The 2000, 2002, and 2004 elections were clearly stolen by the Republicans, led by Karl Rove and his Nazi operatives. John Kerry showed himself to be a ringer; his cowardly refusal to contest the 2004 election proved beyond doubt that he was a shill for the demonic cabal, pretending to be a genuine Democratic candidate. The fact that the votes of the American people in 2006 were allowed to be counted somewhat fairly does not change the fact of the previous rigging of elections by the Republicans. Contrary to Democratic leaders and self-appointed "progressive" pundits, we must continue to work for election reform:
- How American Elections Became a Criminal Enterprise I
- How American Elections Became a Criminal Enterprise II
- Bobby Kennedy, Jr.: How the 2004 Election Was Stolen
- Fitrakis Exposes Manjoo Lies
- The Specifics of Republican Election Rigging
- Kerry Actually Won the 2004 Election!
Even in the 2006 election, in many Republican stronghold states and precincts GOP rigging of elections most likely occurred--investigations are still pending.
In the June 6, 2006 U.S. House special run-off election in California's 50th congressional district, SD County Registrar of Voters, Mikel Haas, apparently approved by California's Secretary of State Bruce McPherson, openly admitted that tamperable and hackable electronic voting machines in San Diego County were completely comprimised by sending the machines home with poll workers, in some cases for weeks at a time, prior to the election.
Unfortunately, like Kerry, Francine Busby folded her tents and refused to contest a clearly rigged election. In the 2006 regular election, there appear to have been election irregularities in the Busy-Bilbray race again. Whether a legitimate investigation will be carried remains to be seen.
If we're to have any chance of stopping the continuing Republican theft of elections in the forseeable future, we must find Democratic or third-party candidates willing and courageous enough to contest an election when that becomes necessary.
Some otherwise intelligent progressives feel--for all the wrong reasons--that contesting elections is unsporting or is the sign of a mean-spirited conspiracy-nut mentality. Ernest Partridge, Co-Editor of the Crisis Papers, quite aptly calls these people "gulliberals." The list includes Al Franken, Paul Begalla, Arianna Huffington, David Corn, Bernie Sanders, and some writers for Salon.com and Mother Jones. How much evidence of criminal behavior do these so-called liberals require before they realize that stealing elections is the same kind of Bush junta behavior as lying about weapons of mass destruction, domestic spying, and rampant criminal behavior in all arenas.
The fact that the cabal has pushed computerized voting to the extent they have--making federal money available, meeting in secret in 2004 to plan a propaganda blitz, involving all the conspirators in the criminal action--this made it clear that they saw computerized voting as the way to steal any election they choose to.
One of a series of studies indicating that current touch-screen technology is seriously flawed is a published study that documents a host of security flaws in a leading touch-screen voting system. This report has caused election officials across the United States to question the use of electronic voting machines. The report comes from a team of computer experts from Johns Hopkins and Rice University who examined the “source code,” the software that runs the Diebold AccuVote-TS voting system used in 37 states.
In light of this recent study, Representative Rush Holt (D-N.J.) stated that “unless Congress acts to pass legislation that would make sure that all computer voting machines have a paper record that voters can verify when they cast their ballots, voters and election officials will have no way of knowing whether the computers are counting votes properly.” Holt has introduced a new bill, H.R. 2239, which would require computerized voting machines to provide voter-verified audit trails.
In the presidential election of 2000, our right to elect our leaders was hijacked and we are now being ruled by a junta who rigged the election in Florida through criminal action and perpetrated a coup d'etat with the complicity of the Supreme Court.
It is absolutely imperative that we fight to regain our voting rights and take back our country from this puppet of the demonic cabal. As Thomas Paine indicated, without our voting rights we are reduced to the status of slaves.
Hitler rose to power through a rigged election in 1933 Germany in exactly the same way Bush II did in 2000 America. The cowed German people in 1933 refused to rise up against Hitler and the Nazi horror ensued.
The growing list of Bush II's terrorist acts against the American people and the world now stares us in the face. Decent Americans are ashamed to view Dubya's face on TV or in newspapers and realize that we have allowed this mindless gangster to remain in power.
"If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal."
Emma Goldman
The Menace of Electronic Manipulation of Voting Data
In the 2000, the midterm 2002, and the 2004 elections, electronic manipulation of voting data meant that our democratic right to have our votes counted fairly and accurately was taken from us by the Bush junta.
"If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal." |
Greg Palast, the investigative reporter for BBC and the Observer, was the first to expose the 2000 Florida vote crimes. He discovered that ninety-four thousand (94,000) people -- over half of them African American --were put on a "scrub list" in Florida by then Secretary of State Katherine Harris and Governor Jeb Bush. This criminal behavior resulted in the people on the scrub list being blocked from voting in the 2000 election.
When the NAACP sued the voting data company, ChoicePoint's DBT, for violating the civil rights of thousands of Florida black citizens, they won their suit. DBT admitted that only 5% of the people listed on the "scrub list" were unqualified to vote. In other words, 89,300 voters on the 2000 scrub list should be re-entered on the Florida election rolls as qualified voters. Florida did not rectify this mistake and reinstate the illegally disqualified voters by the time of the 2002 election. And as yet there is no evidence to indicate that they have been reinstated for the 2004 election.
The fact that Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris were never prosecuted for this heinous crime is part of the Bush II junta's long line of illegal activities, which include the much delayed-prosecution of such criminals as Bush friend, Ken Lay.
Because of the use of electronic voting, we can't be sure that key races in 2002--such as that of Mondale in Minnesota and Carnahan in Missouri and the entire 2004 election--were not the result of massive vote fraud. We can be sure that the last Florida gubernatorial race was completely fixed. In Georgia, the supposed defeat of Democratic incumbent and war-hero Max Cleland by Saxby Chambliss was very likely a vote-rigging effort on the part of the state officials in charge.
November 2002, Baldwin County, Alabama - No one at the voting machine company can explain the mystery votes that changed after polling places had closed, flipping the election from the Democratic winner to a Republican in the Alabama governor’s race. “Something happened. I don’t have enough intelligence to say exactly what,” said Mark Kelley of ES&S. Baldwin County results showed that Democrat Don Siegelman earned enough votes to win the state of Alabama. All the observers went home. The next morning, however, 6,300 of Siegelman’s votes inexplicably had disappeared, and the election was handed to Republican Bob Riley. A recount was requested, but denied. |
In a recent interview with Guerilla News Network, Greg Palast provided even more disturbing information about the Bush junta vote scam:
"What’s new on the election story? It’s grim. Our president has signed the Help America Vote Act. When George W. Bush is going to help me vote, I’m concerned.
"They’re pushing it to go digital, and I think a lot of people are getting distracted worrying about the hacking. The real game is what the Civil Rights Commission calls the “no count,” which is machines that don’t work, power failures, machines that lock up. Hey, you have a laptop, right? Your presidency is hanging on it. This isn’t about whether the machines work or not—they work perfectly. That’s where I investigated. I went into Broward County’s white precinct where touch screen voting works just wonderful, like a coconut oil massage. Real smooth. And you go into the black precincts and it’s like plantation whips brought out in digital form. Precincts were shut down for hours while they told people, come back tomorrow. Power failures. You name it. In the black community, thousands of votes were lost in Broward County with the touch screen vote.
"In the new edition of the book, I am revealing something that was discovered by the Civil Rights Commission in their raw data. 1.9 million votes were cast and never counted in the last election. Thrown in the friggin’ garbage cans. Half of those were cast by African-Americans. And it’s state after state after state, with all kinds of different machines. The biggest game they play is saying “blacks don’t have education, they can’t figure out the ballot.” That’s a wonderful little racist out. If you give black people the same machines, they have the same vote count as white people. Election supervisors told me they told the Jebster about it beforehand. You can’t find this stuff in mainstream newspapers. Ted Koppel runs this story and it’s, “blacks is too dumb to figure out how to vote.” Dig: You’re one thousand times more likely to lose your vote if you’re black than if you’re white."
At present, there is no effective way to guard against election fraud when electronic, touch screen voting is used in specific precincts. For example, votes can easily be lost through "software glitches" and Democratic votes can mysteriously become Republican votes and no one can prove the rigging took place.
The "touch" screen computers are made by ES&S, the vendor chosen by Katherine Harris, then Florida Secretary of State and current congressperson. The lobbyist who sold that company's system to Jeb and Katherine was Sandy Mortham, founder of Women for Jeb and Harris' predecessor as Secretary of State. Mortham was the person who instigated the scam in 1998 to find black voters who could be disqualified.
"When you become entitled to exercise the right of voting for public officers, let it be impressed on your mind that God commands you to choose for rulers, 'just men who will rule in the fear of God.' The preservation of [our] government depends on the faithful discharge of this Duty; if the citizens neglect their Duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made, not for the public good so much as for selfish or local purposes; corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the Laws; the public revenues will be squandered on unworthy men; and the rights of the citizen will be violated or disregarded. If [our] government fails to secure public prosperity and happiness, it must be because the citizens neglect the Divine Commands, and elect bad men to make and administer the Laws." |
The Republican-dominated Congress has pushed through new legislation that gives the Secretaries of State almost total control in purging voters from the election rolls. Previously, local election boards controlled this process and representatives of both Parties in local precincts watched the process carefully. With these new laws, there is a significant threat that partisan Secretaries of States will create voting rolls that favor Republicans.
Three companies (Election System & Software-ES&S, Diebold, and Sequoia) tabulate as much as 85 percent of the vote in the United States. These voting machine companies are privately held, with the second largest (Sequoia) foreign-owned.Key members of active political campaigns own stock in some of the voting machine companies, constituting an obvious conflict of interest. For example, Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) and his campaign treasurer, Michael R. McCarthy, hold top executive positions and have investments in companies that produce the machines that counted Hagel's votes for the 1996 and 2002 elections. A number of investigators of voting machine "glitches" have discovered that most often these benefit Republican candidates rather than Democratic candidates.
"The vitality of America's democracy depends on the fairness and accuracy of America's elections," President George W. Bush said as he signed Help America Vote Act into law on October 29, 2002. This act allocated $3.9 billion in federal money to the states over the next three years to buy electronic voting machines to replace paper ballot voting systems. It's clear from Bush's endorsement of this bill that it's part of the overall Republican game plan to deliver all electoral precincts into the hands of the voting-machine manipulators.
The handful of election technology companies that have positioned themselves to reap the bulk of the money from the legislation all have direct ties to the Republican party in general and to Republican politicians in particular. The most expensive direct recording electronic (DRE) system (computerized touch-screen voting machine) is the one these companies are pushing most aggressively across the United States.DRE computerized touch-screen voting machines offer no real-time verification of a vote beyond what appears on the screen. The source codes behind these machines are proprietary to the company that makes them. Any computer programmer knows that it is a simple matter to add a line of code to switch votes from one candidate to another or lose those votes you don't want recorded.
Palm Beach County, Florida, the county plagued by the chad-recount issue in November 2000, spent $14.5 million in 2002 to purchase 3800 new touch-screen voting machines from Sequoia Voting Systems.
Florida seems to be the vote fraud capital of the United States. It's clear that's why Florida--with Jeb Bush as governor--was chosen by the Bush family controllers as the scene for the Stealing of the Presidency, 2000.
From 1970-1989, Journalists James and Kenneth Collier discovered a string of vote fraud activities going on in a number of Florida counties. The brothers actually managed to videotape members of the League of Women voters forging ballots and found hard evidence that Shouptronics and Printomatic voting machines were rigged in the Dade County Elections. Their book Votescam: The Stealing of America was the result of their long-term investigations.Along with attorney Ellis Rubin, the Colliers turned over the evidence to the Assistant State Attorney for Florida. Unfortunately, that happened to be Janet Reno, who killed the investigation immediately. Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes taped a segment on the Dade County Vote Fraud, but it never aired.
Independent tests on computerized touch-screen voting machines and other electronic voting technology have shown repeatedly that there is no way to assure that vote tampering has not occurred at any step in the election process.A 1988 test of Illinois voting machines worked with tens of thousands of ballots instead of the few dozen normally used for the accuracy testing. The results: over one fourth of the machines which had passed the standard accuracy test were found to have mistabulated the larger test vote results.
There is no good reason to change from a paper ballot system to a computerized voting system--except if you plan to rig elections. Most of Europe still uses paper ballots. In Canada's last national election, paper ballots were hand-counted in 4 hours. Yet today, 98% of votes in America are tabulated by voting machines.
"It’s not the voting that’s democracy, it’s the counting. |
| There are a number of dedicated people who investigate the possibility of voting machine fraud on an ongoing basis. One of the most courageous investigators of vote fraud is Bev Harris, who demonstrated how voting machines are being used to rig elections
Harris has proven that votes can be changed, passwords can be bypassed, and audit trails can be altered. |  |
Sandeep Atwal's provocative article How George W. Bush Won the 2004 Presidential Election is must reading for Americans intent on taking back their voting rights from the Bush II junta.
Rebecca Mercuri, a Research Fellow at the John F.
Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University and president of Notable Software, testifies frequently before Congress and numerous state agencies about computer fraud. She states:
"I am adamantly opposed to the use of fully electronic or Internet-based systems for use in anonymous balloting and vote tabulation applications. The reasons for my opposition are manyfold, and are expressed in my writings as well as those of other well-respected computer security experts. At the present time, it is my strong recommendation that all election officials REFRAIN from procuring ANY system that does not provide an indisputable paper ballot."
Mercuri has developed a computerized voting system model
Additional papers:
The last article listed includes guidelines as to what to do if you believe an election has been corrupted by voting equipment, including contacting Ms. Mercuri herself.
As with other anomalies (read criminal acts) occurring under the Bush regime, "the press" has been strangely silent about the the failure of exit polling in the 2000 elections, and the dismissal of exit polling results in the 2004 election.
Up till 1964, the major news groups did their own exit polling and broadcast independent election predictions. In 1990, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CNN and the Associated Press combined their exit polling and news prediction operations and formed the Voter News Service (VNS). Until the 2002 election all six organizations used the same data and the same models. The top-secret private VNS system somehow mysteriously "failed" in the 2000 election, incorrectly predicting one candidate the winner only to announce the other candidate the winner within a short time--and then reversing itself throughout the evening.
On January 14, 2003, Voter News Service was scrapped by the member news organizations, supposedly because of "technical glitches." With the next election already less than two years away, some analysts are speculating that news outlets will simply rely on the Associated Press's system. The networks may wind up devising a new system based somewhat on the old VNS.
The Republicans made sure that any effective exit poll system in place for the 2004 election was dismissed as innacurate. With a functioning exit poll, it's too easy to tell if the fix is in. An examination of exit polling and pre-election polling versus election results showed that the Republicans rigged the 2004 election.One of the eeriest sights on television on election night, 2000--if you were watching--was papa Bush, mama Bush and Junior all sitting in their living room and expressing absolute certainty that Florida had not--contrary to television productions--gone to Gore. It was as if they KNEW that voting irregularities and recounts and gang action were taking place in Florida--even before it was announced on the air waves. And, of course, they DID KNOW--because brother Jebby had fixed the election in Florida.
"Those who cast the vote decide nothing, those who count the vote decide everything."
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We must act now to insure that the Bush II junta does not rig the 2008 elections. One of the criminal tactics Republicans have used--and may likely use again in 2008--is voter intimidation at the polling stations. In the 2000, 2002, and 2004 elections, the Republican Party posted thousands of party functionaries at polling stations in various parts of the country on election day to intimidate working class and minority voters from casting their ballots. The Republican thugs carry out this anti-democratic operation under the cover of “poll watching.”Investigations into the 2000 and 2004 election crises in Florida exposed pervasive methods of election fraud and discrimination that disenfranchised tens of thousands of minority and working class voters.
The same criminal forces within the Republican Party that organized the theft of the White House in 2000 are currently setting up their 2008 attacks on American citizens' right to vote.
"The ballot is stronger than the bullet." |
For the upcoming 2008 election, we must try to find a strong independent candidate for the presidency who will have the courage to fight for and put in place election safeguards. She or he must lead the attack on the Bush junta's criminal behavior and make sure that any instance of election fraud--prior to and during the 2008 election--is investigated strenuously.
"It is possible to exclude men from the right of voting, but it is impossible to exclude them from the right of rebelling against that exclusion; and when all other rights are taken away the right of rebellion is made perfect. |
By Norman D. Livergood -- Update: 10/10/06 -- Originially presented in September of 2004
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Updates and Reference:
