Two Election Workers Indicted in Cuyahoga County
for Improper Conduct in Recount
Mark Naymik - Cleveland Plain Dealer - 8/31/05
Two Cuyahoga County elections officials were indicted Tuesday on charges of not handling ballots correctly during the recount of the 2004 presidential election.
Kathleen Dreamer, manager of the board's ballot department, and the assistant manager, Rosie Grier, were each charged with six counts of failing to follow Ohio laws that spell out how ballots are selected and reviewed during a recount.
The most serious charges carry a maximum of 18 months in prison.
Read More >>
31 August 2005
22 August 2005
Special prosecutor subpoenas election workers
Angela D. Chatman - Cleveland Plain Dealer - 8/22/05
A special prosecutor investigating charges of illegal conduct in election recount last December has subpoenaed employees of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections.
The employees will testify before a Cuyahoga County grand jury Tuesday.
The special prosecutor, Erie County Prosecutor Kevin J. Baxter, said that subpoenas were sent to as many as 10 people last week. He said he could not disclose who would testify.
Read More >>
Angela D. Chatman - Cleveland Plain Dealer - 8/22/05
A special prosecutor investigating charges of illegal conduct in election recount last December has subpoenaed employees of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections.
The employees will testify before a Cuyahoga County grand jury Tuesday.
The special prosecutor, Erie County Prosecutor Kevin J. Baxter, said that subpoenas were sent to as many as 10 people last week. He said he could not disclose who would testify.
Read More >>
Don't Prettify Our History
Paul Krugman - August 22, 2005
The 2000 election is still an open sore on the body politic. That was clear from the outraged reaction to my mention last week of what would have happened with a full statewide manual recount of Florida.
[...] In November 2001 a larger consortium, which included The New York Times, produced more definitive results that allowed assessment of nine hypothetical recounts. (You can see the results at www.norc.uchicago.edu/fl - under articles.) The three recounts that had been most widely discussed during the battle of Florida, including the partial recount requested by the Gore campaign and two interpretations of the Florida Supreme Court order, would have given the vote to Mr. Bush.
But the six hypothetical manual recounts that would have covered the whole state - including both loose and strict standards - would have given the election to Mr. Gore. And other evidence makes it clear that many intended votes for Mr. Gore were frustrated.
So why do so many people believe the Bush win was rock solid?
[...] More broadly, the story of the 2000 election remains deeply disturbing - not just the fact that a man the voters tried to reject ended up as president, but the ugliness of the fight itself. There was an understandable urge to put the story behind us.
But we aren't doing the country a favor when we present recent history in a way that makes our system look better than it is. Sometimes the public needs to hear unpleasant truths, even if those truths make them feel worse about their country.
Not to be coy: election 2000 may be receding into the past, but the Iraq war isn't. As the truth about the origins of that war comes out, there may be a temptation, once again, to prettify the story. The American people deserve better.
Read More >>
Paul Krugman - August 22, 2005
The 2000 election is still an open sore on the body politic. That was clear from the outraged reaction to my mention last week of what would have happened with a full statewide manual recount of Florida.
[...] In November 2001 a larger consortium, which included The New York Times, produced more definitive results that allowed assessment of nine hypothetical recounts. (You can see the results at www.norc.uchicago.edu/fl - under articles.) The three recounts that had been most widely discussed during the battle of Florida, including the partial recount requested by the Gore campaign and two interpretations of the Florida Supreme Court order, would have given the vote to Mr. Bush.
But the six hypothetical manual recounts that would have covered the whole state - including both loose and strict standards - would have given the election to Mr. Gore. And other evidence makes it clear that many intended votes for Mr. Gore were frustrated.
So why do so many people believe the Bush win was rock solid?
[...] More broadly, the story of the 2000 election remains deeply disturbing - not just the fact that a man the voters tried to reject ended up as president, but the ugliness of the fight itself. There was an understandable urge to put the story behind us.
But we aren't doing the country a favor when we present recent history in a way that makes our system look better than it is. Sometimes the public needs to hear unpleasant truths, even if those truths make them feel worse about their country.
Not to be coy: election 2000 may be receding into the past, but the Iraq war isn't. As the truth about the origins of that war comes out, there may be a temptation, once again, to prettify the story. The American people deserve better.
Read More >>
21 August 2005
No Paper Trail Left Behind
The Theft of the 2004 Presidential Election
Dennis Loo, Ph.D. - Cal Poly Pomona
[...] The Role of Mass Movements and Alternative Media
What can be done? The Eugene McCarthy campaign of 1968 and the George McGovern campaign in 1972 didn’t end the war in Vietnam. The Vietnamese people and the anti-war movement ended the war. Civil rights weren’t secured because JFK and LBJ suddenly woke up to racial discrimination. The Civil Rights Movement and Black Power Movement galvanized public opinion and rocked this country to its foundations. Men didn’t suddenly wake up and realize that they were male chauvinist pigs - women formed the Women’s Movement, organized, marched, rallied, and demanded nothing less than equality, shaking this country to the core. The Bush administration is bogged down and sinking deeper in Iraq not mainly because the top figures of the Bush administration consist of liars, blind (and incompetent) ideologues, international outlaws and propagators of torture as an official policy, but because the Iraqi people have risen up against imperialist invasion. Prior to the war, the international anti-Iraq war movement brought out millions of people into the streets, the largest demonstrations in history, denying the U.S. imperialists the UN’s sanction and leading to Turkey denying US requests to use their land as a staging area. These are major, world-historic feats.
The 2000, 2002 and 2004 elections fraud underscores the critical importance of building a mass movement, a movement of resistance that doesn’t tie itself to the electoral road and electoral parties. In addition, as Robert Parry has eloquently argued, a counterforce to the right-wing media empire must be built by the left and by progressive-minded people. As it stands today, the right can get away with nearly anything because they have talking heads on TV, radio, the Internet and other outlets who set the tone and the political agenda, with mainstream media focusing on sex and sensationalism and taking their political cues to a large extent from the right.
Like a bridge broken by an earthquake, the electoral road can only lead to plunging us into the sea – which is precisely what happened in the 2004 election.
Read More >>
The Theft of the 2004 Presidential Election
Dennis Loo, Ph.D. - Cal Poly Pomona
Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things." "I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." (Through the Looking Glass)
[...] The Role of Mass Movements and Alternative Media
What can be done? The Eugene McCarthy campaign of 1968 and the George McGovern campaign in 1972 didn’t end the war in Vietnam. The Vietnamese people and the anti-war movement ended the war. Civil rights weren’t secured because JFK and LBJ suddenly woke up to racial discrimination. The Civil Rights Movement and Black Power Movement galvanized public opinion and rocked this country to its foundations. Men didn’t suddenly wake up and realize that they were male chauvinist pigs - women formed the Women’s Movement, organized, marched, rallied, and demanded nothing less than equality, shaking this country to the core. The Bush administration is bogged down and sinking deeper in Iraq not mainly because the top figures of the Bush administration consist of liars, blind (and incompetent) ideologues, international outlaws and propagators of torture as an official policy, but because the Iraqi people have risen up against imperialist invasion. Prior to the war, the international anti-Iraq war movement brought out millions of people into the streets, the largest demonstrations in history, denying the U.S. imperialists the UN’s sanction and leading to Turkey denying US requests to use their land as a staging area. These are major, world-historic feats.
The 2000, 2002 and 2004 elections fraud underscores the critical importance of building a mass movement, a movement of resistance that doesn’t tie itself to the electoral road and electoral parties. In addition, as Robert Parry has eloquently argued, a counterforce to the right-wing media empire must be built by the left and by progressive-minded people. As it stands today, the right can get away with nearly anything because they have talking heads on TV, radio, the Internet and other outlets who set the tone and the political agenda, with mainstream media focusing on sex and sensationalism and taking their political cues to a large extent from the right.
Like a bridge broken by an earthquake, the electoral road can only lead to plunging us into the sea – which is precisely what happened in the 2004 election.
Read More >>
20 August 2005
Diebold hires top Dem for PR blitz
Former party chairman make the case for voting to California
By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER
With a phone call and a retainer, Diebold CEO Walden O'Dell has launched former Democratic National Committee chairman Joe Andrew on a 50-state ambassadorship for electronic voting.
O'Dell said he ``wanted to reframe some of the issues,'' Andrew said.
His first stop: California, the nation's largest market for voting machines and the place where Diebold's fortunes as the largest supplier of electronic-voting machines in the nation could be made or broken.
``Even if you have tremendous success every place else,'' said Andrew, ``if you can't sell technology in California, you're in trouble.''
The rest of the voting industry is selling technology here. Millions in federal dollars sit ready for counties to put at least one high-tech, handicapped-accessible voting machine in every polling place by January.
But in California, Diebold can't sell its touchscreen voting machine, the AccuVote TSx, nor can counties that bought thousands of the machines in 2003 used them in elections.
More than $30 million worth of TSx machines sit in three counties' warehouses, unapproved for actual voting. More than $15 million worth of earlier-generation Diebold touchscreens in Alameda, Los Angeles and Plumas counties cannot be used after January.
Read More >>
Former party chairman make the case for voting to California
By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER
With a phone call and a retainer, Diebold CEO Walden O'Dell has launched former Democratic National Committee chairman Joe Andrew on a 50-state ambassadorship for electronic voting.
O'Dell said he ``wanted to reframe some of the issues,'' Andrew said.
His first stop: California, the nation's largest market for voting machines and the place where Diebold's fortunes as the largest supplier of electronic-voting machines in the nation could be made or broken.
``Even if you have tremendous success every place else,'' said Andrew, ``if you can't sell technology in California, you're in trouble.''
The rest of the voting industry is selling technology here. Millions in federal dollars sit ready for counties to put at least one high-tech, handicapped-accessible voting machine in every polling place by January.
But in California, Diebold can't sell its touchscreen voting machine, the AccuVote TSx, nor can counties that bought thousands of the machines in 2003 used them in elections.
More than $30 million worth of TSx machines sit in three counties' warehouses, unapproved for actual voting. More than $15 million worth of earlier-generation Diebold touchscreens in Alameda, Los Angeles and Plumas counties cannot be used after January.
Read More >>
19 August 2005
What They Did Last Fall
Paul Krugman - August 19, 2005
By running for the U.S. Senate, Katherine Harris, Florida's former secretary of state, has stirred up some ugly memories. And that's a good thing, because those memories remain relevant. There was at least as much electoral malfeasance in 2004 as there was in 2000, even if it didn't change the outcome. And the next election may be worse.
In his recent book "Steal This Vote" - a very judicious work, despite its title - Andrew Gumbel, a U.S. correspondent for the British newspaper The Independent, provides the best overview I've seen of the 2000 Florida vote. And he documents the simple truth: "Al Gore won the 2000 presidential election."
Two different news media consortiums reviewed Florida's ballots; both found that a full manual recount would have given the election to Mr. Gore. This was true despite a host of efforts by state and local officials to suppress likely Gore votes, most notably Ms. Harris's "felon purge," which disenfranchised large numbers of valid voters.
But few Americans have heard these facts. Perhaps journalists have felt that it would be divisive to cast doubt on the Bush administration's legitimacy. If so, their tender concern for the nation's feelings has gone for naught: Cindy Sheehan's supporters are camped in Crawford, and America is more bitterly divided than ever.
Meanwhile, the whitewash of what happened in Florida in 2000 showed that election-tampering carries no penalty, and political operatives have acted accordingly. For example, in 2002 the Republican Party in New Hampshire hired a company to jam Democratic and union phone banks on Election Day.
[...] We aren't going to rerun the last three elections. But what about the future?
Our current political leaders would suffer greatly if either house of Congress changed hands in 2006, or if the presidency changed hands in 2008. The lids would come off all the simmering scandals, from the selling of the Iraq war to profiteering by politically connected companies. The Republicans will be strongly tempted to make sure that they win those elections by any means necessary. And everything we've seen suggests that they will give in to that temptation.
Read More >>
Paul Krugman - August 19, 2005
By running for the U.S. Senate, Katherine Harris, Florida's former secretary of state, has stirred up some ugly memories. And that's a good thing, because those memories remain relevant. There was at least as much electoral malfeasance in 2004 as there was in 2000, even if it didn't change the outcome. And the next election may be worse.
In his recent book "Steal This Vote" - a very judicious work, despite its title - Andrew Gumbel, a U.S. correspondent for the British newspaper The Independent, provides the best overview I've seen of the 2000 Florida vote. And he documents the simple truth: "Al Gore won the 2000 presidential election."
Two different news media consortiums reviewed Florida's ballots; both found that a full manual recount would have given the election to Mr. Gore. This was true despite a host of efforts by state and local officials to suppress likely Gore votes, most notably Ms. Harris's "felon purge," which disenfranchised large numbers of valid voters.
But few Americans have heard these facts. Perhaps journalists have felt that it would be divisive to cast doubt on the Bush administration's legitimacy. If so, their tender concern for the nation's feelings has gone for naught: Cindy Sheehan's supporters are camped in Crawford, and America is more bitterly divided than ever.
Meanwhile, the whitewash of what happened in Florida in 2000 showed that election-tampering carries no penalty, and political operatives have acted accordingly. For example, in 2002 the Republican Party in New Hampshire hired a company to jam Democratic and union phone banks on Election Day.
[...] We aren't going to rerun the last three elections. But what about the future?
Our current political leaders would suffer greatly if either house of Congress changed hands in 2006, or if the presidency changed hands in 2008. The lids would come off all the simmering scandals, from the selling of the Iraq war to profiteering by politically connected companies. The Republicans will be strongly tempted to make sure that they win those elections by any means necessary. And everything we've seen suggests that they will give in to that temptation.
Read More >>
18 August 2005
Citizens Request Recount in San Diego Mayoral Race
Miriam Raftery
"Enron by the Sea" shows strange electoral anomalies - a 4 percent shift - ODDS OF SUCH A DISCREPANCY OCCURRING BY CHANCE ALONE ARE LESS THAN 7/100 OF 1%, STATISTICIANS REVEAL.
San Diego Democratic mayoral candidate, Donna Frye, may have been robbed of her mayoral seat in the July 25 local election as citizens' audit parallel election vote shows shift of 4 percent, Raw Story has learned.
Frye, who served three years as a council woman in San Diego, California, previously ran as a write-in candidate in November 2004, but was deprived of San Diego's top seat due to the city's Registrar of Voters, Sally McPherson, blocking the count of 5,547 ballots on which voters had written Frye's name, yet failed to also fill in bubbles. The disputed ballots would have given Frye a victory by 3,439 votes.
Read More >>
Miriam Raftery
"Enron by the Sea" shows strange electoral anomalies - a 4 percent shift - ODDS OF SUCH A DISCREPANCY OCCURRING BY CHANCE ALONE ARE LESS THAN 7/100 OF 1%, STATISTICIANS REVEAL.
San Diego Democratic mayoral candidate, Donna Frye, may have been robbed of her mayoral seat in the July 25 local election as citizens' audit parallel election vote shows shift of 4 percent, Raw Story has learned.
Frye, who served three years as a council woman in San Diego, California, previously ran as a write-in candidate in November 2004, but was deprived of San Diego's top seat due to the city's Registrar of Voters, Sally McPherson, blocking the count of 5,547 ballots on which voters had written Frye's name, yet failed to also fill in bubbles. The disputed ballots would have given Frye a victory by 3,439 votes.
Read More >>
16 August 2005
Election Fraud: It's Time to Make a Stand
I’m posting this as a wake-up call. I see a lot of Democrats, Progressives, Centrists and Moderates engaged in a serious bout of self-delusion. They believe, (quite earnestly), that by learning how to ‘frame the issue’ and by getting voters to the polls, they can defeat the Republican machine.
I see it differently. I see a lot of energy going to waste.
The issue, the only issue, is whether or not your vote is being counted fairly. It’s not about ‘Security Moms’ or ‘Family Values’ or ‘Social Security Reform’ or ‘gay marriage’. That is because all of these issues are meaningless once the ballots are cast. And if your ballot is cast digitally, it’s just a number that can be changed with a password and a few keystrokes, and voila, another ‘close-call’ election.
Read More >>
I’m posting this as a wake-up call. I see a lot of Democrats, Progressives, Centrists and Moderates engaged in a serious bout of self-delusion. They believe, (quite earnestly), that by learning how to ‘frame the issue’ and by getting voters to the polls, they can defeat the Republican machine.
I see it differently. I see a lot of energy going to waste.
The issue, the only issue, is whether or not your vote is being counted fairly. It’s not about ‘Security Moms’ or ‘Family Values’ or ‘Social Security Reform’ or ‘gay marriage’. That is because all of these issues are meaningless once the ballots are cast. And if your ballot is cast digitally, it’s just a number that can be changed with a password and a few keystrokes, and voila, another ‘close-call’ election.
Read More >>
$7.5M Awarded to Study Electronic Voting
Aug 16, 2005
Armed with a $7.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation, Johns Hopkins University is leading a new effort to improve the reliability of electronic voting machines.
The project's goal is to design the most foolproof, transparent voting system possible, officials said Monday.
"I don't think with today's technology we can have a voting system that is fully electronic that can be trusted," said Avi Rubin, a computer science professor. He will head a new Hopkins center called ACCURATE, short for A Center for Correct, Usable, Reliable, Auditable and Transparent Elections.
Rubin told The (Baltimore) Sun he hopes the center will provide information in time for the 2008 presidential contest, but that its research will take longer.
Rubin has been an outspoken critic of computerized voting. In 2003, he co-authored a report that found voting machines from Diebold Elections Systems were vulnerable to hackers, multiple votes and vote-switching.
The Hopkins grant is part of the National Science Foundation's 2005 Cyber Trust program, a $36 million initiative to support cybersecurity research and explore ways to increase the dependability of computers.
Hopkins is leading the effort, but the money will also support research at Stanford University; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Iowa; Rice University; and SRI International, the nonprofit research group in Menlo Park, Calif.
Read More >>
Aug 16, 2005
Armed with a $7.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation, Johns Hopkins University is leading a new effort to improve the reliability of electronic voting machines.
The project's goal is to design the most foolproof, transparent voting system possible, officials said Monday.
"I don't think with today's technology we can have a voting system that is fully electronic that can be trusted," said Avi Rubin, a computer science professor. He will head a new Hopkins center called ACCURATE, short for A Center for Correct, Usable, Reliable, Auditable and Transparent Elections.
Rubin told The (Baltimore) Sun he hopes the center will provide information in time for the 2008 presidential contest, but that its research will take longer.
Rubin has been an outspoken critic of computerized voting. In 2003, he co-authored a report that found voting machines from Diebold Elections Systems were vulnerable to hackers, multiple votes and vote-switching.
The Hopkins grant is part of the National Science Foundation's 2005 Cyber Trust program, a $36 million initiative to support cybersecurity research and explore ways to increase the dependability of computers.
Hopkins is leading the effort, but the money will also support research at Stanford University; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Iowa; Rice University; and SRI International, the nonprofit research group in Menlo Park, Calif.
Read More >>
13 August 2005
Election Fraud Continues in the US
New Data Shows Widespread Vote Manipulations in 2004
Peter Phillips - August 13,2005
In the fall of 2001, after an eight-month review of 175,000 Florida ballots never counted in the 2000 election, an analysis by the National Opinion Research Center confirmed that Al Gore actually won Florida and should have been President. However, coverage of this report was only a small blip in the corporate media as a much bigger story dominated the news after September 11, 2001.
New research compiled by Dr. Dennis Loo with the University of Cal Poly Pomona now shows that extensive manipulation of non-paper-trail voting machines occurred in several states during the 2004 election.
The facts are as follows:
In 2004 Bush far exceeded the 85% of registered Florida Republican votes that he got in 2000, receiving more than 100% of the registered Republican votes in 47 out of 67 Florida counties, 200% of registered Republicans in 15 counties, and over 300% of registered Republicans in 4 counties. Bush managed these remarkable outcomes despite the fact that his share of the crossover votes by registered Democrats in Florida did not increase over 2000, and he lost ground among registered Independents, dropping 15 points. We also know that Bush "won" Ohio by 51-48%, but statewide results were not matched by the court-supervised hand count of the 147,400 absentee and provisional ballots in which Kerry received 54.46% of the vote. In Cuyahoga County, Ohio the number of recorded votes was more than 93,000 greater than the number of registered voters.
More importantly national exit polls showed Kerry winning in 2004. However, It was only in precincts where there were no paper trails on the voting machines that the exit polls ended up being different from the final count. According to Dr. Steve Freeman, a statistician at the University of Pennsylvania, the odds are 250 million to one that the exit polls were wrong by chance. In fact, where the exit polls disagreed with the computerized outcomes the results always favored Bush - another statistical impossibility.
Dennis Loo writes, "A team at the University of California at Berkeley, headed by sociology professor Michael Hout, found a highly suspicious pattern in which Bush received 260,000 more votes in those Florida precincts that used electronic voting machines than past voting patterns would indicate compared to those precincts that used optical scan read votes where past voting patterns held."
There is now strong statistical evidence of widespread voting machine manipulation occurring in US elections since 2000. Coverage of the fraud has been reported in independent media and various websites. The information is not secret. But it certainly seems to be a taboo subject for the US corporate media.
Black Box Voting reported on March 9, 2005 that voting machines used by over 30 million voters were easily hacked by relatively unsophisticated programs and audits of the computers would not show the changes. It is very possible that a small team of hackers could have manipulated the 2004 and earlier elections in various locations throughout the United States. Irregularities in the vote counts certainly indicate that something beyond chance occurrences has been happening in recent elections.
That a special interest group might try to cheat on an election in the United States is nothing new. Historians tell us how local political machines from both major parties have in the past used methods of double counting, ballot box stuffing, poll taxes and registration manipulation to affect elections. In the computer age, however, election fraud can occur externally without local precinct administrators having any awareness of the manipulations - and the fraud can be extensive enough to change the outcome of an entire national election.
There is little doubt key Democrats know that votes in 2004 and earlier elections were stolen. The fact that few in Congress are complaining about fraud is an indication of the totality to which both parties accept the status quo of a money based elections system. Neither party wants to further undermine public confidence in the American "democratic" process (over 80 millions eligible voters refused to vote in 2004). Instead we will likely see the quiet passing of legislation that will correct the most blatant problems. Future elections in the US will continue as an equal opportunity for both parties to maintain a national democratic charade in which money counts more than truth.
Peter Phillips is a Professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University and Director of Project Censored. Dennis Loo's report "No Paper Trail Left Behind: the Theft of the 2004 Presidential Election," can be viewed
HERE
Read More >>
New Data Shows Widespread Vote Manipulations in 2004
Peter Phillips - August 13,2005
In the fall of 2001, after an eight-month review of 175,000 Florida ballots never counted in the 2000 election, an analysis by the National Opinion Research Center confirmed that Al Gore actually won Florida and should have been President. However, coverage of this report was only a small blip in the corporate media as a much bigger story dominated the news after September 11, 2001.
New research compiled by Dr. Dennis Loo with the University of Cal Poly Pomona now shows that extensive manipulation of non-paper-trail voting machines occurred in several states during the 2004 election.
The facts are as follows:
In 2004 Bush far exceeded the 85% of registered Florida Republican votes that he got in 2000, receiving more than 100% of the registered Republican votes in 47 out of 67 Florida counties, 200% of registered Republicans in 15 counties, and over 300% of registered Republicans in 4 counties. Bush managed these remarkable outcomes despite the fact that his share of the crossover votes by registered Democrats in Florida did not increase over 2000, and he lost ground among registered Independents, dropping 15 points. We also know that Bush "won" Ohio by 51-48%, but statewide results were not matched by the court-supervised hand count of the 147,400 absentee and provisional ballots in which Kerry received 54.46% of the vote. In Cuyahoga County, Ohio the number of recorded votes was more than 93,000 greater than the number of registered voters.
More importantly national exit polls showed Kerry winning in 2004. However, It was only in precincts where there were no paper trails on the voting machines that the exit polls ended up being different from the final count. According to Dr. Steve Freeman, a statistician at the University of Pennsylvania, the odds are 250 million to one that the exit polls were wrong by chance. In fact, where the exit polls disagreed with the computerized outcomes the results always favored Bush - another statistical impossibility.
Dennis Loo writes, "A team at the University of California at Berkeley, headed by sociology professor Michael Hout, found a highly suspicious pattern in which Bush received 260,000 more votes in those Florida precincts that used electronic voting machines than past voting patterns would indicate compared to those precincts that used optical scan read votes where past voting patterns held."
There is now strong statistical evidence of widespread voting machine manipulation occurring in US elections since 2000. Coverage of the fraud has been reported in independent media and various websites. The information is not secret. But it certainly seems to be a taboo subject for the US corporate media.
Black Box Voting reported on March 9, 2005 that voting machines used by over 30 million voters were easily hacked by relatively unsophisticated programs and audits of the computers would not show the changes. It is very possible that a small team of hackers could have manipulated the 2004 and earlier elections in various locations throughout the United States. Irregularities in the vote counts certainly indicate that something beyond chance occurrences has been happening in recent elections.
That a special interest group might try to cheat on an election in the United States is nothing new. Historians tell us how local political machines from both major parties have in the past used methods of double counting, ballot box stuffing, poll taxes and registration manipulation to affect elections. In the computer age, however, election fraud can occur externally without local precinct administrators having any awareness of the manipulations - and the fraud can be extensive enough to change the outcome of an entire national election.
There is little doubt key Democrats know that votes in 2004 and earlier elections were stolen. The fact that few in Congress are complaining about fraud is an indication of the totality to which both parties accept the status quo of a money based elections system. Neither party wants to further undermine public confidence in the American "democratic" process (over 80 millions eligible voters refused to vote in 2004). Instead we will likely see the quiet passing of legislation that will correct the most blatant problems. Future elections in the US will continue as an equal opportunity for both parties to maintain a national democratic charade in which money counts more than truth.
Peter Phillips is a Professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University and Director of Project Censored. Dennis Loo's report "No Paper Trail Left Behind: the Theft of the 2004 Presidential Election," can be viewed
HERE
Read More >>
11 August 2005
N.C. House approves new voting machine restrictions
Associated Press - Aug 11, 2005
RALEIGH, N.C. -- The state House unanimously agreed late Thursday to permit only three types of voting methods in North Carolina and also agreed on how to disburse government grants to help pay for machine upgrades.
The measure, developed after Carteret County electronic voting machines lost 4,438 ballots in last November's election, also requires state election officials to hand out more than $36 million in grants to meet new standards.
With the 2006 elections, voting in North Carolina only will occur in the form of optical scan ballot machines, electronic recording machines or paper ballots counted by hand. Electronic machines would have to provide a paper copy of a voter's ballot, which could be corrected by the voter before they are recorded.
The bill will help voters know their ballots are being counted by accurate and reliable machines that have a backup if a machine fails, said Rep. Jean Preston, R-Carteret.
Read More >>
Associated Press - Aug 11, 2005
RALEIGH, N.C. -- The state House unanimously agreed late Thursday to permit only three types of voting methods in North Carolina and also agreed on how to disburse government grants to help pay for machine upgrades.
The measure, developed after Carteret County electronic voting machines lost 4,438 ballots in last November's election, also requires state election officials to hand out more than $36 million in grants to meet new standards.
With the 2006 elections, voting in North Carolina only will occur in the form of optical scan ballot machines, electronic recording machines or paper ballots counted by hand. Electronic machines would have to provide a paper copy of a voter's ballot, which could be corrected by the voter before they are recorded.
The bill will help voters know their ballots are being counted by accurate and reliable machines that have a backup if a machine fails, said Rep. Jean Preston, R-Carteret.
Read More >>
Ballot Issues Aim to Change Ohio Politics
John McCarthy, AP - Aug 10, 2005
Backers filed petitions with hundreds of thousands of signatures to put measures on the November ballot aimed at curbing the power of elected officials in the way Ohio runs its elections.
The coalition of labor unions and Democrat-leaning activists is counting on support from voters disillusioned with a state scandal that has dogged majority Republicans for months and was sparked by the revelation of losses in investments into rare coins.
The measures would create a court-appointed board to choose congressional and legislative redistricting maps, create a state elections board and lower the limits on campaign contributions.
"We, the citizens, are supposed to drive the system, not the politicians," said Jan Fleming of Uptown Progressives, a Columbus community activist group. "Elected officials now choose the voters, rather than the other way around."
The coalition on Tuesday filed petitions with the state bearing 521,000 signatures for each of three ballot measures. To get on the November ballot, the backers need 322,000 valid signatures of registered voters.
[...] Another ballot proposal would put a nine-member, bipartisan board in charge of elections, instead of the secretary of state. The third would lower the limit on individual contributions from $10,000 to $2,000 for statewide candidates and $1,000 for legislative candidates.
Backers got another boost Tuesday when the state Supreme Court unanimously dismissed a lawsuit that sought to keep the proposals off the ballot. The suit had argued their wording was flawed.
Read More >>
John McCarthy, AP - Aug 10, 2005
Backers filed petitions with hundreds of thousands of signatures to put measures on the November ballot aimed at curbing the power of elected officials in the way Ohio runs its elections.
The coalition of labor unions and Democrat-leaning activists is counting on support from voters disillusioned with a state scandal that has dogged majority Republicans for months and was sparked by the revelation of losses in investments into rare coins.
The measures would create a court-appointed board to choose congressional and legislative redistricting maps, create a state elections board and lower the limits on campaign contributions.
"We, the citizens, are supposed to drive the system, not the politicians," said Jan Fleming of Uptown Progressives, a Columbus community activist group. "Elected officials now choose the voters, rather than the other way around."
The coalition on Tuesday filed petitions with the state bearing 521,000 signatures for each of three ballot measures. To get on the November ballot, the backers need 322,000 valid signatures of registered voters.
[...] Another ballot proposal would put a nine-member, bipartisan board in charge of elections, instead of the secretary of state. The third would lower the limit on individual contributions from $10,000 to $2,000 for statewide candidates and $1,000 for legislative candidates.
Backers got another boost Tuesday when the state Supreme Court unanimously dismissed a lawsuit that sought to keep the proposals off the ballot. The suit had argued their wording was flawed.
Read More >>
10 August 2005
Ohio Critics of G.O.P. Start Battle to Change Election Process
August 10, 2005
Critics of the Republican grip on Ohio politics filed petitions on Tuesday that seek a statewide vote on three constitutional amendments that would overturn the way elections are run and strip elected officials of their power to draw legislative districts.
The move, by the group Reform Ohio Now, is an effort to tap into sentiment across the country to remove political influence from the mechanics of elections. The movement has been sparked in part by partisan lines that are sharply reducing electoral competition in Congress and by efforts by political outsiders like Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California to upend the established order.
[...] In addition to the redistricting measure, the proposed amendments would remove the secretary of state from oversight of elections, instead giving the power to an appointed election master. And it would lower some campaign contribution limits. Republicans in Ohio control the governor's office, the State Legislature, the attorney general's office, the Supreme Court and the state auditor and secretary of state's offices.
Read More >>
August 10, 2005
Critics of the Republican grip on Ohio politics filed petitions on Tuesday that seek a statewide vote on three constitutional amendments that would overturn the way elections are run and strip elected officials of their power to draw legislative districts.
The move, by the group Reform Ohio Now, is an effort to tap into sentiment across the country to remove political influence from the mechanics of elections. The movement has been sparked in part by partisan lines that are sharply reducing electoral competition in Congress and by efforts by political outsiders like Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California to upend the established order.
[...] In addition to the redistricting measure, the proposed amendments would remove the secretary of state from oversight of elections, instead giving the power to an appointed election master. And it would lower some campaign contribution limits. Republicans in Ohio control the governor's office, the State Legislature, the attorney general's office, the Supreme Court and the state auditor and secretary of state's offices.
Read More >>
09 August 2005
High-tech voting accessory: Paper
Jim Drinkard - 8/9/2005
WASHINGTON — Three years into a national debate over the security and reliability of computerized voting machines, the skeptics are winning.
In the past month, legislatures in five states — Connecticut, Hawaii, New Jersey, New York and Oregon — have passed laws requiring computer-based voting machines to produce a paper backup that can be verified by the voter, according to Electionline.org, which monitors voting systems. That brings to 25 the number of states that require a paper trail.
Fourteen other states and the District of Columbia are considering similar legislation. (Graphic: States' paper trails)
Paper printouts could be used to verify the electronic count, or as a fail-safe measure in case a recount is needed.
Advocates of requiring a paper trail say it is a response to voters' concerns about whether their ballots are being accurately tallied. Those concerns, they say, stem from the nation's traumatic experience with the disputed 2000 presidential election in Florida and a continuing close split in the nation's politics.
Read More >>
The states which do NOT require verifiable paper backups AND who are NOT EVEN CONSIDERING SUCH LEGISLATION:
KENTUCKY - MY STATE!
Wyoming
Nebraska
Oklahoma
North Dakota
Pennsylvania
Louisiana
Alabama
Mississippi
Delaware
Jim Drinkard - 8/9/2005
WASHINGTON — Three years into a national debate over the security and reliability of computerized voting machines, the skeptics are winning.
In the past month, legislatures in five states — Connecticut, Hawaii, New Jersey, New York and Oregon — have passed laws requiring computer-based voting machines to produce a paper backup that can be verified by the voter, according to Electionline.org, which monitors voting systems. That brings to 25 the number of states that require a paper trail.
Fourteen other states and the District of Columbia are considering similar legislation. (Graphic: States' paper trails)
Paper printouts could be used to verify the electronic count, or as a fail-safe measure in case a recount is needed.
Advocates of requiring a paper trail say it is a response to voters' concerns about whether their ballots are being accurately tallied. Those concerns, they say, stem from the nation's traumatic experience with the disputed 2000 presidential election in Florida and a continuing close split in the nation's politics.
Read More >>
The states which do NOT require verifiable paper backups AND who are NOT EVEN CONSIDERING SUCH LEGISLATION:
KENTUCKY - MY STATE!
Wyoming
Nebraska
Oklahoma
North Dakota
Pennsylvania
Louisiana
Alabama
Mississippi
Delaware
08 August 2005
Highly Irregular
The Ohio election story is going to come back
By Matt Taibbi
I was in Washington last week, covering a story in Congress, when a friend invited me to a panel discussion in the basement of the Capitol building. I agreed before he told me what the subject was. Boy was I bummed when I saw the title on the e-circular:
What went wrong in Ohio? A Harper's Magazine Forum on Voting Irregularities in the 2004 Election.
Oh, Christ, not that, I thought. Like a lot of people in this country (and like most all of my colleagues in the journalism world), my instinctual reaction to the Ohio electoral-mess story has always been one of revulsion and irritation. Almost on principle I had refused even to look at any of the news stories surrounding the Ohio vote; there is a part of me that did not want to be associated with any sore-loser hysteria of the political margins, and in particular with this story, the great conspiratorial Snuffleupagus of the defeated left.
It had always seemed to me that I understood the psychology of the Ohio story without having to examine the facts involved. I thought the story appealed most directly to a group of people who were still reeling after 2000, an election which George W. Bush not only lost according to the popular vote, but plainly stole in the electoral college. The evidence for this theft has been there for everyone to see for five years now; ...
Yet, Bush remains president. And not only has he remained president, he hasn't even had the decency to act embarrassed about it. He's remained president right out in the open, in front of our faces, like he's proud of that shit.
For a certain segment of the population, this state of affairs must have been psychologically unacceptable. Somewhere deep inside, they must have been clinging to the absurd notion that if the president is caught stealing an election, he is to be automatically removed from office, and perhaps even jailed. And so they nursed this notion in their breasts through 2000, and then—just like that, like the hansom magically appearing at Cinderella's door—the Ohio story fell in their laps. Ohio, it always seemed to me, was a wish their hearts made.
That in itself didn't make the Ohio story illegitimate. It did, however, make it something I wanted to avoid precisely because I disliked George Bush. On some level I suspected that the more publicity the Ohio mess got, the more discredited Bush's political opponents would be in the end. The media, I knew, would dismiss the Ohio story in exactly the casually vicious manner described above—as hysteria, as the delusional work of professional conspiracy theorists, as the behavior of sore losers unable to accept George Bush's clear popular victory.
[...] Even when they had a completely plausible excuse to at least investigate the Ohio charges on their own—after Michigan congressman John Conyers issued a lengthy report detailing the Ohio indiscretions —the big dailies still blew off the case. The New York Times mentioned the Conyers report only in the context of a 381-word page A16 item in January about John Kerry endorsing the election results ("Election Results to Be Certified, With Little Fuss From Kerry," 1/16/05). That piece ended with a quote by Dennis Hastert, who dismissed the Conyers report as the work of the "loony left."
I can only speak for myself, but I think that as a result of all of this, I was inclined to dismiss as a waste of time any discussion of what happened in Ohio. The story wasn't going anywhere. Even if there was evidence of wrongdoing, how could it possibly be more incontrovertible than the evidence in Florida? And given that nothing happened when Bush stole the election in front of the entire world in Florida, why bother making a fuss now in Ohio—especially since John Kerry was clearly many millions of votes less of a victim than Al Gore?
Well, I don't think that way anymore. After attending this panel, and speaking to the congressmen involved in the preparation of the Conyers report (in particular Sherrod Brown of Ohio, a former Ohio secretary of state) I'm convinced that Ohio was a far more brazen and frightening subversion of democracy than Florida.
Here's the thing about Ohio. Until you really look at it, you won't understand its significance, which is this: the techniques used in this particular theft have the capacity to alter elections not by dozens or hundreds or even thousands of votes, but by tens of thousands.
Read More >>
The Ohio election story is going to come back
By Matt Taibbi
I was in Washington last week, covering a story in Congress, when a friend invited me to a panel discussion in the basement of the Capitol building. I agreed before he told me what the subject was. Boy was I bummed when I saw the title on the e-circular:
What went wrong in Ohio? A Harper's Magazine Forum on Voting Irregularities in the 2004 Election.
Oh, Christ, not that, I thought. Like a lot of people in this country (and like most all of my colleagues in the journalism world), my instinctual reaction to the Ohio electoral-mess story has always been one of revulsion and irritation. Almost on principle I had refused even to look at any of the news stories surrounding the Ohio vote; there is a part of me that did not want to be associated with any sore-loser hysteria of the political margins, and in particular with this story, the great conspiratorial Snuffleupagus of the defeated left.
It had always seemed to me that I understood the psychology of the Ohio story without having to examine the facts involved. I thought the story appealed most directly to a group of people who were still reeling after 2000, an election which George W. Bush not only lost according to the popular vote, but plainly stole in the electoral college. The evidence for this theft has been there for everyone to see for five years now; ...
Yet, Bush remains president. And not only has he remained president, he hasn't even had the decency to act embarrassed about it. He's remained president right out in the open, in front of our faces, like he's proud of that shit.
For a certain segment of the population, this state of affairs must have been psychologically unacceptable. Somewhere deep inside, they must have been clinging to the absurd notion that if the president is caught stealing an election, he is to be automatically removed from office, and perhaps even jailed. And so they nursed this notion in their breasts through 2000, and then—just like that, like the hansom magically appearing at Cinderella's door—the Ohio story fell in their laps. Ohio, it always seemed to me, was a wish their hearts made.
That in itself didn't make the Ohio story illegitimate. It did, however, make it something I wanted to avoid precisely because I disliked George Bush. On some level I suspected that the more publicity the Ohio mess got, the more discredited Bush's political opponents would be in the end. The media, I knew, would dismiss the Ohio story in exactly the casually vicious manner described above—as hysteria, as the delusional work of professional conspiracy theorists, as the behavior of sore losers unable to accept George Bush's clear popular victory.
[...] Even when they had a completely plausible excuse to at least investigate the Ohio charges on their own—after Michigan congressman John Conyers issued a lengthy report detailing the Ohio indiscretions —the big dailies still blew off the case. The New York Times mentioned the Conyers report only in the context of a 381-word page A16 item in January about John Kerry endorsing the election results ("Election Results to Be Certified, With Little Fuss From Kerry," 1/16/05). That piece ended with a quote by Dennis Hastert, who dismissed the Conyers report as the work of the "loony left."
I can only speak for myself, but I think that as a result of all of this, I was inclined to dismiss as a waste of time any discussion of what happened in Ohio. The story wasn't going anywhere. Even if there was evidence of wrongdoing, how could it possibly be more incontrovertible than the evidence in Florida? And given that nothing happened when Bush stole the election in front of the entire world in Florida, why bother making a fuss now in Ohio—especially since John Kerry was clearly many millions of votes less of a victim than Al Gore?
Well, I don't think that way anymore. After attending this panel, and speaking to the congressmen involved in the preparation of the Conyers report (in particular Sherrod Brown of Ohio, a former Ohio secretary of state) I'm convinced that Ohio was a far more brazen and frightening subversion of democracy than Florida.
Here's the thing about Ohio. Until you really look at it, you won't understand its significance, which is this: the techniques used in this particular theft have the capacity to alter elections not by dozens or hundreds or even thousands of votes, but by tens of thousands.
Read More >>
Excerpt: None Dare Call It Stolen
Ohio, the election, and America's servile press
Mark Crispin Miller
Whichever candidate you voted for (or think you voted for), or even if you did not vote (or could not vote), you must admit that last year's presidential race was—if nothing else—pretty interesting. True, the press has dropped the subject, and the Democrats, with very few exceptions, have “moved on.” Yet this contest may have been the most unusual in U.S. history; it was certainly among those with the strangest outcomes. You may remember being surprised yourself.
The infamously factious Democrats were fiercely unified—Ralph Nader garnered only about 0.38 percent of the national vote while the Republicans were split, with a vocal anti-Bush front that included anti-Clinton warrior Bob Barr of Georgia; Ike's son John Eisenhower; Ronald Reagan's chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, William J. Crowe Jr.; former Air Force Chief of Staff and onetime “Veteran for Bush” General Merrill “Tony” McPeak; founding neocon Francis Fukuyama; Doug Bandow of the Cato Institute, and various large alliances of military officers, diplomats, and business professors. The American Conservative, co-founded by Pat Buchanan, endorsed five candidates for president, including both Bush and Kerry, while the Financial Times and The Economist came out for Kerry alone. At least fifty-nine daily newspapers that backed Bush in the previous election endorsed Kerry (or no one) in this election. The national turnout in 2004 was the highest since 1968, when another unpopular war had swept the ruling party from the White House. And on Election Day, twenty-six state exit polls incorrectly predicted wins for Kerry, a statistical failure so colossal and unprecedented that the odds against its happening, according to a report last May by the National Election Data Archive Project, were 16.5 million to 1.
[...] The press has had little to say about most of the strange details of the election—except, that is, to ridicule all efforts to discuss them. This animus appeared soon after November 2, in a spate of caustic articles dismissing any critical discussion of the outcome as crazed speculation: “Election paranoia surfaces: Conspiracy theorists call results rigged,” chuckled the Baltimore Sun on November 5. “Internet Buzz on Vote Fraud Is Dismissed,” proclaimed the Boston Globe on November 10. “Latest Conspiracy Theory—Kerry Won—Hits the Ether,” the Washington Post chortled on November 11. The New York Times weighed in with “Vote Fraud Theories, Spread by Blogs, Are Quickly Buried”—making mock not only of the “post-election theorizing” but of cyberspace itself, the fons et origo of all such loony tunes, according to the Times.
[...] Since Kerry has conceded, they argued, and since “no smoking gun” had come to light, there was no story to report. This is an oddly passive argument. Even so, the evidence that something went extremely wrong last fall is copious, and not hard to find. Much of it was noted at the time, albeit by local papers and haphazardly. Concerning the decisive contest in Ohio, the evidence is lucidly compiled in a single congressional report, released by Representative John Conyers of Michigan, which, for the last half-year, has been available to anyone inclined to read it. It is a veritable arsenal of “smoking guns”—and yet its findings may be less extraordinary than the fact that no one in this country seems to care about them.
Read More >>
*I* care about them. There are over NINE HUNDRED POSTS on this blog since March, 2003, but few seem interested in looking at it. All the smoking guns have been here and on other sites around the web since long before Congressman Conyers published his report. Republicans call it a 'conspiracy theory' because they want to continue using election fraud to stay in power. The cowards who would not stand up to their giggling idiocy are responsible for allowing the bush cabal to remain in power, even after 2 fraudulent presidential elections and a fraudulent midterm election in 2002, which allowed them to take control of Congress. It is treason, pure and simple. And there is nothing funny about that.
Ohio, the election, and America's servile press
Mark Crispin Miller
Whichever candidate you voted for (or think you voted for), or even if you did not vote (or could not vote), you must admit that last year's presidential race was—if nothing else—pretty interesting. True, the press has dropped the subject, and the Democrats, with very few exceptions, have “moved on.” Yet this contest may have been the most unusual in U.S. history; it was certainly among those with the strangest outcomes. You may remember being surprised yourself.
The infamously factious Democrats were fiercely unified—Ralph Nader garnered only about 0.38 percent of the national vote while the Republicans were split, with a vocal anti-Bush front that included anti-Clinton warrior Bob Barr of Georgia; Ike's son John Eisenhower; Ronald Reagan's chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, William J. Crowe Jr.; former Air Force Chief of Staff and onetime “Veteran for Bush” General Merrill “Tony” McPeak; founding neocon Francis Fukuyama; Doug Bandow of the Cato Institute, and various large alliances of military officers, diplomats, and business professors. The American Conservative, co-founded by Pat Buchanan, endorsed five candidates for president, including both Bush and Kerry, while the Financial Times and The Economist came out for Kerry alone. At least fifty-nine daily newspapers that backed Bush in the previous election endorsed Kerry (or no one) in this election. The national turnout in 2004 was the highest since 1968, when another unpopular war had swept the ruling party from the White House. And on Election Day, twenty-six state exit polls incorrectly predicted wins for Kerry, a statistical failure so colossal and unprecedented that the odds against its happening, according to a report last May by the National Election Data Archive Project, were 16.5 million to 1.
[...] The press has had little to say about most of the strange details of the election—except, that is, to ridicule all efforts to discuss them. This animus appeared soon after November 2, in a spate of caustic articles dismissing any critical discussion of the outcome as crazed speculation: “Election paranoia surfaces: Conspiracy theorists call results rigged,” chuckled the Baltimore Sun on November 5. “Internet Buzz on Vote Fraud Is Dismissed,” proclaimed the Boston Globe on November 10. “Latest Conspiracy Theory—Kerry Won—Hits the Ether,” the Washington Post chortled on November 11. The New York Times weighed in with “Vote Fraud Theories, Spread by Blogs, Are Quickly Buried”—making mock not only of the “post-election theorizing” but of cyberspace itself, the fons et origo of all such loony tunes, according to the Times.
[...] Since Kerry has conceded, they argued, and since “no smoking gun” had come to light, there was no story to report. This is an oddly passive argument. Even so, the evidence that something went extremely wrong last fall is copious, and not hard to find. Much of it was noted at the time, albeit by local papers and haphazardly. Concerning the decisive contest in Ohio, the evidence is lucidly compiled in a single congressional report, released by Representative John Conyers of Michigan, which, for the last half-year, has been available to anyone inclined to read it. It is a veritable arsenal of “smoking guns”—and yet its findings may be less extraordinary than the fact that no one in this country seems to care about them.
Read More >>
*I* care about them. There are over NINE HUNDRED POSTS on this blog since March, 2003, but few seem interested in looking at it. All the smoking guns have been here and on other sites around the web since long before Congressman Conyers published his report. Republicans call it a 'conspiracy theory' because they want to continue using election fraud to stay in power. The cowards who would not stand up to their giggling idiocy are responsible for allowing the bush cabal to remain in power, even after 2 fraudulent presidential elections and a fraudulent midterm election in 2002, which allowed them to take control of Congress. It is treason, pure and simple. And there is nothing funny about that.
05 August 2005
The right to vote still under assault after 40 years
Voting Rights Act:
Key provisions of anti-bias law are up for renewal in 2007
Erin McCormick - August 5, 2005
As a 7-year-old in Richmond's Iron Triangle, the Rev. Andre Shumake was riveted to his parents' television, watching Martin Luther King Jr. celebrate the signing of the Voting Rights Act.
"I remember thinking, 'This means I'll no longer be a second-class citizen,' " he said.
As he ministers 40 years later to a Richmond congregation torn by poverty and violence, Shumake is appalled at how much hasn't changed. In his community and among nonwhites across the United States, political disenfranchisement and voter apathy still reign, and charges of racism regularly crop up.
"Here we are in 2005, still dealing with the issues we were dealing with the '50s and '60s,'' Shumake said.
When President Lyndon Johnson signed the act on Aug. 6, 1965, civil rights advocates hoped the new law finally would demolish the wall of racism that largely excluded nonwhites from the American political process. The law banned literacy tests and the other barriers that southern states had erected since blacks won the vote in 1870 to prevent them from voting. And in the three years after it passed, more than a million new nonwhite voters cast ballots in southern states.
But the law's biggest effect since 1968 has been on the complex question of how race should be used in drawing legislative boundaries. Court battles, amendments and legal interpretations have transformed the law into a key weapon in a seemingly endless battle against race discrimination in the electoral process.
As civil rights advocates launch a campaign to renew provisions that will expire in 2007, the law is still invoked in election discrimination debates stretching from Georgia's gerrymandered congressional districts to Monterey County's sprawling farmland.
Read More >>
Voting Rights Act:
Key provisions of anti-bias law are up for renewal in 2007
Erin McCormick - August 5, 2005
As a 7-year-old in Richmond's Iron Triangle, the Rev. Andre Shumake was riveted to his parents' television, watching Martin Luther King Jr. celebrate the signing of the Voting Rights Act.
"I remember thinking, 'This means I'll no longer be a second-class citizen,' " he said.
As he ministers 40 years later to a Richmond congregation torn by poverty and violence, Shumake is appalled at how much hasn't changed. In his community and among nonwhites across the United States, political disenfranchisement and voter apathy still reign, and charges of racism regularly crop up.
"Here we are in 2005, still dealing with the issues we were dealing with the '50s and '60s,'' Shumake said.
When President Lyndon Johnson signed the act on Aug. 6, 1965, civil rights advocates hoped the new law finally would demolish the wall of racism that largely excluded nonwhites from the American political process. The law banned literacy tests and the other barriers that southern states had erected since blacks won the vote in 1870 to prevent them from voting. And in the three years after it passed, more than a million new nonwhite voters cast ballots in southern states.
But the law's biggest effect since 1968 has been on the complex question of how race should be used in drawing legislative boundaries. Court battles, amendments and legal interpretations have transformed the law into a key weapon in a seemingly endless battle against race discrimination in the electoral process.
As civil rights advocates launch a campaign to renew provisions that will expire in 2007, the law is still invoked in election discrimination debates stretching from Georgia's gerrymandered congressional districts to Monterey County's sprawling farmland.
Read More >>
03 August 2005
Diebold's problems worsen
08/03/2005
Diebold's latest electronic voting machine, desired by dozens of counties nationwide, fared worse in the nation's first mass testing than previously disclosed, with almost 20 percent of the touch-screen machines crashing.
Those software failures are likely to send Diebold programmers back to work and perhaps force the firm into weeks of independent laboratory testing.
With 17 California counties — including Alameda, Marin and San Joaquin — considering purchase of the Diebold AccuVote TSx, as well as dozens of counties in Ohio, Utah and Mississippi, the delay could put at risk tens of millions of dollars in sales and throw open the door to Diebold competitors. In Alameda County, Diebolds first large customer on the West Coast, local officials are eyeing other manufacturers products and mass-mailing county voters to promote the virtues of absentee voting — no need to come to the polling place and use an expensive voting machine.
For years, the county was considered Diebold territory. Other vendors, such as Sequoia Voting Systems with Oakland headquarters less than five miles from county offices, figured a sales pitch was wasted time. But Keith Carson, president of the county supervisors, suspects those days have to be more at an end than not.
"As far as the other supervisors," he said, "I cant believe they would continue down this dark path with Diebold when there are more problems with each testing."
Read More >>
08/03/2005
Diebold's latest electronic voting machine, desired by dozens of counties nationwide, fared worse in the nation's first mass testing than previously disclosed, with almost 20 percent of the touch-screen machines crashing.
Those software failures are likely to send Diebold programmers back to work and perhaps force the firm into weeks of independent laboratory testing.
With 17 California counties — including Alameda, Marin and San Joaquin — considering purchase of the Diebold AccuVote TSx, as well as dozens of counties in Ohio, Utah and Mississippi, the delay could put at risk tens of millions of dollars in sales and throw open the door to Diebold competitors. In Alameda County, Diebolds first large customer on the West Coast, local officials are eyeing other manufacturers products and mass-mailing county voters to promote the virtues of absentee voting — no need to come to the polling place and use an expensive voting machine.
For years, the county was considered Diebold territory. Other vendors, such as Sequoia Voting Systems with Oakland headquarters less than five miles from county offices, figured a sales pitch was wasted time. But Keith Carson, president of the county supervisors, suspects those days have to be more at an end than not.
"As far as the other supervisors," he said, "I cant believe they would continue down this dark path with Diebold when there are more problems with each testing."
Read More >>
Unplugged: County voters will return to paper and pen
Ben van der Meer - Aug 03, 2005
You'll find conventional ink pens and paper sheets with bubbles to fill in for the November special election, says San Joaquin County's registrar of voters.
Top elections official Deborah Hench said that while the state's certification of Diebold Inc.'s voting machines is on hold, voters will make their preferences known the relatively low-tech way, at least this year.
"We'd love to have certification before the end of the year," Hench said, "and I know Diebold would love to have certification sooner rather than later."
But state officials held up that process last month after tests showed that Diebold's touch-screen voting machines had paper jams nearly 10 percent of the time, and were also prone to screen freezes.
While Ohio-based Diebold works on the problem, Hench said, she doesn't expect to use touch-screen machines -- though they performed flawlessly San Joaquin County in the 2003 gubernatorial recall -- until June 2006 at the soonest.
Though that means the November election will cost the county more -- Hench said the price tag is about $1.2 million -- Diebold officials have agreed to pay for printing costs for election ballots, which will save about $300,000.
[...] Concerns have also popped up about the Diebold optical-scan machines the county will use in November to check paper ballots. Cheryl Lillenstein, a Palo Alto resident who saw a report about the machines' problems, pointed out that professional hackers in Florida demonstrated in June that the optical-scan machines can also be hacked.
"Doesn't this test -- astonishingly, the first of its kind -- demonstrate that it's time for California to test ALL the voting equipment, and not just accept secret vote counting software that voting vendors control?" she said in an e-mail.
Read More >>
Ben van der Meer - Aug 03, 2005
You'll find conventional ink pens and paper sheets with bubbles to fill in for the November special election, says San Joaquin County's registrar of voters.
Top elections official Deborah Hench said that while the state's certification of Diebold Inc.'s voting machines is on hold, voters will make their preferences known the relatively low-tech way, at least this year.
"We'd love to have certification before the end of the year," Hench said, "and I know Diebold would love to have certification sooner rather than later."
But state officials held up that process last month after tests showed that Diebold's touch-screen voting machines had paper jams nearly 10 percent of the time, and were also prone to screen freezes.
While Ohio-based Diebold works on the problem, Hench said, she doesn't expect to use touch-screen machines -- though they performed flawlessly San Joaquin County in the 2003 gubernatorial recall -- until June 2006 at the soonest.
Though that means the November election will cost the county more -- Hench said the price tag is about $1.2 million -- Diebold officials have agreed to pay for printing costs for election ballots, which will save about $300,000.
[...] Concerns have also popped up about the Diebold optical-scan machines the county will use in November to check paper ballots. Cheryl Lillenstein, a Palo Alto resident who saw a report about the machines' problems, pointed out that professional hackers in Florida demonstrated in June that the optical-scan machines can also be hacked.
"Doesn't this test -- astonishingly, the first of its kind -- demonstrate that it's time for California to test ALL the voting equipment, and not just accept secret vote counting software that voting vendors control?" she said in an e-mail.
Read More >>
01 August 2005
Ms. Noe's own scandal: Wife of Ohio GOP fundraiser
does some election reform of her own
08/01/2005
In yet another surreal twist in Ohio’s “coin-gate” scandal, the wife of Bush’s chief Ohio fundraiser, Tom Noe—who is currently embroiled in campaign finance and money laundering probes—surprised poll workers and observers alike by disrupting the ballot count during the 2004 general election, RAW STORY has discovered.
Bernadette Noe, who served dual roles as chairman for the Lucas County Republican Party and the Lucas County Board of Elections, sent twelve “partisans” into a warehouse on Election Day, according a memo authored by Ohio’s Director of Campaign Finance Richard Weghorst who was present at the time.
[...] The Board was “directly responsible for the inefficient and unorganized election process” in the county, the report said. Weghorst found they had failed to lock and secure ballots and voting machines; manipulated the three percent hand recount; and failed to properly remove Ralph Nader from county ballots.
[...] A Diebold employee, Robert Diekmann, was also present at the warehouse that night.
Ms. Noe was an advocate of Diebold’s optical scan software as chair of the Lucas County Board of Elections. In April 2004, she and another fellow Republican board member voted to approve a $350,000 contract with Diebold to lease machines for the election. The county was forced the lease the equipment after a deadlock and a rebuke from Blackwell.
[...] The contract was no-bid. After Democrats on the board revealed a cheaper bid from another company, the Lucas County board was forced to open the contract for bidding, over Ms. Noe’s objections.
The contract was eventually awarded to Diebold.
[...] Bernadette Noe resigned from the Lucas County Republican Party and from her position as head of the Board of Elections in December, saying she wanted to spend more time with her family.
In April, the Toledo Blade reported Ms. Noe acted improperly as chairman of the Lucas County Republican Party in accepting $65,000 in loans for the party from her husband. She is also involved in a scandal surrounding an aide to Ohio governor Bob Taft (R) staying for a reduced rate at her vacation home.
Bernadette Noe is married to the now-infamous Tom Noe, who invested millions of dollars of state funds into rare coins and who is currently the target of a wide-ranging inquiry. Noe, a Bush Pioneer, also allegedly laundered money into President Bush’s reelection campaign by paying others to donate.
Tom Noe, the owner of several shady business ventures, including Vintage Coins and Collectibles, funneled an estimated fifty million dollars into his own personal and business accounts as well as to the state’s GOP candidates. Noe’s rare coin venture came at the expense of The Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation, for whom he acted as the sole fund manager.
The Noe coin scandal has widened to include investigations into Taft as well as other GOP candidates from across the state, including several Ohio Supreme Court justices.
Read More >>
does some election reform of her own
08/01/2005
In yet another surreal twist in Ohio’s “coin-gate” scandal, the wife of Bush’s chief Ohio fundraiser, Tom Noe—who is currently embroiled in campaign finance and money laundering probes—surprised poll workers and observers alike by disrupting the ballot count during the 2004 general election, RAW STORY has discovered.
Bernadette Noe, who served dual roles as chairman for the Lucas County Republican Party and the Lucas County Board of Elections, sent twelve “partisans” into a warehouse on Election Day, according a memo authored by Ohio’s Director of Campaign Finance Richard Weghorst who was present at the time.
[...] The Board was “directly responsible for the inefficient and unorganized election process” in the county, the report said. Weghorst found they had failed to lock and secure ballots and voting machines; manipulated the three percent hand recount; and failed to properly remove Ralph Nader from county ballots.
[...] A Diebold employee, Robert Diekmann, was also present at the warehouse that night.
Ms. Noe was an advocate of Diebold’s optical scan software as chair of the Lucas County Board of Elections. In April 2004, she and another fellow Republican board member voted to approve a $350,000 contract with Diebold to lease machines for the election. The county was forced the lease the equipment after a deadlock and a rebuke from Blackwell.
[...] The contract was no-bid. After Democrats on the board revealed a cheaper bid from another company, the Lucas County board was forced to open the contract for bidding, over Ms. Noe’s objections.
The contract was eventually awarded to Diebold.
[...] Bernadette Noe resigned from the Lucas County Republican Party and from her position as head of the Board of Elections in December, saying she wanted to spend more time with her family.
In April, the Toledo Blade reported Ms. Noe acted improperly as chairman of the Lucas County Republican Party in accepting $65,000 in loans for the party from her husband. She is also involved in a scandal surrounding an aide to Ohio governor Bob Taft (R) staying for a reduced rate at her vacation home.
Bernadette Noe is married to the now-infamous Tom Noe, who invested millions of dollars of state funds into rare coins and who is currently the target of a wide-ranging inquiry. Noe, a Bush Pioneer, also allegedly laundered money into President Bush’s reelection campaign by paying others to donate.
Tom Noe, the owner of several shady business ventures, including Vintage Coins and Collectibles, funneled an estimated fifty million dollars into his own personal and business accounts as well as to the state’s GOP candidates. Noe’s rare coin venture came at the expense of The Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation, for whom he acted as the sole fund manager.
The Noe coin scandal has widened to include investigations into Taft as well as other GOP candidates from across the state, including several Ohio Supreme Court justices.
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Bill would require paper ballot with electronic vote
Anita Weier - August 1, 2005
Legislators from both political parties have authored a bill that would require that electronic voting machines in Wisconsin produce a paper ballot that could be reviewed by the voter and that would be kept in case a recount is needed.
Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Madison, Rep. Steve Freese, R-Dodgeville, and Sen. Jeff Plale, D-South Milwaukee, are circulating the bill among fellow legislators in the hope of obtaining co-sponsors.
According to a summary by the nonpartisan Legislative Reference Bureau, the bill provides that if a municipality uses an electronic voting machine, the machine must generate a complete paper ballot showing all votes cast by each elector. The bill would allow a voter to verify his or her votes and would allow a manual recount of each vote cast, the Reference Bureau summary said.
A similar bill passed the Assembly last session.
"One thing that Democrats and Republicans can agree on is that as we enter a new era in voting equipment, we must continue to have faith in our election process," Freese said in a written statement. "Requiring a paper trail is a simple check to make sure the new technology works as it should."
Read More >>
Anita Weier - August 1, 2005
Legislators from both political parties have authored a bill that would require that electronic voting machines in Wisconsin produce a paper ballot that could be reviewed by the voter and that would be kept in case a recount is needed.
Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Madison, Rep. Steve Freese, R-Dodgeville, and Sen. Jeff Plale, D-South Milwaukee, are circulating the bill among fellow legislators in the hope of obtaining co-sponsors.
According to a summary by the nonpartisan Legislative Reference Bureau, the bill provides that if a municipality uses an electronic voting machine, the machine must generate a complete paper ballot showing all votes cast by each elector. The bill would allow a voter to verify his or her votes and would allow a manual recount of each vote cast, the Reference Bureau summary said.
A similar bill passed the Assembly last session.
"One thing that Democrats and Republicans can agree on is that as we enter a new era in voting equipment, we must continue to have faith in our election process," Freese said in a written statement. "Requiring a paper trail is a simple check to make sure the new technology works as it should."
Read More >>
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