American Election Discrepancies Emerge

by redjade Fri Nov 19, 2004 14:40

On Voting Irregularities And Election Integrity - Part One
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/13/235655/22

On Voting Irregularities And Election Integrity - Part Two (Update - good rundown of info and comments)
http://dailykos.com/story/2004/11/19/71447/074

also read...

http://whoreallywon.blogspot.com/

by redjade Fri Nov 19, 2004 14:46

Hearings on Ohio voting put 2004 election in doubt
by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
November 18, 2004

Highly-charged, jam-packed hearings held here in Columbus have cast serious doubt on the true outcome of the presidential election.

On Saturday, November 13, and Monday, November 15, the Ohio Election Protection Coalition’s public hearings in Columbus solicited extensive sworn first-person testimony from 32 of Ohio voters, precinct judges, poll workers, legal observers, party challengers. An additional 66 people provided written affidavits of election irregularities. The unavoidable conclusion is that this year's election in Ohio was deeply flawed, that thousands of Ohioans were denied their right to vote, and that the ultimate vote count is very much in doubt.

more at...

by redjade Fri Nov 19, 2004 14:50

'Stinking Evidence' of Possible Election Fraud Found in Florida

by Thom Hartmann

There was something odd about the poll tapes.

A "poll tape" is the phrase used to describe a printout from an optical scan voting machine made the evening of an election, after the machine has read all the ballots and crunched the numbers on its internal computer. It shows the total results of the election in that location. The printout is signed by the polling officials present in that precinct/location, and then submitted to the county elections office as the official record of how the people in that particular precinct had voted. (Usually each location has only one single optical scanner/reader, and thus produces only one poll tape.)

Bev Harris of http://www.blackboxvoting.org , the erstwhile investigator of electronic voting machines, along with people from Florida Fair Elections, showed up at Florida's Volusia County Elections Office on the afternoon of Tuesday, November 16, 2004, and asked to see, under a public records request, each of the poll tapes for the 100+ optical scanners in the precincts in that county. The elections workers - having been notified in advance of her request - handed her a set of printouts, oddly dated November 15 and lacking signatures.

Bev pointed out that the printouts given her were not the original poll tapes and had no signatures, and thus were not what she'd requested....

more at...
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1118-22.htm

also listen to Thom Hartmann interview Bev Harris
http://www.louisehartmann.com/clips/BevHarrisNov04.mp3 (4.7megs/MP3)

by redjade Fri Nov 19, 2004 14:57

Recount New Hampshire

by RUSS BAKER

[posted online on November 17, 2004]

Tomorrow the first recount begins--in New Hampshire, of all places, a state George Bush didn't even win. But in those areas where he did well, sometimes the numbers look decidedly odd. In this case, the person who got the ball rolling was one Ida Briggs, a longtime Michigan software designer and database developer who did a statistical analysis of some election results, and found them perplexing enough to trigger concerns in her mind about the efficacy of the electronic vote tabulation system used.

What she found were striking anomalies--mostly in precincts using paper ballots that were then input via the optical scanning machines manufactured by the controversial vendor Diebold, of North Canton, Ohio. In general, according to Briggs, the "Diebold precincts" showed larger and more frequent deviations from expected voting trends than precincts relying strictly on hand counts, and even than those using an optical-scan counting system from another manufacturer. Creating trend patterns by looking at the 2000 and 2004 elections, she found rural, typically conservative precincts that hand-counted ballots as voting more for Kerry than they did for Gore, while larger, urban precincts using Diebold's AccuVote machines often did the opposite. Of the precincts where Kerry did less well than expected, according to Briggs, 73 percent used optical-scan technology and 62 percent used Diebold machines. Fully 92 percent of all out-of-trend votes were optically scanned. New Hampshire has 301 precincts; 126 of them use Diebold's AccuVote technology.

by Merkin Watch Fri Nov 19, 2004 15:22

Is there fuck!

by redjade Fri Nov 19, 2004 16:58

http://websrvr20.audiovideoweb.com/avwebdswebsrvr2143/news_video/5.countdown_300k.mov

40megs/Quicktime - worth seeing if you have the bandwidth

by Joe Fri Nov 19, 2004 17:08

This is interesting stuff including some bit of Cleveland that returned 93,000 more votes than the number of voters who cast ballots. Maybe billonaire 2 rather than billonare 1 got picked after all.

by iosaf Sat Nov 20, 2004 15:19

you'll like it.
I haven't seen the movie yet, but always reckoned we do do better with the Predator.

by redjade Sat Nov 20, 2004 15:21

According to Josh Marshall, this is a exerpt from a Message to be sent out gtom John Kerry to Supporters....

"Regardless of the outcome of this election, once all the votes are counted -- and they will be counted -- we will continue to challenge this administration. This is not a time for Democrats to retreat and accommodate extremists on critical principles -- it is a time to stand firm.

I will fight for a national standard for federal elections that has both transparency and accountability in our voting system. It's unacceptable in the United States that people still don't have full confidence in the integrity of the voting process.

I ask you to join me in this cause."

by Ed Sat Nov 20, 2004 15:47

I think the whole e-voting system's a scam.. its legitmacy is overruled by the fact that the system can be oh so easily manipulated by powerful interests.. how do you explain why the EU is rushing towards an e-voting system? So the proprietors can manipulate the voting system to further their neo-conservative policies.
Sure it's much more convenient for ordinary folk to get out and vote, but powerful interests will knowingly exploit this new trend of e-voting and play it to their advantage.
I can't believe our country is going ahead with this.
We take a step forward in the name of technology, yet take a step back from democracy

by gerry Sat Nov 20, 2004 16:29

this is all absolute nonsense...Bush won the election. Deal with it! If your readers concentrated on real issues, murder of Irish aid worker, murder of Dutch film maker, both by crazy islamic fanatics, the world would be a safer place! Anti-americanism rampant on your site is evidence of deep seated psychosis in society...there's a culture war on...if you want irish women in veils, irish daughters out of school, keep up the rubbish!

by Julia Sat Nov 20, 2004 17:46 Clonakilty

Now that the dust has settled a bit on this election result, in my humble opinion the questions about voting irregularities rise above the narrow concerns of republicans v democrats. They even leave behind the broader concerns of US foreign policy. The deeper issue is the survival of democracy itself. The system by which people are chosen to represent us and legislate for us is flawed in many ways, but at least it is comforting to think that the people we elect are there because of what we do in the privacy of the ballot box. I am sure that this reality sends shivers down the spines of the rogues and scoundrels who exercise power when election time comes around again. But at least they are our rogues and scoundrels, and we can all go out and campaign and contest elections against them. Idealistic I know, but that is the truth.
But there is no comfort even in this optimistic idealism if the voting results are controlled by the people in power. It looks like the US is already f**ked. If we are not to be next, this issue is one of the real grassroots priorities for the coming years.

by aaa Sat Nov 20, 2004 22:37

This Berkeley report is just one of the lastest of a long series of indicators of fraud, incometence, and irregularities in the Nov 2nd election.

There is **much** more information in a Wikipedia article started for the purpose of covering these issues:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_U.S._presidential_election_controversy

by redjade Sun Nov 21, 2004 14:44

No More Sham Elections
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOL
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/20/opinion/20kristof.html?ex=1258693200&en=76f088b45498c17f&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

The U.S. electoral system looks increasingly dysfunctional, and those of us who used to mock the old Soviet or Iraqi "elections" for lacking competition ought to be blushing.

In Arkansas, 75 percent of state legislative races this year were uncontested by either the Republicans or by the Democrats. The same was true of 73 percent of the seats in Florida, 70 percent in South Carolina, 62 percent in New Mexico.

And Congressional races were an embarrassment. Only seven incumbents in the House of Representatives lost their seats this month. Four of those were in Texas, where the Republican Legislature gerrymandered Democrats out of their seats.

Granted, gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races are often still competitive. But, increasingly, to be elected to the House once is to be elected for life. As David Broder of The Washington Post put it, the House is becoming like the British House of Lords.

by redjade Mon Nov 22, 2004 18:09

Working Paper:
The Effect of Electronic Voting Machines on Change in Support for Bush in the 2004 Florida Elections
- by Michael Hout, Laura Mangels, Jennifer Carlson, and Rachel Best
University of California's Berkeley Quantitative Methods Research Team.
http://ucdata.berkeley.edu/new_web/VOTE2004/election04_WP.pdf

found at http://ucdata.berkeley.edu/.

There's also some video of the researchers explaining their findings:
http://undergroundclips.com/video/ucdata/11-18-04_VidConf_HQ.mov
(26 MB)
http://undergroundclips.com/video/ucdata/11-18-04_VidConf_LQ.mov
(120 MB)

Mirror for video clips
http://video.lisarein.com/election2004/ucberkeley/stats/


ALL of the above links found thanks to
http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/002309.php

by redjade Tue Nov 23, 2004 12:58

http://www.syntheticniche.com/comics/flash/liar_2.swf - 700k

by redjade Tue Nov 23, 2004 13:09

By Bob Fitrakis
http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2004/995

If the BOE only had 2,741 placed initially, this would explain the long lines in Columbus and voters leaving the polls during the morning voting rush. According to the Franklin County Board of Elections (BOE), in the city of Columbus, where voters waited in the heavily Democratic wards between 2-7 hours to cast the vast majority of their votes for John Kerry, voter turnout was 52.7%. In the affluent white suburbs of Columbus, with far more voting machines available, the turnout figure was 76.15%.

By contrast, 66.31% of registered voters went to the polls in Cincinnati and turnout was 76.82% in the suburbs. In Cincinnati, where more voting machines were available, the difference between the city and suburbs was only 10.5% compared to 23.45% in the Columbus area. Cincinnati and Columbus have similar demographics.

The Franklin County Board of Elections reported that 68 voting machines were never placed on Election Day. In addition, Franklin County BOE Director Matt Damschroder admitted on Friday, November 19, that 77 machines malfunctioned on Election Day.

[....]

In Cincinnati, sworn testimony was taken on vote buying, the lack of machines in African American neighborhoods and the deliberate destruction of new voter registration cards by a private company hired to process the forms.

by redjade Tue Nov 23, 2004 13:27

Early Monday afternoon, Ohio Chairman Dennis White released a comparative bombshell inside the still tiny world of the Recount-Conscious. It bore the headline “Kerry/Edwards Campaign Joins Ohio Recount” and advised that “assuring Ohioans receive an accurate count of all votes cast for president has prompted the Democratic Party to join the initiative to recount the results of the November 2 presidential election.”

But by 8 PM Eastern, a second press release was out, with two notable tweaks. Now the headline read “Kerry/Edwards Campaign Participates In Ohio Recount,” and the lead sentence read “…has prompted the Democratic Party to participate in the initiative to recount the results…”

The switch from “join” to “participate” reduces the Democratic commitment from virtual co-sponsorship to nearly the level of acquiescence.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240

by Noel Tue Nov 23, 2004 14:40

Let it go.
President Bush is POTUS.
John Kerry isn't.

No amount of harping about chads and spoilt ballots will change that.

MoveOn.already

by Peter Tue Dec 07, 2004 14:37

Democrats to investigate voting procedures
Tuesday, December 7, 2004
Posted: 8:30 AM EST (1330 GMT)

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- This battleground state on Monday certified President Bush's 119,000-vote victory over John Kerry, even as the Kerry campaign and third-party candidates prepared to demand a statewide recount.

The president won Ohio with 2.86 million votes, or 51 percent, to Kerry's 2.74 million votes, or 49 percent.

The 118,775-vote lead was closer than the unofficial election night margin of 136,000, but not enough to trigger a mandatory recount. Absentee ballots and provisional votes counted after election night made most of the difference.

"This was an election where you have some glitches but none of these glitches were of a conspiratorial nature and none of them would overturn or change the election results," said Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican who, as the state's chief election official, certified the results.

The presidential election hung on Ohio, prized for its 20 electoral votes. Not until the morning after the election did Kerry finally concede -- realizing there were not enough provisional ballots to erase Bush's lead.

But critics have cited numerous Election Day problems, from long lines, a shortage of voting machines in predominantly minority neighborhoods and suspicious vote totals for candidates in scattered precincts.

The Kerry campaign last week joined the presidential candidates for the Green and Libertarian parties who are asking for a recount. The candidates, who received less than 0.5 percent of the Ohio vote, planned to file their requests Tuesday. The Kerry camp is not disputing the outcome of the race, but wants to ensure that every vote is counted.

A ruling by a federal judge in Columbus on Friday rejected one county's attempt to stop a recount, avoiding a legal precedent that could have stopped other recounts. Green and Libertarian party candidates have already raised the required $113,600 for the recounts.

Republicans said conducting a recount is pointless.

"If there's a recount, there's going to be two losers -- John Kerry and the Ohio taxpayer," said Mark Weaver, a lawyer representing the Ohio Republican Party. "It's going to cost more than $1.5 million to find out what we already know."

The amount the independent candidates have raised is based on state law calculating the cost of a recount to be $10 a precinct, but Blackwell's office has said a more realistic price tag is $1.5 million.

About 20 people protested outside Blackwell's office Monday, demanding Blackwell postpone the December 13 electoral college vote in Ohio until the recount is finished. Blackwell said the vote will take place.

And in San Francisco, about 150 people rallied outside the office of U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, to protest voting irregularities, particularly those in Ohio.

Keith Cunningham, vice president of the state election boards association, bristled at suggestions that the election was plagued by fraud or widespread error.

"To actually assert that elections officials in Ohio have intentionally done something is beyond insulting," he said Monday. "I know election officials all over the state -- it's just fantasy run wild."

The Democratic Party also said Monday it will examine reports of voting problems in Ohio.

Outgoing Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe said the party will spend "whatever it takes" to study complaints from Ohio voters.

McAuliffe said the study will be conducted by nonpartisan experts to be announced later, with a report issued in the spring that recommends reforms to prevent such problems in the future.

Blackwell oversaw the election process while serving as one of several statewide GOP leaders who co-chaired Bush's campaign. The 2000 Florida recount was also administered by a Republican secretary of state, Katherine Harris, who is now a member of Congress.

In a conference call with reporters, McAuliffe said the panel needs to look at the practice of secretaries of state serving as campaign officials. He said he personally thinks it's a laudable goal for election officials to be nonpartisan.

When asked if the president supports an investigation into voting irregularities in Ohio, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the election "was viewed as very free and fair."

"It was a clear victory for the president of the United States," McClellan said. "Now is the time for us to all look forward on how we can work together to get things done."

by Terry Tue Dec 07, 2004 18:45

This is a copy of an affidavit by a software programmer who actually implemented a vote fraud system while working at Yang Enterprises (YET) in Oviedo, Florida

Here's a nice snippet from it:

... During a meeting in late September or October of 2000 at YEI, there were four people present including myself, Tom Feeney, Mike Cohen, Mrs. Yang, and to the best of my recollection, two other YEI employees came in and out of the room during the course of the meeting. Mr. Feeney said that he wanted to know if YEI could develop a prototype of a voting program that could alter the vote tabulation in an election and be undetectable. He was very specific in the design and specifications required for this program. He detailed, in his own words, that; (a) the program needed to be touch-screen capable, (b) the user should be able to trigger the program without any additional equipment, (c) the programming to accomplish this remain hidden even if the source code was inspected.

Story available at http://www.rawstory.com/images/pdfs/CC_Affidavit_120604.pdf
and related link

by toneore Wed Dec 08, 2004 03:33 toneore at eircom dot net

Moore Syndrome Alert! Moore Syndrome Alert!

Bush Won. Get Over It. Time to change tactics. Fatboy Moore even helped George get elected...

"Since the Nov. 2 election, Panetta has spoken out forcefully on what the Democratic Party must do to change its image. Eradicating cultural elitism -- what he calls the "Michael Moore syndrome" -- tops his list."

"Hollywood has its place in politics," Panetta said, "but a lot of people felt that Michael Moore and 'Fahrenheit 9/11' didn't speak for them. There was a sense that he was making fun of their values and exploiting them."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2004/12/06/state0321EST0005.DTL

by redjade Tue Feb 15, 2005 14:58

Diebold to Settle with California
http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3449691?headline=Diebold~to~Settle~with~California

A California court has approved a $2.6 million settlement between Diebold and the State of California and Alameda County. The state and county had sued Diebold for fraudulent claims about the security of its electronic voting machines.

[....]

Diebold has also agreed to certain technology and reporting obligations that will provide election officials with a better understanding of how to use its voting machines.

The settlement is the fruit of a suit filed in September by California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, who argued that Diebold was not truthful about the security and reliability of its electronic voting machines.

Lockyer, who earlier dropped a criminal probe into Diebold, claimed that Diebold provided Alameda County with software that was not certified by the government. Researchers earlier determined the machines contained dangerous flaws.

Researchers said the voting system could easily allow someone to cast multiple votes in the same election. Last April, California set stringent standards for electronic voting by ordering new security measures for e-voting machines.

by redjade Wed Feb 23, 2005 11:39

OHIO’S ODD NUMBERS
Vanity Fair - March 2005
http://makethemaccountable.com/articles/Ohio_s_Odd_Numbers.htm

Whichever way you shake it, or hold it to the light, there is something about the Ohio election that refuses to add up. The sheer number of irregularities compelled a formal recount, which was completed in late December and which came out much the same as the original one, with 176 fewer votes for George Bush. But this was a meaningless exercise in reassurance, since there is simply no means of checking, for example, how many “vote hops” the computerized machines might have performed unnoticed.

[....]

However, there is one soothing explanation that I don’t trust anymore. It was often said, in reply to charges of vote tampering, that it would have had to be “a conspiracy so immense” as to involve a dangerously large number of people. Indeed, some Ohio Democrats themselves laughed off some of the charges, saying that they too would have had to have been part of the plan. The stakes here are very high: one defector or turncoat with hard evidence could send the principals to jail forever and permanently discredit the party that had engaged in fraud.


I had the chance to spend quality time with someone who came to me well recommended, who did not believe that fraud had yet actually been demonstrated, whose background was in the manufacture of the machines, and who wanted to be anonymous. It certainly could be done, she said, and only a very, very few people would have to be “in on it.” This is because of the small number of firms engaged in the manufacturing and the even smaller number of people, subject as they are to the hiring practices of these firms, who understand the technology. “Machines were put in place with no sampling to make sure they were ‘in control’ and no comparison studies,” she explained. “The code of the machines is not public knowledge, and none of these machines has since been impounded.” In these circumstances, she continued, it’s possible to manipulate both the count and the proportions of votes.

[....]

The Federal Election Commission, which has been a risible body for far too long, ought to make Ohio its business. The Diebold company, which also manufactures A.T.M.s, should not receive another dime until it can produce a voting system that is similarly reliable. And Americans should cease to be treated like serfs or extras when they present themselves to exercise their franchise.