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Post by Boomer Chick on Nov 4, 2004 19:39:31 GMT -5
For investigations on this, go to: www.blackboxvoting.org Not just e-votes, either! www.tompaine.com/articles/kerry_won.phpMy response to Owl: Owl -- Nice one! Enjoyed your impassioned speech! Beautiful! Well guess what? You cavalry was there, they turned out in the hundreds of thousands, they registered, they voted and..... their votes were stolen! It is as clear as crystal to many that the Republican machines did their dispicable duty the night and early morning hours of the elections! Many of us did gather our disgust and put it to action... the many that DID turn from the elite sleepers of Babylon and voice their indignation for the war... for the lies...for the twisting of all labelled bills.... THEY SPOKE.... WE SPOKE... but the votes were stolen! NOW, we all must continue the wake up call and get rid of their vehicle of manipulation... the electronic computerized voting machines without a paper trail!!!! And we must educate those who fear the least among us to realize the true reasons to rail against the neocons.... and the neocons themselves will do a lot of the work for us. Hey! Many of us across the nation woke up.... we were the cavalry... and yes I was raised on the good guys fighting the bad and winning on those westerns, the Roy Rogers, the Sky Kings, the Palladins and Wyatt Earps... and the young and the boomers woke up.... we did....and don't believe the propaganda that says we didn't. And yes, the bigoted fear-based Christians, as you said, in the middle, voted their fears and hate.... a brilliant move by the Rove-orchestrated propaganda machine.... and yet... the Kerry voters, the voters for change SPOKE only to be silenced. And the silver lining, as you mentioned, is that now that the machine and the Republicans have full power... they will continue to prove their lunacy. This is the gift. They may even get impeached before two years are up. Their lunacy and agenda will be coming up to the surface through lawsuits, through CIA and FBI investigations and through their own party dissensions on various actions and complicities. It is rumored that Ashcroft will resign soon. Why? Hmmmm. We've been saying it for months and even years that WE are the change we seek. And WE means, us, the people, the citizenry, the ones who can SEE and that includes all people of all faiths who are dedicated to seeing the truth and finding it. Now that we're mobilized online and through our communities, we need to continue to fight for truth and justice and the right for democracy through the voting process to return to legitimacy. It'll be interesting to see where moveon and other groups will go from here. If you can't participate in your local community, the online way will be your best bet! We still have work to do!
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Post by Boomer Chick on Nov 4, 2004 19:41:19 GMT -5
Folks, we worked hard and all those who worked across the nation for Kerry and their Dems did an outstanding job. Now we have to realize that the vote was manipulated. It's not sour grapes at all, it's our right to vote and have it counted correctly that is at stake. And in this realization, knowledge is power and activism is the only way to save our nation from becoming a totalitarian theocratic police state. I was upset yesterday, like many of you, but today I say to you all that the truth of this election resides in this administration's manipulating our voting power. The electronic voting machines without a paper trail need to go. Period. We should all be working on this together, soon, besides keeping our Democratic Party locally alive and active. Personally, also, we need to boycott certain corporations and companies and be savvy consumers working toward energy independence. Please read the following links to educate yourselves as knowledge is power. I'll be posting more on this to add to the others on the list who find this as worthy of saving our democracy as I do. www.gnn.tv/users/user.php?id=46 www.propagandamatrix.com/articles/november2004/031104sameamount.htm www.newstarget.com/002076.html ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm www.bluelemur.com/index.php?p=388Correction to This Article The number of randomly selected voters who were interviewed Tuesday for the National Election Pool's exit poll was incorrect in an earlier version of this article. The correct number is 13,047: www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A23580-2004Nov3?language=printer www.buzzflash.com/contributors/04/11/con04482.html www.ecotalk.org/AP.htm www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/03/1520249 www.buzzflash.com/analysis/04/11/ana04025.html And listen to Air America radio and watch CSpan rather than the other media channels. It's sad to realize the major media had a role in this, too, but they do. I just can't stand the smiling faces on the Chris Mathews and the Scarboroughs anymore! Great news about Salazar, but the religious right really voted on their fear and bigotry and this was a brilliant tactic on the part of the neocons (Rove). And if the vote had not been stolen, Kerry & Edwards would at least be in office, too, even though the House and Senate remain under Republican control. bc
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Post by Boomer Chick on Nov 5, 2004 12:30:48 GMT -5
CITIZENS FOR LEGITIMATE GOVERNMENT (www.legitgov.org) Launches Investigation Into Discrepancies of 2004 'Election' Pittsburgh, PA: November 4, 2004 CONTACT: Michael Rectenwald, Ph.D. and Lori Price, clg_news@legitgov.org CLG Founder and Chair, Michael D. Rectenwald, Ph.D., calls for a thorough investigation into the discrepancies of the 2004 election. At the conclusion of its investigation, CLG may call for specified action(s) against the system that has provided for the theft of the 2000 and 2004 elections. CLG may demand prosecution of those that have laid the groundwork for the 2004 election, if such an investigation points to the conclusion that a second coup d'etat took place on November 2, 2004. Kerry won. Here's the facts. (tompaine.com) Bush won Ohio by 136,483 votes. Typically in the United States, about 3 percent of votes cast are voided—known as "spoilage" in election jargon—because the ballots cast are inconclusive. Drawing on what happened in Florida and studies of elections past, Palast argues that if Ohio’s discarded ballots were counted, Kerry would have won the state. Today, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports there are a total of 247,672 votes not counted in Ohio, if you add the 92,672 discarded votes plus the 155,000 provisional ballots. So far there's no indication that Palast's hypothesis will be tested because only the provisional ballots are being counted. --by Greg Palast "Most voters in Ohio thought they were voting for Kerry. CNN's exit poll showed Kerry beating Bush among Ohio women by 53 percent to 47 percent. Kerry also defeated Bush among Ohio's male voters 51 percent to 49 percent. Unless a third gender voted in Ohio, Kerry took the state. So what's going on here? Answer: the exit polls are accurate. Pollsters ask, 'Who did you vote for?' Unfortunately, they don't ask the crucial, question, 'Was your vote counted?'" legitgov.org/pressrelease_stolen_election_2004_110404.html
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Post by Boomer Chick on Nov 5, 2004 14:56:35 GMT -5
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Post by Boomer Chick on Nov 5, 2004 20:12:22 GMT -5
Glitch gave Bush extra votes in Ohio Friday, November 5, 2004 Posted: 4:15 PM EST (2115 GMT) On CNN.com !!!!! COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- An error with an electronic voting system gave President Bush 3,893 extra votes in suburban Columbus, elections officials said. Franklin County's unofficial results had Bush receiving 4,258 votes to Democrat John Kerry's 260 votes in a precinct in Gahanna. Records show only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct. Bush actually received 365 votes in the precinct, Matthew Damschroder, director of the Franklin County Board of Elections, told The Columbus Dispatch. State and county election officials did not immediately respond to requests by The Associated Press for more details about the voting system and its vendor, and whether the error, if repeated elsewhere in Ohio, could have affected the outcome. Bush won the state by more than 136,000 votes, according to unofficial results, and Kerry conceded the election on Wednesday after acknowledging that 155,000 provisional ballots yet to be counted in Ohio would not change the result. (Full Ohio results) The Secretary of State's Office said Friday it could not revise Bush's total until the county reported the error. The Ohio glitch is among a handful of computer troubles that have emerged since Tuesday's elections. (Touchscreen voting troubles reported) In one North Carolina county, more than 4,500 votes were lost because officials mistakenly believed a computer that stored ballots electronically could hold more data than it did. And in San Francisco, a malfunction with custom voting software could delay efforts to declare the winners of four races for county supervisor. In the Ohio precinct in question, the votes are recorded onto a cartridge. On one of the three machines at that precinct, a malfunction occurred in the recording process, Damschroder said. He could not explain how the malfunction occurred. Damschroder said people who had seen poll results on the election board's Web site called to point out the discrepancy. The error would have been discovered when the official count for the election is performed later this month, he said. The reader also recorded zero votes in a county commissioner race on the machine. Workers checked the cartridge against memory banks in the voting machine and each showed that 115 people voted for Bush on that machine. With the other machines, the total for Bush in the precinct added up to 365 votes. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, a glitch occurred with software designed for the city's new "ranked-choice voting," in which voters list their top three choices for municipal offices. If no candidate gets a majority of first-place votes outright, voters' second and third-place preferences are then distributed among candidates who weren't eliminated in the first round. (E-vote goes smoothly, but experts skeptical) When the San Francisco Department of Elections tried a test run on Wednesday of the program that does the redistribution, some of the votes didn't get counted and skewed the results, director John Arntz said. "All the information is there," Arntz said. "It's just not arriving the way it was supposed to." A technician from the Omaha, Neb. company that designed the software, Election Systems & Software Inc., was working to diagnose and fix the problem. *** This is only one of hundreds of problems in Ohio and Florida. Other places had voter machine problems as well. Some of the Diebold machines were so unprotected if connected to a modem that anyone from anywhere could hack into them!
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Post by Boomer Chick on Nov 5, 2004 20:25:14 GMT -5
CLG update! UPDATE! November 5, 2004: Here is a *big* surprise: The Franklin County voting results .pdf files have *suddenly* been removed from the Franklin County Board of Elections homepage. Everyone, please contact these Reichwing whackjobs, and DEMAND that 'Unofficial Abstract of Votes - General Election - November 2, 2004, Franklin County, Ohio Offices,' page 23, be restored. And, I do mean *demand.* Cheers, the CLG investigation team, www.legitgov.org/ Here is their contact information: webmaster@co.franklin.oh.us. Email GOP Ohio Secretary of State, J. Kenneth Blackwell's office: guide@sos.state.oh.us. Oh. Be sure to call Blackwell, too: 614-466-3910. Oops! More fuzzy math in Ohio... Franklin County, Ohio --A total of 638 votes were cast in the precinct: Bush received 4258 of them, Kerry got 260. See page 23 of the 'Unofficial Abstract of Votes - General Election - November 2, 2004, Franklin County, Ohio Offices.'
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Post by Boomer Chick on Nov 5, 2004 22:13:23 GMT -5
www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65623,00.html 04:38 PM Nov. 05, 2004 PT Three congressmen sent a letter to the General Accounting Office on Friday requesting an investigation into irregularities with voting machines used in Tuesday's elections. The congressmen, Democratic members of the House of Representatives from Florida, New York and Michigan, cited a number of incidents that came to light in the days after the election. One was a glitch in Ohio that caused a memory card reader made by Danaher Controls to give George W. Bush 3,893 more votes than he should have received. Another was a problem with memory cards in North Carolina that caused machines made by UniLect to lose 4,500 votes cast on e-voting machines. The votes were lost when the number of votes cast on the machines exceeded the capacity of the memory cards. There were also problems with machines that counted absentee ballots in Florida. Software made by Election Systems & Software began subtracting votes when totals surpassed 32,000. Officials said the problem affected only certain countywide races on one of the last pages of the ballot. Elections officials knew about the problem two years ago, but the company failed to fix the software before the election this year. Reports from voters in Florida and Ohio also indicated that some of them had problems voting for the candidate of their choice. When they tried to vote for John Kerry, they said, the machine either wouldn't register the vote at all or would indicate on the review page that the vote was cast for Bush instead. In their letter, representatives John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, Jerrold Nadler of New York and Robert Wexler of Florida asked the GAO to "immediately undertake an investigation of the efficacy of voting machines and new technologies used in the 2004 election, how election officials responded to difficulties they encountered and what we can do in the future to improve our election systems and administration." John Doty, spokesman for Nadler, said the congressmen emphasized that they were not seeking a nationwide recount and were not anticipating that an investigation would change the outcome of the election. "But we do want to make sure that where there are problems they're fixed so that it won't affect other elections in the future," Doty said. "We want to make sure that people can be confident in the system." Doty said, however, that if the GAO does find a lot more problems that haven't yet been reported, then people will at least know about them and be able to decide what to do about them. "We're hopeful that the GAO does not find such terrible irregularities that it would demonstrate widespread problems," Doty said. No one was available at the office of the GAO to respond to questions. But a GAO representative told Wired News in September that the agency was planning to produce a report on e-voting after the election anyway. To read Wired News' complete coverage of e-voting, visit the Machine Politics section.
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Post by AnthonyWade on Nov 6, 2004 1:30:17 GMT -5
Nice board. We need to be ever vigilant to not give in to the crowing from the right to move on. Kerry has let us down by conceding before the truth can come out.
Regardless of the concession, we will not accpet it. Keep up the fight, here on the front lines of democracy.
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Post by AnthonyWade on Nov 6, 2004 1:40:58 GMT -5
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Post by Boomer Chick on Nov 6, 2004 2:27:18 GMT -5
Thanks, Anthony! We're sending out the links! News Update from Citizen for Legitimate Government November 6, 2004 www.legitgov.org/ www.legitgov.org/index.html#breaking_newsAlone in Ohio, officials cited homeland security --Warren's vote tally walled off --Citing concerns about potential terrorism [?!!?], Warren County officials locked down the county administration building on election night and blocked anyone from observing the vote count as the nation awaited Ohio's returns. County officials say they took the action Tuesday night for homeland security, although state elections officials said they didn't know of any other Ohio county that closed off its elections board. Media organizations protested, saying it violated the law and the public's rights. The Warren results, delayed for hours because of long lines that extended voting past the scheduled close of polls, were part of the last tallies that helped clinch Dictator Bush's re-selection. [The only *terrorists* are Karl 'Goebbels' Rove and the Bush junta, who have stolen a *second* election!!!] *** Read the full article at the link!
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Post by Boomer Chick on Nov 6, 2004 10:51:25 GMT -5
(Access live embedded links at the link site) Nov. 6, 2004 www.buzzflash.com/editorial/04/11/edi04083.htmlGOP Hypocrite of the Week: Ken Blackwell[/size] A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL (Listen to the GOPHOTW HERE) Welcome back to the BuzzFlash.com GOP Hypocrite of the Week. BuzzFlash readers keep writing us e-mails asking if the Bush Cartel stole the election. Our answer is: we don't know, but they could have if they wanted to. Why? Because of electronic voting and voter suppression. A band of patriots have exposed the electronic voting machines -- manufactured by three U.S. companies -- as both extremely vulnerable to hacking and having their vote results rigged. The machines are also manufactured by companies with strong Republican ties. In fact, Wally O'Dell, the CEO of Diebold, which is headquartered in Ohio, penned a letter earlier this year pledging his commitment to "helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President." Just what exactly did Wally mean? Well, we'll give you one guess, and it has to do with a quote supposedly from Stalin: "Those who vote decide nothing, those who COUNT the votes decide everything." There is no way of knowing whether the Diebold machines -- and other electronic voting machines -- were rigged or not. You see, their counting software is patented. Without considering alternatives, we privatized our vote counting. There are other electronic voting systems. India's 380 million voters used their own electronic voting machines in recent elections. Their machines are inexpensive, transparent, and tamper-proof, because Indians appear to enjoy corruption-free voting. It's too bad Republicans don't. The fact remains that U.S. electronic voting machines are eminently capable of being rigged. Coincidentally, the Bush Cartel will do anything to steal an election. You connect the not-so-distant dots. But that brings us to our BuzzFlash GOP Hypocrite of the Week: Ken Blackwell, Ohio's Secretary of State and the man in charge of insuring the voting in his state is transparent, tamper-proof and corruption-free. Blackwell was the Bush Cartel's male version of Florida's Katherine "Cruella Deville" Harris. So, when Rove strategized how to suppress (and perhaps also steal) the vote, Blackwell, a Clarence Thomas wannabe, said, "Yes, Sir, Mr. Karl, I want to be your token black right winger, just like Clarence. How can I help you suppress black and Democratic voters? Then will you make sure I get elected the next Governor of Ohio? Please, Mr. Karl, please." So an office holder who is supposed to help Americans vote, spent his time over the last two years implementing road blocks to voters, particularly new registrants. Most people know their Secretary of State because he's the guy or woman whose name appears on their driver's license. But most Ohioans got to know Ken Blackwell because he was the one doing everything possible to stop everyone but Republicans from voting. The guy even tried to refuse any voter registration card that wasn't printed on 80 pound weight paper, that is, until Internet-savvy Democrats publicized it enough to make him retract his ridiculous requirement. And then Blackwell even got involved with advocating for the passage of the Draconian anti-gay referendum in Ohio, speaking out at churches about the scourge of gay relationships. He saw nothing wrong with the Secretary of State involving himself with a ballot issue over which he was responsible for counting the results. Stalin would be proud of Ken Blackwell. So, did the Bushes steal the election again? You don't need specific proof. All you need to know is that they -- through the Bush Cartel Secretary of States in Florida and Ohio -- counted the votes. Those who count the votes decide everything, the voters be damned. Ken Blackwell, mission accomplished, you did everything you could do to disenfranchise voters while pretending to represent them. You are the BuzzFlash GOP Hypocrite of the Week. Just remember our motto at BuzzFlash.com: So many Republican hypocrites, so little time. Catch up with you soon. A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL Resources: Black Box Voting by Bev Harris (blackboxvoting.org) The Ultimate Felony Against Democracy: Privatizing Our Vote by Thom Hartmann
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Post by Boomer Chick on Nov 6, 2004 11:05:02 GMT -5
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Post by Boomer Chick on Nov 6, 2004 11:22:35 GMT -5
A History from Thom Hartmann=====> notice the date! Published on Friday, January 31, 2003 by CommonDreams.org "If You Want To Win An Election, Just Control The Voting Machines" by Thom Hartmann Maybe Nebraska Republican Chuck Hagel honestly won two US Senate elections. Maybe it's true that the citizens of Georgia simply decided that incumbent Democratic Senator Max Cleland, a wildly popular war veteran who lost three limbs in Vietnam, was, as his successful Republican challenger suggested in his campaign ads, too unpatriotic to remain in the Senate. Maybe George W. Bush, Alabama's new Republican governor Bob Riley, and a small but congressionally decisive handful of other long-shot Republican candidates really did win those states where conventional wisdom and straw polls showed them losing in the last few election cycles. Perhaps, after a half-century of fine-tuning exit polling to such a science that it's now sometimes used to verify how clean elections are in Third World countries, it really did suddenly become inaccurate in the United States in the past six years and just won't work here anymore. Perhaps it's just a coincidence that the sudden rise of inaccurate exit polls happened around the same time corporate-programmed, computer-controlled, modem-capable voting machines began recording and tabulating ballots. But if any of this is true, there's not much of a paper trail from the voters' hand to prove it. You'd think in an open democracy that the government - answerable to all its citizens rather than a handful of corporate officers and stockholders - would program, repair, and control the voting machines. You'd think the computers that handle our cherished ballots would be open and their software and programming available for public scrutiny. You'd think there would be a paper trail of the vote, which could be followed and audited if a there was evidence of voting fraud or if exit polls disagreed with computerized vote counts. You'd be wrong. The respected Washington, DC publication The Hill (www.thehill.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx) has confirmed that former conservative radio talk-show host and now Republican U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel was the head of, and continues to own part interest in, the company that owns the company that installed, programmed, and largely ran the voting machines that were used by most of the citizens of Nebraska. Back when Hagel first ran there for the U.S. Senate in 1996, his company's computer-controlled voting machines showed he'd won stunning upsets in both the primaries and the general election. 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 of www.blackboxvoting.org, 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. Six years later Hagel ran again, this time against Democrat Charlie Matulka in 2002, and won in a landslide. As his hagel.senate.gov website says, Hagel "was re-elected to his second term in the United States Senate on November 5, 2002 with 83% of the vote. That represents the biggest political victory in the history of Nebraska." What Hagel's website fails to disclose is that about 80 percent of those votes were counted by computer-controlled voting machines put in place by the company affiliated with Hagel. Built by that company. Programmed by that company. "This is a big story, bigger than Watergate ever was," said Hagel's Democratic opponent in the 2002 Senate race, Charlie Matulka (www.lancastercountydemocrats.org/matulka.htm). "They say Hagel shocked the world, but he didn't shock me." Is Matulka the sore loser the Hagel campaign paints him as, or is he democracy's proverbial canary in the mineshaft? In Georgia, Democratic incumbent and war-hero Max Cleland was defeated by Saxby Chambliss, who'd avoided service in Vietnam with a "medical deferment" but ran his campaign on the theme that he was more patriotic than Cleland. While many in Georgia expected a big win by Cleland, the computerized voting machines said that Chambliss had won. The BBC summed up Georgia voters' reaction in a 6 November 2002 headline: "GEORGIA UPSET STUNS DEMOCRATS." The BBC echoed the confusion of many Georgia voters when they wrote, "Mr. Cleland - an army veteran who lost three limbs in a grenade explosion during the Vietnam War - had long been considered 'untouchable' on questions of defense and national security." Between them, Hagel and Chambliss' victories sealed Republican control of the Senate. Odds are both won fair and square, the American way, using huge piles of corporate money to carpet-bomb voters with television advertising. But either the appearance or the possibility of impropriety in an election casts a shadow over American democracy. "The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which all other rights are protected," wrote Thomas Paine over 200 years ago. "To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery.." That slavery, according to Hagel's last opponent Charlie Matulka, is at our doorstep. "They can take over our country without firing a shot," Matulka said, "just by taking over our election systems." Taking over our election systems? Is that really possible in the USA? Bev Harris of www.talion.com and www.blackboxvoting.org has looked into the situation in depth and thinks Matulka may be on to something. The company tied to Hagel even threatened her with legal action when she went public about his company having built the machines that counted his landslide votes. (Her response was to put the law firm's threat letter on her website and send a press release to 4000 editors, inviting them to check it out. "I suspect they're getting ready to do this all across all the states," Matulka said in a January 30, 2003 interview. "God help us if Bush gets his touch screens all across the country," he added, "because they leave no paper trail. These corporations are taking over America, and they just about have control of our voting machines." In the meantime, exit-polling organizations have quietly gone out of business, and the news arms of the huge multinational corporations that own our networks are suggesting the days of exit polls are over. Virtually none were reported in 2002, creating an odd and unsettling silence that caused unease for the many American voters who had come to view exit polls as proof of the integrity of their election systems.
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Post by Boomer Chick on Nov 6, 2004 11:28:42 GMT -5
As all this comes to light, many citizens and even a few politicians are wondering if it's a good idea for corporations to be so involved in the guts of our voting systems. The whole idea of a democratic republic was to create a common institution (the government itself) owned by its citizens, answerable to its citizens, and authorized to exist and continue existing solely "by the consent of the governed." Prior to 1886 - when, law schools incorrectly tell law students, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that corporations are "persons" with equal protection and other "human rights" - it was illegal in most states for corporations to involve themselves in politics at all, much less to service the core mechanism of politics. And during the era of Teddy Roosevelt, who said, "There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains," numerous additional laws were passed to restrain corporations from involvement in politics. Wisconsin, for example, had a law that explicitly stated: "No corporation doing business in this state shall pay or contribute, or offer consent or agree to pay or contribute, directly or indirectly, any money, property, free service of its officers or employees or thing of value to any political party, organization, committee or individual for any political purpose whatsoever, or for the purpose of influencing legislation of any kind, or to promote or defeat the candidacy of any person for nomination, appointment or election to any political office." The penalty for violating that law was dissolution of the corporation, and "any officer, employee, agent or attorney or other representative of any corporation, acting for and in behalf of such corporation" would be subject to "imprisonment in the state prison for a period of not less than one nor more than five years" and a substantial fine. However, the recent political trend has moved us in the opposite direction, with governments answerable to "We, The People" turning over administration of our commons to corporations answerable only to CEOs, boards, and stockholders. The result is the enrichment of corporations and the appearance that democracy in America has started to resemble its parody in banana republics. But if America still is a democratic republic, then We, The People still own our government. And the way our ownership and management of our common government (and its assets) is asserted is through the vote. On most levels, privatization is only a "small sin" against democracy. Turning a nation's or community's water, septic, roadway, prisons, airwaves, or health care commons over to private corporations has so far demonstrably degraded the quality of life for average citizens and enriched a few of the most powerful campaign contributors. But it hasn't been the end of democracy (although some wonder about what the FCC is preparing to do - but that's a separate story). Many citizens believe, however, that turning the programming and maintenance of voting over to private, for-profit corporations, answerable only to their owners, officers, and stockholders, puts democracy itself at peril. And, argues Charlie Matulka, for a former officer of one of those corporations to then place himself into an election without disclosing such an apparent conflict of interest is to create a parody of democracy. Perhaps Matulka's been reading too many conspiracy theory tracts. Or maybe he's on to something. We won't know until a truly independent government agency looks into the matter. When Bev Harris and The Hill's Alexander Bolton pressed the Chief Counsel and Director of the Senate Ethics Committee, the man responsible for ensuring that FEC disclosures are complete, asking him why he'd not questioned Hagel's 1995, 1996, and 2001 failures to disclose the details of his ownership in the company that owned the voting machine company when he ran for the Senate, the Director reportedly met with Hagel's office on Friday, January 25, 2003 and Monday, January 27, 2003. After the second meeting, on the afternoon of January 27th, the Director of the Senate Ethics Committee resigned his job. Meanwhile, back in Nebraska, Charlie Matulka had requested a hand count of the vote in the election he lost to Hagel. He just learned his request was denied because, he said, Nebraska has a just-passed law that prohibits government-employee election workers from looking at the ballots, even in a recount. The only machines permitted to count votes in Nebraska, he said, are those made and programmed by the corporation formerly run by Hagel. Matulka shared his news with me, then sighed loud and long on the phone, as if he were watching his children's future evaporate. "If you want to win the election," he finally said, "just control the machines." Thom Hartmann is the author of "Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights." www.unequalprotection.com This article is copyright by Thom Hartmann, but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, or web media so long as this credit is attached. www.commondreams.org/views03/0131-01.htm### thomhartmann.com/
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Post by Boomer Chick on Nov 6, 2004 11:44:15 GMT -5
"Evidence of a Second Bush Coup?" by Robert Parry www.consortiumnews.comTheoretically at least, it is conceivable that sophisticated CIA-style computer hacking – known as “cyber-warfare” – could have let George W. Bush’s campaign transform a three-percentage-point defeat, as measured by exit polls, into an official victory of about the same margin. Whether such a scheme is feasible, however, is another matter, since it would require penetration of hundreds of local computer systems across the country, presumably from a single remote location. The known CIA successes in cyber-war have come from targeting a specific bank account or from shutting down an adversary’s computer system, not from altering data simultaneously in a large number of computers. To achieve that kind of result, cyber-war experts say, a preprogrammed “kernel of brain” would have to be inserted into election computers beforehand or teams of hackers would be needed to penetrate the lightly protected systems, targeting touch-screen systems without a paper backup for verifying the numbers. [More on “cyber-war” techniques below.] Though there's still no proof of such a cyber-attack, suspicions are growing that the U.S. presidential election results were manipulated to some degree. Voting analyses of some precincts in Florida and Ohio have found surprisingly high percentages for Bush. Others have noted that the large turnout among young voters and the obvious enthusiasm of John Kerry’s voters would have suggested a better showing for the Democrat. Exit Polls But the most perplexing fact is that exit polls into the evening of Nov. 2 showed Kerry rolling to a clear victory nationally and carrying most of the battleground states, including Florida and Ohio, whose totals would have ensured Kerry’s victory in the Electoral College. Significantly, polls also showed Republicans carrying the bulk of the tight Senate races. However, when the official results were tallied, the presidential exit polls proved wrong while the Senate polls proved right. Explanations from the architects of the exit-poll sampling system also sound specious. Their report said Kerry voters were simply more willing than Bush voters to answer the exit pollsters’ questions. But this “chattiness thesis” seems more like a post-facto excuse than a serious argument. Another explanation from some pundits was that the exit polls were adjusted by late in the day to rectify pro-Kerry exaggerations from the earlier samples. But that is not what happened. As the New York Times reported, “The presumption of a Kerry victory built a head of steam late in the day, when the national survey showed the senator with a statistically significant lead, one falling outside the survey’s margin of error.” Washington Post managing editor Steve Coll wrote in an online chat on Nov. 3 that “the last wave of national exit polls we received … showed Kerry winning the popular vote by 51 percent to 48 percent – if true, surely enough to carry the Electoral College.” [NYT, Nov. 5, 2004] Through the late afternoon, exit polls did show Kerry’s lead in some swing states shrinking, For instance, his lead in Ohio slipped from four points to one point. In Florida, his lead dropped from three points to one point. However, his edge in the popular vote seems to have held fairly steady at about three percent. During the day, even Bush’s aides informed the president that he was losing the election by about three percentage points, according to a source with access to information inside the White House. But Bush’s political adviser Karl Rove reportedly voiced confidence that the vote would turn around. By evening, Bush was displaying a cool confidence that he would prevail. Irregularities Since Election Day, some computer irregularities have surfaced in Ohio and elsewhere. Ohio elections officials said an error with an electronic voting system in Franklin County gave Bush 3,893 extra votes in suburban Columbus, more than a 1,000 percent more than he actually got. Records indicated that only 638 voters cast ballots in the precinct and that Bush's total should have been recorded as 365. The Associated Press reported that Franklin County is the only Ohio county to use Danaher Controls Inc.'s ELECTronic 1242, an older-style touch-screen voting system. Much of the suspicion about Bush possibly manipulating the vote totals has centered on touch-screen electronic voting machines made by Ohio-based Diebold, which has more than 75,000 electronic voting stations operating across the United States. Diebold’s chief executive is Walden O’Dell, a major Bush fundraiser. In an invitation to one Bush fundraising event at his mansion in Columbus, O’Dell wrote that he was “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes for the president.” He later expressed regret at his choice of language. [The Plain Dealer, Sept. 16, 2003, posted at Diebold’s Web site.] One Kerry insider told me that Democratic suspicions also were raised by Republican resistance to implementing any meaningful backup system for checking the results on Diebold and other electronic-voting machines. For its part, Diebold denies that its systems are vulnerable to computer hacking, calling such allegations “fantasy.” [See Diebold’s statement.] Dirty Tricks Another reason for suspicion about manipulation of the Nov. 2 vote is the Republican Party’s long history of electoral dirty tricks, which I detail in my book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq. In 1968, Richard Nixon’s campaign reportedly sabotaged Vietnam War peace talks to help ensure his victory. In 1972, burglars working for Nixon’s reelection campaign broke into Democratic offices at Watergate. In 1980, George H.W. Bush and other Republicans allegedly interfered with President Jimmy Carter’s negotiations to free 52 hostages held in Iran. In 1992, Bush’s administration was implicated in an illegal search of Bill Clinton’s passport file. In 2000, George W. Bush sent a team of thugs to disrupt recounts in Florida and eventually got the U.S. Supreme Court to prevent a full counting of disputed ballots. Now the question is whether Republicans have engaged in some high-tech dirty tricks to alter the outcome of a U.S. presidential election. ‘Cyber-War’ The highly secretive practice of “cyber-warfare” has advanced far more than many Americans understand, with U.S. intelligence agencies pioneering methods for surreptitiously entering enemy computer systems. Through the 1990s, the CIA and the U.S. military aggressively expanded “cyber-war” capabilities, bringing online powerful computer systems and recruiting some of the nation’s best hackers, intelligence sources say. During the CIA’s recruitment rush, some hackers were hired despite criminal records and questionable backgrounds. One got in trouble when he was found masturbating in front of his computer screen. By the mid-1990s, cyber-war – also known as "information warfare" – was such a hot topic within the U.S. military that the Pentagon produced a breezy 13-page booklet called "Information Warfare for Dummies." The primer said traditional information warfare would target an enemy's battlefield command-and-control structure to "decapitate" senior officers from their fighters, thereby "causing panic and paralysis." But the primer added that "network penetrations" -- or hacking -- "represents a new and very high-tech form of warfighting."
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