"Two have documented ties with the
Republican party, and the other two have had problems with malfunctions in elections before (e.g., in
California)."
Guess GW is in, no need to continue the "campaign"!!
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLI
TICS/08/08/international.observers/index.html
Jeez, I hope all that somehow helps...
Today, to beat
the 100 degree heat here in Oregon, I bought some ice cold grapefruit juice at my neighborhood supermarket with a
credit card. Three separate pieces of paper were handed to me to document the purchase. (The clerk, I assume,
documented it thoroughly for the store as well.) I was looking at the paper, thinking "God, think about the
deforestation caused by all of everybody's purchases, from as small as a pack of gum. I wonder whether all this
paper is really necessary for every trivial purchase? Then, it struck me -- this is three more pieces of
paper than will document 1/3 of the votes in the upcoming presidential election!"
Currently, it looks
like about two thirds of our total votes will be merely counted by computer, while roughly 1/3 of our total
votes (about half of the 2/3) will be recorded and entered electronically as well. So although the
first portion is certainly vulnerable to fraudulent counting in a variety of ways, the latter portion will leave
no paper trail whatsoever. Therefore there will be no way to truly trace, verify or recount the votes.
I
sure hope the four private e-voting corporations involved will be ethical about all this! (The stated
corporate guiding behavior principle of "maximizing shareholder wealth" exactly = everyday human ethics anyway,
right?) Two have documented ties with the Republican party, and the other two have had problems with malfunctions in
elections before (e.g., in California).
Last edited by DrSmellThis; 08-10-2004 at 11:56 AM.
DrSmellThis (creator of P H E R O S)
"Two have documented ties with the
Republican party, and the other two have had problems with malfunctions in elections before (e.g., in
California)."
Guess GW is in, no need to continue the "campaign"!!
Freedom begins when you tell Mrs. Grundy to go fly a kite.
--Lazarus Long
No need to worry about ethics, then.Originally Posted by DrSmellThis
Ah well. F the
vote.
If a guy's a cocksucker in his life, when he dies, he don't become a saint. - Morris Levy, Hitmen
Holmes' Theme Song
*For further information and
reference, see The Nation, August 15, 2004.
DrSmellThis (creator of P H E R O S)
From "Risks Digest":
Kolwicz kicked out for submitting real election tests
Al
Kolwicz, official representative to Boulder County's test of its new vote counting system, was asked by County
Clerk, Linda Salas, to leave the test.
When asked what happened, Kolwicz said, "we submitted sample ballots to
test the security and accuracy of the county's new vote counting system."
The sample ballots included tests
such as - (1) what happens if a voter
circles the box rather than filling in the entire box with a black pen,
and
(2) what happens if a voter marks over the ballot serial number in hopes that this will make the ballot
secret. (Boulder County's new ballots are
not secret.)
Salas consulted with the Secretary of State,
Donetta Davidson's office, by phone. Following their private conversation, Salas asked Kolwicz to
leave.
Kolwicz left immediately and went outside of the building to record some notes. Deputy P. Dunphy, who was
in the room where the testing was being conducted, came out to find Kolwicz on a bench. He told Kolwicz that he was
not to return to the building. "It looks like a sham is being foist upon the public", said Kolwicz. The tests
prepared by Kolwicz are limited to things that can happen in this year's primary election.
Al Kolwicz,
CAMBER - Citizens for Accurate Mail Ballot Election Results
2867 Tincup Circle, Boulder, CO 80305, 303-494-1540
AlKolwicz@qwest.net
www.users.qwest.net/~alkolwicz
http://coloradovoter.blogspot.com
Freedom begins when you tell Mrs. Grundy to go fly a kite.
--Lazarus Long
I'd worry about the ethics
whether they had affiliations with any party or not because corporations have shown us that they are not to be
trusted. Seems like most high level executives are up for the highest bidder. Is anybody in power honest any more?
A well constructed counting system should have all sorts of checks and balances built in, including redundant
machines located miles apart. It's probably safer than paper in reality. I don't know how they are building the
data bases but know it can be done in such a way as to be very difficult to screw with, at least as hard as paper
votes.
As a slight degression, between his statements about pulling out of Iraq and stem cell research I feel
like Kerry has a better grasp of real needs than Bush. The big question is whether he'll keep his word if
elected.
To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
Thomas Jefferson
The Nation article
indicated that one of the university scientists who built one of the e-voting applications did remark that it would
take one month to rig for one candidate or the other and get away with it; but that this would not be difficult for
election officials to arrange.
But we unfortunately don't know how the database program was built. As it turns
out, all the program code is being kept secret from the public, "to protect voter privacy."
I'm extremely relieved to hear that my government is suddenly so concerned about my privacy!
Nonetheless, some mistrustful citizens think they have a right to know how their votes are being counted; or
whether in fact they are. Silly conspiracy theorists!
DrSmellThis (creator of P H E R O S)
ANYTHING, any system can be
rigged. There's ample evidence that paper votes have been rigged time and again. The fact that there is evidence
also helps to confirm the theory that something that big cannot be hidden for long. I read somewhere that when a
conspiracy gets as many as three people the odds are even that one of the conspirators will talk about it. Then you
have to figure out if they are telling the truth or just playing their own game.
In the case of computer votes,
how many of us would really understand how the votes are counted and kept secure even if they told us? Certainly not
me and I work with computers. I doubt most would. A general overview yes, but not the important details that confirm
the security arrangements. If the details are released, those that are qualified to understand them also would have
more details about how to get through the security. You can't have it both ways and it isn't likely to remain in
hardcopy, which isn't secure either, for much longer.
To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
Thomas Jefferson
Paper votes can be rigged, but
it's easier to monitor than e-voting. There would have to be some kind of independent screen capture and "keystroke
recorder" or something to monitor e-votes. I doubt seriously the necessary checks and balances will be in place, but
I hope I'm wrong.
Not to be paranoid, but I also don't trust political polls these days. They can't have the
polls saying one thing and the voting machines saying the other, if you get my drift. For example, it's extremely
hard for me to believe that Kerry didn't gain anything in July-Aug, with F-9/11 and the successful convention
happening.
Last edited by DrSmellThis; 08-11-2004 at 08:34 PM.
DrSmellThis (creator of P H E R O S)
http://michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=175
"...some basic international requirements for a fair election are missing in Florida. The most significant of
these requirements are:
* A nonpartisan electoral commission or a trusted and nonpartisan official who will be
responsible for organizing and conducting the electoral process before, during and after the actual voting takes
place... Florida voting officials have proved to be highly partisan, brazenly violating a basic need for an unbiased
and universally trusted authority to manage all elements of the electoral process.
* Uniformity in voting
procedures, so that all citizens, regardless of their social or financial status, have equal assurance that their
votes are cast in the same way and will be tabulated with equal accuracy...
Four years ago, the top election
official, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, was also the co-chair of the Bush-Cheney state campaign
committee. The same strong bias has become evident in her successor, Glenda Hood, who was a highly partisan elector
for George W. Bush in 2000. Several thousand ballots of African Americans were thrown out on technicalities in 2000,
and a fumbling attempt has been made recently to disqualify 22,000 African Americans (likely Democrats), but only 61
Hispanics (likely Republicans), as alleged felons.
The top election official has also played a leading role in
qualifying Ralph Nader as a candidate, knowing that two-thirds of his votes in the previous election came at the
expense of Al Gore. She ordered Nader's name be included on absentee ballots even before the state Supreme Court
ruled on the controversial issue.
Florida's governor, Jeb Bush, naturally a strong supporter of his brother, has
taken no steps to correct these departures from principles of fair and equal treatment or to prevent them in the
future.
It is unconscionable to perpetuate fraudulent or biased electoral practices in any nation. It is
especially objectionable among us Americans, who have prided ourselves on setting a global example for pure
democracy. With reforms unlikely at this late stage of the election, perhaps the only recourse will be to focus
maximum public scrutiny on the suspicious process in Florida."
-- Former President Jimmy Carter, world's
foremost expert on fair, democratic elections.
Last edited by DrSmellThis; 10-07-2004 at 06:41 AM. Reason: *PLEASE NOTE ABOVE TEXT NEWLY ADDED AFTER POSTING BELOW ARTICLE*
DrSmellThis (creator of P H E R O S)
It's sad and embarrassing for America, but it has come to this:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLIT
ICS/10/07/election.observers.ap/index.html
David MacDonald, a Canadian member of a team organized
by the San Francisco human rights group Global Exchange, said observers were shocked to find that partisan officials
run U.S. elections.
Requiring election officers to be nonpartisan "is as close as you can get in democratic or
electoral terms to a universal norm," MacDonald said after visiting Missouri, where Secretary of State Matt Blunt, a
Republican, is the chief electoral officer and a candidate for governor. "There are some very serious problems that
need to be addressed."
... The report said touch-screen machines that don't print paper ballots for use during
a possible recount could delay the election outcome beyond November 2 and create more, not less, controversy.
It
faulted procedures with absentee and provisional ballots, cited reports of voter intimidation and
disenfranchisement, and criticized moves by a few states to allow overseas and military voters to fax rather than
mail completed ballots.
The report also noted that many of the reforms envisioned by an election assistance law
enacted after the disputed 2000 presidential election won't be in place by Nov. 2, and raised concerns that the
right to vote "may not be evenly applied or protected throughout the country."
Last edited by DrSmellThis; 10-07-2004 at 06:54 AM.
DrSmellThis (creator of P H E R O S)
* More
voting corruption news, this time from Nevada and Oregon, both swing states:
Nevada:
http://www.klas-tv.com/Global/story.asp?S=2421595
Oregon:
http://w
ww2.kval.com/x30530.xml?ParentPageID=x2649&ContentID=x47627&Lay out=kval.xsl&AdGroupID=x30530
Recent
anti-voting corruption has also been reported in the swing states of Ohio (where its secretary of state, Mr.
Blackwell, has recently limited voting to within precinct instead of county-wide as it has been, and has pushed to
disqualify ballots printed on thinner paper; making it harder to vote) and Wisconsin (where critical inner
city ballot shortages exist in Milwaukee); but I could not produce working links.
Last edited by DrSmellThis; 10-18-2004 at 12:58 AM.
DrSmellThis (creator of P H E R O S)
Originally Posted by DrSmellThis
Quelle surprise.
(Thanks for the links!)
If a guy's a cocksucker in his life, when he dies, he don't become a saint. - Morris Levy, Hitmen
Holmes' Theme Song
Keep the dream of Democracy
alive!
DrSmellThis (creator of P H E R O S)
I had a friend vote with a
Franklin County Ohio ballot today. It was a complicated procedure with a punch card and pad. Three chads hung up and
had to be removed with a kitchen knife. She required assistance and became frustrated with the procedure and the
wording of the written ballots enclosed. There was a seperate paper explaining why Nader wasn't on the ballot but
it looked like the other paper explanations except for color. It will be easy to file these absentee ballots in a
circular file. Ohio voting is still pretty shakey folks.
Elk
"Via chicagoprogressive at Dailykos,
we have this report in the Albuquerqe Journal:
Kim Griffith voted on Thursday— over and over and
over.
She's among the people in Bernalillo and Sandoval counties who say they have had trouble with
early voting equipment. When they have tried to vote for a particular candidate, the touch-screen system has said
they voted for somebody else.
It's a problem that can be fixed by the voters themselves— people can
alter the selections on their ballots, up to the point when they indicate they are finished and officially cast the
ballot.
For Griffith, it took a lot of altering.
She went to Valle Del Norte Community Center
in Albuquerque, planning to vote for John Kerry. "I pushed his name, but a green check mark appeared before
President Bush's name," she said.
Griffith erased the vote by touching the check mark at Bush's name.
That's how a voter can alter a touch-screen ballot.
She again tried to vote for Kerry, but the screen
again said she had voted for Bush. The third time, the screen agreed that her vote should go to Kerry.
She faced the same problem repeatedly as she filled out the rest of the ballot. On one item, "I had to vote five or
six times," she said.
Michael Cadigan, president of the Albuquerque City Council, had a similar
experience when he voted at City Hall.
"I cast my vote for president. I voted for Kerry and a check mark
for Bush appeared," he said.
He reported the problem immediately and was shown how to alter the
ballot.
Cadigan said he doesn't think he made a mistake the first time. "I was extremely careful to
accurately touch the button for my choice for president," but the check mark appeared by the wrong name, he
said.
Bernalillo County Clerk Mary Herrera said she doesn't believe the touch-screen system has been
making mistakes. It's the fault of voters, she said Thursday.
Cadigan, for example, could have "leaned
his palm on the touch screen and it hit the wrong button," she said.
In Sandoval County, three Rio Rancho
residents said they had a similar problem, with opposite results. They said a touch-screen machine switched their
presidential votes from Bush to Kerry.
Bureau of Elections Manager Eddie Gutierrez also said he doesn't
believe there are problems with the machines.
But Gutierrez did replace one after someone complained—
even though he found nothing wrong with it.
"He (the voter) felt so strongly about it, that I shut it
down," Gutierrez said.
Herrera said she's heard stories from Democrats and Republicans. In some cases,
when people have tried to vote a straight ticket, the screen has given their votes to every candidate in the
opposite political party, she said.
She believes it's a people problem. "I have confidence in the
machines," she said. "They are touch screens. People are touching them with their palms, or leaning their hand. ...
They're hitting the wrong button."
It is outrageous to simply blame the people for this. e-Voting machines
have long shown problems and this is a threat to
democracy."
http://vote2004.eriposte.com/
also a nice compilation of voter fraud (so
far):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselection...331610,00.html
Give truth a chance.
Thanks. You beat me to it.
I was going to post the same thing.
DrSmellThis (creator of P H E R O S)
Postal Experts Hunt for Missing Ballots in Florida
By Michael Christie /
[
color=#0000ff]Reuters[/color]
MIAMI (Reuters) - U.S. Postal Service investigators on Wednesday were trying
to find thousands of absentee ballots that should have been delivered to voters in one of Florida's most populous
counties, officials said.
The issue evoked memories of the polling problems that bedeviled the Florida election
in 2000 and which the state has been trying to address before next Tuesday's presidential election, which is again
expected to be a very tight race.
Broward deputy supervisor of elections Gisela Salas said 60,000 absentee
ballots, accounting for just over 5 percent of the electorate in the county north of Miami, were sent out between
Oct. 7 and Oct. 8 to voters who would not be in town on election day.
While some had begun to be delivered, her
office had been inundated with calls from anxious voters who still had not received their ballots.
"It's
really inexplicable at this point in time and the matter is under investigation by law enforcement," Salas told
Reuters.
"It was basically our first major drop of the absentee ballots," Salas said. She said postal service
officials had assured Broward elections supervisor Brenda Snipes that the ballots had moved out of the post office
to which they had been taken by the elections office.
U.S. Postal Service Inspector Del Alvarez, whose federal
agency is independent from the U.S. Postal Service, said it had yet to be determined if the ballots reached the post
office.
"It's highly unlikely that 58,000 pieces of mail just disappeared," he said. "We're looking for it,
we're trying to find it if in fact it was ever delivered to the postal service."
In 2000 the race in Florida,
on which the national presidential contest ultimately depended, was so close it prompted five weeks of lawsuits and
recounts.
The U.S. Supreme Court eventually halted the recounts, handing President Bush a 537-vote victory in
Florida and the White House, and infuriating Democrats who insist their candidate Al Gore (news - web sites) won the
popular vote in the state.
The punch card ballots that were at the heart of the disputed 2000 election have
been replaced by touchscreen voting machines in 15 of Florida's 67 counties, and just over half the state
electorate will use them. The other counties will use optical scanning machines to read paper ballots.
But poll
watchers still fear another legal maelstrom if the race in Florida, or any other critical swing state, is close and
there are suspicions that some voters were denied a ballot.
Salas said the missing absentee ballot forms did
not yet represent a major election problem because people had the option of voting early before next Tuesday, when
Bush is being challenged by Democratic Sen. John Kerry.
Poll workers will be able to cross-check through lap
top computers hooked up to a central database whether voters had already sent in absentee ballots. On election day
itself, those who requested absentee ballots will only be able to vote in person if they bring the blank absentee
forms with them.
"A lot of people are very concerned because they think that just because they requested an
absentee ballot, now they're stuck in a limbo situation where they don't have their ballot and they can't vote,"
Salas said.
"So most definitely we want to get the message out that yes they can go to an early voting site and
cast their ballot and that's what we would encourage them to do," she said.
DrSmellThis (creator of P H E R O S)
...And a significant victory
for voters in Ohio:
http://www.us
atoday.com/news/politicselections/state/ohio/2004-10-27-voter-registration_x.htm
DrSmellThis (creator of P H E R O S)
Judge temporarily halts
hearings on Ohio voter registration challenges
COLUMBUS (AP) — One voter picks up letters at the post office
because trucks kept hitting his mailbox. Another serves in Iraq. Hundreds more are homeless, listing shelters as
permanent addresses.
[img]http://images.usatoday.com/news/_photos/2004/1
0/28/inside-ohio-vote.jpg[/img]The Republican Party
is challenging Mary Sullivan's voter registration because she used to be
homeless.By Jay LaPrete, AP
All are among the
35,000 whose eligibility has been challenged by the Ohio Republican Party. Since mail came back undelivered, the GOP
says, those registrations could be fraudulent. Democrats say the GOP is trying to keep poor and minorities, who move
more often, from voting.
A federal judge put a temporarily halt to the challenges Wednesday, ruling in favor of
Democrats who said the GOP was targeting new voters registered by political groups supporting Sen. John Kerry, the
Democratic challenger to President Bush. U.S. District Judge Susan Dlott ruled that six county elections boards
should stop hearings scheduled this week in Ohio, a hotly contested state in the presidential election.
In
southwest Ohio, Republicans challenged the registration of Surjo Panerjee, a fact his brother found unusual.
Panerjee, 40, is an Army sergeant who is now in Fallujah in Iraq.
Panerjee, also a veteran of the first Gulf
War, uses his brother's house in Centerville as a permanent address even though he has lived around the world, said
his brother, Dr. Partha Banerjee.
"He would laugh it off," Banerjee said. "He would say, 'I never get picked
for anything nice — why can't they give me a car or something?'"
Republicans withdrew all 2,319 challenges in
Montgomery County, including the one against Panerjee, after acknowledging several mistakes in its mailing.
In
suburban Franklin County, the registration of Raven Shaffer was wrongly challenged because he gets mail at a post
office box, according to the federal lawsuit filed Tuesday by Democrats. The "family's mailbox has been repeatedly
hit by delivery trucks," the lawsuit said.
Also in Franklin County, 291 homeless people are being questioned out
of the 2,370 total challenges, according to an analysis of the challenges by the Coalition on Homelessness and
Housing in Ohio. In Cuyahoga County, 757 people of the 17,717 total being challenged are homeless.
"We're very
concerned that people that have chosen to participate in our democratic process, who took a big step in registering
to vote and who were poised to go to the polls on Nov. 2, are going to be disenfranchised, and we may never get them
back," said Bill Faith, COHHIO executive director.
Mary Sullivan, 57, looked for work for a year after losing
her job as a receptionist and prescription filler for a local drug maker in August 2003. She was evicted from her
apartment after her money ran out this past June and spent two months at Friends of the Homeless, a shelter on
Columbus' east side.
"My vote has to be counted," Sullivan said. "Just because you're homeless doesn't mean
you're stupid."
Sullivan got a job caring for a 77-year-old widow at her suburban Columbus home in August. She
had no idea her registration had been challenged.
"I've been voting for presidents since I was old enough to
vote," said Sullivan, a Kerry supporter. "Now they're taking away my constitutional right."
It isn't just
Kerry supporters who've had their registrations challenged. Roy Bottiggi, a 31-year-old registered Republican who
plans to vote for President Bush, was confused when he got a call about a challenge to his registration. He has been
a registered voter for 13 years, has lived in the same house for five years and voted in every election, general and
primary, during that time.
"I was a little bothered by it," Bottiggi, a resident of Willoughby in northeast
Ohio, said Wednesday. "I never really had a problem until now."
The Republican party withdrew its challenge
after the Lake County Board of Elections documented his registration.
Dlott, appointed by former President
Clinton in 1995, said her temporary order would remain in effect until further rulings in the case. She scheduled a
hearing in her Cincinnati court for Friday morning.
DrSmellThis (creator of P H E R O S)
Gov. Bush: Poll watchers
can, should challenge voters
His remarks come amid concerns that excessive scrutiny may put aBy JONI JAMES and TAMARA LUSH
damper on the election.
Published October 28,
2004
TALLAHASSEE - Gov. Jeb Bush said Wednesday he would have no problem if Republican poll watchers
challenge the eligibility of voters before they cast ballots on Election Day, despite growing concern that it could
create gridlock and scare away qualified voters.
"I don't think it will cause problems," Bush said. "I do think
that people who are not eligible to vote shouldn't and the people who are should."
The Florida Republican Party
has not decided whether to instruct poll watchers to challenge voters Tuesday, spokeswoman Mindy Fletcher
said.
But Democrats say a GOP list of 2,663 newly registered voters in Duval County who appear to have incorrect
addresses indicates Republicans are planning such a strategy.
"It's despicable," Florida Democratic Party
chairman Scott Maddox said. "Their goal is to harass people enough that they'll give up their right to vote or not
go to the polls."
Fletcher said the Duval list will not be used to challenge voters but to revise the
Republicans' mailing list.
Republicans and Democrats have signed up thousands of poll watchers who will be
inside precincts to monitor voters. A rarely used provision of state law allows poll watchers to challenge an
individual's qualifications to vote by writing a sworn affidavit. The challenge is resolved on the spot by election
workers, or by having the voter cast a provisional ballot.
In Pinellas County, for example, 275 Republicans and
339 Democrats will work as poll watchers. In Hillsborough County, there will be 277 Republicans and 496 Democrats.
In Pasco County, there will be 55 Republicans and 64 Democrats.
"My big concern is that you are going to have
people sitting in these polling places with their finger on a hair trigger because they want some action," said
Pasco Elections Supervisor Kurt Browning, a Republican. "I would hope and pray that both parties think this thing
through."
Hillsborough Supervisor of Elections Buddy Johnson met with a John Kerry lawyer this week to discuss
how to handle challenges from Republican lawyers.
"We are hopefully going to rely on civility, and beyond that,
we are going to rely on law enforcement," Johnson said.
The concept of challenging voters isn't restricted to
Florida. In Ohio, Republicans already have challenged the eligibility of 35,000 of Ohio's 800,000 newly registered
voters.
Florida Democrats on Wednesday released a memo sent to state and local election officials insisting such
challenges should be rare, accompanied by irrefutable proof and not disruptive to other voters.
The Democratic
Party and Kerry's campaign said it will have 7,000 poll watchers in Florida on Election Day, including 1,500
lawyers.
"We made sure we are prepared for ugly tactics," said Christine Anderson, spokeswoman for the combined
Democratic campaign. "It seems to us the Republicans are making a very proactive and blatant strategy to discourage
turnout and deny citizens the right to vote."
Republicans say they want to ensure that illegally cast votes do
not dilute the power of legally registered voters.
"What we're doing is looking at making sure that the law is
enforced," Fletcher said. "We are in the process of looking at the (challenge) process and making sure we know what
is the best way to make sure legal votes aren't disenfranchised by illegal votes."
The GOP built its list of
newly registered Duval voters who appear to have incorrect addresses by recording returned mail from a broad mailing
the party sent out. Tucker Fletcher said the mailing was sent to all newly registered voters, regardless of
party.
The British Broadcasting Corp., which reported the list included voters in predominantly black precincts
in Duval, suggested the list would be used to challenge voters.
But Fletcher said that account was
inaccurate.
"The information created from this mailing will not be used in any way, shape or form to challenge,"
Fletcher said. The Democrats find "anything they can and try to accuse us of intimidating or trying to suppress
black voters, and it's just not true."
In Jacksonville, where leaders of the African-American community
successfully lobbied the county to increase the number of early voting sites, Pastor James B. Sampson was concerned
that voters might be challenged at the polls.
"Who would have ever thought that we would still be fussing and
fighting, still be going through all this drama about voting in America?" asked Sampson.
But Bush expressed
frustration about the attention focused on election procedures.
"These are all marginal issues. ... I hope people
would keep it in the proper perspective: 99.9 percent of the people that are voting have already voted before in
other elections," he said, "and every vote will be counted and it will be done fairly."
Among other
election-related issues Wednesday:
* Bush said he has recused himself from the Election Canvassing Commission,
which certifies the state's final vote.
* In Broward County, officials searched for 58,000 ballots that have not
been returned. Officials said they sent 126,220 absentee ballots on Oct. 7-8, yet half of those have not been
received by elections officials. The U.S. Post Office denied any responsibility, and the Florida Department of Law
Enforcement said its investigation found no criminal violations. Elections officials planned to send new ballots by
overnight mail to any voter requesting a new form.
* In Pinellas County, officials acknowledged that nearly 300
St. Petersburg voters received absentee ballots that were missing the second of two pages.
Supervisor Deborah
Clark's office mailed the missing page to affected voters along with an explanation and a postage-paid
envelope.
* State elections officials urged county supervisors to post signs or put up ropes to ensure privacy
for voting booths after reports of campaigning at early voting sites.
* Computers used to check voter
registrations were slow or malfunctioning in Broward, Duval and Hillsborough counties. On Tuesday, Hillsborough
County's registration network went down for about 30 minutes. Workers used the telephone to verify
registrations.
* Long lines at early voting precincts were reported throughout the Tampa Bay area and the state.
Hillsborough reported 43,000 early voters as of Tuesday. Early voters in Pinellas reported lines of more than two
hours in some locations.
- Times staff writers Steve Bousquet and David Karp and researcher Deirdre Morrow
contributed to this report, which used information from the Associated Press.
DrSmellThis (creator of P H E R O S)
DrSmellThis (creator of P H E R O S)
If a guy's a cocksucker in his life, when he dies, he don't become a saint. - Morris Levy, Hitmen
Holmes' Theme Song
I hope that doesn't catch
on...the "one-fingered victory salute" would completely ruin a thing called 'sportsmanship' and 'diplomacy' in
sports and international politics, respectively.
DrSmellThis (creator of P H E R O S)
Those who burn out the most brain cells are too often those who can least afford to.Originally Posted by Holmes
DrSmellThis (creator of P H E R O S)
Oops! Not so fast...Originally Posted by DrSmellThis
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITIC
S/11/02/ohio.challengers.ap/index.html
DrSmellThis (creator of P H E R O S)
Thirty-three percent of the 2004 vote was cast in electronic form.
Thirty-four states used Diebold (an Ohio company with deep Republican ties) or ESS machines (whose former CEO won a
Republican senate seat using his own machines in the election). At the beginning of this thread, before the
election, we considered whether this might end up being a problem. Sadly, now that the "election" is over, it is
starting to look like it was. Check out this breaking news from CNN:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS
/11/05/voting.problems.ap/index.html
On November 2, 2004 in Ohio 5000 extra votes were "mistakenly"
recorded for Bush, despite the fact that there were only 650 available voters in that area. This was not the only
such incident. Despite the gentlemanly concession from Kerry, there may well be a huge scandal brewing. Here is a
web site at the center of the developing e-voting scandal:
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/
This organization is sending out
the largest freedom of information request ever, for the e-voting logs. They are also requesting the government to
do the audit, and have documented quite a few abuses so far. They need donations to fund the audit. This is not
trivial. So far, they already found a patch in the Diebold software for the State of Georgia that redirects
votes. The name of the folder was "robgeorgia"! Diebold's website was hacked to get this information. Democrat
Max Cleland (the amputee) apparently lost the senate race because of this patch in 2002. It was called "votergate"
at the time. Here is a free documentary for download that addresses the Georgia "incident:"
http://www.votergate.tv/
In response, Democrats in Congress introduced a
bill requiring a paper trail for votes. Republican Tom Delay blocked the bill.
Florida (gambling measure) and
North Carolina lost significant numbers of e-votes. And this is vague, but reports have it that there was a dropoff
in Florida in votes counted based on Democratic locations. There have also been reports of relatively fewer voting
terminals in known Democratic locations. I'll post more specific information as I get it.
Over 1000
problems have been reported to the voter hotline (of course the actual number of problems would be higher) with
touch screen voting, including numerous incidents where voters selected Kerry and saw Bush selected on the
confirmation screen, apparently too many incidents to suggest voter mistakes. College campuses, which typically
vote democratic, were typically understocked with machies (booths), causing extremely long lines of several hours.
If you do that at enough places it has a cumulative effect.
Alaska, a traditionally Republican state, was
trending toward Kerry, but Bush won. The same thing happened in Ohio and Florida. In general, exit polling in areas
where paper balloting was used tended to match the ultimate results; whereas exit polls in e-voting areas
tended to conflict with eventual results, or be "innacurate".
Corporate America now owns voting!
Therefore, corporations own democracy, and own all our rights, all of which depend on the right to vote. Should we
trust these corporations with such precious and sacred parts of our lives?
In Ohio, Diebold is the e-voting
company. Their CEO Wally O'Dell promised in a letter to Republicans to "deliver Ohio" for Bush. (here is a link
addressing the incident:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0828-08.htm
) One machine in Ohio read "negative 25 million votes" at one point on Tuesday. Similarly, in Florida a machine read
"negative 12 votes," after being in operation for a while. Experts suggest that typical voter fraud software patches
would instruct counters to start going backwards when the undesired candidate's tally reached a certain
percentage.
ESS Systems CEO Chuck Hegel manufactured and sold e-voting machines, then left his position. He then
beat an incumbent Democratic governor in Nebraska in a tremendous upset (unseating an incumbent Democratic
governor in 1996), in an election where his own machines were used. He had been expected to lose.
I'm
glad we got this thread going before the election. I don't know how much evidence will be recoverable, but America
deserves answers on this.
One of the prominent authors and authorities in this area is Bev Harris. She has a
great book on black box voting. Here is an excellent article by her that demonstrates in detail how voter fraud can
occur, and did occur in Georgia:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0307/S00065.h
tm
Ralph Nader is being solicited by blackboxvoting.org to spearhead this investigation, since he is
extremely good at this sort of thing. If you want to request him to "challenge the election results", please fax
him at 202-265-0092. Blackbox voting is asking all citizens to do this. Tell him you are requesting this
as a "blackboxvoting.org activist". He will do it if enough people show interest. New Hampshire was particularly
suspect, according to the blackboxvoting people. If they succeed in forcing an audit in New Hampshire, they can most
probably do it in all 34 states. Americans deserve this information, be they Democrat or Republican. Even if you are
Republican, is winning the election in the short term worth destroying your own democracy? I am outraged by the
appearance of this.
As all this is breaking news, I don't know how it will play out. But it might snowball into
a scandal of historic proportions -- laying bare a profoundly serious felonious assault on America and her
Democracy. Randi Rhodes, who has an evening show on Air America radio is actively following this body of
news.
Last edited by DrSmellThis; 11-08-2004 at 02:54 AM.
DrSmellThis (creator of P H E R O S)
"While the heavily scrutinized
touch-screen voting machines seemed to produce results in which the registered Democrat/Republican ratios matched
the Kerry/Bush vote, and so did the optically-scanned paper ballots in the larger counties, in Florida's smaller
counties the results from the optically scanned paper ballots - fed into a central tabulator PC and thus vulnerable
to hacking - seem to have been reversed.
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
smaller counties where, it was probably assumed, the small voter numbers wouldn't be much noticed. 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 larger counties, where such anomalies would be more obvious to the news media, high
percentages of registered Democrats equaled high percentages of votes for
Kerry."
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1106-30.htm
Give truth a chance.
To a statistician, that is
some significant data, if true.
DrSmellThis (creator of P H E R O S)
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