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Votergate BART Alert! Thursday, 11/18, SF, Powell & Market, 5 PM
VOTERGATE BART ALERT! THURSDAY, 11/18, SF, POWELL & MARKET, 5 PM; THE ONLY MANDATE IS TO STOP VOTER SUPPRESSION.
OHIO RECOUNT IS ON - REMOVE THE SEC'Y OF STATE FROM THE COUNT. NETWORKS: RELEASE STATE & COUNTY EXIT POLLS
OHIO RECOUNT IS ON - REMOVE THE SEC'Y OF STATE FROM THE COUNT. NETWORKS: RELEASE STATE & COUNTY EXIT POLLS
A presidential recount will happen in Ohio, as Green candidate David Cobb and Libertarian candidate Michael Badnarik have formally requested it and have raised the money to pay the bill, though fundraising for the second phase continues (http://www.votecobb.org). They are calling for thousands of volunteers from Ohio and nationwide to assist as election observers in the 88 counties. Nader is doing the same in selected precincts in New Hampshire. The results of this recount and investigations of voter suppression and the questions that arise in the absence of a “voter-verified paper ballot” (http://www.verifiedvoting.org) go way beyond whatever might happen to Bush or Kerry - it goes to how and whether votes are counted in the United States.
Although the recount is good news, what kind of recount can we expect? Especially when led by the likes of Secretary of State (and Bush-Cheney state chair) J. Kenneth Blackwell and election county heads like ex-Republican Party director Matt Damschroder?
FRANKLIN COUNTY WAS GROUND ZERO FOR THE VOTE SUPPRESSION OF AFRICAN AMERICANS
Ohio has been the center of voter suppression tactics, with Columbus and the surrounding county of Franklin as “ground zero”. Bob Fithrakis of the Columbus Free Press http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2004/981 reports that the Republican board of elections director held back voting machines and dispersed many of the other machines to affluent suburbs in Franklin County. The number of dispersed machines remains unclear as of this writing, but not the pattern:“Matt Damschroder is the Franklin County Board of Elections Director, and the former Executive Director of the Franklin County Republican Party...Prior to Election Day, the Republican Party in Ohio planned to utilize an archaic Ohio election law to place Republican poll challengers in every polling site. The strategy, according to Republican insiders, was to clog the voting lines in predominantly black Democratic wards in urban areas, so voters would turn away in frustration.
When that plan came under heavy media scrutiny, federal courts in Ohio ruled against it, and a massive Election Protection Coalition operation was put in place to monitor the polling sites, Republican Central Committee sources say that Damschroder instituted Plan B.” – the dispersal of the machines.
Local public hearings are being held in Columbus on voter suppression and fraud - the first hearing was held on the 13th, the other for the evening of the 15th. The Nov. 14 Columbus Dispatch reports that the first hearing ran hours over schedule, with testimony about cars being towed from a Driving Park polling site, standing in line for several hours, and too few machines.
“Carol Shelton was the presiding judge at the Linden library precinct, with three machines for 1,500 registered voters. At her home precinct in Clintonville, she said there were three machines for 730 voters.”
"I called to get more machines and got connected to Matt Damschroder, and after lots of hassle he sent a fourth machine," she said. "It did not put a dent in the long lines. This was a clear case of voter suppression."
Similar tales of vote suppression have occurred in the Hispanic community in Cuyahoga County and elsewhere, such as left-wing student enclaves such as Kenyon College.
THE KEY EVIDENCE ON POSSIBLE VOTER FRAUD MEANS THAT WE MUST FORCE THE NETWORKS TO RELEASE WHAT THEY OWN - THE STATE AND COUNTY EXIT POLLS
The key evidence on possible voter fraud means that we must force the networks to release what they own - the state and county exit polls
These public hearings were held at the New Life Church, the location of the polling station in the Republican suburb of Gahanna where a faulty electronic voting machine cartridge counted 4,258 votes for George W. Bush in a precinct where only 638 people had voted. These miscounted 4000 votes will reduce the current 136,000 Bush margin of victory.
How many similar errors have occurred, in Ohio or eleswhere? The race is on to find out, especially in counties with electronic voting machines that have no paper trails. Ralph Nader is conducting a recount of 11 New Hampshire precincts that used optical scanners of Diebold or Sequoia Voting Systems. Although Kerry won the state, voting anomalies for Bush have resulted in numbers 5-15% higher than normal.
Bev Harris at www [at] blackboxvoting.org is conducting a fraud audit in Ohio, Florida and several other states. The discovery of 4500 lost e-votes in Carteret County, North Carolina is forcing a second election that could encompass the entire state. Bev Harris did a demonstration on national TV during election night how to hack into “the central tabulator” for voting machines, which “is just a PC”. In the words of those in the trenches at Verifiedvoting.org: “Electronic miscounts of votes are no longer a theory - it’s a fact.” David Dill, a Stanford University computer scientist, has obtained the signatures of more than a thousand other computer scientists on a petition
warning federal authorities that voting systems lacking paper records are "inherently subject to programming error, equipment malfunction, and malicious tampering."
A comparison of the exit polls of the swing states with the actual results reveals that the odds of Bush making an average gain of 4.15 per cent in every one of the 16 states included in the media’s 4 p.m. exit polling is 1 in 50,000, or .002 percent. (See the comparison at the end of this article; and for the basis of these numbers, go to http://www [at] slate.msn.com/id/2109053 and http://www.nytimes.com/ref/elections2004/2004President.html)
Look at the discrepancies for the three key swing states Ohio: 4.5% (before recount); Florida: 7%; Pennsylvania: 4.8%. Prof. Steve Freeman at UPenn calculates the odds of this anomaly in a well-written paper at 250 million to one. http://www.ilcaonline.org/freeman.pdf. And with New Hampshire at 8.6% statewide, it’s no wonder Nader wants to take a second look at chosen precincts.
Former MIT mathematics professor David Anick (www [at] bluelemur.org, Nov. 8) has found the odds of Bush making an average gain of 4.15 percent among all 16 states included in the media’s 4 p.m. exit polling is 1 in 50,000, or .002 percent. (See the poll at the end of this article).
Anick reasons that there are four possible causes of the “Bush gains.” (1) Significantly greater lying or refusal to speak to pollsters in Bush voters versus Kerry voters; (2) Consistent/systematic errors in weighting demographic groups; (3) A surge of Bush voters after 4 p.m., in all states; (4) Systematic tampering/hacking of reported vote totals, in Bush’s favor.
Activists are calling for the release of the full exit polling for all states by county, as the swing state data is the only data that has been made public by the networks. Their proprietary interest in the data should yield to the immediate public interest. No real conclusion can be drawn without all the data, and county by county exit polling would be the best means for examining claims of fraud.
Like Florida, 70% of Ohio’s votes are by “punch cards”, which historically disenfranchise African Americans and people of color
The amazing thing about the recount, as attorney and commentator Jonathan Turley pointed out on MSNBC on Nov. 9 that 70% of Ohio’s votes were done with punch cards with the infamous “chads”. As Florida proved in 2000, a lot of those punch cards “turn over” in a recount.
In a groundbreaking 1982 study, shortly after punch-card ballots became prevalent in Ohio, Ohio State poli-sci professor Herb Asher found that thousands of voters were disenfranchised because of punch-card ballots. More recently, Asher reviewed results from numerous urban precincts in the 2000 presidential election. In both instances, Asher found that proportionally more votes went uncounted in African American communities.
The original deadline set by the federal Help America Vote Act to replace the punch card voting machines was the Nov. 2 election, but Sec’y of State Blackwell received a waiver because of “security questions”. The ACLU filed a lawsuit to try to force the turnover by the 2004 election, but that suit has been stalled by shenanigans by the Republican attorney general.
Although the a recount of the punch cards could make things pretty wild with the 92,000 spoiled ballots and review of those already counted, a brand new article by Greg Palast (www [at] gregpalast.com) explains why a full recount of the 155,000 provisional ballots will run into enormous difficulties. The right-wing Sec’y of State in charge of the vote, J. Kenneth Blackwell, is running to be the next governor of Ohio:
“...These ballots are counted only by the whimsy and rules of a state's top elections official; and in Ohio, that gives a virtually ballot veto to Bush-Cheney campaign co-chair, Blackwell.
“Mr. Blackwell has a few rules to make sure a large proportion of provisional ballots won't be counted. For the first time in memory, the Secretary of State has banned counting ballots cast in the "wrong" precinct, though all neighborhoods share the same President...The election-shifting bulge in provisional ballots (more than 3% of the electorate) was the direct result of the national Republican strategy that targeted African-American precincts for mass challenges on election day.
“This is the first time in four decades that a political party has systematically barred -- in this case successfully -- hundreds of thousands of Black voters from access to the voting booth. While investigating for BBC Television, we obtained three dozen of the Republican Party's confidential "caging" lists, their title for spreadsheets listing names and addresses of voters they intended to block on any pretext.
“We found that every single address of the thousands on these Republican hit lists was located in Black-majority precincts. You might find that nasty and racist. It may also be a crime.
“Blackwell has said he will count all the "valid" provisional ballots. However, his rigid regulations, like the new guess-your-precinct rule, are rigged to knock out enough voters to keep Bush's skinny lead alive. Other pre-election maneuvers by Republican officials -- late and improbably large purges of voter rolls, rejection of registrations -- maximized the use of provisional ballots which will never be counted. For example, a voter wrongly tagged an ineligible "felon" voter (and there's plenty in that category, mostly African-Americans), will lose their ballot even though they are wrongly identified.”
“...To count the ballots, (one would) have to demand a hand reading of the punch cards. Blackwell, armed with the Supreme Court's Bush v. Gore diktat, would undoubtedly pull a "Kate Harris" by halting or restricting a hand count. Most daunting, (one) would also, as one state attorney general pointed out to me, have to litigate each and every rejected provisional ballot in court. This would entail locating up to a hundred thousand voters to testify to their right to the vote, with Blackwell challenging each with a holster full of regulations from the old Jim Crow handbook.”
Blackwell gave orders as recently as Nov. 9 to not count any provisional ballots from Cuyahoga County where the voter did not provide a date of birth, even though the
“Provisional Verification Procedure” of the county clearly states “Date of birth is not mandatory and should not reject a provisional ballot.” http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2004/985
The word is that Blackwell backed off a couple days ago - but if the election is “over”, why the fuss?
Blackwell’s other stunts have included an attempt to destroy thousands of new voter registrations because he claimed they were not printed on the “proper” 80-pound card stock. Registration forms had been photocopied on regular paper and even printed in local newspapers. For a dozen different ways the Ohio vote was manipulated, see http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/810.
MoveOn.org is now on the case. Mainstream groups such as People for the American Way have changed their tune about the election being fundamentally fair. But we have to raise the volume.
The national shout-out should be clear:
Due to his conflict of interest, Blackwell should be “recused” - that is, barred - from having anything to do with the recount.
We must end the historic pattern of vote suppression in African American, Latino and student communities, all of which has manifested in this election.
Until voting machines are free from “hacking” and leave a verifiable receipt for the voter, the legitimacy of this and all future elections will always remain in question.
Join the “BART Alert!” to Investigate Votergate in San Francisco, at Powell and Market, Thursday, November 18, at 5 pm. We will sponsor a speak-out at the plaza by witnesses to voter suppression and fraud - we will document the evidence to be presented to election protection activists - we will march through the city to make our voices heard that THE ONLY MANDATE IS TO STOP VOTER SUPPRESSION.
Bill Simpich (lawland [at] pacbell.net)
Democracy Defense Committee
Exit Polling Reported Vote
State Kerry Bush Diff. Kerry Bush Diff. Bush Gain
AR 45 54 -9 45 54 -9.8 0.8
CO 49 50 -1 47 52 -5.6 4.6
FL 51 49 2 47 52 -5.0 7.0
IA 50 49 1 49 50 -0.9 1.9
MI 52 46 6 51 48 3.4 2.6
MN 52 46 6 51 48 3.5 2.5
MO 47 52 -5 46 53 -7.3 2.3
NH 54 44 10 50 49 1.4 8.6
NJ 54 44 10 53 46 6.2 3.8
NM 50 48 2 49 50 -1.1 3.1
NV 49 48 1 48 50 -2.6 3.6
NY 62 36 26 58 40 17.3 8.7
OH 51 49 2 49 51 -2.5 4.5
PA 53 46 7 51 49 2.2 4.8
WI 51 48 3 50 49 0.4 2.6
WV 45 54 -9 43 56 -13.0 4.0
Although the recount is good news, what kind of recount can we expect? Especially when led by the likes of Secretary of State (and Bush-Cheney state chair) J. Kenneth Blackwell and election county heads like ex-Republican Party director Matt Damschroder?
FRANKLIN COUNTY WAS GROUND ZERO FOR THE VOTE SUPPRESSION OF AFRICAN AMERICANS
Ohio has been the center of voter suppression tactics, with Columbus and the surrounding county of Franklin as “ground zero”. Bob Fithrakis of the Columbus Free Press http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2004/981 reports that the Republican board of elections director held back voting machines and dispersed many of the other machines to affluent suburbs in Franklin County. The number of dispersed machines remains unclear as of this writing, but not the pattern:“Matt Damschroder is the Franklin County Board of Elections Director, and the former Executive Director of the Franklin County Republican Party...Prior to Election Day, the Republican Party in Ohio planned to utilize an archaic Ohio election law to place Republican poll challengers in every polling site. The strategy, according to Republican insiders, was to clog the voting lines in predominantly black Democratic wards in urban areas, so voters would turn away in frustration.
When that plan came under heavy media scrutiny, federal courts in Ohio ruled against it, and a massive Election Protection Coalition operation was put in place to monitor the polling sites, Republican Central Committee sources say that Damschroder instituted Plan B.” – the dispersal of the machines.
Local public hearings are being held in Columbus on voter suppression and fraud - the first hearing was held on the 13th, the other for the evening of the 15th. The Nov. 14 Columbus Dispatch reports that the first hearing ran hours over schedule, with testimony about cars being towed from a Driving Park polling site, standing in line for several hours, and too few machines.
“Carol Shelton was the presiding judge at the Linden library precinct, with three machines for 1,500 registered voters. At her home precinct in Clintonville, she said there were three machines for 730 voters.”
"I called to get more machines and got connected to Matt Damschroder, and after lots of hassle he sent a fourth machine," she said. "It did not put a dent in the long lines. This was a clear case of voter suppression."
Similar tales of vote suppression have occurred in the Hispanic community in Cuyahoga County and elsewhere, such as left-wing student enclaves such as Kenyon College.
THE KEY EVIDENCE ON POSSIBLE VOTER FRAUD MEANS THAT WE MUST FORCE THE NETWORKS TO RELEASE WHAT THEY OWN - THE STATE AND COUNTY EXIT POLLS
The key evidence on possible voter fraud means that we must force the networks to release what they own - the state and county exit polls
These public hearings were held at the New Life Church, the location of the polling station in the Republican suburb of Gahanna where a faulty electronic voting machine cartridge counted 4,258 votes for George W. Bush in a precinct where only 638 people had voted. These miscounted 4000 votes will reduce the current 136,000 Bush margin of victory.
How many similar errors have occurred, in Ohio or eleswhere? The race is on to find out, especially in counties with electronic voting machines that have no paper trails. Ralph Nader is conducting a recount of 11 New Hampshire precincts that used optical scanners of Diebold or Sequoia Voting Systems. Although Kerry won the state, voting anomalies for Bush have resulted in numbers 5-15% higher than normal.
Bev Harris at www [at] blackboxvoting.org is conducting a fraud audit in Ohio, Florida and several other states. The discovery of 4500 lost e-votes in Carteret County, North Carolina is forcing a second election that could encompass the entire state. Bev Harris did a demonstration on national TV during election night how to hack into “the central tabulator” for voting machines, which “is just a PC”. In the words of those in the trenches at Verifiedvoting.org: “Electronic miscounts of votes are no longer a theory - it’s a fact.” David Dill, a Stanford University computer scientist, has obtained the signatures of more than a thousand other computer scientists on a petition
warning federal authorities that voting systems lacking paper records are "inherently subject to programming error, equipment malfunction, and malicious tampering."
A comparison of the exit polls of the swing states with the actual results reveals that the odds of Bush making an average gain of 4.15 per cent in every one of the 16 states included in the media’s 4 p.m. exit polling is 1 in 50,000, or .002 percent. (See the comparison at the end of this article; and for the basis of these numbers, go to http://www [at] slate.msn.com/id/2109053 and http://www.nytimes.com/ref/elections2004/2004President.html)
Look at the discrepancies for the three key swing states Ohio: 4.5% (before recount); Florida: 7%; Pennsylvania: 4.8%. Prof. Steve Freeman at UPenn calculates the odds of this anomaly in a well-written paper at 250 million to one. http://www.ilcaonline.org/freeman.pdf. And with New Hampshire at 8.6% statewide, it’s no wonder Nader wants to take a second look at chosen precincts.
Former MIT mathematics professor David Anick (www [at] bluelemur.org, Nov. 8) has found the odds of Bush making an average gain of 4.15 percent among all 16 states included in the media’s 4 p.m. exit polling is 1 in 50,000, or .002 percent. (See the poll at the end of this article).
Anick reasons that there are four possible causes of the “Bush gains.” (1) Significantly greater lying or refusal to speak to pollsters in Bush voters versus Kerry voters; (2) Consistent/systematic errors in weighting demographic groups; (3) A surge of Bush voters after 4 p.m., in all states; (4) Systematic tampering/hacking of reported vote totals, in Bush’s favor.
Activists are calling for the release of the full exit polling for all states by county, as the swing state data is the only data that has been made public by the networks. Their proprietary interest in the data should yield to the immediate public interest. No real conclusion can be drawn without all the data, and county by county exit polling would be the best means for examining claims of fraud.
Like Florida, 70% of Ohio’s votes are by “punch cards”, which historically disenfranchise African Americans and people of color
The amazing thing about the recount, as attorney and commentator Jonathan Turley pointed out on MSNBC on Nov. 9 that 70% of Ohio’s votes were done with punch cards with the infamous “chads”. As Florida proved in 2000, a lot of those punch cards “turn over” in a recount.
In a groundbreaking 1982 study, shortly after punch-card ballots became prevalent in Ohio, Ohio State poli-sci professor Herb Asher found that thousands of voters were disenfranchised because of punch-card ballots. More recently, Asher reviewed results from numerous urban precincts in the 2000 presidential election. In both instances, Asher found that proportionally more votes went uncounted in African American communities.
The original deadline set by the federal Help America Vote Act to replace the punch card voting machines was the Nov. 2 election, but Sec’y of State Blackwell received a waiver because of “security questions”. The ACLU filed a lawsuit to try to force the turnover by the 2004 election, but that suit has been stalled by shenanigans by the Republican attorney general.
Although the a recount of the punch cards could make things pretty wild with the 92,000 spoiled ballots and review of those already counted, a brand new article by Greg Palast (www [at] gregpalast.com) explains why a full recount of the 155,000 provisional ballots will run into enormous difficulties. The right-wing Sec’y of State in charge of the vote, J. Kenneth Blackwell, is running to be the next governor of Ohio:
“...These ballots are counted only by the whimsy and rules of a state's top elections official; and in Ohio, that gives a virtually ballot veto to Bush-Cheney campaign co-chair, Blackwell.
“Mr. Blackwell has a few rules to make sure a large proportion of provisional ballots won't be counted. For the first time in memory, the Secretary of State has banned counting ballots cast in the "wrong" precinct, though all neighborhoods share the same President...The election-shifting bulge in provisional ballots (more than 3% of the electorate) was the direct result of the national Republican strategy that targeted African-American precincts for mass challenges on election day.
“This is the first time in four decades that a political party has systematically barred -- in this case successfully -- hundreds of thousands of Black voters from access to the voting booth. While investigating for BBC Television, we obtained three dozen of the Republican Party's confidential "caging" lists, their title for spreadsheets listing names and addresses of voters they intended to block on any pretext.
“We found that every single address of the thousands on these Republican hit lists was located in Black-majority precincts. You might find that nasty and racist. It may also be a crime.
“Blackwell has said he will count all the "valid" provisional ballots. However, his rigid regulations, like the new guess-your-precinct rule, are rigged to knock out enough voters to keep Bush's skinny lead alive. Other pre-election maneuvers by Republican officials -- late and improbably large purges of voter rolls, rejection of registrations -- maximized the use of provisional ballots which will never be counted. For example, a voter wrongly tagged an ineligible "felon" voter (and there's plenty in that category, mostly African-Americans), will lose their ballot even though they are wrongly identified.”
“...To count the ballots, (one would) have to demand a hand reading of the punch cards. Blackwell, armed with the Supreme Court's Bush v. Gore diktat, would undoubtedly pull a "Kate Harris" by halting or restricting a hand count. Most daunting, (one) would also, as one state attorney general pointed out to me, have to litigate each and every rejected provisional ballot in court. This would entail locating up to a hundred thousand voters to testify to their right to the vote, with Blackwell challenging each with a holster full of regulations from the old Jim Crow handbook.”
Blackwell gave orders as recently as Nov. 9 to not count any provisional ballots from Cuyahoga County where the voter did not provide a date of birth, even though the
“Provisional Verification Procedure” of the county clearly states “Date of birth is not mandatory and should not reject a provisional ballot.” http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2004/985
The word is that Blackwell backed off a couple days ago - but if the election is “over”, why the fuss?
Blackwell’s other stunts have included an attempt to destroy thousands of new voter registrations because he claimed they were not printed on the “proper” 80-pound card stock. Registration forms had been photocopied on regular paper and even printed in local newspapers. For a dozen different ways the Ohio vote was manipulated, see http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/810.
MoveOn.org is now on the case. Mainstream groups such as People for the American Way have changed their tune about the election being fundamentally fair. But we have to raise the volume.
The national shout-out should be clear:
Due to his conflict of interest, Blackwell should be “recused” - that is, barred - from having anything to do with the recount.
We must end the historic pattern of vote suppression in African American, Latino and student communities, all of which has manifested in this election.
Until voting machines are free from “hacking” and leave a verifiable receipt for the voter, the legitimacy of this and all future elections will always remain in question.
Join the “BART Alert!” to Investigate Votergate in San Francisco, at Powell and Market, Thursday, November 18, at 5 pm. We will sponsor a speak-out at the plaza by witnesses to voter suppression and fraud - we will document the evidence to be presented to election protection activists - we will march through the city to make our voices heard that THE ONLY MANDATE IS TO STOP VOTER SUPPRESSION.
Bill Simpich (lawland [at] pacbell.net)
Democracy Defense Committee
Exit Polling Reported Vote
State Kerry Bush Diff. Kerry Bush Diff. Bush Gain
AR 45 54 -9 45 54 -9.8 0.8
CO 49 50 -1 47 52 -5.6 4.6
FL 51 49 2 47 52 -5.0 7.0
IA 50 49 1 49 50 -0.9 1.9
MI 52 46 6 51 48 3.4 2.6
MN 52 46 6 51 48 3.5 2.5
MO 47 52 -5 46 53 -7.3 2.3
NH 54 44 10 50 49 1.4 8.6
NJ 54 44 10 53 46 6.2 3.8
NM 50 48 2 49 50 -1.1 3.1
NV 49 48 1 48 50 -2.6 3.6
NY 62 36 26 58 40 17.3 8.7
OH 51 49 2 49 51 -2.5 4.5
PA 53 46 7 51 49 2.2 4.8
WI 51 48 3 50 49 0.4 2.6
WV 45 54 -9 43 56 -13.0 4.0
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The Center for Public Integrity reported that Kerry has just under $51.6 million leftover in his campaign funds that could be used for recount activities. So, where is John Kerry, the purple-hearted swift-boat veteran hero in the recount mission? MIA. Perhaps he is resting at one if his 4 mansions or beachfront property with his 1million dollar yacht.
Greens, Liberarians and Independent activists have taken it upon themselves to raise the necessary funds. May we never be duped like that again.
Greens, Liberarians and Independent activists have taken it upon themselves to raise the necessary funds. May we never be duped like that again.
some people voted for bush but were ashamed to admit it. for example, Black voters who cared about the religious stuff, but didn't want to be seen voting for such visceral swine.
too bad, even the radicals want to ignore the church thing.
suckahs!!
too bad, even the radicals want to ignore the church thing.
suckahs!!
i was wondering about this myself. but what can we do?
The Bush people cheated in 2000. Since then they’ve lied and cheated on everything they’ve done, both large and small. WMDs, military discharge, etc. They were also making preparations for massive voter fraud during the months leading up to the Nov. 2nd election. But now is that any reason to suspect them of cheating during the election itself?
A. Vote Fraud is the most extreme possible charge and least likely to be resolved before the electoral college meets on December 13.
This is an allegation of violation of federal law tantamount to "rigging" the vote to benefit one party or candidate - hard to pin on an individual even if it can be proven to have happened with the machines. But a tremendous amount of circumstantial evidence [some below] from numerous key states is very very very strong that the Bushies, the Evangelicals and others have massively rigged this thing. [Its very easy to believe when you put together the results v. exit polls and the clear descriptions of the ease with which e-vote shenanigans are doable.]
This is the furthest from the minds of the US people and certainly isn't discussed in mainstream media [only MSNBCs K. Olberman has even approached the topic]. It is also unlikely to be "proven" in sufficient time to make a difference so it requires people understanding the implications of the evidence and asking for the "electoral machine" to grind to a halt long enough to determine the facts and results. [unlikely]
B. Exit Polls and craziness
the reality is that the descrepencies between exit polls and the results in these key states average the largest difference in history of exit polling and well-outside acceptable error rate. [exit polls are v. well established as reliable estimates by many mathematicians, statisticians, politicans and non-profit political orgs.] much on this available including crazy grafs at http://www.stolenelection.net
which writes:
Florida and Ohio were the two most important swing states in the 2004 United States presidential election.
The margin of error for a 95% confidence interval is +/- 3% for the national exit poll and +/- 4% for the 50 state exit polls (1). On November 2, 2004, the exit polls showed John Kerry with a lead over George W. Bush of 3 percentage points in Florida and 4 percentage points in Ohio (2)(3). As it stands today, November 5, 2004, John Kerry has ended up losing Florida to George W. Bush by 5.2 percentage points (4) and in Ohio he has ended up losing by 2.5 percentage points (5).
The difference between the Florida exit poll and the final results are 8.2 percentage points. This is more than double the +/- 4% error rate for this exit poll. This 105% increase in the error rate is statistically next to impossible to happen. For the 67 county-by-county breakdowns on this take a look at "Surprising Pattern of Florida's Election Results" (6).
The difference between the Ohio exit poll and the final results are 6.5 percentage points. This is a 62.5% increase in the +/- 4% error rate for this exit poll. A 62.5% increase in the error rate is statistically very unlikely to occur.
Together, the likelihood of Florida and Ohio both seeing such differences from their exit polls to the final results are statistically impossible. Therefore the only conclusion one could possibly derive from this statistic impossibility is that this was a stolen election. The new electronic voting machines with no paper receipts are suspect (7).
Pennsylvania Professor Steven Freeman has "proven" it to his own satisfaction and his work can be seen at http://www.solarbus.org/stealyourelection/
C. Vote Recounts and Operational Investigation of Vote in NH, OH, FL and NC could mean a different electoral result in the race for presidency.
This IS possible and meaningful even with Democrat concession - THE CONCESSION MEANS NOTHING.
1. NH - first filing for Recount and request for data from machines. This is Ralph Nader conducting a consumer rights/voter rights investigation using his standing as a candidate in that state for President. http://www.votenader.org
The Nader-Camejo hand recount in New Hampshire will begin this Thursday.
Nader-Camejo requested recounts in 11 wards where the results seemed anomalous in their support for President Bush and where the votes were counted on optical scan machines – primarily the Diebold AccuVote Machine.
Could easily result in first proof of machine-tampering or vote-count problems that are "systemic" enough to rationalize throwing out a lot of the vote or needing to remedy the count.
2. OH - second state where recount is now on schedule since Presidential Candidates David Cobb [GRN] and Michael Badnarik [Lib] raised the requisite funds and have filed request and where our reporter Evan Davis working with CASEOhio [Citizens Alliance for Secure Elections] in Colombus and with Ohio Vote 2004 out of Cincinnati.
The margin here was called 130,000 by Secretary of State and Kerry campaign at concession because they thought they couldn't win.
But there are huge problems with Provisional Ballot count which was announced by Establishment Media before midnight as between 400,000 and 500,000 and which Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell himself stated was 265,000 [CNN just after Midnight on November 2/November 3 a.m.] sometime after midnight on Nov. 2 and which shrank to under 165,000 by the next morning. Also huge problems with EXCESS votes recorded in several counties ... votes for president in excess of total number of voters. [this is a problem reported in FL, too]
There have been three very large public hearings to discuss the vote and there have been many dozens of testimonials given at these by voters who have reported a "jumping screen" that changed votes for Kerry to Bush onsite and of many other severe problems registering excess votes for Bush ... also many charges of disenfranchisement, suppression, intimidation and rigging.
Counting of Provisionals is taking place now and Recount wouldn't be filed until after certification which could take place by Dec. 1.
3. FL
there are 88,000 excess votes for president than total number of voters in Palm Beach County [the county of clerk Teresa LaPore who invented the Butterfly Ballot in 2000 that was so confusing to elderly folks and resulted in Jews for Buchanan] and there are numerous reports of excess votes for Bush in other counties.
In 29 counties using [Diebold] Op-scan machines, as graphed at http://www.kotosforcongress.com/floridaflip.htm
the Republicans had the most votes (left col.) and Democrats had the most registrations (right col.). Such a "shift" resulted in a net gain to Republicans of 406,510 votes (i.e., if registrations translated directly to votes), equal to 42% of the total votes cast in these 29 counties for either Republican or Democrat.
and that
In the other 22 Florida counties that used Op-scan machines, similar "shifts" in numbers of Republican votes relative to registrations represent an additional net gain to Republicans of 245,577 votes, equal to 9.7% of the total votes in these 22 counties for either Republican or Democrat.[links to data at site]
http://www.kotosforcongress.com/floridaflip.htm
where they also claim:
In contrast, in the remaining 15 Florida counties that used E-touchscreen machines, such relative shifts in favor of Republicans accounted for a prospective net gain of 97,880 votes, equal to 2.4% of the total votes in these 15 counties for either Republican or Democrat.
In all, these "shifts" accounted for a "net gain" to Republicans of 749,967 votes, equal to 10 percent of the total votes cast for either Republican or Democrat throughout the state of Florida.
In Table 2 at this site:
All Florida counties: The ratio of Republican:Democratic votes relative to the ratio of Republican:Democratic registrations; yielding the relative liklihood/proportionality of the Republican vote; comparison of Op-scan v. E-Touchscreen machines..
It is noted that if votes were recorded proportionate to registrations, all of the graph points would be at 1.0; and for the most part in the case of votes cast with the E-touchscreen, this seems to have occurred; in any case, the contrast between these items (to the right on the graph) and items corresponding to allegedly "flipped" op-scan votes (to the left on the graph) is mind-blowing.
[I know the author of the above and can get him - he is a long time politico who worked under Rumsfeld crunching numbers many many years ago at State Department - good source]
widespread reports of intimidation, suppression and disenfranchisement and Greg Palast reports increased "spoilage"by design ... claiming Kerry won FL and OH. margin is also small in FL.
3. NC - serious statewide problems .. don't know much here ... but rumour of recount impending.
C. Freedom of Information Act [FOIA] filing by Bev Harris of blackboxvoting.org and gaps in the Project and Audit logs of e-vote machines
This is the largest filing of FOIA requests in US history.
Harris seeks the electronic records and "logs" of every single county that used electronic voting machines in United States. She seeks in specific - among other things - the Project Log and Audit Log of the GEMS software
[which she has shown on CNN (August 7, 2004, Topic A with Tina Brown in which Howard Dean subs for Brown) to be able to be altered with a simple click of the mouse in the software on a windows machine]
and to see whether or not there are "gaps"in these logs which would imply the machines were left unattended and with the logs off ... this would allow changes to data to be made unobserved.
already Black Box Voting has discovered a Three Hour Gap in the logs in Washington State!
They have likened this metaphorically to the 18-minute gap in the Watergate tapes but of course, amplified significantly.
This is an allegation of violation of federal law tantamount to "rigging" the vote to benefit one party or candidate - hard to pin on an individual even if it can be proven to have happened with the machines. But a tremendous amount of circumstantial evidence [some below] from numerous key states is very very very strong that the Bushies, the Evangelicals and others have massively rigged this thing. [Its very easy to believe when you put together the results v. exit polls and the clear descriptions of the ease with which e-vote shenanigans are doable.]
This is the furthest from the minds of the US people and certainly isn't discussed in mainstream media [only MSNBCs K. Olberman has even approached the topic]. It is also unlikely to be "proven" in sufficient time to make a difference so it requires people understanding the implications of the evidence and asking for the "electoral machine" to grind to a halt long enough to determine the facts and results. [unlikely]
B. Exit Polls and craziness
the reality is that the descrepencies between exit polls and the results in these key states average the largest difference in history of exit polling and well-outside acceptable error rate. [exit polls are v. well established as reliable estimates by many mathematicians, statisticians, politicans and non-profit political orgs.] much on this available including crazy grafs at http://www.stolenelection.net
which writes:
Florida and Ohio were the two most important swing states in the 2004 United States presidential election.
The margin of error for a 95% confidence interval is +/- 3% for the national exit poll and +/- 4% for the 50 state exit polls (1). On November 2, 2004, the exit polls showed John Kerry with a lead over George W. Bush of 3 percentage points in Florida and 4 percentage points in Ohio (2)(3). As it stands today, November 5, 2004, John Kerry has ended up losing Florida to George W. Bush by 5.2 percentage points (4) and in Ohio he has ended up losing by 2.5 percentage points (5).
The difference between the Florida exit poll and the final results are 8.2 percentage points. This is more than double the +/- 4% error rate for this exit poll. This 105% increase in the error rate is statistically next to impossible to happen. For the 67 county-by-county breakdowns on this take a look at "Surprising Pattern of Florida's Election Results" (6).
The difference between the Ohio exit poll and the final results are 6.5 percentage points. This is a 62.5% increase in the +/- 4% error rate for this exit poll. A 62.5% increase in the error rate is statistically very unlikely to occur.
Together, the likelihood of Florida and Ohio both seeing such differences from their exit polls to the final results are statistically impossible. Therefore the only conclusion one could possibly derive from this statistic impossibility is that this was a stolen election. The new electronic voting machines with no paper receipts are suspect (7).
Pennsylvania Professor Steven Freeman has "proven" it to his own satisfaction and his work can be seen at http://www.solarbus.org/stealyourelection/
C. Vote Recounts and Operational Investigation of Vote in NH, OH, FL and NC could mean a different electoral result in the race for presidency.
This IS possible and meaningful even with Democrat concession - THE CONCESSION MEANS NOTHING.
1. NH - first filing for Recount and request for data from machines. This is Ralph Nader conducting a consumer rights/voter rights investigation using his standing as a candidate in that state for President. http://www.votenader.org
The Nader-Camejo hand recount in New Hampshire will begin this Thursday.
Nader-Camejo requested recounts in 11 wards where the results seemed anomalous in their support for President Bush and where the votes were counted on optical scan machines – primarily the Diebold AccuVote Machine.
Could easily result in first proof of machine-tampering or vote-count problems that are "systemic" enough to rationalize throwing out a lot of the vote or needing to remedy the count.
2. OH - second state where recount is now on schedule since Presidential Candidates David Cobb [GRN] and Michael Badnarik [Lib] raised the requisite funds and have filed request and where our reporter Evan Davis working with CASEOhio [Citizens Alliance for Secure Elections] in Colombus and with Ohio Vote 2004 out of Cincinnati.
The margin here was called 130,000 by Secretary of State and Kerry campaign at concession because they thought they couldn't win.
But there are huge problems with Provisional Ballot count which was announced by Establishment Media before midnight as between 400,000 and 500,000 and which Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell himself stated was 265,000 [CNN just after Midnight on November 2/November 3 a.m.] sometime after midnight on Nov. 2 and which shrank to under 165,000 by the next morning. Also huge problems with EXCESS votes recorded in several counties ... votes for president in excess of total number of voters. [this is a problem reported in FL, too]
There have been three very large public hearings to discuss the vote and there have been many dozens of testimonials given at these by voters who have reported a "jumping screen" that changed votes for Kerry to Bush onsite and of many other severe problems registering excess votes for Bush ... also many charges of disenfranchisement, suppression, intimidation and rigging.
Counting of Provisionals is taking place now and Recount wouldn't be filed until after certification which could take place by Dec. 1.
3. FL
there are 88,000 excess votes for president than total number of voters in Palm Beach County [the county of clerk Teresa LaPore who invented the Butterfly Ballot in 2000 that was so confusing to elderly folks and resulted in Jews for Buchanan] and there are numerous reports of excess votes for Bush in other counties.
In 29 counties using [Diebold] Op-scan machines, as graphed at http://www.kotosforcongress.com/floridaflip.htm
the Republicans had the most votes (left col.) and Democrats had the most registrations (right col.). Such a "shift" resulted in a net gain to Republicans of 406,510 votes (i.e., if registrations translated directly to votes), equal to 42% of the total votes cast in these 29 counties for either Republican or Democrat.
and that
In the other 22 Florida counties that used Op-scan machines, similar "shifts" in numbers of Republican votes relative to registrations represent an additional net gain to Republicans of 245,577 votes, equal to 9.7% of the total votes in these 22 counties for either Republican or Democrat.[links to data at site]
http://www.kotosforcongress.com/floridaflip.htm
where they also claim:
In contrast, in the remaining 15 Florida counties that used E-touchscreen machines, such relative shifts in favor of Republicans accounted for a prospective net gain of 97,880 votes, equal to 2.4% of the total votes in these 15 counties for either Republican or Democrat.
In all, these "shifts" accounted for a "net gain" to Republicans of 749,967 votes, equal to 10 percent of the total votes cast for either Republican or Democrat throughout the state of Florida.
In Table 2 at this site:
All Florida counties: The ratio of Republican:Democratic votes relative to the ratio of Republican:Democratic registrations; yielding the relative liklihood/proportionality of the Republican vote; comparison of Op-scan v. E-Touchscreen machines..
It is noted that if votes were recorded proportionate to registrations, all of the graph points would be at 1.0; and for the most part in the case of votes cast with the E-touchscreen, this seems to have occurred; in any case, the contrast between these items (to the right on the graph) and items corresponding to allegedly "flipped" op-scan votes (to the left on the graph) is mind-blowing.
[I know the author of the above and can get him - he is a long time politico who worked under Rumsfeld crunching numbers many many years ago at State Department - good source]
widespread reports of intimidation, suppression and disenfranchisement and Greg Palast reports increased "spoilage"by design ... claiming Kerry won FL and OH. margin is also small in FL.
3. NC - serious statewide problems .. don't know much here ... but rumour of recount impending.
C. Freedom of Information Act [FOIA] filing by Bev Harris of blackboxvoting.org and gaps in the Project and Audit logs of e-vote machines
This is the largest filing of FOIA requests in US history.
Harris seeks the electronic records and "logs" of every single county that used electronic voting machines in United States. She seeks in specific - among other things - the Project Log and Audit Log of the GEMS software
[which she has shown on CNN (August 7, 2004, Topic A with Tina Brown in which Howard Dean subs for Brown) to be able to be altered with a simple click of the mouse in the software on a windows machine]
and to see whether or not there are "gaps"in these logs which would imply the machines were left unattended and with the logs off ... this would allow changes to data to be made unobserved.
already Black Box Voting has discovered a Three Hour Gap in the logs in Washington State!
They have likened this metaphorically to the 18-minute gap in the Watergate tapes but of course, amplified significantly.
BART Alert is like an East Bay trademark. It is supposed to mean Berkeley BART at 5. But oh, well. Hoepfully people read the whole announcement.
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