW Bush's apparent electoral victory appears to be the result of "the margin
of systematic vote fraud" rather than actual, physical vote totals.
This is the first email which this reporter received today, from a knowledgeable
source:
----- Original Message -----
From: an-nA
To: ______@shaw.ca
Sent: Tuesday, November 02, 2004 7:20 AM
Subject: [Fwd: FW: FW: heads up]
thought i'd pass this on, don't know the reality of it. xa
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: FW: FW: heads up
Date: Mon, 1 Nov 2004 14:44:50 -0800
Hey all, just forwarding a message sent to me
Subject: Re: heads up
this was sent to me by someone who produced television and movies for
years and is working hard on the elections this fall - and following the
elections - please be advised and pass it on if you are interested in people
fairly voting ...No joking around. Here's an important heads up ...
Yesterday a friend voted early at a polling location in Austin.
She voted straight Democratic. When she did the final check, lo and behold
every vote was for the Democratic candidates except that it showed she had
voted for Bush/Cheney for president/vice pres. She immediately got a poll official.
On her vote, it was corrected. She called the Travis County Democratic headquarters.
They took all her information, and told her that she wasn't the first to report
a
similar incident and that they are looking into it.
So check before you leave the polling booth, and if anything is wrong,
get it corrected immediately. Report any irregularities to your local Democratic
headquarters. Make sure you pass this along to your friends ... hopefully this
is all over the airwaves by tomorrow ...
The same result via "the margin of systematic vote fraud" may have
occured occured in the 2002 mid-term U.S. elections, when the exit polls were
"cancelled." There was a large "margin of systematic fraud"
between the expected vote outcome and the actual vote outcome in that election,
benefiting the party of GW Bush.
Voter testimonials like this one, which document the basis for "the margin
of systematic vote fraud" are not being reported over the mainstream media
as of November 2, 2004 @ 9 PM PT.
The mainstream media are not reporting the effects of the "margin of systemic
vote fraud" in describing the outcomes of the 2004 U.S. Presidential election.
By default or complicity, the mainstream media appear to bear responsibility
for transmitting an incomplete picture of the basis of the apparent electoral
vote margin of GW Bush.
Links:
http://www.votersunite.org
Copyright 2004-5
All rights reserved
ecologynews.com
Key articles:
Evidence Mounts that Vote was Hacked, by Thom Hartmann
www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1106-30.htm
The Ultimate Felony Against Democracy, by Thom Hartmann
www.commondreams.org/views04/1104-38.htm
Kerry Won by Greg Palast
www.commondreams.org/views04/1104-36.htm
More In-depth Article List – Thanks to Prof. Hugh Urbana from Ohio State
University for this list.
Pre-Nov. 2 articles warning of the possibility of Electronic voting fraud and
other problems:
Computer Voting is Open to Easy Fraud, Experts Say (New York Times)
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/24/technology/24VOTE.html
Black Box Voting Blues (Newsweek)
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3339650/
How They Could Steal the Election this Time
www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040816&s=dugger
More Problems Arise with Black Box Voting (USA Today)
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/andrewkantor/2004-06-04-kantor_x.htm
Charges of Fraud and Voter Suppression Already Flying
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/01/politics/campaign/01voting.html
Twelve Ways Bush is Now Stealing the Ohio Vote
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/810
Russian Observer Shocked by U.S. Election Procedures
http://www.mosnews.com/news/2004/11/03/russianobserver.shtml
Signs of Voter Fraud Appear (LA Times)
www.latimes.com/news/politics/2004/la-navotefraud27oct27,0,1877750.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Black Box Voting declares 2004 Election a Fraud
http://blackboxvoting.org
Voting Machine Error Gives Bush Extra Ohio Votes (NBC)
www.nbc4i.com/politics/3894867/detail.html
Michael Moore's Election Watch, 2004, with reports of fraud from every state
www.michaelmoore.com/electionwatch/
Ohio Voting Fraud reports
www.michaelmoore.com/electionwatch/state.php?state=OH
Florida Rigged the Optical Scanners
http://blog.democrats.com/florida
Votes Lost and Extras Counted in E-voting Errors
http://www.thestandard.com/internetnews/000563.php
Exit Polls and Actual Polls Don't Match
http://www.bluelemur.com/index.php?p=388
Voting Machine Controversy
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0828-08.htm
Electronic Voting Machine Woes Reported (ABC News)
http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20041103.gtvotenov3/BNStory/Technology/
Insights from Paul Ray, Ph.D., sociologist and author of The Cultural Creatives
We don't need an impossible vote recount from no-paper-trail-machines to show
that the vote was probably stolen. There's another way--and it's not even hard.
Odds are very high the election was stolen, judging from just the initial "evidence"
being offered all over the internet. I say this as a social scientist who has
done innumerable surveys. I have a Ph.D. in sociology, and I have done statistical
modelling for over 30 years, and I say this is an easy research design to make
a convincing case.
Your best rhetoric should be to use "the odds" to set up a legally
binding re-examination of the vote in the swing states: Having really objective
researchers calling voters to see who they voted for. Even the dumbest mouth-breather
can get the idea that the election might have been stolen, and that experts
can give the odds that it was.
The best thing you can do to advance the progressive cause is to participate
in the detailed examination of the discrepancy in percentage vote between exit
polls and recorded vote. Exit polls are remarkably accurate, historically in
the US, and elsewhere, say in Germany. Hire some top experts in political science
methodology RIGHT NOW and put them to work on this.
It simply takes a 2-stage strategy to set up the third and final stage of a
challenge to the election, i.e., legally binding contacting of those who
are listed as voting:
1) Do an initial analysis, state by state, and precinct by by precinct of the
publicly listed discrepancy between exit polls and the recorded vote. Not just
for Kerry vs. Bush, but also for contested Congressional seats. That will tell
you if you have something suspicious. There's lots of yelling going on on the
internet, and some of it is very suggestive. This stage would say if it's worthwhile
going on.
2) Do a random sampling of people listed as having voted in those counties you
detected as having suspiciously large discrepancies in key states. Ask who they
voted for, for Congress and President. You need a good survey house, like Zogby,
to do this right. It will take a big sample size, so it won't be cheap. Doing
this quickly may overwhelm single firms, so you may need to hire several, with
a single political scientist controlled methodology giving them directions.
(Note: A lot of the polling firms will want to rescue their damaged reputations,
and may be glad to participate for reduced profits.)
For both stage 1 and stage 2 your researchers are looking for two kinds of discrepancies,
not one:
A) Electronic Vote Recording Fraud: in the swing states, all you have to fund
is studies comparing that discrepancy for districts where there was electronic
voting without a paper trail to where there was. Any competent statistical program
will give you the odds whether the result appeared by chance.
We can mobilize Democrats and progressives around voting fraud. Here's how to
set it up so scientifically that it supports a legal case for a full blown challenge:
If it is true, as it now appears, that "exit poll failures" occurred
mostly where there's no paper trail, then there's a prima facie case that the
recorded voters need to be systematically polled by phone and by mail, by truly
impartial researchers to say who they voted for, for congress and for president.
B) Spoiled Ballots and Ballots Never Recorded: For example: It appears that
Blackwell in Ohio is refusing to give the legally required spoilage numbers.
Odds are high that too many votes were thrown away, simply unrecorded. Greg
Palast is claiming loudly that this happened in a number of states, and was
done systematically by Republicans. This was once the norm in the South, and
may simply have come back in more sophisticated form. This can be detected statistically
from examining exit polls as well, though it's probably a little more complicated.
Notice that the statistical tables are only a little more complex if both vote
spoilage and electronic voting machine fraud were going on simultaneously. You
simply have to control for both kinds of tampering, and compare a good sample
of what people say they did with the outcome. It's a big sample size, but it
will set up the later, full count.
Again, the second stage will say whether you have a good basis for Stage 3:
to go to court to demand a full and complete recontact of people who are listed
as voting.
Kerry has $45 million for legal challenges. We need to persuade him to use it.
We also need to contact major donors to the Dems, who should want to protect
their investment.
Paul H. Ray, Ph.D.
Fake Polling
Station Set up to Confuse Democrats |
Received from a reader in Colorado:
I too feel that Kerry won and that he conceded too soon. Even with them being able to manipulate the touch screen voting machines, I still think Kerry won. In Ohio and Florida, Kerry was ahead for quite a while. What, did the republicans ask the democrats to vote first? And I noticed the electoral votes were not given to Kerry (anywhere) until Bush was given another state. In order to keep ahead the whole time. What was that? There were cases here in Colorado of fake polling place getting set up in a Baptist church in Lewisville. Flyers were hung up for early voting all over a "democrat" neighborhood and people went to this place on Monday. They had set it up to appear very legitimate and a lot of people voted there. Only problem is there wasn't any early voting the day before super tuesday. And even though all the news stations were contacted here no one chose to run the story. Absentee ballots and provisional ballots were not counted in Ohio, I heard, because there was no point. Bush had already won? And Kerry had said he'd make sure everyone's vote would count. They let black people get hassled by lawyers in Ohio and those are probably the votes that got thrown out. I think we need the help of Jimmy Carter, who helped set up democratic voting in many countries all over the world - and are a lot better than the total corruption we've got here. First off Diebold has got to go. If we are to use electronic voting it'll have to be on Linux or something equally secure. Two different universities hacked into the Diebold system, one well before the election and proved the votes could be totally manipulated. Okay, I'm ranting here. Sorry. But this should have been fixed after the 2000 election. And the news media don't even hardly mention that there was a problem this time. And the right wing jesus freaks are the only ones that "fixed" the problem of 2000 this time. Any suggestions of who to contact on this one?
Protecting Our Political Investment
by Stephen Dinan
www.stephendinan.com
Published by OpEdNews.com: http://www.opednews.com/dinan_112304_investment.htm
Post-election analyses have swung between two positions: some see the resounding
defeat as a call for the Democratic Party to change positions – perhaps
towards more conservative policies or a more spiritual/religious orientation.
The other main stance is to encourage us to keep our chins up and focus our
attention on the next stage, working harder and organizing even better for the
next round.
Both of these positions are naïve because they rest on a crucial assumption:
namely, that the results that we were given are the actual results.
Historically, there is no reason to assume an election is clean, in this country
or elsewhere. This isn’t even a partisan charge. The Democratic Party
has often been a perpetrator of election fraud, though the preponderance of
cheating now seems to have swung to the Republicans. Where there is power, there
is corruption and when the reins of the most powerful country on earth are involved,
we can count on attempted corruption of the voting process.
The real question about an election is not whether it was clean or not. The
question is how much any particular election was tampered with. Did
cheating involve only local corruption or were there more widespread, coordinated
efforts? Was the cheating widespread enough to change the outcome?
The Internet has been a great blessing in this election because it has allowed
the rapid dissemination of evidence of fraud. This has sometimes resulted
in hysterical over-reactions that proved groundless. In many other cases,
though, the data has proved remarkably resilient and well-founded in truth.
The first thing a clear-thinking person needs to do in this environment is to
look for signs of systematic fraud. This year, we have a very simple and,
to date, unexplained discrepancy between exit polls and final tallies. In
some of the key battleground states, there was greater than a 5-6% swing between
exit polls and final vote counts. Oddly, all these “errors”
slanted towards Bush. University of Pennsylvania professor Steven Freeman
performed a careful statistical analysis and concluded that the odds of the
composite discrepancies from Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida occurring due solely
to chance were about 250 million to one. PDF: http://www.buzzflash.com/alerts/04/11/The_unexplained_exit_poll_discrepancy_v00k.pdf
And that’s only one piece of evidence –the University of California's
Berkeley Quantitative Methods Research Team reported irregularities associated
with electronic voting machines may have awarded 130,000-260,000 or more excess
votes to President George W. Bush in Florida in the 2004 presidential election.
http://www.commondreams.org/news2004/1118-14.htm
These two studies are the tip of an iceberg of data and attempts to cover up
evidence. The suspect nature of the results are bolstered by the fact that Karl
Rove immediately began dismissing exit polls as unreliable, though exit polls
have traditionally been used as a way to detect election fraud. His behavior
fits with an attempt to cover up clues that might lead to discovery of more
systematic corruption.
These facts alone are enough to warrant massive investigation, especially in
light of the warnings of dozens of organizations before the election about how
remarkably easy fraud now is with electronic voting. Strangely, the Kerry
campaign has been mostly quiet on the matter.
The relative absence of a serious investigation by the Democratic Party is a
betrayal of the trust that supporters placed in them. Every person who
contributes money or time to a political campaign is, to some extent, an investor.
We are each investing our assets into specific candidates who promise to produce
the kind of government and country we want to live in. When a party fails
as badly as the Democratic Party did in this election, especially given the
massive investment of time, money, and energy, the investors have a right to
understand why they did not get a return on their political investment.
If the Democratic Party were a company that launched a product line that flopped,
and we were investors in the business, we would make sure the company knew exactly
what went wrong before investing another penny. Part of the Democratic Party
treating our investment honorably and respectfully, then, is to take seriously
the process of post-election examination of voting fraud. It’s a
necessary and important audit, especially in a situation where we have strong
statistical signals pointing to fraud, demonstrated opportunities, and a clear
motive.
Investigation of fraud is important for two reasons. First, if the fraud
is systematic, it may well affect the outcome of the election as a whole, in
which case we might even end up with a President Kerry. Second, if fraud is
present but less severe, exposing the individual nonetheless acts as a crucial
safeguard for future political investments and exposes flaws in the system.
There are many ways to corrupt voting results, and evidence abounds of cheating
at all stages of the process this year. This problem is compounded by the presence
of Republican-dominated companies at all stages of the balloting and counting
process, often operating in secret, typically with no paper trail, on machines
that have been shown to be easily hackable.
For every avenue of voting fraud that is available, there is at least one major
story chronicling the use of that method. Seen as a whole, this may well
have been enough to tip the election unjustly to Bush, which means they all
must be fully investigated. Here are some common ways to cheat:
1. Voter roll purges – often focused on supposed felons who happen to
be black, widespread in Florida, resulting in the disenfranchisement of tens
of thousands of legitimate voters.
2. Discarded voter registrations – this was exposed in Nevada in advance
of the election, where Republican operatives in a voter registration company
instructed workers to dispose of Democratic registrations.
3. Deception tactics – such as fliers stating that those in long lines
could come back the next day to vote. Common in Ohio.
4. Underprovisioning of districts – especially widespread in Ohio, where
lines in primarily Democratic areas stretched to eight or nine hours because
of gross underprovisioning of poll stations while neighboring Republican counties
had ten minute waits.
5. Ballot “spoilage” – These are ballots that dismissed for
being filled out “incorrectly,” and there are often ten times the
number in minority-dominated counties. Estimates are that 2 million were
thrown out in the 2004 election, with a high percentage of those from
African Americans.
6. Higher usage of provisional ballots in certain precincts – Provisional
ballots are generally not counted until the election winner has already been
declared, if ever.
7. Software problems – resulting in machine totals running in reverse,
vote dumping, and sometimes systematic bias towards certain candidates. The
Diebold software running electronic voting machines, for example, is so
easy to hack that some experts question whether it was intentionally designed
for manipulation.
8. Manipulations of county totals at central tabulators – this is very
easy to accomplish, as demonstrated by Black Box Voting on a nationally-aired
special. The question is not whether it is possible but how widespread
this form of manipulation was.After reviewing the information that is
emerging, anyone who assumes this election was clean is naïve. The only
real question is whether the fraud was systematic enough to change the results
and elect the wrong man. Given that defeating Bush was the entire point
of the hundreds of millions in Democratic investment this year, I suggest that
until the Party addresses these issues rigorously, they do not deserve our future
support. Exposure and analysis of voting fraud is a pre-requisite to earn our
trust that future investments are well spent.
For a clearinghouse of information on voting fraud, see www.nov2truth.org
Permanent link to this article: http://www.stephendinan.com/2004/11/protecting-our-political-investment.html
Published on Thursday, November 4, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
The Ultimate Felony Against Democracy
by Thom Hartmann
The hot story in the Blogosphere is that the "erroneous" exit
polls that showed Kerry carrying Florida and Ohio (among other states) weren't
erroneous at all - it was the numbers produced by paperless voting machines
that were wrong, and Kerry actually won. As more and more analysis is done of
what may (or may not) be the most massive election fraud in the history of the
world, however, it's critical that we keep the largest issue at the forefront
at all time: Why are We The People allowing private, for-profit corporations,
answerable only to their officers and boards of directors, and loyal only to
agendas and politicians that will enhance their profitability, to handle our
votes?
Maybe Florida went for Kerry, maybe for Bush. Over time - and through the efforts
of some very motivated investigative reporters - we may well find out (Bev Harris
of www.blackboxvoting.org just filed what may be the largest Freedom of Information
Act [FOIA} filing in history), and bloggers and investigative reporters are
discovering an odd discrepancy in exit polls being largely accurate in paper-ballot
states and oddly inaccurate in touch-screen electronic voting states Even raw
voter analyses are showing extreme oddities in touch-screen-run Florida, and
eagle-eyed bloggers are finding that news organizations are retroactively altering
their exit polls to coincide with what the machines ultimately said.
But in all the discussion about voting machines, let's never forget the concept
of the commons, because this usurpation is the ultimate felony committed by
conservatives this year.
At the founding of this nation, we decided that there were important places
to invest our tax (then tariff) dollars, and those were the things that had
to do with the overall "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"
of all of us. Over time, these commons - in which we all make tax investments
and for which we all hold ultimate responsibility - have come to include our
police and fire services; our military and defense; our roads and skyways; our
air, waters and national parks; and the safety of our food and drugs.
But the most important of all the commons in which we've invested our hard-earned
tax dollars is our government itself. It's owned by us, run by us (through our
elected representatives), answerable to us, and most directly responsible for
stewardship of our commons.
And the commons through which we regulate the commons of our government is our
vote.
About two years ago, I wrote a story for these pages, "If You Want To Win
An Election, Just Control The Voting Machines," that exposed how Senator
Chuck Hagel had, before stepping down and running for the U.S. Senate in Nebraska,
been the head of the voting machine company (now ES&S) that had just computerized
Nebraska's vote. The Washington Post (1/13/1997) said Hagel's "Senate victory
against an incumbent Democratic governor was the major Republican upset in the
November election." According to Bev Harris, Hagel won virtually every
demographic group, including many largely black communities that had never before
voted Republican. Hagel was the first Republican in 24 years to win a Senate
seat in Nebraska, nearly all on unauditable machines he had just sold the state.
And in all probability, Hagel run for President in 2008.
In another, later article I wrote at the request of MoveOn.org and which they
mailed to their millions of members, I noted that in Georgia - another state
that went all-electronic - "USA Today reported on Nov. 3, 2002, 'In Georgia,
an Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll shows Democratic Sen. Max Cleland with
a 49%-to-44% lead over Republican Rep. Saxby Chambliss. 'Cox News Service, based
in Atlanta, reported just after the election (Nov. 7) that, "Pollsters
may have goofed" because 'Republican Rep. Saxby Chambliss defeated incumbent
Democratic Sen. Max Cleland by a margin of 53 to 46 percent. The Hotline, a
political news service, recalled a series of polls Wednesday showing that Chambliss
had been ahead in none of them.'" Nearly every vote in the state was on
an electronic machine with no audit trail.
In the years since those first articles appeared, Bev Harris has published her
book on the subject ("Black Box Voting"), including the revelation
of her finding the notorious "Rob Georgia" folder on Diebold's FTP
site just after Cleland's loss there; Lynn Landes has done some groundbreaking
research, particularly her new investigation of the Associated Press, as have
Rebecca Mercuri and David Dill. There's a new video out on the topic, Votergate,
available at www.votergate.tv.
Congressman Rush Holt introduced a bill into Congress requiring a voter-verified
paper ballot be produced by all electronic voting machines, and it's been co-sponsored
by a majority of the members of the House of Representatives. The two-year battle
fought by Dennis Hastert and Tom DeLay to keep it from coming to a vote, thus
insuring that there will be no possible audit of the votes of about a third
of the 2004 electorate, has fueled the flames of conspiracy theorists convinced
Republican ideologues - now known to be willing to lie in television advertising
- would extend their "ends justifies the means" morality to stealing
the vote "for the better good of the country" they think single-party
Republican rule will bring.
Most important, though, the rallying cry of the emerging "honest vote"
movement must become: Get Corporations Out Of Our Vote!
Why have we let corporations into our polling places, locations so sacred to
democracy that in many states even international election monitors and reporters
are banned? Why are we allowing corporations to exclusively handle our vote,
in a secret and totally invisible way? Particularly a private corporation founded,
in one case, by a family that believes the Bible should replace the Constitution;
in another case run by one of Ohio's top Republicans; and in another case partly
owned by Saudi investors?
Of all the violations of the commons - all of the crimes against We The People
and against democracy in our great and historic republic - this is the greatest.
Our vote is too important to outsource to private corporations.
It's time that the USA - like most of the rest of the world - returns to paper
ballots, counted by hand by civil servants (our employees) under the watchful
eye of the party faithful. Even if it takes two weeks to count the vote, and
we have to just go, until then, with the exit polls of the news agencies. It
worked just fine for nearly 200 years in the USA, and it can work again.
When I lived in Germany, they took the vote the same way most of the world does
- people fill in hand-marked ballots, which are hand-counted by civil servants
taking a week off from their regular jobs, watched over by volunteer representatives
of the political parties. It's totally clean, and easily audited. And even though
it takes a week or more to count the vote (and costs nothing more than a bit
of overtime pay for civil servants), the German people know the election results
the night the polls close because the news media's exit polls, for two generations,
have never been more than a tenth of a percent off.
We could have saved billions that have instead been handed over to ES&S,
Diebold, and other private corporations.
Or, if we must have machines, let's have them owned by local governments, maintained
and programmed by civil servants answerable to We The People, using open-source
code and disconnected from modems, that produce a voter-verified printed ballot,
with all results published on a precinct-by-precinct basis.
As Thomas Paine wrote at this nation's founding, "The right of voting for
representatives is the primary right by which all other rights are protected.
To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery."
Only when We The People reclaim the commons of our vote can we again be confident
in the integrity of our electoral process in the world's oldest and most powerful
democratic republic.
Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is a Project Censored Award-winning
best-selling author and host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk
show. www.thomhartmann .com His most recent books are "The Last Hours of
Ancient Sunlight," "Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance
and the Theft of Human Rights," "We The People: A Call To Take Back
America," and "What Would Jefferson Do?: A Return To Democracy."
http://planetmove.blogspot.com/2004/11/machine-politics.html
Machine politics?
The US presidential election of 2004 is over. The people (or at least some
of them) have voted. From the reports in the media, it is now clear that George
Walker Bush has apparently won the election. I say ‘apparently’
because polls from our top demographic experts and exit polls recorded yesterday
reported precisely the opposite outcome. John Zogby, considered to be the ‘gold
standard’ of presidential polling, predicted that John Kerry and John
Edwards would win with over 300 electoral votes. Following Zogby’s prediction
to the letter, the preponderance of the exit polling stated that John Kerry
would carry all of the major battleground states: Florida, Pennsylvania, New
Hampshire, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and Oregon. These exit
polls were interpreted as further confirmation of Zogby’s final predictions.
At this point (noon on the third of November), nobody has raised the spectre
of criminality, a criminal conspiracy to inflate votes for Bush and deflate
tallies for Kerry via hacking the computerized voting machines. However, it
is, indeed, suspicious to note that the scale of Bush’s vote far exceeded
the best of the pre-election polling. This raises other questions about the
superficial inflation of his vote totals via covert criminal operations.
Two days ago, Greg Palast published his report that over one million votes for
Kerry-Edwards had been sabotaged through criminal skullduggery. According to
Palast, registered voters were being denied the right to vote, and absentee
ballots had gone missing in the key battleground states of Florida and Ohio.
In Ohio, the situation is even more dubious. It now seems that the assurances
made by Walter O’Dell to some of Bush’s top supporters are both
haunting and troubling. Suspicions are now running rampant that Mr. O’Dell,
who is the president of Diebold which manufactures paperless touchscreen voting
machines, may be involved in a conspiracy to defraud the people of Ohio and
America.
Last year, Mr. O’Dell promised some top-ranking Bush supporters that he
would work to deliver the electoral votes in Ohio to Bush. Coming as it did
from the president of a paperless touchscreen voting machine company with proprietary
software, Mr. O’Dell’s ill-considered pledge may now seem more like
a promise than a prediction. With Mr. O’Dells machines in use in so many
states, why did he mention only Ohio and not other states. Was there some hidden
meaning in his ill-conceived letter? Perhaps, we shall never know.
Leading experts have published academic papers about the problems inherent in
these machines. Many who have studied them in detail regard them to be a serious
threat to democracy. A professional study at Johns Hopkins deduced that the
Diebold machines were not to be trusted simply because tampering with them is
little more than child’s play.
There are simply too many coincidences at play heree. The dubious situation
of the pre-election polls which had been so consistently accurate in previous
years now going haywire all of a sudden, and the exit polls taken on election
day – which have almost always accurately predicted the outcomes of presidential
elections – taken into context with Mr. O’Dell’s reckless
pre-election pledge and the strange situations in both Florida and Ohio where
these machines were used prolifically causes serious suspicions to arise over
the integrity of the presidential vote in 2004.
It is worth remembering that in 2002, Senator Max Cleland, one of John Kerry's
staunchest supporters, was unseated under highly suspicious circumstances involving
missing memory cards from paperless, voting machines.
This election is riddled with a plethora of suspicious circumstances. There
should be no rush to judgment about the integrity of this vote, even though
it might please the president with the radio transmitter fitted to his back.
Institute for Public Accuracy
915 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045
(202) 347-0020 * http://www.accuracy.org * ipa@accuracy.org
___________________________________________________
1 p.m. ET -- Wednesday, November 3, 2004
Was the Ohio Election Honest and Fair?
Interviews and Background
TERESA FEDOR, [via Greg Lestini, (614) 466-5204, glestini@maild.sen.state.oh.us]
Ohio State Senator Teresa Fedor said today: "There was trouble with our
elections in Ohio at every stage. It's been a battle getting people
registered to vote, getting to the ballot on voting day and getting that
vote to count. There is a pattern of voter suppression; that's why I called
for [Ohio Secretary of State] Blackwell's resignation more than a month
ago. Blackwell, while claiming to run an unbiased elections process, was
also the co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio. Additionally, he was
the spokesperson for the anti-business, anti-family constitutional
amendment 'Issue 1,' and a failed initiative to repeal a crucial sales-tax
revenue source for the state. Blackwell learned his moves from the
Katherine Harris playbook of Florida 2000, and we won't stand for it."
BILL MOSS, (614) 257-0728, (614) 864-8901, bmoss@hbcuconnect.com
Executive vice president of HBCU Connect, which works to connect
historically black colleges and universities, Moss said today: "I stayed
in
line two and a half hours. I've never seen anything like this in my life.
There were fewer voting machines in the highly concentrated black areas,
creating the long lines so as to frustrate the voters. But we knew the
Republicans -- many of whom became Republicans because they opposed equal
rights for blacks -- would try to drive down black turnout. ... [Ohio
Secretary of State] Blackwell was confusing things by raising issues like
the paper weight of cards."
SUSAN TRUITT, (614) 487-1759, cell: (614) 270-5239, susan.truitt@lexisnexis.com,
http://www.caseohio.org
Co-founder of the Citizens Alliance for Secure Elections, Truitt said
today: "Seven counties in Ohio have electronic voting machines and none
of
them have paper trails. That alone raises issues of accuracy and integrity
as to how we can verify the count. A recount without a paper trail is
meaningless; you just get a regurgitation of the data. Last year, Blackwell
tried to get the entire state to buy new machines without a paper trail.
The exit polls, virtually the only check we have against tampering with a
vote without a paper trail, had shown Kerry with a lead. ... A poll worker
told me this morning that there were no tapes of the results posted on some
machines; on other machines the posted count was zero, which obviously
shouldn't be the case."
DAN WALLACH, (713) 348-6155, dwallach@cs.rice.edu,
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~dwallach,
http://www.accuracy.org/press_releases/PR062104.htm
Wallach is an assistant professor of Computer Science at Rice University in
Houston specializing in building secure and robust software systems for the
Internet. Along with colleagues at Johns Hopkins, Wallach co-authored a
groundbreaking study that revealed significant flaws in electronic voting
systems. He appeared on an Institute for Public Accuracy news release in
June entitled "Electronic Voting -- Danger for Democracy."
BOB FITRAKIS, (614) 287-2482, (614) 253 2571, cell: (614) 374-2380, rfitrakis@cscc.edu
An attorney who monitored the election with the Election Protection
Coalition, Fitrakis said today: "There were far fewer machines in the
inner-city districts than in the suburbs. I documented at least a dozen
people leaving because the lines were so long in African-American areas.
Blackwell did a great deal of suppressing before the election -- like
attempting to refuse to process voter registration forms. The absentee
ballots were misleading in Franklin County. Kerry was the third line down,
but you had to punch number four to vote for him. Bush was getting both his
votes as well as Kerry's."
HARVEY WASSERMAN, (614) 231-0507; windhw@aol.com,
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/810
Senior editor of FreePress.org, an Ohio-based web site, and co-author with
Fitrakis of the recent article "Twelve Ways Bush is Now Stealing the Ohio
Vote," Wasserman said today: "There was a huge fight around ensuring
that
the electronic voting machines had paper trails and there was resistance by
the secretary of state, so there is no paper trail. There were some
victories to ensure a paper trial -- by 2006. There were limited numbers of
voting machines in African-American districts. Some people had to wait up
to eight hours, far more than in predominantly white areas."
BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT:
On November 9, 2003, the New York Times reported: "In mid-August, Walden
W.
O'Dell, the chief executive of Diebold Inc., sat down at his computer
to compose a letter inviting 100 wealthy and politically inclined friends
to a Republican Party fund-raiser, to be held at his home in a suburb
of Columbus, Ohio. 'I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral
votes to the president next year,' wrote Mr. O'Dell, whose company is based
in Canton, Ohio. That is hardly unusual for Mr. O'Dell. A longtime
Republican, he is a member of President Bush's 'Rangers and Pioneers,' an
elite group of loyalists who have raised at least $100,000 each for the
2004 race. But it is not the only way that Mr. O'Dell is involved in the
election process. Through Diebold Election Systems, a subsidiary in
McKinney, Tex., his company is among the country's biggest suppliers of
paperless, touch-screen voting machines. Judging from Federal Election
Commission data, at least 8 million people will cast their ballots using Diebold
machines next November. ... Some people find Mr. O'Dell's pairing of interests
-- as voting-machine magnate and devoted Republican fund-raiser -- troubling."
www.nytimes.com/2003/11/09/business/yourmoney/09vote.html
On November 3, 2004, Reuters reported: "Voters across the United States
reported problems with electronic touch-screen systems on Tuesday in what critics
said could be a sign that the machines used by one-third of the population were
prone to error.... "
www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1103-03.htm
On October 24, 2004, the Palm Beach Post reported: "A federal judge on
Monday rejected U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler's claim that paperless electronic voting
violates the constitutional rights of Floridians...."
www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/epaper/2004/10/26/c1a_wexler_1026.html
On November 3, 2004, Thomas Crampton wrote in the International Herald Tribune:
"The global implications of the U.S. election are undeniable, but international
monitors at a polling station in southern Florida said Tuesday that voting procedures
being used in the extremely close contest fell short in many ways of the best
global practices...."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/11/02/news/observe.html
For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020, (202) 421-6858; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
www.unknownnews.net/041106n.html#110304
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2004
America is screwed: Election stolen again
www.unknownnews.org/041106n.html#hh3218>#
Virtually every act of the Cheney-Bush administration has been disastrous,
and every word of the Cheney-Bush campaign was a lie or a distortion. But the
Democrats ran a pull-string mannequin who made even the "Anyone But Bush"
vote waver.
We offer our apologies and embarrassment to the world.
But ... The nationwide consensus that <http://www.votersunite.org/electionproblems.asp> election problems were <http://apnews.myway.com/article/20041103/D8645VM03.html> scattered, that <http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=13277909&BRD=2259&PAG=461&dept_id=455154&rfi=6> glitches were few, far between, and quickly resolved, is total bull.
<http://onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html> Everything was in place for fictitious election results, and that seems
to be what has happened.
In most states, the returns were pretty much as predicted by <http://www.electoral-vote.com/nov/nov02.html>
the last polls. Florida seems the odd exception -- the last polls were for Kerry,
49-44%, but the returns are running 52-47 Bush.
So in just one day -- and in just one state -- Bush went from five points down
to five points ahead.
<http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0828-08.htm>Hell of a last-minute
swing, eh? Smells like <http://www.unknownnews.net/comvot.html> another
Diebold victory to us.
Helen & Harry Highwater
Unknown News
<http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/110204V.shtml> One million Kerry votes
stolen before election day
<http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/shared/news/politics/stories/11/1102_barrier.html>
Civil rights groups, GOP trade charges of dirty tricks
<http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/02/1523210> Voting problems
widespread in Florida, Pennsylvania
FLORIDA:
<http://www.unknownnews.net/041103d-JP.html> The evidence says Florida vote was rigged
<http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20041101/ts_alt_afp/us_vote_media_violence>
Journalist beaten, arrested by police outside Florida polling place
Excerpt: A sheriff's spokesman said later the deputy was enforcing a new county
rule prohibiting reporters from interviewing or photographing voters lined up
outside the polls, the Palm Beach Post said.
... Le Pore's office had not announced the new rule before the incident.
Election monitors say sheriff's deputies themselves broke the law on Sunday
by standing right outside polling offices while early voting was going on.
<http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/state/10074226.htm> Elections
reporter freed from jail
OUR MIAMI HERALD LOGIN: xoxounknown@ yahoo.com
PASSWORD: unknown99
Excerpt: A freelance journalist from New York posted bail early Monday and remained
in South Florida after he was arrested by a Palm Beach County sheriff's deputy
on Sunday while trying to take photos of early voters waiting in line.
James S. Henry emerged from the Palm Beach County Jail with scrapes, torn clothes
and a numb hand, which he blamed on being tackled and handcuffed on Sunday.
"I'm a little sore and I have some scrapes and bruises, but it wasn't Abu
Ghraib," Henry told The Palm Beach Post ...
<http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/11/01/pollwatch/index_np.html>
"Nobody should have to go through so much to vote"
www.starbanner.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041102/NEWS/41102007/1001/FEATURES01
Bogus
calls target Florida Democrats
Excerpt: At least a few Marion and Lake county residents received telephone
calls Monday directing them to the wrong polling places today.
The calls targeting Democrats appear to be a local version of the false claims
delivered by telephone showing up around the nation during a hotly contested
presidential race.
<http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/myrtlebeachonline/news/nation/10084928.htm>Absentee
votes draw Florida eye
Excerpt: In Palm Beach and Broward counties, where thousands of absentee
ballots arrived in voter mailboxes at the last minute, if at all, Democrats
said many who planned to use them encountered problems when they instead tried
to vote in person. In a lawsuit filed late Tuesday, the American Civil
Liberties Union asked that voters who received absentee ballots at the eleventh
hour be given more time to mail them back.
"These are people who applied for absentee ballots weeks ago and got them
today," said Howard Simon, executive director of the ACLU of Florida. "If
they were denied an opportunity to vote through no fault of their own but more
through the negligence of election officials, that's a pretty serious problem."
Broward County election officials mailed thousands of replacement ballots, some
as late as Saturday night, after the originals did not arrive at their destinations.
Palm Beach County also sent out several thousand ballots on Saturday, and postal
officials warned that it was dangerously late.
OHIO:
<http://personal.news.yahoo.com/us/news/ratings/getavgrate3.html
?locale=us&prop=news&rateid=nm/20041102/election_monitors_ohio_dc&type=T&cat=615&ncid=> Appeals
Court OKs Republican harassment
of Ohio voters in minority precincts
<http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2004/977>Is there inner-city
election suppression in Franklin County, Ohio?
<http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/news/local/10076178.htm>Newspaper denied
access at polls
OUR AKRON BEACON-JOURNAL LOGIN: xoxounknown@yahoo.com PASSWORD: unknown99
Excerpt: A federal judge on Monday refused to allow the Akron Beacon Journal
access to polling locations -- a practice the paper has enjoyed for years in
its news-gathering role.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Paul Matia late Monday effectively cut off
the right of all media, not just the newspaper, to monitor voting during what
is expected to be the most divisive Election Day in recent history.
<http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=22&art_id=qw1099435860260U213>Foreign
monitors 'barred' from US polls
Excerpt: Some observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation
in Europe (OSCE), a Europe-wide security and rights forum, were barred from
entering some polling stations in the United States on Tuesday, one of them
said.
"We were not allowed to enter polling stations," said Soeren Soendergaard,
a Danish parliamentary deputy.
"Although we were officially invited to follow the (US presidential) election,
the message was not passed on to the polling stations," he told the Danish
news agency Ritzau.
<http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2004/11/02/sports2341EST0292.DTL>
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/110304V.shtml
GOP Doing all it can to Keep Minorities from Voting
By Jesse Jackson
Chicago Sun-Times
Tuesday 02 November 2004
Standing at the crossroad, we must be united.
"This election tells the Arab world," Yosri Fouda of Al-jazeera explained
to Peter Jennings of ABC News, "that Americans firmly support George Bush's
aggression, so Arabs and others will not only blame Bush from now on, but the
American people as well."
But a Diebold win is not a mandate, and we must make that point clearly heard
around the world.
With paperless electronic voting machines placed in strategic counties nationwide,
did Americans indeed vote for a Bush future? Or did we overwhelmingly vote for
Kerry, selecting a box on touch-screen machines under John Kerry's name, unknowingly
triggering a Bush vote on the other end of the wire?
Republican contributors and friends of Bush campaign guru Karl Rove own the
company that makes these paperless machines. How useful it would be to see the
nationwide results of Diebold machines compared with other balloting methods
used in this election! But is that possible? There's plenty of evidence these
machines were programmed to display one choice and count another - but there's
no paper trail. A recount? How? Ask the Bush supporter at Diebold for a number?
With such massive turnouts, and exit polls indicating strong pro-Kerry voting,
it's inconceivable that Bush prevailed without major illegalities involved.
We must tell the world that a Diebold win is not a mandate!
The world falsely bears witness that the sheep of an empire are blind to its
crimes and will follow the wolves among us to our deaths. But political gangsters
have prevailed, and the Bush administration now has a green light for wholesale
abuse of power, for escalating its monstrous agenda of global war and oppression,
for bankrupting our nation in every way and silencing our right to dissent.
But we are not sheep. Our freedom of choice was stolen at great cost to humankind,
and we must shout our dissent while we can: that we did not choose this tyranny,
that we do not stand behind Bush but above him, superior in our desire for a
coexistent world.
We can expect neither peace nor privacy now. Passive dissent will be infiltrated
and made violent for media purposes, as it was under Nixon. (When a million
people march, all that counts are the next-day headlines: "Protesters turn
violent!")
We stand at a crossroad but must reject the path of our tormentors, the path
of violence, as defeat waits for us down that road. Our world and the soul of
a nation have suffered a terrible blow. We must absorb this blow and stand firm
as the foundation of a new world free from the tyranny we abhor.
Let us make such fools of these false gods as to stir widespread discontent.
Let our outrage never die, for the challenge of the righteous everywhere has
been passed to us. Let our soldiers come home to our warm embrace and a strong
and rising movement. It is they who will best expose the evils of Bush policies.
It is they who will move others to join this pivotal struggle.
Expect to be provoked into violence, but resist at all costs. Stand arm in arm,
and calm and care for each other as never before. Stand tall and united for
humankind, and for the sake of our common vision of peace. This is a new day.
Make it lead to all tomorrows and not our final hours.
-- Brian Bogart
http://portland.craigslist.org/pol/48176012.html
portland.craigslist.org > politics >
**BREAKING NEWS** 2004 U.S. GENERAL ELECTION FRAUD CRISIS GROWS: (USA
last modified: Sun, 7 Nov 14:26 PST
WASHINGTON DC - With the Middle East sliding toward total war and U.S. soldiers
preparing for a major offensive in Iraq, at home, national disgust and shocking
allegations on the results of Tuesday's General Election continues to heighten
across the United States on Sunday with rising anger and more mysteries yet
to be explained.
Meanwhile, calls for a nationwide investigation of "massive vote fraud"
by Republicans and President Bush's campaign manager Karl Rove and others, has
been sent to the General Accounting Office (GAO) by members of Congress.
This confirms the very tense atmosphere building in what is being termed "ElectionGate"
with allegations of "acts of treason" against the American people
and violations of the U.S. Constitution in the 2004 General Election.
"Bigger than Watergate," is how one high-official described the under-the-radar
activities of thousands of investigators, law enforcement officials and citizens
across the country after Tuesday's election. Many are calling the results of
the race for president "openly false" as reports flood in from across
the nation citing "criminal activities" that are now proving that
massive fraud has been committed through the computer voting software inside
Optical Scanning Machines placed in voting precinct across the country.
The two hottest states where unnamed high-officials say the microscopes are
on are Florida and the state of Ohio, where Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell
is under increasing pressure to de-certify Ohio's 88 county results after an
electronic voting system gave President Bush nearly 4,000 extra votes, reported
the Associated Press.
Florida's election results - like in the 2000 election - are also highly suspect,
says the high-offical source. At stake are the electoral votes of both Ohio
and Florida despite the fact that technically - "the 2004 election is not
over."
Meanwhile, while some news media organizations continue to follow the "moral
values" loss of the Democrats in Tuesday's election; many news executives
are continuing to gather evidence of massive fraud in the general election that
some say Senator John Kerry actually "won in a landslide."
Strangely, on Friday, the state of Iowa finally gave its seven electoral votes
to Pres. Bush. It was the first time in 20 years a Republican president has
won the state. Political insiders on the ground in Iowa suspect criminal activities
have taken place to delay the Iowa vote. There are reports inquiring about the
role of Dick Morris, the political consultant of President Clinton's first campaign
in 1992 for the White House. Morris, who left the Clintons' after a bitter dispute
over money, switched parties and became a Republican consultant and a Fox news
regular. He was seen in Iowa just a week before the election and is playing
a curious role in the national general election scandals that leads back to
Karl Rove, campaign manager for Pres. Bush, and his role on election night.
One unnamed high-offical close to the Bush administration says there are members
of the Republican Party angry about the "massive fraud" reports coming
from every part of the country and others closer to events who are "thoroughly
scared to death about what is happening, referring not only to the election,
but to the spreading war in Iraq and the Middle East." Furthermore, the
source says, "These fierce new attacks on Arlen Specter is leading some
moderate Republican leaders and voters to feel that things are not right at
all now in this country and that a crisis bigger than Watergate is about to
explode. The tension is tight. Everyone is under a lot of stress and fear right
now."
Specter, the senior Republican senator from Pennsylvania was re-elected to the
senate on Tuesday and is regarded as the top candidate to chair the powerful
Senate Judiciary Committee. Attacks from some within his party about Specter's
comments to protect the 1973 Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade has religious
conservatives fuming and calling for Specter to be bypassed for the chairmanship.
Meanwhile, loud calls from across the country continue to grow for criminal
investigations into what some are calling the worst corruption of federal, state
and local election laws in U.S. history. "It's a total mess," said
one angry and ashamed Cleveland, Ohio elections offical who requested her name
not be used. "I'm so sick of the corruption games and shannigans this year.
That Blackwell has GOT to be arrested. He and Diebold Elections Systems cannot
get away with this. These optical scanners have to go," she said before
storming out, her head down heartbroken and crying.
The voting machine scanners used in Ohio are from the corporation Diebold Election
Systems, a company racked with mystery about its connections to President Bush
and its exclusive contract with the state of Ohio in providing its "Opti-Scan"
machines to voting precincts. DIEBOLD INC. CEO Walden O'Dell could not be reached
for comment. It is reported earlier this year that he gave millions to the Bush
campaign as a GOP fundraiser and in one fundraising letter to Bush, O'Dell promised
to deliver Ohio to the president in November.
O'Dell's role may be connected to a group of well-financed corporate players
called "Rangers" for Bush and the Republican Party. Millions of dollars,
possible hundreds of millions, have been used as a huge "slush fund"
reminescient of Nixon's CREEP - Committee to Re-Elect the President - to buy
the 2004 general elections.
Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, a committed Bush-Cheney supporter,
has been sued by a host of civil rights attorneys before Tuesday's election
for a variety of illlegal actions to influence Democratic voting in Ohio's 88
counties.
Blackwell was contacted by the Associated Press Friday after reports confirmed
that President Bush received thousands of votes that didn't exist and voters
demanded to know why their Kerry votes were recorded as Bush votes on DIEBOLD
Opti-Scan Voting Machines. Blackwell responded that it was an "error, but
would not affect the outcome of the election." Blackwell has been unavailable
for comment since Friday night.
Blackwell, Karl Rove, O'Dell and Diebold along with other Electronic Scan Voting
corporations are the focus of intense attention as investigators, civil rights
attorneys, and citizens swarm to confirm reports of massive vote rigging - giving
millions of Kerry votes to Pres. Bush, and then spreading more Kerry votes to
third party candidates. Google searches on the name is reported to be in the
hundreds of thousands as of Saturday evening nation, and now, worldwide.
Hundreds of Ohio citizens stormed the statehouse Wednesday demanding redress
and answers from Blackwell. Chanting, "Treason Treason, Capture the Conspirators",
Ohio state police clashed with voters with signs saying "Save Our Votes"
and "Blackwell: Criminal, as mothers with children, fathers, and sons,
and daughters shared personal information, home and cell phone numbers, writing
the names of their lawyers on their arms as Ohio state police threatened to
arrest them. More citizens plan to surround the capitol until the state's 20
electoral votes are given to John Kerry - the winner of Ohio's general election
for president.
"The cable TV news is acting like nothing is going on," said a 19-year-old
woman named Stephanie, a first time voter. We turned on another channel and
there was demonstrations in Portland, Oregon and then another in Seattle and
some in California. I hear cities all over the country are joining in like a
massive march to Washington D.C. later this month. I watched TV with my mom
and dad and I'm like, come on, what's this? They are acting like nothing is
going on. My mom grabs her coat, calls her friends and my dad is like, 'make
some signs, let's hit the streets! 'I'm like, "I love you guys'. I'm glad
I've got parents like this. They're not blind to what's going on."
What is going on?, she was asked. "I think a serious revolution, like the
Boston Tea Party is starting, a real one," she said. "Some of my friends
knew this was going to happen and guess what? They were right. I hear Hip-Hop
nation is talking about getting on the streets with everyone, white, black and
brown and asian. By the end of this month there's going to be like millions
and millions of people in Washington DC. Something big is going to happen and
I want to be there! I voted for Kerry."
The Diebold "Opti-Scan" machines, can read paper ballots filled in
by pencil or ink in the voter's hand, or the scanners that read voter's punch
cards, or through a touch of the screen itself - records the voter's selection.
In all cases, the final tally of all the voting machines is sent to a central
"tabulator" machine - rumored to be a Windows-based PC - that adds
up all the votes. According to sources, the Diebold machines in Ohio and Florida,
and other states sabotaged and the central system was hacked into from the inside.
and there are more than one person involved."
This pushes some to start believing there indeed has been massive fraud in "blackboxing"
Kerry's total votes and giving them to Pres. Bush.
This "problem" or what some mainstream cable news media are calling
"glitches" - are anything but. In Palm Beach County, Flordia for example,
the DIELBOLD and SEQUOIA voting machines were already PRE-MARKED with selections
BEFORE voters had made any selections. Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida refused to allow
the machines to leave a paper trail.
According to experts, what happened in the 2004 elections to all Democratic
candidates and John Kerry was this:
A computer pre-hacking "manipulation technique" called "blackboxing"
was found in the DIEBOLD central tabulator - where all a state's election ballot
votes go to be counted. A main computer counter. The way to cheat is to enter
a two-digit code in a hidden location - a file folder - where a SECOND set of
fake vote tabulated in each county is created. This second set of "votes"
can be changed so it no longer matches the true vote tally. It takes seconds
to do this. This is what happened on election day. There are about 1,000 DIEBOLD
central tabulators or "counters" in place. These tabulators count
up to two million votes at a time.
Kerry's votes were shifted to Bush, and then more of Kerry's votes were spread
out among third party candidates - some of whom did better than ever before
in U.S. history, while Republicans racked up unheard of "wins" in
senate and congressional races. All the races are now suspect with the alleged
widespread theft of tens of millions of votes across the country.
In Washington state, where King County voters experienced electronic vote fraud
in a primary race, the race for governor is "too close to call" and
reflects what has happened nationwide.
The Ohio county elections worker who asked that her name and precinct not be
used yet said, "Every time a voter complained of a problem it was always
the same one. They told me they pressed the name of John Kerry on the machine,
but the confirmation prompt would go right back time and again and show they
voted for George Bush. What a mess! They should all go straight to jail. Some
heads are going to roll on this one!"
Reports breaking out of Columbus, Cinninatti, Cleveland, and Columbus, Ohio,
and the wild reports coming from Florida. News from other states reveals the
widening crisis that seem to be building toward a constitutional crisis this
month with calls for criminal investigations and confiscation of all electronic
voting machines and the central main terminal that counted the votes in all
races across the country.
As of Sunday, November 7th, the "unoffical" tally has Pres. Bush winning
Ohio by about 136,000 votes. And although there are at least 155,000 to 250,000
"provisional" ballots still left to be counted - investigators on
the ground are behaving as though the votes awarded to Bush are actually John
Kerry's and a much wider net is being cast on the votes many are saying were
"switched" to Pres. Bush.
At first thought, some say, these are outlandish statements, but confirmed and
accurate reports flooding into newsrooms throughout the United States have prompted
more calls for arrests in several states - citing infringement of local and
state laws and violations of the XV and XVII amendments to the U.S. Constitution
that call for "fair and free popular elections" and the protection
of "civil rights". Others are citing major violations of the Voting
Rights Act of 1964 as well.
This is what is known as of Sunday, November 7 -
- In Columbus, Ohio, the Associated Press reported Friday that a Diebold voting
system gave President Bush nearly 3,893 extra votes in the suburban county.
- Franklin County, Ohio had Pres. Bush receiving 4,258 votes to John Kerry's
260 votes in the Gehanna precinct although the official records show only 638
voters cast ballots in that precinct.
- In Broward County, Florida, a Diebold machine was off by 70,000 votes.
- In Lafayette County, Florida, out of 4,309 total registered voters - 82.8
percent are registered Democrats and 13.2 percent registered Republicans. On
Election Day this county reported a 77.2 percent turnout. The Exit Poll results
were: 2,755 votes for John F. Kerry and 440 votes for George W. Bush. The Diebold
machine's results were the opposite with 2,460 for Bush and 845 for Kerry.
- In Jacksonville, North Carolina, a Opti-Scan machine lost 4,500 votes.
- In Craven County, N.C., Pres. Bush received 11,283 more votes than were actually
cast in that county.
- In one North Carolina county more than 4,500 votes were lost because the computer
voting company told county elections officials that the store ballots there
could "hold more data than it did."
- In Baker County, Florida, with 12,887 registered voters - 69.3 percent Democrat
and 24.3 percent Republican - the vote came to 2,180 for Kerry and 7,738 for
Bush. Residents in the county express shock at the outcome and are calling for
a recount and inspection of the central computer tabulator.
- Fueling extreme voter anger is the case in Dixie County, Florida, where with
4,988 registered voters - 77.5 percent Democrat and just 15 percent Republican
- the machine "recorded" that only 1,959 people voted for Kerry -
while 4,443 voted for Bush. "I'm ashamed to be an American," said
one Dixie County voter, "Just how stupid do they think we are? There's
talk of some people going to jail for this," the 48-year-old father of
two said. "I can't look my daughters in the eye. No one believes Bush won
this county. No one. If John Kerry can't win this county, then the Earth is
square and my name is Mickey Mouse. It just didn't happen."
The pattern continues to repeat all over the country where opitical voting scan
machines were used - but only in those counties like Florida's where heavily
Democratic Counties reported exit polls heavily favoring Kerry, but the machines
indicated otherwise. Even county elections officials were shocked and appalled
at what they saw -
- Franklin County - 77.3 percent Democratic but 58.5 percent of votes went Republican.
- Holmes County - 72.7 percent Democratic but 77.25 percent went Republican.
The voter furor has Democratic congressional candidate Jeff Fisher calling the
FBI. On Saturday, Fisher said he has evidence that the Florida election was
"hacked" giving Democratic votes to Repbulicans and says he evidence
of who is involved and how they did it.
On Friday, three United States Congressmen sent an "urgent request"
to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to "immediately undertake
an investigation of the efficacy of the voting machines and new technologies
used in the 2004 election."
In the letter to David M. Walker, the Comptroller of the United States in Washington
D.C., the urgent letter cited more cases of fraud involving the electronic voting
machines -
"The House Judiciary Committee Democratic staff has received numerous
reports from Youngstown, Ohio, that voters who attempted to cast a vote for
John Kerry on electronic voting machines saw that their votes were instead recorded
as votes for George W. Bush. In South Florida, Congressman (Robert) Wexler's
staff receieved numerous reports from voters in Palm Beach, Broward, and Dade
Counties that they attempted to select John Kerry but George Bush appeared on
the screen. CNN has reported similar problems. This was among over one thousand
such problems reported."
Citing that a "blow to our democracy may have occurred in 2004" the
letter from ranking member John Coyers, Jr. of Michigan and signed by a ranking
member of the subcommittee on the Constitution, and Florida representative Robery
Wexler, has raised allegations that the crisis stemmed from a key part of Election
Night when Exit Poll numbers favoring John Kerry were "leaked" to
Karl Rover, Bush's campaign manager and architect of the president's re-election
effort.
According to some, this is where the role of political consultant Dick Morris
may shed some light on the election night actions of Karl Rove, and may explain
why Pres. Bush's campaign communications counsultant Karen Hughes was reported
by AP Radio News that she sat Pres. Bush down to inform him that he'd lost the
election, according to the exit polls, Kerry was winning in a landslide.
Morris, who switched to working with the Repulicans wrote a widely-read article
for "The Hill" - a political publication read by every political junkie
in Washington D.C.. Morris wrote that "exit polls are almost never wrong.
They eliminate the two major potential fallacies in survey research by correctly
separating actual voters from those who pretend they will cast ballots but never
do and by substituting actual observation for guesswork in judging the relative
turnout of different parts of the state."
According to ABC, CNN, ABC and AP's exit polls, Kerry was slated to carry Florida,
Ohio, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada and Iowa.
CNN especially expected a landslide for Kerry, according to the huge exit poll
numbering greatly favoring Kerry. This is why CNN's Wolf Blitzer. Larry King
and Judy Wooddruff waited until 5:00 a.m. Wednesday morning while Fox News and
NBC called Ohio for Bush hours earlier.
News of Kerry's very good exit polls was the reason why Bush was informed by
Hughes that Bush lost the election. The exit poll numbers put Rove into a frenzy,
according to one source, he began calling the TV media, pressuring them to call
Ohio for Bush. Fox and NBC did so. CNN, CBS, ABC and the AP would not.
British Prime Minister, looking at the same exit polls before going to bed early
Wednesday morning Greenwich time, expected John Kerry to be the 44th President
of the United States. When he awoke in the morning to the apparent Bush win,
he was shocked, says the report.
The reason was the exit polling numbers news organizations had been looking
at all election night. "Everything pointed to Kerry, in a landside, perhaps
almost by four million popular votes more than Bush," said one CNN executive.
"Everyone was laughing at FOX and NBC. We knew they had it wrong. Calling
Ohio like that? I still think they are wrong. Dead wrong," he said.
According to sources, Rove and Morris worked together to "manipulate"
the exit polls as "moral values" votes - that were actually Kerry's
popular vote cushion of more than three million votes in a landslide win for
the Democrats. The exit polls tabulated by the National Pooling Service - a
consortium of major media networks and the AP - give accurate polling data to
the media so stories can be prepared and coverage organized -
According to sources, it is widely believed that the electronic optical voting
machines' central tabulators were "tampered with" and that the "actual"
votes for Bush are wrong and the exit poll numbers are right.
Graphic maps of Kerry v. Bush exit polls with paper
voting ballot states show Kerry way ahead, while those with electronic voting
in some states had Kerry ahead as well. Matches of the millions of tallies to
those of electronic votes radically changed opposite those from Kerry to Bush!
FOX news, and NBC News, attempting to "spin" the story of the exit
polls only makes the allegations of massive fraud that much more real as stories
from across the country are not reported on this network except as "political
spin" for the Republican party.
While all of this may or may not be evidence of vote tampering yet, some say,
it brings us back to the question of why several "swing states" using
"electronic voting machines" from companies committed to the re-election
of George W. Bush and often failing, programmed to give Kerry votes to Bush
and connected to modems producing votes inconsistent with registered voters'
numbers and exit polls?
The "moral values" vote is a typical Rove spin, with a tinge of Morris
in it from his secret activities in Iowa in October. Iowa was the last state
in the union to report Friday that it has given President Bush its seven electoral
votes for his total of 286 electoral votes. No one knows why Iowa took four-days
under secrecy to count its votes.
Those who say they observed the election, such as the OSCE - European observers,
looking glum, said they could not gain access into Florida and North Carolina
to observe the polls. The gave a news conference and Thursday and headed back
to Europe where a report will be issued in six weeks.
According to others in polling stations in Ohio, Florida and North Carolina,
- the national polling results showed Kerry with a national three-to-four million
popular vote cushion. The computerized results gave that cushion to Bush and
explained through Karl Rove that these "moral values votes" gave Bush
his religious conservative mandate.
One particpant in last week's conference call about the Opti-Scan voting machines,
the exit polls and the actual vote asked, "What if the exit polls are right
and the vote count is wrong?"
Numerous reports of demonstrations springing up in Washington state, Oregon,
California, New York, and other cities and states throughout the country against
the vote corruption continue to come in.
It was reported Sunday by CNN "Headline News" that a 25-year-old man
distraught over the election fraud and Kerry's loss, shot himself in the head
at ground zero of the World Trade Center in New York.
A huge gathering of Americans against the vote fraud and war in Iraq across
the nation is expected to form in all 48 lower states heading peacefully toward
and settling in Washington D.C. beginning the day after Thanksgiving - Friday,
November 26 - and arriving and remaining in the nation's capital until mid-December.
Other gatherings are expected on Inauguration Day - Thursday, January 20, 2005.
Organizers are planning to remain in Washington through the Electoral College
meeting on December 13th.
Tentatively titled, 'The "Don't Tread On Me March: SAVE THE U.S. CONSTITUTION!
Save America!' by organizers; a call for all able-bodied Americans, young, and
old, male and female, Democrat, Republican, Independent, Constitution, Green
Party and others, no matter the culture, color or voting age, black, brown,
white, red or "other" - join in gathering to seek a resettlement of
the government of the people in the nation's capital to seek redress of the
2004 General Election.
The results of the 2004 general election has not be certified by the electors,
who, according to the U.S. Constitution, must have each state certify the electoral
votes to either ballot candidate or switch votes towards their favored candidate
according to the "true and accurate account of the popular vote" as
by XV amendment of the U.S. Constitution by the deadline of December 7, 2004.
Whoever is certified as the winner is inaugurated president on January 20, 2005.
Organizers said the People of the United States of America will be present to
observe the proper swearing in of the 44th President of the United States and
see the U.s. Constitution and their Civil Rights fully enforced.
More news as news breaks... it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services
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www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7499.htm
Rise of the Amerikan Nazis
Democracy at Death’s Doorstep
Death of Democracy
By Manuel Valenzuela
12/16/04 "ICH" -- In November 2000 democracy, or the mirage that passed
for it, was dismembered, never again allowed to grace America with its cherished
principles espousing the power of ‘We the People.’ It was four years
ago that democracy inhaled its last breath of life through the asphyxiation
of the People’s will by the powerful grip of electoral fraud. Today, after
four years of having experienced the subsequent results of what fraud helped
birth, and now with yet another clear case of electoral fraud under our belts,
democracy has been replaced by a mutated and debauched species of democracy,
one consisting of televised manipulation of votes through media conditioning,
two-party charades controlled and commanded by corporate interests, representative
façades that no longer serve the People, and election day fictions of
electorate mandates along with fantasies of voter empowerment.
All this, combined with the methodical and clandestine rigging of elections
by the GOP elite, has resulted in the utter destruction of one of the most honored
principles in American history. The beacon of democracy has thus become a bastardized
bonfire of duplicity, a sham designed to maintain and control power even as
the citizenry is made to believe their voice resonates and steers the country
forward. Nothing could be further than the truth.
“We the People,” that brilliantly concocted phrase designed for
the consumption of the masses, carefully masqueraded yet hardly ever applied,
whose fiction has since its creation been unmasked more and more with each passing
decade, has now been firmly revealed for the farce that it is through the second
coup d’etat in four years to smear the land of greed and the home of the
slave. For those residing inside the entrails of the United Corporations of
America, now under the firm grip of the Amerikan Nazis, the term created by
the Founding Fathers has ceased to exist. It is now nothing more than a phrase
rotting away in the dustbins of history, forever to gather dust, slowly decomposing
its once protected greatness, discarded by the indifference and abandonment
of the same people it was meant to inspire.
Democracy’s grave today lies in Florida, with its undertaker, Jeb “Jim
Crow” Bush, and its mortician, the good old boys’ Grand Old Party,
responsible for America’s descent into despotism. It was the Sunshine
State that first carried the election fraud cancer four years ago, riddled with
tumors and chicanery, in time helping spread it to other states and other elections
by the greed addicts and power mongers comprising the Amerikan Nazis. Like pollen
carried by the wind the virus traveled freely, passing from host to host, from
Diebold machine to Diebold machine, infecting Amerikan Nazi minions, from Katherine
Harris in Florida to Kenneth Blackwell in Ohio, traitors to a now terminally
infected nation, catalysts to mass murder and incalculable crimes against humanity.
Growing in malignancy, the cancer proliferated into many other states. It was
tested to great success in the mid-year elections of 2002 (think Georgia, Florida),
and was perfected in time for the grand prize of 2004, culminating in the Buckeye
state of Ohio, systematically delivered to George Bush through an array of clandestine
methods that would make a third-world dictator merry with Christmas glee and
New Year’s bliss.
If in November 2000 the monster’s heinous face was finally uncovered,
revealing to those no longer blinded by the System its true and contemptible
nature, then in November 2004 we witnessed its dastardly growth and mutation
into a malevolent tumor afflicting the greatest democracy the world has ever
known.
The election of 2000 had been too close, a certain defeat for BushCo without
Florida’s massive fraud, and never again would the People be allowed to
interrupt the master plans of the corporatists (criminals) and zealots (murderers)
who were destined to rule the new Amerika. And so, the Amerikan Nazis, patient
and sinister, understanding the rapid evolution of technology, owning the mechanisms
by which elections were held, counted and tallied, and possessing monopolistic
control of the halls of governance, waited as time became their ally and conditioned
fear and ignorance of the citizenry became their bedfellows.
The Florida Fraud of 2000, followed by the Supreme Court selection, assured
the Amerikan Nazis of four years to perfect their democracy-destroying mechanisms,
four years to study their strategy, upgrade their Jim Crow techniques, subvert
democracy-protecting legislation, learn from their mistakes, improve their technology,
research voting trends and demographics, distribute their election-rigging machines,
refine their vote-manipulating code, unleash their army of lackeys and install
the infrastructure necessary to once and forever control American elections.
It was only natural, then, that with the advent and evolution of digital technology,
advancements in optical scanners, upgrades in computer power and the privatization
of elections that those entities unscrupulous in character, absorbed in the
corruption birthed by absolute power and enemies to democracy would attempt
to erode the basic fabric of the will of the People. Such has happened with
the 2004 Presidential elections, the second coup d’etat in four years
to riddle its disease-soaked tumor onto the lands of the nation once known as
the greatest democracy to ever exist. Déjà vu all over again Over
100 million Americans went to the voting booth on November 4, 2004 to help elect
the next President of the United States. Voter turnout was massive as record
numbers of citizens headed to the polls intent on having their voice heard.
What they did not know, however, was that the presidential election had already
been decided in favor of George W. Bush months, if not years, before.
The Amerikan Nazi strategy of rigging elections has been carefully implemented
during the last six years, if not longer. Through control of every aspect of
American elections, from ownership of electronic voting machines and optical
scanning equipment designed to count votes, owned by Diebold, ES & S and
Triad, to political control of state officials responsible for the implementation
and enforcement of elections – think the Ken Blackwell’s and Jeb
“Jim Crow” Bush’s of the world – to the control of state
legislatures and Supreme Courts to the one-party ownership of all branches of
the federal government and its vast arsenal of power, including the ability
to squash democracy protecting legislation, the Amerikan Nazis have assured
themselves of perpetual fraud, massive deceit of the American People, and continual
domination of governance.
Electronic voting machines are the most devious mechanism yet created to assassinate
democracy. Why they have been allowed to infiltrate American elections, even
when they function without paper trails, without accountability, without overbearing
security of codes and technology, without the ability to trace how a vote is
created and by whom, is a travesty. Yet it is Republican legislatures that have
refused to allow paper trails of machines or audits or investigations into the
effects of private enterprise possessing the ability to run American elections.
This past November, it was these same machines, along with optical scanners
counting the voting tallies, that defrauded the American people of their democracy.
In district after district, votes were stolen from Kerry while at the same time
higher voting numbers were given to Bush. In fact, in many districts voter turnout
favoring Bush statistically outnumbered the total number of voter registrations,
and in other areas, Democratic votes dropped dramatically from their 2000 numbers,
even in Democrat heavy districts and even with a massive outpouring of progressive
voter drives.
The machine codes of Republican controlled election equipment were most likely
formulated to erode ten votes here, one hundred there, 1000 over there, amounting
to insignificant numbers when seen from individual polling place to polling
place, yet in the aggregate, statewide and nationally, these small eroded numbers
end up adding up to hundreds of thousands of votes methodically taken away from
Kerry and naturally favoring Bush.
Combined with the now obvious tampering and hacking into these companies’
non-secure codes and machines whose fraudulent glitches gave massive and non-existent
vote numbers to Bush and the disenfranchisement of hundreds of thousands, if
not millions, of minority votes, the fraud that is the election of 2004 becomes
apparent.
Historically, exit polls have never been wrong, except in Florida 2000 and now
in every state rigged in favor of Bush. (If exit polls can convince the Bush
administration that the Ukraine suffered electoral fraud, then why is the same
not so here?) This year, exit polls were right on the money in those states
not seen as strategic, battleground areas. But in those vitally important for
both candidates, such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Florida, dependent
on electronic voting machines and optical scanners, the exit polls substantially
differed from the results. In these states, substantial Kerry leads in exit
polls resulted in Bush victory at the voting booth.
Exit polls from districts not using electronic voting machines and optical scanners
were also right on target as compared to the results of polling places using
them. The fraud cannot be more obvious. Exit polls were pointing in the direction
of a Kerry landslide in key battleground states, yet a few hours later these
figures changed dramatically in an impossible shift in numbers. The machines
had been hacked, they had suddenly worked their magic, and incredibly, what
appeared like a sure victory for Kerry turned into a dramatic win for Bush.
The anomalies and the glitches have been everywhere, and reports from all across
the nation report the same thing. Yet in every case, these so-called mistakes
and natural errors only seem to favor Bush. Now, anyone with a slight education
in statistics will tell you that this is quite impossible. Surely we would see
errors favoring Kerry, right? Well, we do not, every glitch in the election
favors Bush, coincidentally with Republican controlled voting machines and optical
scanners that count the votes. And we still debate that the election was stolen?
The fraud was massive, systemic, methodical and coldly-calculated to steal the
election in favor of Bush and the Amerikan Nazis. Clandestine and ingenious,
the infrastructure built by the Republicans, from top to bottom, assured that
everything would work to perfection. The cover up, from elected officials in
Ohio and elsewhere to those People’s representatives in Washington to
the cowards in the corporate media has been colossal. Yet slowly, but surely,
the truth is coming out, as it usually always does.
Democracy was dealt a Texas lethal injection, executing the glimmer of hope
elections and votes represented. In its last breaths of agony and suffering
it bellowed its excruciating shrieks from the belly of the state of Ohio, its
indifferent executioner. A Presidential election has once more been stolen,
the second coup against the American people in four years, obvious to anyone
not having their head buried in the sand or stuck in the haze of ignorance.
More importantly, the nation of, by and for the People has been usurped, defrauded
of the mandate of voters and the will of the People. The rise of the Amerikan
Nazis thus continues, coinciding with the death of American democracy, its power
eviscerated, never again allowed to jeopardize the interests or power of those
most threatened by the voting mandate of the masses.
For democracy in its purest forms is the mortal enemy of the greed addicted,
power hungry, unscrupulous-laden, corrupt, criminal and warmongering pestilence
that today resides in Washington, their plague-like virus encroaching the halls
of Congress, the offices of governance and homes old and white.
The will of the People only gets in their way; it interferes with their plans,
interrupts their ideologies and castrates their intentions. Autocrats, like
a fly thriving on fecal matter, prosper on despotism; they depend on absolute
power and control of the nation to implement the devastation of the masses for
the prosperity of the few.
Democracy only hinders their plans, and so becomes an enemy to tyranny, which,
once in power, begins slicing off the appendages of democratic principles. There
is nothing despots hate more than the voice of the People and the power of the
masses. They detest dissent and protest, free-thought and informed intelligence.
And so, like vultures circling a dead carcass, the cabal of miscreants now in
power has swarmed down to feast, gutting the Peoples’ will and voice,
eroding America’s collective intelligence and manipulating minds through
the power of propaganda and brainwashing, courtesy of corporate media and the
whores it calls journalists, now nothing more than loudspeakers spewing government/corporate
rhetoric into the minds of Americans. Like Taking Candy From a Baby The
television has become the most useful and powerful manipulator of minds, and
hence of votes, ever envisioned by those in power. Its sheer ability to define
issues favorable to those who control television makes the television the ultimate
weapon of mass deception. Those who control television and its content control
the masses. America has reached a stage where the television has become society’s
outlet to the world, acting as entertainer and informer, educator and conveyor
of escapism. The power of the monitor, beamed into every home, seen by nearly
every pair of eyes, when combined with a population easily controlled, unwise
to the world and ignorant beyond repair, becomes the tool assuring despots such
as the Amerikan Nazis of mass support and of blind sheep easily herded, both
indifferent to the actions of those in power and pacified to the criminal nature
of their enterprise.
If Joseph Goebbels succeeded with much less, transforming a defeated nation
into a molten cauldron of warmongers soaked in blind patriotism, violent nationalism,
animalistic fear and ignorant xenophobia, all done without the use of television,
imagine the successes of Karl Rove, Zionists, corporatists and the Amerikan
Nazis who like puppet masters skillfully command the thoughts, actions and beliefs
of millions of Americans. When the television has become the new conduit of
reality, the new altar of American prayer and experience, acting as parent,
teacher, preacher and manipulative religion, it is easy to surmise, then, that
a population bred for and addicted to television, with its vast arsenal of programming
controlled by the same corporations now in control of government, has for years
marched like soldier ants and worker bees to the drumbeat and marching orders
of those in power.
Whether willing or not, the American people have become captives to whatever
information is or is not aired by the corporate media. We are unable, for example,
to hear any information or news on the debacle in Iraq, with its ceaseless war
crimes and mass murders, or on the devastation of both land and man of radioactive
depleted uranium, or on the dire threat of global warming, or on the balanced
view of the Israeli-Palestinian issue or on dissident points of debate prevalent
in this country and, of course, on the ever-widening scandal that is the fraud-riddled
election of 2004. We remain, unfortunately, at the mercy of the corporate media,
itself in bed with the Amerikan Nazis, unable to inform ourselves of anything
detrimental to both government and big business. The sphere of reality, for
those who have yet to discover the liberating energy of the Internet, is as
limited as those in control of television wish it to be.
When only carefully selected news and information is relayed into our homes,
when only the one-sided opinions espoused by government and corporations are
showcased, with only the voices of pro-government or corporate talking heads
available, when only whitewashed, censored stories and reports favorable to
those in power get aired, when vitally important information gets suppressed,
when the views of third-party candidates never gets covered and when escapist
fantasy is shown over important reality democracy becomes a useless instrument
devoid of power.
When the citizenry of a nation can no longer make electoral decisions based
on free-thought, on educated information gathering and on the objective reporting
of media democracy cannot function. Media today has the ability to censor any
candidate running for office it does not approve of. It can help build a candidate
up, making him or her the next war president. It can manipulate stories, so-called
yells of rage, the popularity of a candidate and inevitably, his or her success.
Just ask Howard Dean how his campaign was destroyed in part by the corporate
media. The Establishment saw a threat and proceeded to eliminated it.
For an objective, balanced and informative media loyal only to the truth is
a pillar of a healthy democracy. When it crumbles, however, as we see today,
instead becoming the stepping stone of the Amerikan Nazis’ rise to power
and nothing more than corporatist controlled media, democracy is destroyed and
can no longer be trusted to help move the nation forward.
An unenlightened populace, imputing televised propaganda as its own opinion,
ignorant to the true state of the country, conditioned to never question either
the monitor or government propagandists, captured by lies, deceits, fears, schizophrenia
and obedient to the Amerikan Nazis cannot be said to vote wisely, with neither
all available information at their disposal or with a clear understanding of
the issues. This is not democracy, this is controlled debauched democracy, reminiscent
of the best media propaganda in the now defunct Soviet Union and Iron Curtain,
reminding one of the state owned channels available in dictatorships. Today
in America, the only thing those in power have to do to win votes is control
the television, its content and message. In the United States, nothing is easier
to do.
What the television guarantees the Amerikan Nazis is the undivided attention
of the masses who have no other choice but to see and listen to what the corporate
media decides to release. At the press of a button, the Amerikan Nazis can manipulate
public opinion and steer the direction of the nation’s pulse based on
the images beamed and the propaganda voiced by sold out talking heads, journalists
and anchors. They can mobilize millions through propaganda and fear, they can
make millions vote against their interests through an amalgam of psychologically
devastating tools designed to manipulate and condition.
More and more, the media, nothing more than the propaganda-laced loudspeaker
of government and the corporate interests that owns it, airs only what the Amerikan
Nazis want the population to see and hear. Hence, we see that a complete blackout
of the stolen election of 2004 has been implemented by the corporate media.
Naturally, this is done so that the vast majority of the sheep can continue
grazing tranquilly, not knowing, not caring and not interested. This is done
so that momentum of the resistance does not grow, so that more citizens do not
become aware of what is being done to us, so that the movement is discredited,
so that truth dies and is forgotten, and so that Amerikan Nazi power and control
continues to grow without interruption and without an awakening of the masses.
The complicit nature of the corporate media, in its failure to cover such a
treasonous crime upon the American people, is clear proof of its role in the
death of democracy, the birth of despotism now invading America and the rise
of the Amerikan Nazis.
Carefully bombarding the human mind with one-sided, censored, misleading, deceitful,
manipulative, jingoistic, patriotic diatribe and propaganda, especially in a
country where free-thought is the exception rather than the rule, where the
thoughts of pundits become the opinions of the masses, where diversity of opinion
has evaporated and dissent has ceased to exist, the media, through the television
and radio, creates in the thought processes of the masses the illusion that
only the opinion it airs exists and can be accepted. Thus what it shows and
says must be true because no other opinion or view exists out there in the realm
of television. With a populace that does not self-educate itself, dependent
entirely on the viewpoints of Amerikan Nazi lackeys for their lackluster attempt
at knowledge, this is a recipe for the manipulation of a healthy democracy.
In order to maintain power in a so-called ‘free-society’, where
liberty and freedom ring loud and clear, autocrats destroy democracy’s
last vestiges, a population’s ability to think independently, rationally,
analytically and logically, thereby decimating liberating education and necessary
dissent, thereby clandestinely cleansing a nation of the will of the People.
Yet retaining the illusion and appearance of democracy is purposefully done
so that the masses believe that nothing has changed, that they are in control
of their own destiny. Charades of democracy are created, their manipulations
ensuring that a dumbed-down populace, in this case nearly 60 million zombies,
continue voting against their own interests and for the immoral and criminal
power mongers in control.
Controlling the masses has never been easier. Manipulating their minds to the
dictates of the Amerikan Nazis is like taking candy from a baby, without so
much a whimper or a cry. Contempt for Diversity and Elections After November
2000, elections, and the balance of power, would never again be left to the
People, for the Amerikan Nazis understood that demographics and the inevitable
societal push towards liberalism were evolving against them. America was becoming
a melting pot, a heterogeneous cornucopia of world diversity where the status
quo was no more and the good old boy network was threatened. Suddenly, one day
the American Nazis woke up from a delirious slumber and found the America they
adored no longer existed. A spectrum of opinion, ideas, talents and beliefs
now dotted the landscape. A nation of snow-covered whiteness and WASP male dominance
had become a land of rainforests and deserts and mountains and valleys and jungles
and beaches and sun, full of color, warmth and translucent light, a window upon
the world.
In diversity and the continued evolution of progressive thought the Amerikan
Nazis found fear. They found themselves losing elections to minorities and women
and gays, losing power to people of color, to assertive, intelligent women and
to united same sex partners. Together with a plethora of young adults, progressive
and open, educated and of liberal mind, this mixture of diversity would in a
few years make extinct, by way of majority numbers, the way it had always been,
where power was monopolized by the elite, white in color, male in gender, born
to privilege and forever destined to rule.
Gray and White had, in the course of a few years, mutated into a cocktail of
Rainbows and colorful prisms, and in this new America the Amerikan Nazis felt
an insurmountable threat surrounding them from all sides. Black and white television
had given way to high-definition digital technology; progress was once more
working its wonderful magic, trouncing conservative and traditional thought.
The fog had cleared, giving way to a crispness not before seen. The Amerikan
Nazi hegemony over us and tight grip on the nation would soon, and inevitably,
begin crumbling like a rotten wooden barn.
An ever-evolving America, with its ever-evolving society, had taken a great
leap forward, a place where female talent now competed with male mediocrity,
where African-Americans were slowly entering middle-class mainstream America,
where an influx of immigration was transforming the face of the nation for the
better. The Amerikan Nazis, Republican and corporatist dinosaurs facing extinction
by the asteroid of change, felt threatened, seeing their power perched atop
the roofs of governance in peril. Indeed, it was becoming apparent to them that
with each passing year, with each new immigrant wave, female act of empowerment,
minority advancement, gay right granted, scientific discovery made, religious
dogma abandoned and move toward progressiveness their tenuous grip on power
would begin to erode.
The threat therefore had to be quashed, the sooner the better. In rigging elections
the Amerikan Nazis saw their salvation, and their way to retain power and control.
Corrupt technology would rescue them, and forever would they be allowed to transform
their Amerika in an image in contrast to the course the nation was presently
embarking on. To accomplish this, the minority vote would, as has always been
the case, have to be disenfranchised through the vast arsenal of tactics available
to the GOP.
Also, the female vote would have to be manipulated, for too many women were
turning against the America of old. This would be accomplished using the psychologically
devastating effects of 9/11, with perpetual fear, insecurity and constant threats
of terror creating in many women a desire to seek protection in the present
leader of the country, a “strong” male figure turned war president,
George Bush. Thus, using fear, the Amerikan Nazis were able to manipulate in
their favor millions of female votes.
In strong progressive white communities, too, mechanisms would be implemented
to decimate the ever-growing vote, eroding high numbers of votes by the systematic
rigging of electronic voting machines and optical scanners designed to count
votes. And so, the great death march of American democracy thus began.
People of color, those comprising every spectrum of the greatness of human diversity,
of all shades and ethnicities, were increasing their numbers, growing exponentially
each decade, now constituting nearly 30 percent of the population. Historically
voting progressive, their numbers were now too large to ignore or disenfranchise
through more traditional means. Jim Crow 2.0 would have to be resurrected, evolving
with the changing years and new technologies, always decimating “minority”
vote for the benefit of the Amerikan Nazis.
The good old boy tradition of suppressing and intimidating the minority vote,
for decades successful in erasing the election voice of the black community
by apartheid-like inequality, discrimination and segregation, thereby disenfranchising
hundreds of thousands if not millions of votes each election, would be upgraded
and improved. To the same mechanisms of the past would be added the advanced
technology of Republican controlled optical scanners in service to count ballots,
as well as electronic voting machines manipulated to tabulate according to the
formulas concocted by GOP strategists.
For years separated from “traditional” America, placed in urban
reservations infiltrated with drugs, guns and firewater, infested with high
crime and infected by the corrosive mechanisms of lost talents and non-existent
opportunity, perpetually held down at the lowest echelons of the American caste
system, millions of undesired “minorities” knew the oldest, most
corrupt, least efficient and least sophisticated voting apparatuses in the country
were usually sent their way, causing the disenfranchisement of untold numbers
of votes that simply became lost by the incompetence of the machinery.
This past election was no exception, once more affecting the minority vote in
all fifty states, usually in poor urban areas, “the minority reservations.”
It is difficult to quantify the number of votes lost, spoiled, unread or discarded
by these antiquated and run down voting mechanisms, but it is safe to say that
the voice of hundreds of thousands never gets heard. In a country of so-called
equality, at the dawn of the 21st century, to have this apartheid in voting
rights is a disgrace, where environment, socioeconomic status and skin color
coalesce to disintegrate a person’s right to vote.
While white, more affluent communities not caught in the vicious circle of corrosive
segregation – not to mention Republican strongholds – get the most
modern voting equipment, guaranteeing their right to vote, destitute neighborhoods,
mostly of color and mostly liberal voting, those lacking resources and education,
get shafted with the discarded machines of yesterday. These machines, antiquated
and inefficient, are purposefully sent to minority reservations simply because
they guarantee that hundreds of thousands of votes will never be counted. This
the Amerikan Nazis know too well, which is why they fight to keep it that way.
After all, with the elimination of so many votes, the vast majority of which
go against their interests, the Amerikan Nazis succeed in retaining the power
and control of governance, forever keeping the minority voice silent and suppressed.
As an example, in Ohio this past election voting irregularities abounded, particularly
in minority districts. The Amerikan Nazi strategy of eliminating progressive
votes while increasing their own numbers was methodically implemented in the
crucial state of Ohio, this election’s Florida. In many black neighborhoods,
traditionally voting strongly for liberal candidates, the disenfranchisement
of votes was everywhere. Besides the use of antiquated voting equipment mentioned
above, in districts where electronic voting machines were used, votes for Kerry
were transferred to fringe candidates with no popular support. A few hundred
here, a few hundred there, county to county, district to district, electronic
voting machine code, controlled by Diebold, a strong Republican-backed corporation,
systemically manipulated the vote so that Democrat votes for Kerry ended up
elsewhere. When added together, these votes are significant.
Also, too few voting machines were sent to districts, even with many machines
available for distribution, resulting in hours upon hours of waiting in line,
with voters growing impatient and leaving, most having to return to work or
other responsibilities. Thus, untold thousands were unable to cast votes. Meanwhile,
in Republican dominated districts, an abundance of voting machines were available,
meaning people’s wait was minimal. This happened over and over again in
Ohio, as well as other strategically important states. Still in other districts,
there were many reports of votes for Kerry suddenly and without explanation
being converted into votes for Bush. This was repeated in small numbers throughout
Ohio, the end result being that separately, what appears to be a small number
of votes disenfranchised, easily discarded as computer errors, in the aggregate
turns out to be a substantial number of votes away from Kerry and for Bush.
Broken Like Wild Stallions We are puppets, one and all, our attached strings
easily maneuvered, our brainwashed minds easily controlled. Too many years of
accumulated televised propaganda, too many years of control and manipulation
by our schools and corporate media have made us immune to the spirit of rage
and the power of the People present in other regions of the world but sorely
extinct here. We have been inoculated with acquiescence and passivity, becoming
humans living in a vegetative state incapable of rising up, conditioned to believe
in the greatness of government and its lawmakers, trained well to obey laws
and rules even when they favor those in power and when they fail to seek justice
and equality, even as corporations and the government rape and pillage our ways
of life, even as the future of our children is put in grave danger more and
more each day we fail to act. The System has worked its magic, and comatose
drones living mechanical lives have we been bred to become, from the cradle
to the grave, swimming in a cocktail of complacency, indifference, passivity
and conformism.
The evidence of this is enveloping, it is all around us. Our failure to rise
up as one giant energy, millions strong, seeking accountability and justice,
searching for a government no longer serving the needs of the People, demanding
the end to corporate rule, forcing change in policy and direction and putting
an end to the criminal nature of our politicians is proof that our human spirit
has been extinguished, our will to fight extinct. Today, in spite of massive,
overwhelming and accumulating evidence of election fraud, in spite of being
lied and led into illegal war and criminal mass murder, in spite of the miserable
failure of our leaders, in spite of the likely road to totalitarianism we seem
headed towards and in spite of the profound danger Bush has and continues to
place us in we continue to live life not caring, not knowing and not interested.
We have been tamed, like a wild stallion, broken, saddled and corralled, robbed
of the freedom to roam America’s plains, now faithful and obedient to
our wicked masters, unwilling to take action, unwilling to resist and revolt,
much like the Declaration of Independence asks us to do in times of tyranny,
instead complacent in life, entertained by bread and circus, uncaring for our
future, ignorant to our present, blind to the destruction of America being perpetrated
by those in power. We are like zoo animals, encaged, depressed, controlled,
conditioned, defeated.
We are unlike the hundreds of thousands of brave people of Ukraine demanding
that justice be served and democracy re-instated, marching and protesting, or
unlike the millions of Italians who in solidarity against the economic policies
of Silvio Berlusconi recently enacted a massive, country-wide strike that grinded
that nation to a halt, or unlike millions of Eastern Europeans trapped inside
the Iron Curtain in the late 1980’s, creating revolution and mass protest,
finally demanding and getting freedom and an end to tyranny and corrupt political
systems, or unlike millions of Palestinians, who under Nazi and apartheid-like
treatment by Israelis continue struggling for their lands and their culture,
becoming a testament to the will of the human spirit, refusing to cower to occupiers
and dehumanizers, or unlike the thousands of Chileans and Canadians marching
through their streets, protesting the arrival of the greatest criminal against
humanity now living, or unlike the millions of Venezuelans marching together
in support of their beloved leader Hugo Chavez, democratically elected yet American
castigated, slowly making profound changes to help improve the lives of his
poor, or unlike the millions upon millions who marched throughout the world
in February 2003 against the imminent attack on Iraq, filling streets by the
millions, in a show of solidarity never before seen.
The flame inside us has disappeared, replaced by a cold and dark void, even
as we witness firsthand the arrival of fascism and the death of democracy, even
as we are witness to the end of freedom and rights and the extinction of the
land once known as America. From a Small Ripple to a Massive Wave Yet
a small movement grows, made up of brave patriots and seekers of truth, which
refuses to die. It is slowly building momentum, gathering steam as its numbers
swell with the arrival of still more truths that, it seems, become manifest
every day. The cover up of the electoral fraud of 2004 is imploding, seam by
seam and code by code, slowly unraveling as the beautiful energy of those fed
up with the Amerikan Nazis grows in rage and power.
In every state and every city the resistance to the Amerikan Nazis gathers more
numbers of dissidents ready to join a small yet momentous army of change. The
movement is exposing more truth as diverse talents expose the crimes and fraud
perpetrated against the American People. Collectively saying “No More”
to the power mongers and war criminals that have stolen the past two elections,
the movement is uncovering what the corporate media refuses to touch. In spite
of the media blackout on the stolen election, which is designed to erase memories
of fraud from the short-attention span of the average American, the movement
refuses to die. On the contrary, it is gathering steam, becoming a much needed
burst of positive energy upon the lands of the United States.
In spite of all obstacles and hindrances placed at our feet, in spite of the
power of the Amerikan Nazis to erase from history this most malevolent episode
in our history, in spite of a well-conceived and planned cover up, the movement
is growing. It is because of people like you, reading this essay, that the fraud
lingers in our conscious. It is because of seekers of truth and justice that
the Amerikan Nazis are being exposed.
From a small ripple can a massive wave be formed, washing from our lands the
criminal elements living among us. From a giant wave of positive energy can
the virus that is the Amerikan Nazis forever be vanquished. We must inoculate
ourselves against the disease ripping apart democracy by joining together in
this movement to uncover the crimes against the American people. We must not
let it die for the truth is emerging. If we let the Amerikan Nazis win, every
election from here on will be filled to the brim with fraud and deceit, and
the end of America as we know it will be upon us. Only together can we defeat
tyranny, exposing it to the least enlightened among us and forever changing
the course of America, and the world. The movement must continue, for if not
now, when?
Enough is enough, government is today destructive to the principles we espouse
as a people. Let us listen, read and absorb those words uttered so long ago
by the Founding Fathers. Not since their time have the words engraved in the
Declaration of Independence been so in need. For it is our duty and our right
to alter or abolish this tyrannical regime that no longer serves the interests
of the People. It is our sacred duty to expose despotism and rising dictatorship,
to circumvent the prostitutes of the corporate media and report truths hidden
from our eyes, to rise up in protest at what is being done to us and to restore
the republic to what it once portended to be, and what it is capable of being.
Do not let the movement die, let it grow along with the raging fire burning
inside us all, let it prosper and expand, becoming the leviathan feared by the
Amerikan Nazis. May it guide us in strength and courage to help save both our
present and future. From a small ripple may a giant wave be created, cleansing
and washing away from our America the putrid disease infecting a great, noble
and good People.
The Declaration of Independence
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve
the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among
the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of
Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of
mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the
separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that
they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among
these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these
rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from
the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes
destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish
it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles
and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to
effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments
long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly
all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils
are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they
are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably
the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it
is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide
new Guards for their future security. -- Such has been the patient sufferance
of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter
their former Systems of Government.
Letter sent to the Asia Times
www.atimes.com/atimes/Letters.html
The American citizens have chosen to send the man [who] has trampled on the
views and wishes of a vast majority of the world's leaders and citizens for
the past four years back into the White House for four more years. In doing
so, they have indicated quite clearly that our views in the international community
do not count, that the USA and its citizens believe that they own and control
the world. The good news for us who live outside American borders is that now
comes our chance to bring out our votes. Yes, indeed we can and must bring out
our votes. We have every day of the next four [years] on which we can
vote with our wallets and purses by switching our daily purchases from American
goods to those produced outside American borders. If we do this in
sufficient numbers, two things will happen. Firstly, the American economy will
shrink in size and importance in the world and thus decrease American economic
might and ability to bully the rest of the world. The world economy will not
suffer, because the economies of the countries from whom we will be buying our
products will collectively grow in equal part to the amount by which the American
economy will shrink. Secondly, if the American economy shrinks dramatically
over the next four years, the absolute misery that they will suffer will wake
American voters up to the fact that America does not own the world, that our
views as the international community matters and must be treated with respect,
and that there is no way that we as the international community will allow them
to again choose such an irresponsible bully to be their president. Let
[us] start voting with our wallets and purses tomorrow. To use a Bush phrase,
we will have four more years to bring out our votes.
Barry Vorster
South Africa (Nov 4, '04)
Published Tuesday, November 30, 2004 by the Chicago Sun Times
Something's Fishy in Ohio
by Jesse Jackson
In the Ukraine, citizens are in the streets protesting what they charge
is a fixed election. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell expresses this nation's
concern about apparent voting irregularities. The media give the dispute around-the-clock
coverage. But in the United States, massive and systemic voter irregularities
go unreported and unnoticed.
Ohio is this election year's Florida. The vote in Ohio decided the presidential
race, but it was marred by intolerable, and often partisan, irregularities and
discrepancies. U.S. citizens have as much reason as those in Kiev to be concerned
that the fix was in. Consider:
In Ohio, a court just ruled there can't be a recount yet, because the vote is
not yet counted. It's three weeks after the election, and Ohio still hasn't
counted the votes and certified the election. Some 93,000 overvotes and undervotes
are not counted; 155,000 provisional ballots are only now being counted. Absentee
ballots cast in the two days prior to the election haven't been counted.
Ohio determines the election, but the state has not yet counted the vote. That
outrage is made intolerable by the fact that the secretary of state in charge
of this operation, Ken Blackwell, holds -- like Katherine Harris of Florida's
fiasco in 2000 -- a dual role: secretary of state with control over voting procedures
and co-chair of George Bush's Ohio campaign. Blackwell should recuse himself
so that a thorough investigation, count and recount of Ohio's vote can be made.
Blackwell reversed rules on provisional ballots in place in the spring primaries.
These allowed voters to cast provisional ballots anywhere in their county, even
if they were in the wrong precinct, reflecting the chief rationale for provisional
ballots: to ensure that those who went to the wrong place by mistake could have
their votes counted. The result of this decision -- why does this not surprise?
-- was to disqualify disproportionately ballots cast in heavily Democratic Cuyahoga
County.
Blackwell also permitted the use of electronic machines that provided no paper
record. The maker of many of these machines, the head of Diebold Co., promised
to deliver Ohio for Bush. In one precinct in Franklin County, an electric voting
system gave Bush 3,893 extra votes out of a total of 638 votes cast.
Blackwell also presided over a voting system that resulted in quick, short lines
in the dominantly Republican suburbs, and four-hour and longer waiting lines
in the inner cities. Wealthy precincts received ample numbers of voting machines
and numerous voting places. Democratic precincts received inadequate numbers
of machines in too few polling places that were often hard to locate; this caused
daylong waits for the very working people who could least afford the time.
In Ohio, as in Florida and Pennsylvania, there was a stark disconnect between
the exit polls and the tabulated results, with the former favoring John Kerry
and the latter George Bush. The chance of this occurring in these three states,
according to Professor Steven Freeman of the University of Pennsylvania, is
about 250 million to 1.
In one of dozens of examples, Ellen Connally, an African-American Supreme Court
candidate running an underfunded race at the bottom of the ticket, received
over 257,000 more votes than Kerry in 37 counties. She ran better than Kerry
in the areas of the state where she wasn't known and didn't campaign than she
did where she was known and did campaign.
There should be a federal investigation of the vote count in Ohio, with the
partisan secretary of state removing himself from the scene.
In Cleveland, as in Kiev, Ukraine, citizens have the right to know that the
election is run fairly and every vote counted honestly. Citizens have the right
to nonpartisan election officials. Citizens have the right to voting machines
that keep a paper record and allow for an independent audit and recount.
This country needs no more Floridas and Ohios. This shouldn't be a partisan
issue. We call for a constitutional amendment to guarantee the right to vote
for all U.S. citizens and to empower Congress to establish federal standards
and nonpartisan administration of elections. Harris and Blackwell are insults
to the people they represent, and stains upon the president whose election they
sought to ensure. Democracy should not be for export only.
© 2004 Chicago Sun Times
How The Bush Gang Stole Its Third National Election in a Row
By William Hare
11/29/04
www.politicalstrategy.org/archives/000869.php
www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/story/257365p-220441c.html
Ohio tally fit for Ukraine
Juan Gonzalez, November 30, 2004
Voter fraud in the Ukraine? Give me a break.
It has been a month now and we still don't have a clear count of the votes for
our own presidential race from the state of Ohio.
For those who may have forgotten, Ohio supposedly assured George W. Bush a second
term in the White House - only the most important job on the planet.
The morning after the election, we were told Bush was ahead of John Kerry in
that state's unofficial count by 139,000 votes, or 2.5%.
At the time there were 155,000 uncounted provisional ballots and an unknown
number of overseas ballots, but Kerry concluded they would not produce enough
of a margin to erase his deficit, so he promptly conceded.
At the same time, given the bitter Democratic memories of the 2000 Florida fiasco,
he assured his supporters he would fight to have every vote properly counted
this time.
Within a few days, other problems began to show up in Ohio's preliminary tally.
We learned, for example, that an additional 93,000 voters had gone to the polls
yet machines had registered no preference of theirs for President. Only a manual
recount can tell us for sure what happened to those 93,000 ballots.
Then, red-faced election officials in Franklin County admitted a computer error
on Election Night had tallied 4,258 votes for Bush in a precinct where only
638 people voted. That correction alone will drop Bush's margin by 3,620.
And now Daily News reporter Larry Cohler-Esses and I have uncovered some more
unusual vote totals, this time in black neighborhoods of Cleveland. Those results
are from the precinct-by-precinct tallies released by the Cuyahoga County Board
of Elections, where Cleveland is located.
In the 4th Ward on Cleveland's East Side, for example, two fringe presidential
candidates did surprisingly well.
In precinct 4F, located at Benedictine High School on Martin Luther King Jr.
Drive, Kerry received 290 votes, Bush 21 and Michael Peroutka, candidate of
the ultra-conservative anti-immigrant Constitutional Party, an amazing 215 votes!
That many black votes for Peroutka is about as likely as all those Jewish votes
for Buchanan in Florida's Palm Beach County in 2000.
In precinct 4N, also at Benedictine High School, the tally was Kerry 318, Bush
21, and Libertarian Party candidate Michael Badnarik 163.
Back in 2000, the combined third-party votes in those two precincts - including
the Nader vote - was 8. Cuyahoga, like most of Ohio's 88 counties, uses punch-card
balloting.
"That's terrible, I can't believe it," said City Councilman Kenneth
Johnson, who has represented the 4th Ward since 1980. "It's obviously a
malfunction with the machines."
But Peroutka and Badnarik polled unusually well in a few other black precincts.
In the 8th Ward's G precinct at Cory United Methodist Church, for instance,
Badnarik tallied 51 votes - nearly three times better than Bush's 19. And in
I precinct at the same church, Peroutka was the choice on 27 ballots, three
times more than Bush's 8. In 2000, independent candidates received 9 votes from
both precincts.
The same pattern showed up in 10 Cleveland precincts in which Badnarik and Peroutka
received nearly 700 votes between them.
In virtually all those precincts, Kerry's vote was lower than Al Gore's in 2000,
even though there was a record turnout in the black community this time, and
even though blacks voted overwhelmingly for Kerry.
If this same pattern held true in other cities around Ohio, then quite possibly
thousands of votes meant for Kerry somehow ended up in the tallies of the two
independent candidates. So far, however, precinct-by-precinct results have not
been posted by boards of elections in other counties, but by Thursday all official
results are due.
On Monday, Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell will certify Ohio's results
and then a manual recount will be requested by the Green and Libertarian parties.
The Badnarik and Peroutka surge was not the only unusual occurrence in Cleveland.
Also unusual was the drop in the Democratic vote in scores of precincts compared
to 2000. But more on that next time.
Originally published on November 30, 2004
www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/11/30/ukraine_election/
Democracy inaction
If U.S. officials who are complaining about election fraud in Ukraine
applied the same standards in Ohio, then our own presidential election certainly
was stolen.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By James K. Galbraith
Nov. 30, 2004 | The election was stolen. That's not in doubt. Secretary
of State Colin Powell admitted it. The National Democratic Institute and the
International Republican Institute both admitted it. Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana
-- a Republican -- was emphatic; there had been "a concerted and forceful
program of Election Day fraud and abuse"; he "had heard" of employers
telling their workers how to vote; yet he had also seen the fire of the resisting
young, "not prepared to be intimidated." In Washington, former National
Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski demanded that the results be set aside
and a new vote taken, under the eye -- no less -- of the United Nations. In
the New York Times, Steven Lee Myers decried "the use of government resources
on behalf of loyal candidates and the state's control over the media" --
practices, he said, that were akin to those in "Putin's Russia." Personally,
I don't know whether the Ukrainian election was really stolen. I don't trust
Lugar, Powell or the National Democratic Institute. It's obvious that U.S. foreign
policy interests, rather than love of democracy for its own sake, are behind
this outcry. Russia backed the other candidate in Ukraine. For Brzezinski, doing
damage to Russia is a hobby.
But if the Ukraine standard were applied in Ohio -- as it should be -- then
the late lamented U.S. election certainly was stolen. In Ohio, the secretary
of state in charge of the elections process was co-chairman of the Bush campaign
in the state. He obstructed the vote count systematically -- for instance, by
demanding that provisional ballots without birth dates on their envelopes be
thrown out, even though there is no requirement for that in state law. He also
required that provisional ballots be cast in a voter's home precinct, ensuring
that there would be no escape from long lines. Republicans fielded thousands
of election challengers to Democratic precincts, mainly to try to intimidate
black voters and to slow down the voting process. A recount, demanded and paid
for by the Green and Libertarian parties, has been stalled in court, so that
it won't possibly upset the certification of Ohio's electoral votes.
In Franklin County, Ohio, there was rampant abuse, with voting machines added
in Republican precincts and taken away in Democratic ones, as documented by
the Columbus Dispatch. The result was a crippling pileup at the polls; many
thousands did not vote because they simply could not afford to wait. I witnessed
this with my own eyes. And Sen. Lugar could have, too, for much less than the
price of airfare to Kiev.
According to an article by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman: "The man
running the show in Franklin County was Board of Elections Director Matt Damschroder,
former head of the county's Republican Party ... Damschroder's official records
also show that while desperate poll workers called his office throughout the
day, at least 125 machines were held back at the opening of the polls and an
additional 68 were never deployed. Thus while thousands of inner city voters
stood in the rain, were told their cars would be towed, and were then forced
to vote in five minutes or less, Damschroder sat on machines that could have
significantly sped the process."
These are the established facts. Eyewitness reports of other forms of abuse
include malfunctioning voting machines in Youngstown, a mysterious lockdown
of the vote count in Warren County and lesser incidents that run into the thousands.
And then there are allegations of irregularities in the count -- how solid these
are, one does not know. Taken together, are these enough to change the outcome?
No one can say. But the same is true in Kiev. And there, allegations by the
defeated opposition are taken in good faith, and are quite enough to satisfy
international observers and the government of the United States.
So where is the press? Why aren't there more stories on Ohio? Why is there no
national pressure for a prompt statewide recount? Why no continuing outcry?
Why no demand -- as our friends are making with strong American support in Ukraine
-- that the election results in Ohio be set aside and a new vote held? Why has
our election, with all its thuggery, been forgotten just three weeks after it
occurred?
One reason, of course, is that the U.S. government gives direction in these
matters, here at home as well as around the world. And our press, like that
in "Putin's Russia," follows suit. Our political leaders, if one could
call them that, stay silent and move on. They are terrified of being mocked
and bullied by the press.
Another reason is that in Ohio, pissed-off voters are well behaved. They are
working the hearings process, the recount process and the unhearing, unseeing
courts. In Kiev, by contrast, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators are on
the streets, staying there overnight in the bitter cold, bringing the government
to a halt and the world to attention.
We'll get our democracy back, one of these days, when the Democratic Party has
a mass base and is prepared to use it in the same way.
salon.com
- - - - - - - - - - - -About the writer
James K. Galbraith is Salon's economics correspondent. He teaches at the Lyndon
B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin.