A loaves & fishes/Holy Ghost victory for the GOP in November?by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
October 17, 2006
The polls all point to a Democratic sweep in November.The news pours in about pedophile Republicans and Team Bush contempt for their fundamentalist bedmates. Iraq implodes. Deficits soar. Katrina lingers. Scandal is everywhere.
On the other hand, there are rumors of an "October Surprise." An attack on Iran. A new terror incident. Osama finally captured.
Gas prices are down, the stock market up.
None of it dampens the Democrats' euphoria. They think they are about to win. In conventional terms, they should.
But think again. Please. It will take just two Biblical fixes for the GOP to keep the Congress, and thus solidify their power in this country, possibly forever: a loaves and fishes vote count, a Holy Ghost turnout.
We coined the phrase "loaves and fishes vote count" to describe the tally in Gahanna, Ohio, 2004. This infamous precinct in suburban Columbus registered 4258 votes for George W. Bush where just 638 people voted. The blessed event occurred at a fundamentalist church run by a close ally of the Reverend Jerry Falwell.
These numbers were later "corrected." But they reflect a much larger reality: the 2004 election was stolen with scores of dirty tricks for whose second coming the Democrats have yet to fully prepare.
In the two years since the fraudulent defeat of John Kerry, we've unearthed an unholy arsenal by which that election was stolen. They include: outright intimidation, wrongful elimination of registered voters, theft, selective deployment of (often faulty) voting machines, absentee ballots without Kerry's name on them, absentee ballots pre-punched for Bush, absentee ballots never mailed, touch screens that lit up for Bush when Kerry was chosen, lines for black voters five hours long while white voters a mile away voted in fifteen minutes, tens of thousands of provisional ballots pitched summarily in the trash, alleged ex-felons illegally told they could not vote, Hispanic precincts with no Spanish-speaking poll workers, deliberate misinformation on official web sites…and that's not even the tip of an iceberg whose bottom we may never see.
Thanks to a federal lawsuit, we have finally been able to look at some of the actual ballots from Ohio 2004. Just for starters, researchers Stuart Wright and Dr. Richard Hayes Phillips have found a precinct in Delaware County where 359 consecutive voters allegedly cast ballots for Bush. Dr. Ron Baiman found another precinct in Clermont County where a random inspection found 36 straight replacement ballots, a phenomenon that can be accomplished only by divine intervention or outright fraud.
These initial snippets have been unearthed with no cooperation or participation from the Democratic Party. The official Democratic spin is that they have "looked into the matter." But public records indicate that they have yet to visit the actual ballot storage facilities to examine the public records from the 2004 election. In sum, we see no indication that the Democrats are prepared for the inevitable…that Karl Rove will steal again, and more, in 2006.
In Ohio alone, four election boards have already eliminated some 500,000 voters since the 2000 election---ten percent of the state's electorate---from the registration rolls in four Democratic counties. No similar purges have occurred in rural Republican counties. The Democrats have said or done very little about it.
To date there is no logical explanation from John Kerry as to why he conceded with 250,000 votes still uncounted while Bush's alleged margin was just half that. Nor have we heard about Democrat plans to monitor the ever-larger numbers of electronic voting machines deployed throughout the United States with no paper trail and no transparency for programming codes and memory cards that are privately owned, with no public inspection allowed. Which is brings us to the Holy Ghost turnout. As Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has reported in Rolling Stone Magazine, in Georgia 2002, U.S. Senate incumbent Max Cleland went into Election Day with a very substantial lead in the polls. He proceeded to allegedly lose by a substantial margin. Church-state operatives like Ralph Reed attributed this astonishing turn-around to an alleged last-minute mass turnout of evangelical voters.
Similar things were said about Florida and Ohio 2004.
But it never happened. There are no visual reports or other reliable indicators of extraordinary lines or massive late-in-the-day crowds at the polls. Throughout all those election days, it was every bit as quick and easy to vote in rural precincts that gave Bush his miraculous victory as it was impossible to do so in your average black neighborhood. But there was no extraordinary turnout of last-minute Bush voters.
What happened instead hearkens to the Holy Ghost, made manifest in electronic voting machines that cannot and will not be monitored. The miraculous pro-Bush margins give new meaning to the phrase "ghost in the machine." While the Democratic vote count was slashed and trashed in urban precincts, the rural voting stations, through the miracle of untrackable electronics, materialized just the right number of GOP votes to keep the Men of God in the White House (where it's recently reported they dare to mock those earthly evangelicals who allegedly gave them their margin of victory).
There's absolutely nothing to prevent this from happening again in 2006. Major studies from the Conyers Committee, the Government Accountability Office, Princeton University, the Brennan Center, the Carter-Baker Commission, and esteemed others, have all come to the same conclusion: it takes just one individual with inside access---or even just a wi-fi machine---to change the outcome of any election anywhere.
Electronic voting machines can be pre-programmed, re-programmed, re-calibrated, electronically adjusted, hacked, jimmied, jammed or otherwise blessed with a few well-placed electrons and---LO AND BEHOLD!---a Democratic landslide can be born again to a Republican deliverance.
We already see the signs. The corporate bloviators predict a last-minute surge for Bush. The Fox/Rove media machine has planted suggestive stories at the New York Times and elsewhere about the alleged hidden powers of the GOP juggernaut. They will, they say, once again turn out those invisible legions of evangelical voters when and where necessary.
Every two years, Rove leaks some story that is implausible and easily refuted: four million new evangelical voters are identified nationwide; or, a late surge of homophobic Old Order Amish rush to the polls in Ohio; or shy and reluctant right-wing Republican women flood the polls at closing and slip out unseen without speaking to exit pollsters (but, they are only shy in the early evening in Republican counties).
And the Democrats? They say they are also turning out voters. But what happens when their names are miraculously gone from the new electronic registration rolls? When there aren't enough machines in their precincts on which to vote? When they press a Democratic name on their touch-screen and an anointed Republican's lights up? Or when techno-gods from private partisan vendors barge in unchallenged to "adjust" the e-machines in the middle of the voting process.
So far, the Democrats have heaped abuse on those who dare to warn of all this.But as it is written, so it shall be: unless there are armies of trained, dedicated citizens prepared to monitor this upcoming election, electronic and otherwise, the Holy Ghosts will vote, the loaves & fishes will multiply and be counted, and the GOP will once again emerge with total control of the checks and the balances---this time, perhaps, for all Eternity.
--
Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman are co-authors, with Steve Rosenfeld, of WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO?, just published by The New Press. Fitrakis is of counsel and Wasserman is a plaintiff in the King-Lincoln lawsuit that has preserved the Ohio 2004 ballots. Fitrakis is an independent candidate for Ohio governor, endorsed by the Green Party; Wasserman is author of SOLARTOPIA! Our Green-Powered Earth, A.D. 2030.Source: www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2006/2181NOTE from Michelle: I loathe most of Congress, Democrats included, however, please note:
Kucinich Introduces HR 6200 - HAND counted, PAPER ballots - everywhere. (Sept 30 - thus too late for the Nov 7 elections - this is just for the record)
www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2269919
____________________________________________________
And here, if you look further below at the dates these articles were run, one has to ask the question: WHY HASN'T CONGRESS, PARTICULARLY THE DEMOCRATS, DONE ANYTHING TO SECURE AND PROTECT OUR VOTES?!
Because they're part of the same corrupt and lying system we call our government.
There is this attempt to save our votes; is it enough?:Video the Vote 2006www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaEECHjWptUOur goal is to protect the vote by being the eyes and ears where ballots are cast and counted on Election Day. We will document and report any irregularities that occur at polling places and boards of elections while they are happening, enabling the media and public to watch-dog the electoral process across our country.
____________________________________________________
This message is available online at www.WantToKnow.info/electionscoverupsElections Cover-up
A Two-Page Summary of Revealing Media Reports With LinksThe concise excerpts from media articles below reveal major problems with the elections process. This is not a partisan matter. Fair elections are crucial to all who support democracy. Few have compiled this information in a way that truly educates the public on the great risk of using electronic voting machines. Spread the word and be sure to vote.
CNN News, 9/20/06, Voting Machines Put U.S. Democracy at Riskwww.cnn.com/2006/US/09/19/Dobbs.Sept20Electronic voting machines...time and again have been demonstrated to be extremely vulnerable to tampering and error. During the 2004 presidential election, one voting machine...added nearly 3,900 additional votes. Officials caught the machine's error because only 638 voters cast presidential ballots. In a heavily populated district, can we really be sure the votes will be counted correctly? A 2005 Government Accountability Office report on electronic voting confirmed the worst fears: "There is evidence that some of these concerns have been realized and have caused problems with recent elections, resulting in the loss and miscount of votes."
New York Times, 9/5/06, In Search of Accurate Vote Totalswww.nytimes.com/2006/09/05/opinion/05tue1.html?ex=1315108800&en=c0560775e07d9ee0&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rssA recent government report details enormous flaws in the election system in Ohio's biggest county, problems that may not be fixable before the 2008 election. Cuyahoga County...recently adopted Diebold electronic voting machines that produce a voter-verified paper record. Investigators compared the vote totals recorded on the machines after this year's primary with the paper records produced. The numbers should have been the same, but often there were large and unexplained discrepancies. The report also found that nearly 10 percent of the paper records were destroyed, blank, illegible, or otherwise compromised.
MSNBC/Associated Press, 9/13/06, Princeton Prof Hacks E-vote Machinemsnbc.msn.com/id/14825465/A Princeton University computer science professor added new fuel...to claims that electronic voting machines...are vulnerable to hacking. In a paper posted on the university's Web site, Edward Felten and two graduate students described how they had tested a Diebold AccuVote-TS machine they obtained, found ways to quickly upload malicious programs and even developed a computer virus able to spread such programs between machines. They designed software capable of modifying all records, audit logs and counters kept by the voting machine, ensuring that a careful forensic examination would find nothing wrong.
USA Today/Associated Press, 7/13/06, Electronic Voting Machines Under Legal Attackwww.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-07-13-evoting_x.htmLawsuits have been filed in at least nine states, alleging that the machines are wide open to computer hackers. New York University's Brennan Center for Justice released a one-year study...that determined that the three most popular types of U.S. voting machines "pose a real danger" to election integrity. More than 120 security threats were identified, including wireless machines that could be hacked "by virtually any member of the public with some (computer) knowledge." Lowell Finley: "We had dozens of affidavits from voters in New Mexico who said they touched one candidate's name, but the machine picked the opponent."
Washington Post, 6/28/06, A Single Person Could Swing an Electionwww.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/27/AR2006062701451.htmlA team of cybersecurity experts [concluded] that it would take only one person, with a sophisticated technical knowledge and timely access to the software that runs the voting machines, to change the [election] outcome.
New York Times, 5/30/06, Block the Votewww.nytimes.com/2006/05/30/opinion/30tue1.html?ex=1306641600&en=4eafe18972bb6a8a&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rssStates are adopting rules that make it hard, and financially perilous, for nonpartisan groups to register new voters. New rules for maintaining voter rolls...are likely to throw off many eligible voters. Florida recently reached a new low when it actually bullied the League of Women Voters into stopping its voter registration efforts. Colorado recently imposed criminal penalties on volunteers who slip up in registration drives.
Newsweek, 5/29/06, Will Your Vote Count in 2006?www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12888600/site/newsweekA report by Finnish security expert Harri Hursti analyzed Diebold voting machines [and] found unheralded vulnerabilities. Experts are calling them the most serious voting-machine flaws ever. It requires only a few minutes of pre-election access to a Diebold machine to open the machine and insert a PC card that...could reprogram the machine to give control to the violator. It's even possible...to trick authorized technicians into thinking that everything is working fine, an illusion you couldn't pull off with pre-electronic systems.
Wall Street Journal, 5/12/06, Reversing Course on Electronic Votingonline.wsj.com/public/article/SB114739688261250925-q5rh2ocioxu6mgjmS6bZPCZL0HY_20060610.htmlSome advocates of a 2002 law mandating upgrades of the nation's voting machinery now worry the overhaul is making things worse. Proponents of the Help America Vote Act are filing lawsuits to block some state and election officials' efforts to comply with the act. In Indiana, an ES&S [major voting machine supplier] employee alerted local-election officials that another ES&S worker had installed unauthorized software on the machines before the election. That and other disputes led to a multimillion-dollar settlement.
New York Times, 5/12/06, New Fears of Security Risks in Electronic Voting Systemswww.nytimes.com/2006/05/12/us/12vote.html?ex=1305086400&en=5b3554a76aad524a&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rssOfficials in Pennsylvania and California issued urgent directives...about a potential security risk in their Diebold Election Systems touch-screen voting machines. "It's the most severe security flaw ever discovered in a voting system," said Michael I. Shamos, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon. Diebold issued a warning...saying that it had found a "theoretical security vulnerability." A professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University...after studying the latest problem [said] "I almost had a heart attack."
Washington Post, 3/26/06, Election Whistle-Blower Stymied by Vendorswww.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/25/AR2006032500805.htmlIon Sancho is...elections supervisor in Leon County, Fla. Last year, [he] helped show that electronic voting machines...would allow election workers to alter vote counts without detection. Sancho may be paying an unexpected price for his whistle-blowing: None of the state-approved companies here will sell him the voting machines the county needs. The trouble began last year when Sancho allowed a Finnish computer scientist to test Leon County's Diebold voting machines. Diebold will not sell to Sancho without assurances that he will not permit more such tests, which the company considers a reckless use of the machines.
New York Times, 9/12/04, On the Voting Machine Makers' Tabwww.nytimes.com/2004/09/12/opinion/12sun2.html?ex=1252728000&en=dda9313c18e02663&ei=5090&partner=rssuserlandSome of electronic voting's loudest defenders have been state and local election officials. Many of those same officials have financial ties to voting machine companies. Officials from Georgia, California and Texas argued that voter-verifiable paper trails...are impractical. Former secretaries of state from Florida and Georgia have signed on as lobbyists for Election Systems and Software [ES&S] and Diebold Election Systems. When Bill Jones left office as California's secretary of state in 2003, he quickly became a consultant to Sequoia Voting Systems. His assistant secretary of state took a full-time job there. The list goes on.
MSNBC/AP, 8/23/04, Secretive Testing Firms Certify Nation's Vote Count Machineswww.msnbc.msn.com/id/5762054/from/RL.4The three companies that certify the nation's voting technologies operate in secrecy, and refuse to discuss flaws in the machines. Federal regulators have virtually no oversight over testing of the technology.
New York Times, 1/31/04, How to Hack an Electionwww.WantToKnow.info/040131nytimesMaryland hired a computer security firm to test its new machines. Paid hackers had little trouble casting multiple votes and taking over the machines' vote-recording mechanisms. Diebold...rushed to issue a self-congratulatory press release with the headline "Maryland Security Study Validates Diebold Election Systems Equipment." The study's authors were shocked to see their findings spun so positively.
For a powerful, reliable 10-page summary of the elections cover-up, go at www.wanttoknow.info/electionsmanipulationsFor astonishing facts on who counts your vote: www.WantToKnow.info/votingproblemsFor more on elections cover-ups and what you can do:
Elections Information Centerwww.WantToKnow.info/electionsinformation