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Post by Boomer Chick on Nov 6, 2004 11:51:56 GMT -5
(continued) Indirectly, the booklet acknowledged secret U.S. capabilities in these areas. The manual described these info-war tactics as "fairly ground-breaking stuff for our nation's mud-sloggers. … Theft and the intentional manipulation of data are the product of devilish minds." The primer also gave some hints about the disruptive strategies in the U.S. arsenal. "Network penetrations" include "insertion of malicious code (viruses, worms, etc.), theft of information, manipulation of information, denial of service," the primer said. The booklet also recognized the sensitivity of the topic. "Due to the moral, ethical and legal questions raised by hacking, the military likes to keep a low profile on this issue," the primer explained. Despite the Pentagon's nervousness, the booklet said the cyber-war tactics do have advantages over other military operations. "The intrusions can be carried out remotely, transcending the boundaries of time and space," the manual said. "They also offer the prospect of 'plausible deniability' or repudiation." The booklet indicated that U.S. intelligence has found it relatively easy to cover its tracks. "Due to the difficulty of tracing a network penetration to its source, it's difficult for the adversary to prove that you are the one responsible for corrupting their system," the primer said. "In fact, viral infections can be so subtle and insidious that the adversary may not even know that their systems have been attacked." Drug Scam U.S. intelligence sources described one case study of a CIA high-tech "dirty trick" that worked in the mid-1990s. After learning of a drug lord's plans to bribe a South American government official, the spy agency waited for the money to be transferred and then accessed the bank records to remotely delete the bribe. Besides stopping the bribe, the money's disappearance spread confusion within the cartel. The recriminations that followed – with the corrupt official and the drug lord complaining about the lost money – led eventually to the execution of a hapless bookkeeper, according to the story. During the war over Kosovo in 1999, U.S. government hackers tried to expand on these strategies, targeting Serbian computer systems and government bank accounts. By most accounts, the cyber-war attacks on Serbian targets achieved only limited success. While avoiding clear confirmation of a U.S. offensive cyber-war capability, American officials occasionally have discussed the topic in the third person, as if the United States were not a participant in this new arms race. On Feb. 2, 1999, for instance, then-CIA director George Tenet said "several countries have or are developing the capability to attack an adversary's computer systems." He added that "developing a computer attack capability can be quite inexpensive and easily concealable." Left unsaid in Tenet's statement was that the U.S. government, with the world's most powerful computers and the most sophisticated software designs, has led the way both in offensive “cyber-war” strategies and defensive countermeasures. With questions lingering about discrepancies between the Nov. 2 exit polls and Bush's final tallies, some Democrats are wondering whether the intelligence community's cyber-war capabilities may have come home to roost. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Robert Parry, who broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek, has written a new book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq. It can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com. www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1893517012/qid=1099759181/sr=8-1/ref=pd_ka_1/104-3877163-2707931?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
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Post by Boomer Chick on Nov 6, 2004 13:02:47 GMT -5
Published on Thursday, November 04, 2004 Students Rally in Copley, Claim Bush ‘Stole’ Election By JESSICA C. CHIU Contributing Writer In the wake of the presidential election, Harvard students joined more than 100 other political protesters yesterday in Copley Square for the Rally and Vigil for Democracy. The local rally, which began at 5 p.m., was part of a larger effort by the No Stolen Elections! campaign, for which people from over 30 cities nationwide have promised to protest the election results in upcoming weeks. Over 15,000 people have already signed a pledge expressing their concerns that the election was stolen by President Bush, said Michael A. Gould-Wartofsky ’07, a founding member of the Harvard Social Forum. “I think Harvard students are more aware than others of how they can make democracy happen,” said Gould-Wartofsky, who is also a Crimson editor. “Some people might be staying home depressed, but we should translate that to something visible by getting active.” Though a handful of Boston police officers were needed to control the flow of traffic, the rally was peaceful and attracted individuals of various political affiliations and beliefs, including union representatives, Socialists, Democrats, anarchists and radicals. Many students from the Harvard Social Forum joined the other political activists in Copley Square. The protesters paced back and forth at intersection of Dartmouth and Boylston Streets, holding signs, chanting slogans and distributing pamphlets while several cars honked in support of their cause. Many protesters said they were there to express discontent with election results and Bush’s foreign policy. “Being out here is the start to rebuilding the movements against Bush and the war in Iraq,” said Daniel DiMaggio ’04, a former member of the Harvard Socialist Alternative. Gould-Wartofsky said that many of the protesters feel that the Kerry campaign should have waited longer for the votes to be counted. Early yesterday morning, Sen. John Edwards, D.-N.C., vowed to “fight for every vote.” But by yesterday afternoon Sen. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., conceded the presidential election. The political rally, however, was more than just an anti-Bush demonstration. The majority of protesters said they came out to voice specific concerns on issues, including immigration, social security, the draft and police brutality. “I would have come out if Kerry won, too. I’m here to meet other people who are also interested in radical ideas,” said Hank R. Gonzalez, ’06, treasurer of the Socialist Alternative. Edward B. Childs, a cook in Adams House, said that even though he is against “four more years of Bush,” the reason he attended was to focus on the issues. “It’s important to go out the first day after elections to protest against cuts in Social Security, Medicare, cuts to veterans and workers’ rights,” said Childs, who is also the chief steward of Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Local 26. As he watched the crowd of protesters, Gould-Wartofsky reflected on the election results. “More people are demoralized than I thought, but movements are what really change American politics,” he said. “The power is still in the people. We didn’t just give it up to the President yesterday.”
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Post by Boomer Chick on Nov 6, 2004 13:14:24 GMT -5
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Post by Boomer Chick on Nov 6, 2004 13:30:12 GMT -5
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Post by Boomer Chick on Nov 6, 2004 23:20:18 GMT -5
Have the people really spoken at the polls? www.delmarvanow.com/easternshore/stories/20041106/1549774.html-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Think the people have spoken? Think again. Not only were there major voter irregularities in Ohio and Florida but the winners were based on results of computerized voting machines without a paper trail. Anyone who has any experience programming knows how just changing one word in a line code can completely change the output. Most of the manufacturers of these black box voting machine will not reveal the programs that run them. Bush supporters have been vehement against forcing the manufacturers to provide a paper trail. They said it is too difficult. This is nonsense -- they manufacture ATMs. Could you imagine going to a bank and not getting a receipt? In addition, after two other courts said it was illegal, a Republican judge said it was OK to challenge voters' registrations at Ohio polls. That meant that anyone could say they didn't trust the person's credentials and force them into filing a provisional ballot. Then many precincts ran out of these ballots and thousands did not get to vote at all. Some stood in lines until 2 a.m. and did not get to vote. This was almost entirely in very Democratic areas. All the exit polls revealed that Sen. John Kerry was winning handily in both Florida and Ohio. These surveys may be off by a point or two, but in aggregate, never that wrong. Is there any wonder that the Ohio Secretary of State did everything to stop exit polling. The answer is obvious. Welcome to George W. Bush's America, where stolen elections are not the exception, but the norm. Martin Freed Quinby Originally published Saturday, November 6, 2004
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Post by Boomer Chick on Nov 6, 2004 23:24:08 GMT -5
www.legitgov.org/index.html#breaking_news ES&S Operative Had Access to Ohio Ballot Computer --In a letter dated Oct. 21, Ken Nuss, former deputy director of the Auglaize County Board of Elections, claimed that Joe McGinnis, a former employee of Election Systems and Software (ES&S), the company that provides the voting system in Auglaize County, was on the main computer that is used to create the ballot and compile election results, which would go against election protocol. Nuss claimed in the letter that McGinnis was allowed to use the computer the weekend of Oct. 16. Nuss, who resigned from his job Oct. 21 after being suspended for a day, was responsible for overseeing the computerized programming of election software, according to his job description. His resignation is effective Nov. 11.
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Post by Boomer Chick on Nov 6, 2004 23:35:36 GMT -5
Florida: blog.democrats.com/floridawww.commondreams.org/views04/1106-30.htmThom Hartmann Posted Nov 6, 2004 06:12 PM PST Category: VOTE FRAUD When I spoke with Jeff Fisher this morning (Saturday, November 06, 2004), the Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida's 16th District said he was waiting for the FBI to show up. Fisher has evidence, he says, not only that the Florida election was hacked, but of who hacked it and how. And not just this year, he said, but that these same people had previously hacked the Democratic primary race in 2002 so that Jeb Bush would not have to run against Janet Reno, who presented a real threat to Jeb, but instead against Bill McBride, who Jeb beat. "It was practice for a national effort," Fisher told me. And some believe evidence is accumulating that the national effort happened on November 2, 2004. "It was practice for a national effort," Fisher told me. And some believe evidence is accumulating that the national effort happened on November 2, 2004. The State of Florida, for example, publishes a county-by-county record of votes cast and people registered to vote by party affiliation. Net denizen Kathy Dopp compiled the official state information into a table, available at ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm, and noticed something startling. While the heavily scrutinized touch-screen voting machines seemed to produce results in which the registered Democrat/Republican ratios largely matched the Kerry/Bush vote, in Florida's counties using results from optically scanned paper ballots - fed into a central tabulator PC and thus vulnerable to hacking – the results seem to contain substantial anomalies. In Baker County, for example, with 12,887 registered voters, 69.3% of them Democrats and 24.3% of them Republicans, the vote was only 2,180 for Kerry and 7,738 for Bush, the opposite of what is seen everywhere else in the country where registered Democrats largely voted for Kerry. In Dixie County, with 4,988 registered voters, 77.5% of them Democrats and a mere 15% registered as Republicans, only 1,959 people voted for Kerry, but 4,433 voted for Bush. The pattern repeats over and over again - but only in the counties where optical scanners were used. Franklin County, 77.3% registered Democrats, went 58.5% for Bush. Holmes County, 72.7% registered Democrats, went 77.25% for Bush. Yet in the touch-screen counties, where investigators may have been more vigorously looking for such anomalies, high percentages of registered Democrats generally equaled high percentages of votes for Kerry. (I had earlier reported that county size was a variable – this turns out not to be the case. Just the use of touch-screens versus optical scanners.) More visual analysis of the results can be seen at http://us together.org/election04/FloridaDataStats.htm, and www.rubberbug.com/temp/Florida2004chart.htm. Note the trend line – the only variable that determines a swing toward Bush was the use of optical scan machines. One possible explanation for this is the "Dixiecrat" theory, that in Florida white voters (particularly the rural ones) have been registered as Democrats for years, but voting Republican since Reagan. Looking at the 2000 statistics, also available on Dopp's site, there are similar anomalies, although the trends are not as strong as in 2004. But some suggest the 2000 election may have been questionable in Florida, too. One of the people involved in Dopp's analysis noted that it may be possible to determine the validity of the "rural Democrat" theory by comparing Florida's white rural counties to those of Pennsylvania, another swing state but one that went for Kerry, as the exit polls there predicted. Interestingly, the Pennsylvania analysis, available at ustogether.org/election04/PA_vote_patt.htm, doesn't show the same kind of swings as does Florida, lending credence to the possibility of problems in Florida. Even more significantly, Dopp had first run the analysis while filtering out smaller (rural) counties, and still found that the only variable that accounted for a swing toward Republican voting was the use of optical-scan machines, whereas counties with touch-screen machines generally didn't swing - regardless of size. Others offer similar insights, based on other data. A professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, noted that in Florida the vote to raise the minimum wage was approved by 72%, although Kerry got 48%. "The correlation between voting for the minimum wage increase and voting for Kerry isn't likely to be perfect," he noted, "but one would normally expect that the gap - of 1.5 million votes - to be far smaller than it was." While all of this may or may not be evidence of vote tampering, it again brings the nation back to the question of why several states using electronic voting machines or scanners programmed by private, for-profit corporations and often connected to modems produced votes inconsistent with exit poll numbers. Those exit poll results have been a problem for reporters ever since Election Day. Election night, I'd been doing live election coverage for WDEV, one of the radio stations that carries my syndicated show, and, just after midnight, during the 12:20 a.m. Associated Press Radio News feed, I was startled to hear the reporter detail how Karen Hughes had earlier sat George W. Bush down to inform him that he'd lost the election. The exit polls were clear: Kerry was winning in a landslide. "Bush took the news stoically," noted the AP report. But then the computers reported something different. In several pivotal states. Conservatives see a conspiracy here: They think the exit polls were rigged. thingy Morris, the infamous political consultant to the first Clinton campaign who became a Republican consultant and Fox News regular, wrote an article for The Hill, the publication read by every political junkie in Washington, DC, in which he made a couple of brilliant points. "Exit Polls are almost never wrong," Morris wrote. "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." He added: "So, according to ABC-TVs exit polls, for example, Kerry was slated to carry Florida, Ohio, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, and Iowa, all of which Bush carried. The only swing state the network had going to Bush was West Virginia, which the president won by 10 points." Yet a few hours after the exit polls were showing a clear Kerry sweep, as the computerized vote numbers began to come in from the various states the election was called for Bush. How could this happen? On the CNBC TV show "Topic A With Tina Brown," several months ago, Howard Dean had filled in for Tina Brown as guest host. His guest was Bev Harris, the Seattle grandmother who started www.blackboxvoting.org from her living room. Bev pointed out that regardless of how votes were tabulated (other than hand counts, only done in odd places like small towns in Vermont), the real "counting" is done by computers. Be they Diebold Opti-Scan machines, which read paper ballots filled in by pencil or ink in the voter's hand, or the scanners that read punch cards, or the machines that simply record a touch of the screen, in all cases the final tally is sent to a "central tabulator" machine.
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Post by Boomer Chick on Nov 6, 2004 23:36:10 GMT -5
That central tabulator computer is a Windows-based PC. "In a voting system," Harris explained to Dean on national television, "you have all the different voting machines at all the different polling places, sometimes, as in a county like mine, there's a thousand polling places in a single county. All those machines feed into the one machine so it can add up all the votes. So, of course, if you were going to do something you shouldn't to a voting machine, would it be more convenient to do it to each of the 4000 machines, or just come in here and deal with all of them at once?" Dean nodded in rhetorical agreement, and Harris continued. "What surprises people is that the central tabulator is just a PC, like what you and I use. It's just a regular computer." "So," Dean said, "anybody who can hack into a PC can hack into a central tabulator?" Harris nodded affirmation, and pointed out how Diebold uses a program called GEMS, which fills the screen of the PC and effectively turns it into the central tabulator system. "This is the official program that the County Supervisor sees," she said, pointing to a PC that was sitting between them loaded with Diebold's software. Bev then had Dean open the GEMS program to see the results of a test election. They went to the screen titled "Election Summary Report" and waited a moment while the PC "adds up all the votes from all the various precincts," and then saw that in this faux election Howard Dean had 1000 votes, Lex Luthor had 500, and Tiger Woods had none. Dean was winning. "Of course, you can't tamper with this software," Harris noted. Diebold wrote a pretty good program. But, it's running on a Windows PC. So Harris had Dean close the Diebold GEMS software, go back to the normal Windows PC desktop, click on the "My Computer" icon, choose "Local Disk C:," open the folder titled GEMS, and open the sub-folder "LocalDB" which, Harris noted, "stands for local database, that's where they keep the votes." Harris then had Dean double-click on a file in that folder titled "Central Tabulator Votes," which caused the PC to open the vote count in a database program like Excel. In the "Sum of the Candidates" row of numbers, she found that in one precinct Dean had received 800 votes and Lex Luthor had gotten 400. "Let's just flip those," Harris said, as Dean cut and pasted the numbers from one cell into the other. "And," she added magnanimously, "let's give 100 votes to Tiger." They closed the database, went back into the official GEMS software "the legitimate way, you're the county supervisor and you're checking on the progress of your election." As the screen displayed the official voter tabulation, Harris said, "And you can see now that Howard Dean has only 500 votes, Lex Luthor has 900, and Tiger Woods has 100." Dean, the winner, was now the loser. Harris sat up a bit straighter, smiled, and said, "We just edited an election, and it took us 90 seconds." On live national television. (You can see the clip on http://www.votergate.tv.) And they had left no tracks whatsoever, Harris said, noting that it would be nearly impossible for the election software – or a County election official - to know that the vote database had been altered. Which brings us back to Morris and those pesky exit polls that had Karen Hughes telling George W. Bush that he'd lost the election in a landslide. Morris's conspiracy theory is that the exit polls "were sabotage" to cause people in the western states to not bother voting for Bush, since the networks would call the election based on the exit polls for Kerry. But the networks didn't do that, and had never intended to. According to congressional candidate Fisher, it makes far more sense that the exit polls were right - they weren't done on Diebold PCs - and that the vote itself was hacked. And not only for the presidential candidate - Jeff Fisher thinks this hit him and pretty much every other Democratic candidate for national office in the most-hacked swing states. So far, the only national "mainstream" media to come close to this story was Keith Olbermann on his show Friday night, November 5th, when he noted that it was curious that all the voting machine irregularities so far uncovered seem to favor Bush. In the meantime, the Washington Post and other media are now going through single-bullet-theory-like contortions to explain how the exit polls had failed. But I agree with Fox's Dick Morris on this one, at least in large part. Wrapping up his story for The Hill, Morris wrote in his final paragraph, "This was no mere mistake. Exit polls cannot be as wrong across the board as they were on election night. I suspect foul play." 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."
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Post by Boomer Chick on Nov 7, 2004 0:15:17 GMT -5
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Post by Boomer Chick on Nov 7, 2004 9:34:54 GMT -5
www.willthomas.net/Convergence/Weekly/Robbed_2004_Election.htmRobbed by William Thomas 11/06/04 Tony Blair went to sleep on the night of the world’s most important election certain that John Kerry had won. He wasn’t the only one. And we were right. From evidence already gathered by award-winning investigators Bev Harris and Greg Palast documenting uncounted Kerry votes and suspicious electronic voting machine irregularities in key states, there can be no doubt that the Kerry/Edwards ticket swept the decisive states of Ohio, New Mexico and Florida. America’s vaunted democracy is putrefying after exit polls asking voters how they voted often failed to match the actual votes counted. The polls turned out to be “largely accurate in paper-ballot states and oddly inaccurate in touch-screen electronic voting states,” says award winning author and commentator Thom Hartmann. “The ‘erroneous’ exit polls that showed Kerry carrying Florida and Ohio (among other states) weren't erroneous at all,” Hartmann maintains. “It was the numbers produced by paperless voting machines that were wrong, and Kerry actually won.” The Ohio exit polls are accurate, Greg Palast agrees. The award winning investigative journalist who exposed extensive vote-rigging in Florida the last time around says, “Kerry took the state.” In states like Ohio and New Mexico, where most voters told pollsters that they’d punched or tapped their ballots for Kerry-Edwards, many of their votes “were simply not recorded” explains Palast. KERRY TAKES OHIO In Ohio, 1.96% of legally cast votes were trashed in 2000. Assuming state officials did nothing more than hold to this same national average for spoiled votes in 2004, “that's 110,000 votes – overwhelmingly Democratic,” Palast figures When the polls opened, the man in charge of counting Ohio’s vote was Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell. After predicting “a Florida-like calamity” in his state, the man described as “a rabidly partisan Republican” now refuses to release the actual number of provisional ballots handed out to mostly minority voters – whose names on the voting rolls were to be checked later. Instead, Blackwell “estimates” that 175,000 of these catch-you-later ballots were handed out. But Democrats say a quarter-million provisional votes were dispensed last Tuesday in Ohio alone. Let’s stay carefully conservative and pick the lower, Republican-admitted number of uncounted Ohio votes. Though it’s safe to assume that nearly all of these minority-cast ballots went for Kerry/Edwards, applying the exit poll tallies of at least 53% of the total vote going to the Democrats still leaves 92,750 additional votes for them. DIEBOLD FOR PRESIDENT This is also the state where Diebold corporate chief and top Bush fundraiser, Wally O'Dell, publicly promised to "deliver" a Bush win. Nine crucial Ohio counties use the same electronic machines banned in California after an earlier voting fiasco there. The Diebold machines are a dictator’s dream. Blackboxvoting.org has posted an internal Diebold memo showing how easy it is to change the vote tallies by modem. King County, Washington was very likely rigged. A Freedom of Information request filed there by Black Box Voting immediately following the Sept. 15, 2004 primary has already uncovered a three-hour “deletion” during the heaviest voting in a district with more than one million registered voters. The critical phone number needed to remotely access the county’s voting computers was provided to poll workers, office personnel – and Black Box Voting activists! “Networks called the election before anyone bothered to perform even the most rudimentary audit,” complains Bev Harris, author of Black Box Voting. Reporting from her website of the same name, Harris says that her organization has already launched the largest Freedom of Information action in US history. Filed on election night, the first in a series of requests is seeking internal computer audit logs from all polling places in 3,000 counties and townships. Requested records for all types of voting systems – optical scan, touch-screen, and punch card – also include all polling results slips, modem transmission logs, and “computer trouble” slips from audit logs. Similar to the “black box” flight data recorder in an airliner, the voting computer’s “audit log” automatically records all attempts to access the central vote tabulator – either remotely by modem, or through direct tampering of the hard drive. During the electronic balloting on Nov. 2, 2004, “information indicates that hackers may have targeted the central computers that are counting our votes,” Bev Harris claims. In Ohio, to name just one state with this fascinating arrangement, all voting machines can be accessed while in use by modem and a laptop from the Republican-run county elections office. As the Diebold memo confirms, no password is needed to “change vote totals without being detected by observers,” Harris writes. Attacks by remote access are possible even if the modem is turned off! There can be zero doubt that Kerry and Edwards did not just win Ohio – they won it big. KERRY WINS FLORIDA In the state where the erasure of the Democratic black vote was termed “fraudulent” by the Florida Supreme Court, just before the 2004 sequel, Governor Jeb Bush removed the Democrat election supervisor. His Republican replacement failed to send out nearly 60,000 absentee ballots. Florida is ES&S territory. The supplier of the ES&S voting machines that tallied a third of the votes cast in the United States last Tuesday is Howard Ahmanson. A member of the right-wing National Policy “steering group” that helps set Dubya’s dubious course, Ahmanson is also a major financial backer of the extremist “Christian Reconstructionist” movement. ES&S voting machines can be remotely “adjusted” by modem while in use. After Jeb Bush was dissuaded from choosing ES&S lobbyist Sandra Mortham as his 1998 gubernatorial running mate, Mortham made a mint installing the uncheckable machines that counted Jeb’s votes! Also in the Hurricane State, many black voters were simply “cleansed” from lily white voting rolls. Though the exact numbers of eligible Kerry voters struck from the rolls this year have not been released, we can take a close guess. After 91,000 eligible, democrat-favoring black voters were cut from the Florida rolls to throw the election to his brother in the 2000 election, Jeb Bush hired the same company to conduct further voter purges for the 2004 repeat. This time around, Palast learned that the voters on Florida’s secret “caging” lists intended to block their legal ballots are “almost exclusively, residents of African-American neighborhoods.” No wonder exit polls showed Kerry carrying Florida. That is, before Bush “won” that state by 370,000 votes. In New Mexico, which Gore won handily in 2000, the Democrats once again took that state’s decisive electoral votes. KERRY WINS NEW MEXICO In New Mexico, Greg Palast insists, “The Kerry plurality – if all votes are counted – is more obvious still.” Using the 2.68% spoilage rate reported by New Mexico in the last presidential race, Palast calculates at least 18,000 ballots went into New Mexico’s spoilage bins last Tuesday – almost entirely, he adds, from Hispanic, Native American “and other poor precincts that are Democratic turf.” New Mexico’s Hispanic districts are controlled by Republican election officials. Chaves County, for example, has a 44% Hispanic population, as well as many African Americans and Native Americans. Yet, the “spoils” of Chavez County went to George Bush, who “won” 68% of the votes that weren’t thrown into segregated garbage cans. In Rio Arriba, where Democrats enjoy an eight-to-one registration edge over Republicans, in 2000 one in 10 votes simply weren’t counted. Looking at the 2004 vote, an election official told Palast, “If the vote is stolen here, it will be stolen in Rio Arriba County.” Other minorities fare little better. Across America, watchdog group Democracy South has found that black voters are 300% more likely than white voters to have their voter registration sign-ups rejected. As for Native Americans, “vote spoilage is epidemic near Indian reservations,” Palast found. Palast calls this, “apartheid democracy, in which wealthy white votes almost always count, but minorities are often purged or challenged or simply not recorded.” You could also call it racism – a word carved in the psyches of black sisters and brothers, whose initial response to their latest democratic disenfranchisement can already be heard in music sounding more like machine-gun fire than melody. Listening to these blistering lyrics, the self-righteous Christian Right who arranged this latest outrage had better fall to their knees and pray that the Americans they shafted yet again confine their rage to Rap. The Hispanic vote alone was enough to give Kerry and Edwards New Mexico, where provisional ballots were being handed out “like candy” according to Albuquerque reporter Renee Blake. Considering at least 18,000 “spoiled” ballots and 20,000 as yet uncounted provisional ballots – almost every one for the Democrats – either one of these corrected tallies says bye-bye to Bush’s 11,620-vote lead. Taken together, the phantom Republican juggernaut got its doors blown off in New Mexico.
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Post by Boomer Chick on Nov 7, 2004 9:35:50 GMT -5
WHY KERRY WHY? There can be no doubt that forces inimical to freedom, democracy and equality rigged the 2000 and 2004 elections in a back-to-back electoral coup d’etat. By letting them get away with it a second time, the Democratic Party has much to answer for.
Was John Kerry’s family threatened? Did a decorated war hero chicken out? Or was some kind of deal struck between a lackluster stalking horse and his fraternity brother? Whatever went down in the Kerry camp, the world has a right to know why, unlike last time, the Democrats bailed before demanding that “deciding states” like Ohio and New Mexico recount all those cards with not-quite-punched holes. If they had, the President’s initials today would be JK – not GW.
Then again, given such a stunning abdication, it might not have made any difference.
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Post by Boomer Chick on Nov 7, 2004 12:16:29 GMT -5
Dear 9/11 truth activists and concerned citizens, The following is the most recent update from Bev Harris' organization in Seattle -- BlackBoxVoting.Org. BlackBoxVoting.Org is has submitted the largest Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in history, asking for the computer logs from over 3,000 voting machines around the country. We at the 9/11 Visibility Project believe the evidence for electronic voting fraud in the 2004 election is more than compelling, and we will continue to send you periodic updates as the issue develops. Let the truth come out! Emanuel Sferios Webmaster, 9/11 Visibility Project www.septembereleventh.org----- >From Bev Harris: Freedom of Information requests at www.blackboxvoting.org have unearthed two Ciber certification reports indicating that security and tamperability was NOT TESTED and that several state elections directors, a secretary of state, and Dr. Britain Williams signed off on the report anyway, certifying it. The documents, posted at Black Box Voting (.ORG) show that Ciber Labs' Shawn Southworth used a conformance chart specifying FEC regulations, marking each test item "pass" or "fail." Southworth “tested” whether every candidate on the ballot has a name. But we were shocked to find out that, when asked the most important question -- about vulnerable entry points -- Southworth’s report says “not reviewed.” Ciber “tested” whether the manual gives a description of the voting system. But when asked to identify methods of attack (which we think the American voter would consider pretty important), the top-secret report says “not applicable.” Ciber “tested” whether ballots comply with local regulations, but when we asked Shawn Southworth what he thinks about Diebold tabulators accepting large numbers of “minus” votes, he said he didn’t mention that in his report because “the vendors don’t like him to put anything negative” in his report. After all, he said, he is paid by the vendors. Was this just a one-time oversight? Nope. It appears to be more like a habit. We also posted the sister report, for another vendor entirely, VoteHere, and you can see that the critical security test, the “penetration analysis” was again marked “not applicable” and was not done. Maybe another ITA did the penetration analysis? Apparently not. We discovered an even more bizarre Wyle Laboratories report. In it, the lab admits the Sequoia voting system has problems, but says that since they were not corrected earlier, Sequoia could continue with the same flaws. At one point the Wyle report omits its testing altogether, hoping the vendor will do the test. Computer Guys: Be your own ITA certifier. Black Box Voting has posted a full Ciber report on GEMS 1.18.15. We also posted a .zip file download for the GEMS 1.18.15 program. We also provided a real live Diebold vote database. Compare your findings against the official testing lab and see if you agree with what Ciber says. E-mail us your findings. Who the heck is NASED? They are the people who certified this stuff. Now, if the security of the U.S. electoral system depends on you to certify a voting system, and you get a report that says security was “not tested” and “not applicable” -- what would you do? Perhaps we should ask them. Go ahead. Hold them accountable for the election we just had. (Please, e-mail us their answers) Their names are listed on the Web site. Bev Harris
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Post by Boomer Chick on Nov 7, 2004 12:48:13 GMT -5
www.blackboxvoting.orgBREAKING -- SUNDAY Nov. 7 2004: Freedom of Information requests at www.blackboxvoting.org have unearthed two Ciber certification reports indicating that security and tamperability was NOT TESTED and that several state elections directors, a secretary of state, and computer consultant Dr. Britain Williams signed off on the report anyway, certifying it. Black Box Voting has taken the position that fraud took place in the 2004 election through electronic voting machines. We base this on hard evidence, documents obtained in public records requests, inside information, and other data indicative of manipulation of electronic voting systems. What we do not know is the specific scope of the fraud. We are working now to compile the proof, based not on soft evidence -- red flags, exit polls -- but core documents obtained by Black Box Voting in the most massive Freedom of Information action in history. SUNDAY Nov. 7 2004: We’re awaiting independent analysis on some pretty crooked-looking elections. In the mean time, here’s something to chew on. Your local elections officials trusted a group called NASED -- the National Association of State Election Directors -- to certify that your voting system is safe. This trust was breached. NASED certified the systems based on the recommendation of an “Independent Testing Authority” (ITA). “Whuuut?” What no one told local officials was that the ITA did not test for security (and NASED didn’t seem to mind). The ITA reports are considered so secret that even the California Secretary of State’s office had trouble getting its hands on one. The ITA refused to answer any questions about what it does. Imagine our surprise when, due to Freedom of Information requests, a couple of them showed up in our mailbox. The most important test on the ITA report is called the “penetration analysis.” This test is supposed to tell us whether anyone can break into the system to tamper with the votes. “Not applicable,” wrote Shawn Southworth, of Ciber Labs, the ITA that tested the Diebold GEMS central tabulator software. “Did not test.” This is Shawn Southworth, in his office in Huntsville, Alabama. He is the man who carefully examines our voting software. Shawn Southworth “tested” whether every candidate on the ballot has a name. But we were shocked to find out that, when asked the most important question -- about vulnerable entry points -- Southworth’s report says “not reviewed.” Americans want to know: Ciber “tested”whether the manual gives a description of the voting system. But when asked to identify methods of attack (which we think the American voter would consider pretty important), the top-secret report says “not applicable.” Ciber “tested” whether ballots comply with local regulations, but when Bev Harris asked Shawn Southworth what he thinks about Diebold tabulators accepting large numbers of “minus” votes, he said he didn’t mention that in his report because “the vendors don’t like him to put anything negative” in his report. After all, he said, he is paid by the vendors. “Hmmmm.” Shawn Southworth didn’t do the penetration analysis, but check out what he wrote: “Ciber recommends to the NASED committee that GEMS software version 1.18.15 be certified and assigned NASED certification number N03060011815.” Was this just a one-time oversight? Nope. It appears to be more like a habit. Here is the same Ciber certification section for VoteHere; as you can see, the critical security test, the “penetration analysis” was again marked “not applicable” and was not done. Maybe another ITA did the penetration analysis? Apparently not. We discovered an even more bizarre Wyle Laboratories report. In it, the lab admits the Sequoia voting system has problems, but says that since they were not corrected earlier, Sequoia could continue with the same flaws. At one point the Wyle report omits its testing altogether, hoping the vendor will do the test.
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Post by Boomer Chick on Nov 7, 2004 12:49:24 GMT -5
Computer Guys: Be your own ITA certifier. Here is a copy of the full Ciber report (part 1, 2, 3, 4) on GEMS 1.18.15. Here is a zip file download for the GEMS 1.18.15 program. Here is a real live Diebold vote database. Compare your findings against the official testing lab and see if you agree with what Ciber says. E-mail us your findings.
TIPS: The password for the vote database is “password” and you should place it in the “LocalDB” directory in the GEMS folder, which you’ll find in “program files.”
Who the heck is NASED? They are the people who certified this stuff.
You’ve gotta ask yourself: Are they nuts? Some of them are computer experts. Well, it seems that several of these people suddenly want to retire, and the whole NASED voting systems board is becoming somewhat defunct, but these are the people responsible for today's shoddy voting systems.
If the security of the U.S. electoral system depends on you to certify a voting system, and you get a report that plainly states that security was “not tested” and “not applicable” -- what would you do?
Perhaps we should ask them. Go ahead. Let's hold them accountable for the election we just had. (Please, e-mail us their answers) They don't make it very easy to get their e-mail and fax information; when you find it, let us know and we'll post it here.
NASED VOTING SYSTEMS/ITA ACCREDITATION BOARD
Thomas R. Wilkey, Executive Director, New York State Board of Elections
David Elliott, (former) Asst. Director of Elections, Washington State
James Hendrix, Executive Director, State Election Commission, South Carolina
Denise Lamb, Director, State Bureau of Elections, New Mexico
Sandy Steinbach, Director of Elections, Iowa
Donetta Davidson, Secretary of State, Colorado
Connie Schmidt, Commissioner, Johnson County Election Commission, Kansas
(the late) Robert Naegele, President Granite Creek Technology, Pacific Grove, California
Brit Williams, Professor, CSIS Dept, Kennesaw State College, Georgia
Paul Craft, Computer Audit Analyst, Florida State Division of Elections Florida
Steve Freeman, Software Consultant, League City, Texas
Jay W. Nispel, Senior Principal Engineer, Computer Sciences Corporation Annapolis Junction, Maryland
Yvonne Smith (Member Emeritus), Former Assistant to the Executive Director Illinois State Board of Elections, Illinois
Penelope Bonsall, Director, Office of Election Administration, Federal Election Commission, Washington, D.C.
Committee Secretariat: The Election Center, R. Doug Lewis, Executive Director Houston, Texas, Tele: 281-293-0101
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Post by Boomer Chick on Nov 7, 2004 12:59:41 GMT -5
Ohio www.theeveningleader.com/articles/2004/11/06/news/news.01.txtTEXTSunday, November 7, 2004 News -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Board awaits state followup By ERIN MILLER WAPAKONETA -- Auglaize County Board of Election members say they have not heard any more from the state regarding a possible investigation after receiving notice of being placed on administrative oversight last week. "Absolutely nothing," board member Diana Hausfeld said in a telephone interview Wednesday afternoon when asked if the board had received any information about the investigation. Election Board Director Jean Burklo, in her office Wednesday morning, said she has not received any information from Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell's office since notice of the board being placed on administrative oversight arrived late on Oct. 30. James Lee, spokesperson for the secretary of state's office, said last week the specific conditions of the administrative oversight and reasons for the oversight were available after Tuesday's election. Lee said Wednesday afternoon the Secretary of State's office was focusing its efforts on assisting county elections boards with processing and counting provision ballots. "These other issues will be addressed in the coming weeks," Lee said. In a letter dated Oct. 21, Ken Nuss, former deputy director of the Auglaize County Board of Elections, claimed that Joe McGinnis, a former employee of Election Systems and Software (ES&S), the company that provides the voting system in Auglaize County, was on the main computer that is used to create the ballot and compile election results, which would go against election protocol. Nuss claimed in the letter that McGinnis was allowed to use the computer the weekend of Oct. 16.
Nuss, who resigned from his job Oct. 21 after being suspended for a day, was responsible for overseeing the computerized programming of election software, according to his job description. His resignation is effective Nov. 11.
The letter also included allegations that Burklo released a sheet from a petition packet filed by Auglaize County Common Pleas Judge Frederick Pepple last December.
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