Votergate
13 June 2006
12 June 2006
Some Ohio Editors and Reporters Criticize
'Rolling Stone' Story on 2004 Alleged Vote Fraud
Joe Strupp - June 12, 2006
NEW YORK - Did the press really miss the story in the 2004 presidential election of massive voter fraud and conspiracies to keep millions from casting ballots that a recent controversial piece in Rolling Stone has alleged? As the article's author, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., believes, did news outlets, both nationally and in the battleground state of Ohio, engage in a "media blackout" that ignored what he claims are "deeply troubling" aspects of the election that returned George W. Bush to the White House?
Bob Herbert added fuel to the fire on Monday in claiming in his New York Times column that, after the Rolling Stone report, "the integrity of the election process needs to be more fiercely defended in the face of outrageous Republican assaults. Democrats, the media, and ordinary voters need to fight back."
But for many in Ohio who covered the presidential race, which was not decided until the following morning after John Kerry gave up any attempt at challenging the Ohio results, the Rolling Stone allegations are unfounded.
"We looked at the Rolling Stone piece and we didn't see anything new in there," says Eva Parziale, Associated Press Ohio bureau chief, who held that post in 2004 when the election occurred. "They were things we already reported on and issues we did not see to have substance."
Carl Weiser, government and public affairs editor for the Cincinnati Enquirer, agreed. "I read it and nothing in there was really new," he said. "The folks who know Ohio elections best checked into it and found there was no conspiracy."
But that hasn't stopped the Kennedy piece from raising interest among others in the newspaper world, particularly on the editorial page, even before the Herbert column.
"In the days since Rolling Stone magazine published a long piece that accused Republicans of widespread and intentional cheating that affected the outcome of the last presidential election, the silence in America's establishment media has been deafening," Ken Bunting, associate publisher of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and a former editor of the paper, wrote Friday. "In terms of bad news judgment, this could turn out to be the 2006 equivalent of the infamous 'Downing Street memo,' the London Times story that was initially greeted by the U.S. Media with a collective yawn."
Kennedy's article, which is heavily footnoted on the magazine's web site, draws much of its sourcing from the very newspapers in Ohio and nationally it appears to criticize. The Cincinnati Enquirer, The Blade of Toledo and the Columbus Dispatch, as well as the Times and The Washington Post, appear frequently throughout his long list of background notes.
The piece declares that incidents ranging from broken voting machines in New Mexico to long lines in Ohio to millions of overseas voters not receiving ballots were not given the national media inquiries they deserved. Kennedy writes that "the national media, with few exceptions, did little to question the validity of the election. The Washington Post immediately dismissed allegations of fraud as 'conspiracy theories,' and The New York Times declared that 'there is no evidence of vote theft or errors on a large scale'."
[...] But Herbert wrote on Monday: "Kerry almost certainly would have won Ohio if all of his votes had been counted, and if all of the eligible voters who tried to vote for him had been allowed to cast their ballots....No one has been able to prove that the election in Ohio was hijacked. But whenever it is closely scrutinized, the range of problems and dirty tricks that come to light is shocking. What's not shocking, of course, is that every glitch and every foul-up in Ohio, every arbitrary new rule and regulation, somehow favored Bush."
Read More >>
'Rolling Stone' Story on 2004 Alleged Vote Fraud
Joe Strupp - June 12, 2006
NEW YORK - Did the press really miss the story in the 2004 presidential election of massive voter fraud and conspiracies to keep millions from casting ballots that a recent controversial piece in Rolling Stone has alleged? As the article's author, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., believes, did news outlets, both nationally and in the battleground state of Ohio, engage in a "media blackout" that ignored what he claims are "deeply troubling" aspects of the election that returned George W. Bush to the White House?
Bob Herbert added fuel to the fire on Monday in claiming in his New York Times column that, after the Rolling Stone report, "the integrity of the election process needs to be more fiercely defended in the face of outrageous Republican assaults. Democrats, the media, and ordinary voters need to fight back."
But for many in Ohio who covered the presidential race, which was not decided until the following morning after John Kerry gave up any attempt at challenging the Ohio results, the Rolling Stone allegations are unfounded.
"We looked at the Rolling Stone piece and we didn't see anything new in there," says Eva Parziale, Associated Press Ohio bureau chief, who held that post in 2004 when the election occurred. "They were things we already reported on and issues we did not see to have substance."
Carl Weiser, government and public affairs editor for the Cincinnati Enquirer, agreed. "I read it and nothing in there was really new," he said. "The folks who know Ohio elections best checked into it and found there was no conspiracy."
But that hasn't stopped the Kennedy piece from raising interest among others in the newspaper world, particularly on the editorial page, even before the Herbert column.
"In the days since Rolling Stone magazine published a long piece that accused Republicans of widespread and intentional cheating that affected the outcome of the last presidential election, the silence in America's establishment media has been deafening," Ken Bunting, associate publisher of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and a former editor of the paper, wrote Friday. "In terms of bad news judgment, this could turn out to be the 2006 equivalent of the infamous 'Downing Street memo,' the London Times story that was initially greeted by the U.S. Media with a collective yawn."
Kennedy's article, which is heavily footnoted on the magazine's web site, draws much of its sourcing from the very newspapers in Ohio and nationally it appears to criticize. The Cincinnati Enquirer, The Blade of Toledo and the Columbus Dispatch, as well as the Times and The Washington Post, appear frequently throughout his long list of background notes.
The piece declares that incidents ranging from broken voting machines in New Mexico to long lines in Ohio to millions of overseas voters not receiving ballots were not given the national media inquiries they deserved. Kennedy writes that "the national media, with few exceptions, did little to question the validity of the election. The Washington Post immediately dismissed allegations of fraud as 'conspiracy theories,' and The New York Times declared that 'there is no evidence of vote theft or errors on a large scale'."
[...] But Herbert wrote on Monday: "Kerry almost certainly would have won Ohio if all of his votes had been counted, and if all of the eligible voters who tried to vote for him had been allowed to cast their ballots....No one has been able to prove that the election in Ohio was hijacked. But whenever it is closely scrutinized, the range of problems and dirty tricks that come to light is shocking. What's not shocking, of course, is that every glitch and every foul-up in Ohio, every arbitrary new rule and regulation, somehow favored Bush."
Read More >>
Rove headlining GOP fund-raiser for phone-jamming crooks
12 Jun 2006
Presidential adviser Karl Rove is the keynote speaker Monday night at the state Republican Party's annual dinner -- which Democrats say is to raise money to help the party pay legal fees in a phone jamming case.
Democrats are suing Republicans to find out who knew about the phone jamming done Election Day 2002 that tied up a Democratic and nonpartisan effort to get out the vote and provide rides to the polls. Three Republican operatives have been convicted in the plot.
Read More >>
12 Jun 2006
Presidential adviser Karl Rove is the keynote speaker Monday night at the state Republican Party's annual dinner -- which Democrats say is to raise money to help the party pay legal fees in a phone jamming case.
Democrats are suing Republicans to find out who knew about the phone jamming done Election Day 2002 that tied up a Democratic and nonpartisan effort to get out the vote and provide rides to the polls. Three Republican operatives have been convicted in the plot.
Read More >>
NYT's Herbert: Kerry 'almost certainly' won Ohio in 2004
Raw Story - June 12, 2006
In the 2004 presidential election, Senator John Kerry (D-MA) "almost certainly would have won Ohio if all of his votes had been counted, and if all of the eligible voters who tried to vote for him had been allowed to cast their ballots," writes columnist Bob Herbert for Monday's edition of The New York Times.
Excerpts from Herbert's Op-Ed, Those Pesky Voters:
Republicans, and even a surprising number of Democrats, have been anxious to leave the 2004 Ohio election debacle behind. But Kennedy, in his long, heavily footnoted article ("Was the 2004 Election Stolen?"), leaves no doubt that the democratic process was trampled and left for dead in the Buckeye State. Kerry almost certainly would have won Ohio if all of his votes had been counted, and if all of the eligible voters who tried to vote for him had been allowed to cast their ballots.
[...] No one has been able to prove that the election in Ohio was hijacked. But whenever it is closely scrutinized, the range of problems and dirty tricks that come to light is shocking. What's not shocking, of course, is that every glitch and every foul-up in Ohio, every arbitrary new rule and regulation, somehow favored Bush.
[...] Walter Mebane Jr., a professor of government at Cornell University, did a statistical analysis of the vote in Franklin County, which includes the city of Columbus. He told Kennedy, "The allocation of voting machines in Franklin County was clearly biased against voters in precincts with high proportions of African-Americans."
Mebane told me that he compared the distribution of voting machines in Ohio's 2004 presidential election with the distribution of machines for a primary election held the previous spring. For the primary, he said, "There was no sign of racial bias in the distribution of the machines." But for the general election in November, "there was substantial bias, with fewer voting machines per voter in areas that were heavily African-American."
Read More >>
Raw Story - June 12, 2006
In the 2004 presidential election, Senator John Kerry (D-MA) "almost certainly would have won Ohio if all of his votes had been counted, and if all of the eligible voters who tried to vote for him had been allowed to cast their ballots," writes columnist Bob Herbert for Monday's edition of The New York Times.
Excerpts from Herbert's Op-Ed, Those Pesky Voters:
Republicans, and even a surprising number of Democrats, have been anxious to leave the 2004 Ohio election debacle behind. But Kennedy, in his long, heavily footnoted article ("Was the 2004 Election Stolen?"), leaves no doubt that the democratic process was trampled and left for dead in the Buckeye State. Kerry almost certainly would have won Ohio if all of his votes had been counted, and if all of the eligible voters who tried to vote for him had been allowed to cast their ballots.
[...] No one has been able to prove that the election in Ohio was hijacked. But whenever it is closely scrutinized, the range of problems and dirty tricks that come to light is shocking. What's not shocking, of course, is that every glitch and every foul-up in Ohio, every arbitrary new rule and regulation, somehow favored Bush.
[...] Walter Mebane Jr., a professor of government at Cornell University, did a statistical analysis of the vote in Franklin County, which includes the city of Columbus. He told Kennedy, "The allocation of voting machines in Franklin County was clearly biased against voters in precincts with high proportions of African-Americans."
Mebane told me that he compared the distribution of voting machines in Ohio's 2004 presidential election with the distribution of machines for a primary election held the previous spring. For the primary, he said, "There was no sign of racial bias in the distribution of the machines." But for the general election in November, "there was substantial bias, with fewer voting machines per voter in areas that were heavily African-American."
Read More >>
11 June 2006
Records for 150,000 Colo. Voters Missing
Newsday - 11 Jun 2006
Records containing personal information on more than 150,000 voters are missing at city election offices, and officials are trying to determine if the files were lost, moved or stolen.
Read More >>
Newsday - 11 Jun 2006
Records containing personal information on more than 150,000 voters are missing at city election offices, and officials are trying to determine if the files were lost, moved or stolen.
Read More >>
10 June 2006
09 June 2006
Public interest in news topics beyond control of mainstream media
Seattle P-I - June 9, 2006
The blogosphere has been abuzz. But in the days since Rolling Stone magazine published a long piece that accused Republicans of widespread and intentional cheating that affected the outcome of the last presidential election, the silence in America's establishment media has been deafening.
In terms of bad news judgment, this could turn out to be the 2006 equivalent of the infamous "Downing Street memo," the London Times story that was initially greeted by the U.S. media with a collective yawn.
Robert Kennedy Jr.'s Rolling Stone mega-essay is titled "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?" It focuses on widespread voting irregularities, questionable tallies and disenfranchising practices, particularly in Ohio, which President Bush won by more than 100,000 votes.
Singling out Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell for much of the blame, Kennedy writes persuasively that enough was awry in that state alone to raise serious questions as to whether Bush really defeated John Kerry in 2004. Blackwell, now a Republican candidate for governor, headed Bush's state re-election campaign at the same time he was constitutionally in charge of the state's voting machinery.
While Kennedy's article perhaps gives far too much weight to suspicious discrepancies between exit polls and the final election outcome, it meticulously asserts and documents questionable methods of purging voter rolls, intentionally created long lines at Democratic polling places, court-defying practices regarding registrations and provisional ballots, a phony terrorist alert on Election Day and final tallies in some counties and precincts that, to Kennedy's way of seeing it, simply don't make sense. Already, it notes, three Cleveland-area election officials have been indicted for illegally rigging the recount.
Kennedy's 11,000-word article was Rolling Stone's cover story, published on Thursday of last week.
But if you were looking in the five or six days afterward for follow-up stories, investigations or even a mention in the P-I, its cross-town competitor or just about any other major U.S. newspaper, you were almost certainly disappointed.
To his credit, CNN's Wolf Blitzer aired a brief and not-very-illuminating interview with Kennedy late the next day after the Rolling Stone issue hit the newsstands. There was a brief mention on the Lou Dobbs report later that same evening and MSNBC got around to mentioning the article's assertions several days later.
But for the most part, national and regional newspapers, the major networks and news services have behaved as if the article was never published, that it broke no new ground and there was nothing of interest or significance in it.
Understandably, some readers are asking why. One Whidbey Island resident e-mailed the news editors of the P-I and The Seattle Times simultaneously, asking "Which one of you has the honesty and guts to investigate and report about the charges that Robert Kennedy Jr. has written about in regards to stolen 2004 presidential election?
"That someone could claim that our American electoral process was criminally thwarted should be BIG news."
[...] It is true that there have been reports about voting problems in Ohio since election night. But Kennedy's article is not just old news rehashed. Its 11,000 words, not counting the 208 footnotes, most of which contain Web addresses for links to source information, are certainly overreaching at times. For those with mistrust or partisan fervor against Bush, Kennedy's reporting will sound like evidence of fraud and election tampering that rivals the shenanigans of the worst Third World dictators.
For those who read it with a more balanced view, there is plenty to fuel outrage about imperfections and potential for manipulation of the electoral system.
It's too early to tell whether it will become big news in the same delayed manner the British intelligence memo did. But the titans of the news industry still have things to learn about how news becomes news in the present-day media landscape. Editors will always have responsibility for filtering, and helping readers understand the importance and credibility of news reports.
But nowadays, the American discourse is rightfully in hands other than ours.
Read More >>
Seattle P-I - June 9, 2006
The blogosphere has been abuzz. But in the days since Rolling Stone magazine published a long piece that accused Republicans of widespread and intentional cheating that affected the outcome of the last presidential election, the silence in America's establishment media has been deafening.
In terms of bad news judgment, this could turn out to be the 2006 equivalent of the infamous "Downing Street memo," the London Times story that was initially greeted by the U.S. media with a collective yawn.
Robert Kennedy Jr.'s Rolling Stone mega-essay is titled "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?" It focuses on widespread voting irregularities, questionable tallies and disenfranchising practices, particularly in Ohio, which President Bush won by more than 100,000 votes.
Singling out Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell for much of the blame, Kennedy writes persuasively that enough was awry in that state alone to raise serious questions as to whether Bush really defeated John Kerry in 2004. Blackwell, now a Republican candidate for governor, headed Bush's state re-election campaign at the same time he was constitutionally in charge of the state's voting machinery.
While Kennedy's article perhaps gives far too much weight to suspicious discrepancies between exit polls and the final election outcome, it meticulously asserts and documents questionable methods of purging voter rolls, intentionally created long lines at Democratic polling places, court-defying practices regarding registrations and provisional ballots, a phony terrorist alert on Election Day and final tallies in some counties and precincts that, to Kennedy's way of seeing it, simply don't make sense. Already, it notes, three Cleveland-area election officials have been indicted for illegally rigging the recount.
Kennedy's 11,000-word article was Rolling Stone's cover story, published on Thursday of last week.
But if you were looking in the five or six days afterward for follow-up stories, investigations or even a mention in the P-I, its cross-town competitor or just about any other major U.S. newspaper, you were almost certainly disappointed.
To his credit, CNN's Wolf Blitzer aired a brief and not-very-illuminating interview with Kennedy late the next day after the Rolling Stone issue hit the newsstands. There was a brief mention on the Lou Dobbs report later that same evening and MSNBC got around to mentioning the article's assertions several days later.
But for the most part, national and regional newspapers, the major networks and news services have behaved as if the article was never published, that it broke no new ground and there was nothing of interest or significance in it.
Understandably, some readers are asking why. One Whidbey Island resident e-mailed the news editors of the P-I and The Seattle Times simultaneously, asking "Which one of you has the honesty and guts to investigate and report about the charges that Robert Kennedy Jr. has written about in regards to stolen 2004 presidential election?
"That someone could claim that our American electoral process was criminally thwarted should be BIG news."
[...] It is true that there have been reports about voting problems in Ohio since election night. But Kennedy's article is not just old news rehashed. Its 11,000 words, not counting the 208 footnotes, most of which contain Web addresses for links to source information, are certainly overreaching at times. For those with mistrust or partisan fervor against Bush, Kennedy's reporting will sound like evidence of fraud and election tampering that rivals the shenanigans of the worst Third World dictators.
For those who read it with a more balanced view, there is plenty to fuel outrage about imperfections and potential for manipulation of the electoral system.
It's too early to tell whether it will become big news in the same delayed manner the British intelligence memo did. But the titans of the news industry still have things to learn about how news becomes news in the present-day media landscape. Editors will always have responsibility for filtering, and helping readers understand the importance and credibility of news reports.
But nowadays, the American discourse is rightfully in hands other than ours.
Read More >>
Diebold Lobbyist Donates $10,000 to Blackwell Campaign
09 Jun 2006
Forty-nine of the 85 people who this year have given Ohio secretary of state [and GOP coupmeister] Kenneth Blackwell the maximum $10,000 allowed an individual donor have done so since May 2. The maximum-donor list also includes Mitch Given, who is a registered lobbyist for Diebold Election Systems, one of the vendors of 'voting' machines for election boards in Ohio.
Read More >>
09 Jun 2006
Forty-nine of the 85 people who this year have given Ohio secretary of state [and GOP coupmeister] Kenneth Blackwell the maximum $10,000 allowed an individual donor have done so since May 2. The maximum-donor list also includes Mitch Given, who is a registered lobbyist for Diebold Election Systems, one of the vendors of 'voting' machines for election boards in Ohio.
Read More >>
08 June 2006
Inquiry finds problems in 2004 election
Yahoo News - Jun 8, 2006
WASHINGTON - Many of the voting and counting mishaps of the bizarre 2000 general election were not fixed four years later and brand new problems arose, including a rash of fraudulent voter registrations in some areas, congressional investigators say.
A study of the 2004 election by the Government Accountability Office concludes that paper ballots continued to be used extensively by small jurisdictions, many polling places struggled to manage heavy early voting and new federal requirements for voter identification were applied unevenly by local officials across the country. The GAO released the study Thursday.
Read More >>
Colo. Court to consider parolees voting
Debating the Bugs of High-Tech Voting
Reversing Course on Electronic Voting
Could Giving Voters On-Demand Content Get Them Interested?
One Man, One Vote, One Conspiracy Theory
States join forces against electoral college
Yahoo News - Jun 8, 2006
WASHINGTON - Many of the voting and counting mishaps of the bizarre 2000 general election were not fixed four years later and brand new problems arose, including a rash of fraudulent voter registrations in some areas, congressional investigators say.
A study of the 2004 election by the Government Accountability Office concludes that paper ballots continued to be used extensively by small jurisdictions, many polling places struggled to manage heavy early voting and new federal requirements for voter identification were applied unevenly by local officials across the country. The GAO released the study Thursday.
Read More >>
Colo. Court to consider parolees voting
Debating the Bugs of High-Tech Voting
Reversing Course on Electronic Voting
Could Giving Voters On-Demand Content Get Them Interested?
One Man, One Vote, One Conspiracy Theory
States join forces against electoral college
Op-Scan Voting Machines Miscount Ballots
in Iowa Republican Primary
Bradblog - 6/8/2006
Machine Counts Halted in All Races After Hand Count of Absentee Ballots Finds 128 Vote Margin for Incumbant Instead of 20 Vote Margin for Challenger Reported by Op-Scan System!
[...] After optically scanning absentee ballots in a Republican Primary on Tuesday in Pottawattamie County, a popular, long-time incumbent was trailing a first-time college student candidate by 20 votes. Since that seemed odd, the County Auditor decided to count the absentee ballots by hand and indeed found that the incumbent had won the count instead!... By 128 votes instead of having lost it by 20!
In this case, the new optical scan computers being used for the first time were reportedly made by ES&S.
Read More >>
in Iowa Republican Primary
Bradblog - 6/8/2006
Machine Counts Halted in All Races After Hand Count of Absentee Ballots Finds 128 Vote Margin for Incumbant Instead of 20 Vote Margin for Challenger Reported by Op-Scan System!
[...] After optically scanning absentee ballots in a Republican Primary on Tuesday in Pottawattamie County, a popular, long-time incumbent was trailing a first-time college student candidate by 20 votes. Since that seemed odd, the County Auditor decided to count the absentee ballots by hand and indeed found that the incumbent had won the count instead!... By 128 votes instead of having lost it by 20!
In this case, the new optical scan computers being used for the first time were reportedly made by ES&S.
Read More >>
07 June 2006
Rigged USA Elections Exposed - Videos
Computer Programmer testifies that Tom Feeney (Speaker of the Houe of Florida at the time, currently US Representative representing MY district ) tried to pay h Computer Programmer testifies that Tom Feeney (Speaker of the Houe of Florida at the time, currently US Representative representing MY district ) tried to pay him to rig election vote counts. Watch Video >>
Florida Election Fraud Scandal part 1 - Watch Video >>
Florida Election Fraud Scandal part 2 - Watch Video >>
Computer Programmer testifies that Tom Feeney (Speaker of the Houe of Florida at the time, currently US Representative representing MY district ) tried to pay h Computer Programmer testifies that Tom Feeney (Speaker of the Houe of Florida at the time, currently US Representative representing MY district ) tried to pay him to rig election vote counts. Watch Video >>
Florida Election Fraud Scandal part 1 - Watch Video >>
Florida Election Fraud Scandal part 2 - Watch Video >>
CNN's Lou Dobbs Hammers Electronic Voting
for Third Straight Night!
6/7/2006
It appears that Election Integrity advocates have a staunch new ally in their fight for clean, legitimate elections in the United States of America. And he's hardly a "lefty," a "conspiracy theorist" or a "sour grapes" guy.
Conservative CNN anchor Lou Dobbs hammered on Electronic Voting machines and the company's that own them for the third straight day yesterday on his show, Lou Dobbs Tonight.
Yesterday, his report led off with these clear words: "The security of our elections and the integrity of our democracy is in jeopardy."
While Dobb's initial focus for his reports concerns the foreign ownership of the Sequoia Voting Systems company (recently purchased by Smartmatic, a Venezuelan firm said to be tied to Hugo Chavez), his reports, and the guests he's interviewed, also focus on the broader aspect of private ownership of all the voting machine company's running our public elections, as well as the security vulnerabilities of the hackable and unreliable electronic machines.
Read More >>
for Third Straight Night!
6/7/2006
It appears that Election Integrity advocates have a staunch new ally in their fight for clean, legitimate elections in the United States of America. And he's hardly a "lefty," a "conspiracy theorist" or a "sour grapes" guy.
Conservative CNN anchor Lou Dobbs hammered on Electronic Voting machines and the company's that own them for the third straight day yesterday on his show, Lou Dobbs Tonight.
Yesterday, his report led off with these clear words: "The security of our elections and the integrity of our democracy is in jeopardy."
While Dobb's initial focus for his reports concerns the foreign ownership of the Sequoia Voting Systems company (recently purchased by Smartmatic, a Venezuelan firm said to be tied to Hugo Chavez), his reports, and the guests he's interviewed, also focus on the broader aspect of private ownership of all the voting machine company's running our public elections, as well as the security vulnerabilities of the hackable and unreliable electronic machines.
Read More >>
Private Voting Machines - Lou Dobbs
Lou Dobbs: Foreign Owned Voting
Raw Story - June 8, 2006
Wednesday night's report from Lou Dobbs explains how the Venezuelan election may have been stolen using Smartmatic voting equipment. A Harvard Professor who has studied the election suggest that results could be modified at the central tabulator without detection.
Read More >>
Lou Dobbs: Foreign Owned Voting
Raw Story - June 8, 2006
Wednesday night's report from Lou Dobbs explains how the Venezuelan election may have been stolen using Smartmatic voting equipment. A Harvard Professor who has studied the election suggest that results could be modified at the central tabulator without detection.
Read More >>
Block the Vote, Ohio Remix
NYT Editorial - June 7, 2006
If there was ever a sign of a ruling party in trouble, it is a game plan that calls for trying to win by discouraging voting.
The latest sign that Republicans have an election-year strategy to shut down voter registration drives comes from Ohio. As the state gears up for a very competitive election season this fall, its secretary of state, J. Kenneth Blackwell, has put in place "emergency" regulations that could hit voter registration workers with criminal penalties for perfectly legitimate registration practices. The rules are so draconian they could shut down registration drives in Ohio.
Read More >>
NYT Editorial - June 7, 2006
If there was ever a sign of a ruling party in trouble, it is a game plan that calls for trying to win by discouraging voting.
The latest sign that Republicans have an election-year strategy to shut down voter registration drives comes from Ohio. As the state gears up for a very competitive election season this fall, its secretary of state, J. Kenneth Blackwell, has put in place "emergency" regulations that could hit voter registration workers with criminal penalties for perfectly legitimate registration practices. The rules are so draconian they could shut down registration drives in Ohio.
Read More >>
06 June 2006
CNN's Lou Dobbs Says Private Voting Machine Companies a 'Threat to Our Democracy'
6/6/2006
Yesterday on the Lou Dobb's Show on CNN, Lou's crack reporter, Kitty Pilgrim did the second of a two-part (with more to come we hope) report on the ownership of Sequoia Voting by a foreign conglomerate that is directly owned by Venezuelan nationals with direct ties to the Hugo Chavez regime.
It was fun to see Lou all blustery and nearly spitting as he decried the fact that the US government had allowed a foreign owned company to buy a company that supplies voting machines to states and counties.
===
ADDITIONAL THOUGHT FROM BRAD: It should also be pointed out here, when the questions/concerns about Sequoia's ownership are raised, that it's no different from the "local" privatized ownership of all of the other companies, such as Diebold, ES&S, etc. They are equally, if not more, partisan and their privatized (and secretized) ownership of our public elections should be of equal concern to Lou Dobbs, and all other, mostly rightwingers, who are suddenly concerned about the ownership of Sequoia!
CNN's Jack Cafferty Derides Electronic Voting Machines!
6/6/2006
This was buried in the earlier piece concerning Lou Dobb's coverage of Electronic Voting in which his report alleges that these machines and the private company's that now control our vote are a "threat to democracy". But the later CNN segment with Jack Cafferty deserves to be front and center.
Said Cafferty yesterday (complete must-read transcript of the segment is below!):
THANK GOD someone in the MSM finally gets it! Lord knows Wolf doesn't! See the full transcript below for answers from emailers to Cafferty's question-of-the-day yesterday: "Do you trust the honesty of America's election process?"
Regular BRAD BLOG readers won't be surprised at the answers sent in. Only that CNN actually read them on air! (Thank you, Jack Cafferty!)
Read More >>
6/6/2006
Yesterday on the Lou Dobb's Show on CNN, Lou's crack reporter, Kitty Pilgrim did the second of a two-part (with more to come we hope) report on the ownership of Sequoia Voting by a foreign conglomerate that is directly owned by Venezuelan nationals with direct ties to the Hugo Chavez regime.
It was fun to see Lou all blustery and nearly spitting as he decried the fact that the US government had allowed a foreign owned company to buy a company that supplies voting machines to states and counties.
===
ADDITIONAL THOUGHT FROM BRAD: It should also be pointed out here, when the questions/concerns about Sequoia's ownership are raised, that it's no different from the "local" privatized ownership of all of the other companies, such as Diebold, ES&S, etc. They are equally, if not more, partisan and their privatized (and secretized) ownership of our public elections should be of equal concern to Lou Dobbs, and all other, mostly rightwingers, who are suddenly concerned about the ownership of Sequoia!
CNN's Jack Cafferty Derides Electronic Voting Machines!
6/6/2006
This was buried in the earlier piece concerning Lou Dobb's coverage of Electronic Voting in which his report alleges that these machines and the private company's that now control our vote are a "threat to democracy". But the later CNN segment with Jack Cafferty deserves to be front and center.
Said Cafferty yesterday (complete must-read transcript of the segment is below!):
"The arguments against the machines include these: they're vulnerable to software tampering, they don't keep an easily recountable printed record, and they may miscount, switch or not record votes at all. Other than that, they're great.
Defenders of these machines say that most of the problems occur because of hasty setup or poor training of poll workers. What's the message there, that it's OK as long as it's one of those two reasons?"
THANK GOD someone in the MSM finally gets it! Lord knows Wolf doesn't! See the full transcript below for answers from emailers to Cafferty's question-of-the-day yesterday: "Do you trust the honesty of America's election process?"
Regular BRAD BLOG readers won't be surprised at the answers sent in. Only that CNN actually read them on air! (Thank you, Jack Cafferty!)
Read More >>
05 June 2006
Votejacking 101
Scott Thill - Huffington Post
After breathing in its recent effluvia, I've decided that the labyrinthine mechanism of election grifting deserves its own segment. Well, the truth is that it deserves its own section in the papers or show on the networks, but America will win the World Cup long before that happens. To that end, I'd like to unveil Votejacking 101, a how-to guide for those looking to avoid election destablization. Courtesy of, who else, the Bush administration and its various network of dependents. Of which there are many. We're talking Mormon-sized families. Anyway, first lesson up is a simple one:
[...] Remember, without a functioning voting system, America is just another mafia kept in line by a gripload of bigshots at the top, and innocent bystanders everywhere else.
Read More >>
Scott Thill - Huffington Post
After breathing in its recent effluvia, I've decided that the labyrinthine mechanism of election grifting deserves its own segment. Well, the truth is that it deserves its own section in the papers or show on the networks, but America will win the World Cup long before that happens. To that end, I'd like to unveil Votejacking 101, a how-to guide for those looking to avoid election destablization. Courtesy of, who else, the Bush administration and its various network of dependents. Of which there are many. We're talking Mormon-sized families. Anyway, first lesson up is a simple one:
[...] Remember, without a functioning voting system, America is just another mafia kept in line by a gripload of bigshots at the top, and innocent bystanders everywhere else.
Read More >>
04 June 2006
Spate of lawsuits target e-voting
USA TODAY - 6/4/2006
DENVER — Electronic voting machines, adopted widely after the disputed Florida ballot count in the 2000 presidential election, are under legal attack as primary election season heats up.
Lawsuits have been filed in at least six states, the most recent last week in Colorado, to block the purchase or use of computerized machines.
Voter Action, a non-partisan advocacy group, led the challenge filed Thursday against the state of Colorado and nine counties, as well as similar lawsuits in California and Arizona this spring and New Mexico last year. Court actions by others targeted the devices in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Most of the suits argue that the machines are vulnerable to software tampering, don't keep an easily recountable printed record and may miscount, switch or not record votes and even add phantom votes.
In California, one of eight states holding primaries Tuesday, a lawsuit in March led several counties to switch to printed ballots counted with optical scanners, a competing technology. Six of the eight states will have some electronic balloting, which records votes by touch screens.
Texas and Illinois had some problems using electronic voting machines during their March primaries.
About one-third of the USA's 3,114 counties use some electronic systems, according to Election Data Services, a consulting group. It says half the counties use optical scanners that read dots or marks that voters pencil in on ballots.
The rest vote by other means, mostly hand-counted paper ballots in smaller communities but also lever-type machines in New York and Connecticut.
Read More >>
USA TODAY - 6/4/2006
DENVER — Electronic voting machines, adopted widely after the disputed Florida ballot count in the 2000 presidential election, are under legal attack as primary election season heats up.
Lawsuits have been filed in at least six states, the most recent last week in Colorado, to block the purchase or use of computerized machines.
Voter Action, a non-partisan advocacy group, led the challenge filed Thursday against the state of Colorado and nine counties, as well as similar lawsuits in California and Arizona this spring and New Mexico last year. Court actions by others targeted the devices in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Most of the suits argue that the machines are vulnerable to software tampering, don't keep an easily recountable printed record and may miscount, switch or not record votes and even add phantom votes.
In California, one of eight states holding primaries Tuesday, a lawsuit in March led several counties to switch to printed ballots counted with optical scanners, a competing technology. Six of the eight states will have some electronic balloting, which records votes by touch screens.
Texas and Illinois had some problems using electronic voting machines during their March primaries.
About one-third of the USA's 3,114 counties use some electronic systems, according to Election Data Services, a consulting group. It says half the counties use optical scanners that read dots or marks that voters pencil in on ballots.
The rest vote by other means, mostly hand-counted paper ballots in smaller communities but also lever-type machines in New York and Connecticut.
Read More >>
02 June 2006
Was the 2004 Election Stolen?
Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House
ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR. - Rolling Stone Magazine
The complete article, with Web-only citations, follows. Talk about it in our National Affairs blog, or see exclusive documents, sources, charts and commentary.
Like many Americans, I spent the evening of the 2004 election watching the returns on television and wondering how the exit polls, which predicted an overwhelming victory for John Kerry, had gotten it so wrong. By midnight, the official tallies showed a decisive lead for George Bush -- and the next day, lacking enough legal evidence to contest the results, Kerry conceded. Republicans derided anyone who expressed doubts about Bush's victory as nut cases in ''tinfoil hats,'' while the national media, with few exceptions, did little to question the validity of the election. The Washington Post immediately dismissed allegations of fraud as ''conspiracy theories,''(1) and The New York Times declared that ''there is no evidence of vote theft or errors on a large scale.''(2)
But despite the media blackout, indications continued to emerge that something deeply troubling had taken place in 2004. Nearly half of the 6 million American voters living abroad(3) never received their ballots -- or received them too late to vote(4) -- after the Pentagon unaccountably shut down a state-of-the-art Web site used to file overseas registrations.(5) A consulting firm called Sproul & Associates, which was hired by the Republican National Committee to register voters in six battleground states,(6) was discovered shredding Democratic registrations.(7) In New Mexico, which was decided by 5,988 votes,(8) malfunctioning machines mysteriously failed to properly register a presidential vote on more than 20,000 ballots.(9) Nationwide, according to the federal commission charged with implementing election reforms, as many as 1 million ballots were spoiled by faulty voting equipment -- roughly one for every 100 cast.(10)
The reports were especially disturbing in Ohio, the critical battleground state that clinched Bush's victory in the electoral college. Officials there purged tens of thousands of eligible voters from the rolls, neglected to process registration cards generated by Democratic voter drives, shortchanged Democratic precincts when they allocated voting machines and illegally derailed a recount that could have given Kerry the presidency. A precinct in an evangelical church in Miami County recorded an impossibly high turnout of ninety-eight percent, while a polling place in inner-city Cleveland recorded an equally impossible turnout of only seven percent. In Warren County, GOP election officials even invented a nonexistent terrorist threat to bar the media from monitoring the official vote count.(11)
Any election, of course, will have anomalies. America's voting system is a messy patchwork of polling rules run mostly by county and city officials. ''We didn't have one election for president in 2004,'' says Robert Pastor, who directs the Center for Democracy and Election Management at American University. ''We didn't have fifty elections. We actually had 13,000 elections run by 13,000 independent, quasi-sovereign counties and municipalities.''
But what is most anomalous about the irregularities in 2004 was their decidedly partisan bent: Almost without exception they hurt John Kerry and benefited George Bush. After carefully examining the evidence, I've become convinced that the president's party mounted a massive, coordinated campaign to subvert the will of the people in 2004. Across the country, Republican election officials and party stalwarts employed a wide range of illegal and unethical tactics to fix the election. A review of the available data reveals that in Ohio alone, at least 357,000 voters, the overwhelming majority of them Democratic, were prevented from casting ballots or did not have their votes counted in 2004(12) -- more than enough to shift the results of an election decided by 118,601 votes.(13) (See Ohio's Missing Votes) In what may be the single most astounding fact from the election, one in every four Ohio citizens who registered to vote in 2004 showed up at the polls only to discover that they were not listed on the rolls, thanks to GOP efforts to stem the unprecedented flood of Democrats eager to cast ballots.(14) And that doesn?t even take into account the troubling evidence of outright fraud, which indicates that upwards of 80,000 votes for Kerry were counted instead for Bush. That alone is a swing of more than 160,000 votes -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.(15)
Read More >>
Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House
ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR. - Rolling Stone Magazine
The complete article, with Web-only citations, follows. Talk about it in our National Affairs blog, or see exclusive documents, sources, charts and commentary.
Like many Americans, I spent the evening of the 2004 election watching the returns on television and wondering how the exit polls, which predicted an overwhelming victory for John Kerry, had gotten it so wrong. By midnight, the official tallies showed a decisive lead for George Bush -- and the next day, lacking enough legal evidence to contest the results, Kerry conceded. Republicans derided anyone who expressed doubts about Bush's victory as nut cases in ''tinfoil hats,'' while the national media, with few exceptions, did little to question the validity of the election. The Washington Post immediately dismissed allegations of fraud as ''conspiracy theories,''(1) and The New York Times declared that ''there is no evidence of vote theft or errors on a large scale.''(2)
But despite the media blackout, indications continued to emerge that something deeply troubling had taken place in 2004. Nearly half of the 6 million American voters living abroad(3) never received their ballots -- or received them too late to vote(4) -- after the Pentagon unaccountably shut down a state-of-the-art Web site used to file overseas registrations.(5) A consulting firm called Sproul & Associates, which was hired by the Republican National Committee to register voters in six battleground states,(6) was discovered shredding Democratic registrations.(7) In New Mexico, which was decided by 5,988 votes,(8) malfunctioning machines mysteriously failed to properly register a presidential vote on more than 20,000 ballots.(9) Nationwide, according to the federal commission charged with implementing election reforms, as many as 1 million ballots were spoiled by faulty voting equipment -- roughly one for every 100 cast.(10)
The reports were especially disturbing in Ohio, the critical battleground state that clinched Bush's victory in the electoral college. Officials there purged tens of thousands of eligible voters from the rolls, neglected to process registration cards generated by Democratic voter drives, shortchanged Democratic precincts when they allocated voting machines and illegally derailed a recount that could have given Kerry the presidency. A precinct in an evangelical church in Miami County recorded an impossibly high turnout of ninety-eight percent, while a polling place in inner-city Cleveland recorded an equally impossible turnout of only seven percent. In Warren County, GOP election officials even invented a nonexistent terrorist threat to bar the media from monitoring the official vote count.(11)
Any election, of course, will have anomalies. America's voting system is a messy patchwork of polling rules run mostly by county and city officials. ''We didn't have one election for president in 2004,'' says Robert Pastor, who directs the Center for Democracy and Election Management at American University. ''We didn't have fifty elections. We actually had 13,000 elections run by 13,000 independent, quasi-sovereign counties and municipalities.''
But what is most anomalous about the irregularities in 2004 was their decidedly partisan bent: Almost without exception they hurt John Kerry and benefited George Bush. After carefully examining the evidence, I've become convinced that the president's party mounted a massive, coordinated campaign to subvert the will of the people in 2004. Across the country, Republican election officials and party stalwarts employed a wide range of illegal and unethical tactics to fix the election. A review of the available data reveals that in Ohio alone, at least 357,000 voters, the overwhelming majority of them Democratic, were prevented from casting ballots or did not have their votes counted in 2004(12) -- more than enough to shift the results of an election decided by 118,601 votes.(13) (See Ohio's Missing Votes) In what may be the single most astounding fact from the election, one in every four Ohio citizens who registered to vote in 2004 showed up at the polls only to discover that they were not listed on the rolls, thanks to GOP efforts to stem the unprecedented flood of Democrats eager to cast ballots.(14) And that doesn?t even take into account the troubling evidence of outright fraud, which indicates that upwards of 80,000 votes for Kerry were counted instead for Bush. That alone is a swing of more than 160,000 votes -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.(15)
Read More >>
How They Stole Ohio
The GOP 4-step Recipe to 'Blackwell' the USA in 2008
Abracadabra: Three Million Votes Vanish
Greg Palast - Buzzflash - June 2, 2006
Heads up! Catch Robert Kennedy Jr., Mike Papantonio and Greg Palast this next Saturday, June 10th, on Air America's 'Ring of Fire' on the shoplifting of the last election & and the next one.
This is a fact: On November 2, 2004, in the State of Ohio, 239,127 votes for President of the United States were dumped, rejected, blocked, lost and left to rot uncounted.
And not just anyone's vote. Dive into the electoral dumpster and these "spoiled" votes have a very dark color indeed.
In another life, I taught statistics. And these statistics stank: the raw data tells us that if you are a Black voter, the chance of you losing your vote to technical errors in voting machinery is 900% higher than if you were a white voter.
Any guesses as to whom those African-Americans chose for president on those junked ballots? Check Ohio's racial demographics, do the numbers, and there it is: Kerry won Ohio. And that, too, is a fact. A fact that could not get reported in the USA.
But the shoplifting of those votes in Ohio was just the tip of the theft-berg. November 2, 2004 was a national ballot-box bonfire. In total, over three million votes (3,600,380 to be exact) were cast -- marked, punched, pulled -- YET NEVER COUNTED. I'm not talking about the Ukraine or Uganda. I'm talking about the United States of America "with liberty and justice for all."
Read More >>
The GOP 4-step Recipe to 'Blackwell' the USA in 2008
Abracadabra: Three Million Votes Vanish
Greg Palast - Buzzflash - June 2, 2006
Heads up! Catch Robert Kennedy Jr., Mike Papantonio and Greg Palast this next Saturday, June 10th, on Air America's 'Ring of Fire' on the shoplifting of the last election & and the next one.
This is a fact: On November 2, 2004, in the State of Ohio, 239,127 votes for President of the United States were dumped, rejected, blocked, lost and left to rot uncounted.
And not just anyone's vote. Dive into the electoral dumpster and these "spoiled" votes have a very dark color indeed.
In another life, I taught statistics. And these statistics stank: the raw data tells us that if you are a Black voter, the chance of you losing your vote to technical errors in voting machinery is 900% higher than if you were a white voter.
Any guesses as to whom those African-Americans chose for president on those junked ballots? Check Ohio's racial demographics, do the numbers, and there it is: Kerry won Ohio. And that, too, is a fact. A fact that could not get reported in the USA.
But the shoplifting of those votes in Ohio was just the tip of the theft-berg. November 2, 2004 was a national ballot-box bonfire. In total, over three million votes (3,600,380 to be exact) were cast -- marked, punched, pulled -- YET NEVER COUNTED. I'm not talking about the Ukraine or Uganda. I'm talking about the United States of America "with liberty and justice for all."
Read More >>
01 June 2006
RFK Jr. To question 2004 presidential election
in major Rolling Stone feature article!
A damning and detailed feature article, written by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for Rolling Stone and documenting evidence of the theft of the 2004 Presidential Election is set to hit newstands this Friday, The BRAD BLOG can now confirm. The online version of the article will be posted tomorrow (Thursday) morning.
The article -- headlined on the cover as "Did Bush Steal the 2004 Election?: How 350,000 Votes Disappeared in Ohio" -- has been several months in development and will contend that a concerted effort was undertaken by high-level Republican officials to steal the Election in Ohio -- and thus the country -- in 2004!
Kennedy told The BRAD BLOG this morning that "the best evidence says the Republicans succeeded" in their plan.
He writes in the 10-page long article, and confirmed to us today, that evidence shows Ohio Sec. of State J. Kenneth Blackwell was "certainly in on" the scheme, and there are indications that the effort went all the way up to the White House.
Kennedy, who is co-host of Ring of Fire, a weekend show on Air America Radio, is an environmental attorney and the son of the late Robert F. Kennedy. This is his first public foray into the realm of Election Fraud, Election Integrity, Electronic Voting and, in particular, the questionable results of Election 2004.
A major publicity push is currently in the works to accompany the feature story which is sure to get the attention of more than a few D.C. and Buckeye State pols in addition to the mainstream media who have, of late, begun reporting more frequently on the litany of concerns and now-documented evidence that new electronic voting machines are hackable through a number of means.
Several public appearances are currently being scheduled for Kennedy in the coming weeks, including an appearance on The Colbert Report currently scheduled for Monday, June 12.
Read More >>
in major Rolling Stone feature article!
A damning and detailed feature article, written by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for Rolling Stone and documenting evidence of the theft of the 2004 Presidential Election is set to hit newstands this Friday, The BRAD BLOG can now confirm. The online version of the article will be posted tomorrow (Thursday) morning.
The article -- headlined on the cover as "Did Bush Steal the 2004 Election?: How 350,000 Votes Disappeared in Ohio" -- has been several months in development and will contend that a concerted effort was undertaken by high-level Republican officials to steal the Election in Ohio -- and thus the country -- in 2004!
Kennedy told The BRAD BLOG this morning that "the best evidence says the Republicans succeeded" in their plan.
He writes in the 10-page long article, and confirmed to us today, that evidence shows Ohio Sec. of State J. Kenneth Blackwell was "certainly in on" the scheme, and there are indications that the effort went all the way up to the White House.
Kennedy, who is co-host of Ring of Fire, a weekend show on Air America Radio, is an environmental attorney and the son of the late Robert F. Kennedy. This is his first public foray into the realm of Election Fraud, Election Integrity, Electronic Voting and, in particular, the questionable results of Election 2004.
A major publicity push is currently in the works to accompany the feature story which is sure to get the attention of more than a few D.C. and Buckeye State pols in addition to the mainstream media who have, of late, begun reporting more frequently on the litany of concerns and now-documented evidence that new electronic voting machines are hackable through a number of means.
Several public appearances are currently being scheduled for Kennedy in the coming weeks, including an appearance on The Colbert Report currently scheduled for Monday, June 12.
Read More >>
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