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Have anybody found any voting anomalies in 2004 Ohio that didn't favor only the Repugs?
In less than two weeks, many will find out just what type of banana republic we live in today...
A loaves & fishes/Holy Ghost victory for the GOP in November?
by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
October 17, 2006
The Free PressThe polls all point to a Democratic sweep in November. The news pours in about pedophile Republicans and Team Bush contempt for their fundamentalist bedmates. Iraq implodes. Deficits soar. Katrina lingers. Scandal is everywhere.
On the other hand, there are rumors of an "October Surprise." An attack on Iran. A new terror incident. Osama finally captured.
Gas prices are down, the stock market up.
None of it dampens the Democrats' euphoria. They think they are about to win. In conventional terms, they should.
But think again. Please.
It will take just two Biblical fixes for the GOP to keep the Congress, and thus solidify their power in this country, possibly forever: a loaves and fishes vote count, a Holy Ghost turnout.
We coined the phrase "loaves and fishes vote count" to describe the tally in Gahanna, Ohio, 2004. This infamous precinct in suburban Columbus registered 4258 votes for George W. Bush where just 638 people voted. The blessed event occurred at a fundamentalist church run by a close ally of the Reverend Jerry Falwell.
These numbers were later "corrected." But they reflect a much larger reality: the 2004 election was stolen with scores of dirty tricks for whose second coming the Democrats have yet to fully prepare.
In the two years since the fraudulent defeat of John Kerry, we've unearthed an unholy arsenal by which that election was stolen. They include: outright intimidation, wrongful elimination of registered voters, theft, selective deployment of (often faulty) voting machines, absentee ballots without Kerry's name on them, absentee ballots pre-punched for Bush, absentee ballots never mailed, touch screens that lit up for Bush when Kerry was chosen, lines for black voters five hours long while white voters a mile away voted in fifteen minutes, tens of thousands of provisional ballots pitched summarily in the trash, alleged ex-felons illegally told they could not vote, Hispanic precincts with no Spanish-speaking poll workers, deliberate misinformation on official web sites…and that's not even the tip of an iceberg whose bottom we may never see.
Thanks to a federal lawsuit, we have finally been able to look at some of the actual ballots from Ohio 2004. Just for starters, researchers Stuart Wright and Dr. Richard Hayes Phillips have found a precinct in Delaware County where 359 consecutive voters allegedly cast ballots for Bush. Dr. Ron Baiman found another precinct in Clermont County where a random inspection found 36 straight replacement ballots, a phenomenon that can be accomplished only by divine intervention or outright fraud.
These initial snippets have been unearthed with no cooperation or participation from the Democratic Party. The official Democratic spin is that they have "looked into the matter." But public records indicate that they have yet to visit the actual ballot storage facilities to examine the public records from the 2004 election.
In sum, we see no indication that the Democrats are prepared for the inevitable…that Karl Rove will steal again, and more, in 2006.
In Ohio alone, four election boards have already eliminated some 500,000 voters since the 2000 election---ten percent of the state's electorate---from the registration rolls in four Democratic counties. No similar purges have occurred in rural Republican counties. The Democrats have said or done very little about it.
To date there is no logical explanation from John Kerry as to why he conceded with 250,000 votes still uncounted while Bush's alleged margin was just half that. Nor have we heard about Democrat plans to monitor the ever-larger numbers of electronic voting machines deployed throughout the United States with no paper trail and no transparency for programming codes and memory cards that are privately owned, with no public inspection allowed.
Which is brings us to the Holy Ghost turnout. As Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has reported in Rolling Stone Magazine, in Georgia 2002, U.S. Senate in bent Max Cleland went into Election Day with a very substantial lead in the polls. He proceeded to allegedly lose by a substantial margin. Church-state operatives like Ralph Reed attributed this astonishing turn-around to an alleged last-minute mass turnout of evangelical voters.
Similar things were said about Florida and Ohio 2004.
But it never happened. There are no visual reports or other reliable indicators of extraordinary lines or massive late-in-the-day crowds at the polls. Throughout all those election days, it was every bit as quick and easy to vote in rural precincts that gave Bush his miraculous victory as it was impossible to do so in your average black neighborhood. But there was no extraordinary turnout of last-minute Bush voters.
What happened instead hearkens to the Holy Ghost, made manifest in electronic voting machines that cannot and will not be monitored. The miraculous pro-Bush margins give new meaning to the phrase "ghost in the machine." While the Democratic vote count was slashed and trashed in urban precincts, the rural voting stations, through the miracle of untrackable electronics, materialized just the right number of GOP votes to keep the Men of God in the White House (where it's recently reported they dare to mock those earthly evangelicals who allegedly gave them their margin of victory).
There's absolutely nothing to prevent this from happening again in 2006. Major studies from the Conyers Committee, the Government Accountability Office, Princeton University, the Brennan Center, the Carter-Baker Commission, and esteemed others, have all come to the same conclusion: it takes just one individual with inside access---or even just a wi-fi machine---to change the outcome of any election anywhere.
Electronic voting machines can be pre-programmed, re-programmed, re-calibrated, electronically adjusted, hacked, jimmied, jammed or otherwise blessed with a few well-placed electrons and---LO AND BEHOLD!---a Democratic landslide can be born again to a Republican deliverance.
We already see the signs. The corporate bloviators predict a last-minute surge for Bush. The Fox/Rove media machine has planted suggestive stories at the New York Times and elsewhere about the alleged hidden powers of the GOP juggernaut. They will, they say, once again turn out those invisible legions of evangelical voters when and where necessary.
Every two years, Rove leaks some story that is implausible and easily refuted: four million new evangelical voters are identified nationwide; or, a late surge of phobic Old Order Amish rush to the polls in Ohio; or shy and reluctant right-wing Republican women flood the polls at closing and slip out unseen without speaking to exit pollsters (but, they are only shy in the early evening in Republican counties).
And the Democrats? They say they are also turning out voters. But what happens when their names are miraculously gone from the new electronic registration rolls? When there aren't enough machines in their precincts on which to vote? When they press a Democratic name on their touch-screen and an anointed Republican's lights up? Or when techno-gods from private partisan vendors barge in unchallenged to "adjust" the e-machines in the middle of the voting process.
So far, the Democrats have heaped abuse on those who dare to warn of all this.
But as it is written, so it shall be: unless there are armies of trained, dedicated citizens prepared to monitor this upcoming election, electronic and otherwise, the Holy Ghosts will vote, the loaves & fishes will multiply and be counted, and the GOP will once again emerge with total control of the checks and the balances---this time, perhaps, for all Eternity.
Have anybody found any voting anomalies in 2004 Ohio that didn't favor only the Repugs?
I have given this story little truck, and long thought it as simply another "conspiracy" theory.
But, think about this when you read it:
Loot at the vitriol that a lot of individual Republicans hurl at the Dems, indicating a large emotive force to beat them in elections.
Given this level of desire to win and seemingly win at any cost, does it make it more or less probable that, even without a conscious wide-spread conspiracy, a large number of independent actors would attempt to rig elections in their areas?
You're getting more and more myopic, RG. Ever listen to a Dixie Chicks concert? How about Barbara Streishand? Ted Kennedy once said Republicans want poor children to starve to death! You yourself suggested that conservatives couldn't be Christian because we don't like to pay higher taxes!
BUSH IS HATED - and people openly say so all the time - in every venue! His motives, his intelligence, his ethics and morals are questioned CONSTANTLY! You have your X-Ray to beat up, I'll trum the out of that with a Boutons!
Many conservatives are simply bewildered by the lack of logic of liberals; Many liberals HATE conservatives.
I think these types of articles are coming out now so that the Democrats have a ready-made excuse when they lose again.
Yeah, heaven forbid discussing the truth. The fact that Dems are involved makes it all irrelevant.
His motives are criminal.
His intelligence is=to dangerous incompetance
He is void of ethics
He is morally bankrupt
I'm sorry, was i looking for logic here?
I'm still dumbfounded that no one on the right sees a need for a paper receipt verifying their vote. No matter who wins without a way to verify the votes there will always be doubt no matter who wins
I'm telling you I won't be surprised if the Republicans keep control of both the House and the Senate. These polls mean nothing to me and some democrats may just sit this out too because of the hype that is all over the damn liberal media. It is FAR from over.
I don't like Karl Rove but the man does his homework.
I thought one of the reasons for electronic voting was to REDUCE the paperwork (you know, save the trees and all that). If they are required to have a paper receipt it defeats the purpose. In that case, just do away with electronic voting and use the paper ballots.
Regardless of what method is used, if someone is determined to cheat, they will find a way. There have been voting "irregularities" as long as we've been voting.
So do you favor paper receipts or not?
That is quite an uninformed and politically negligent position you have taken there.
There are a lot of benefits to electronic voting.
It is easier to vote.
Vote totals can be tabulated a lot more quickly with a lot less manpower.
Human error can be reduced. Mechanical error can be reduced.
You get a lot of the same benefits as in any automated system. There is a reason we don't all use typewriters, or pen and paper anymore, for all of our work, and I don't think "saving the trees" is all that high up on the list.
And, curiously, though we all have computers and servers and all this nifty electronic stuff in the Information Age, I notice in my office there is this thing called a "printer." Actually, our building has like 15 of them, and they're cranking out lots of paper all day long.
If anyone were to come in here and suggest that with so much paper coming out of these printers, we ought just to ditch all of these computers and go back to typewriters, quadrille pads, and slide rules, we would -- as politely as possible -- ask them to hitch a ride on the turnip truck they just fell off of.
Since, in any voting system, with the possibility of fraud, or tampering, there needs to be data security. My company would never neglect security in its information systems. People with any prudence don't neglect security on their computers at home.
A robust information system has to be auditable.
This a lot of times can be done electronically. At work, I have a username and password, so anything I do has an electronic signature. It is trackable. In our accounting system, any transaction I perform has a tracking number associated with it that goes back to me.
Our information systems are audited periodically by a third party to verify we meet ISO standards.
Our customers demand that we go through this degree of work to maintain our systems, because it affects the quality of our products.
Likewise, the quality of our voting system affects the quality of our democracy. It seems you are content with a second- or third-rate level of security for voting. If so, you are content with a second- or third-rate form of government. Or, it may just be that since all the conspiracy theories out there say that Republicans benefit from the alleged fraud, and you like the Republicans, that you would rather look the other way.
Now, with electronic voting, some of these security concepts don't work as well. We have secret ballots, so it is not as though every voter can have a username and password to track their votes.
One of the ideas people have come up with is using paper printouts on cardstock as an independent data source for the purposes of auditing. That may not be the only way to do it, but at least it is an idea. There may be ways to do it electronically as well.
In any event, poor security on electronic voting systems makes it easier to commit fraud, and much larger fraud than has been possible in the past. Rather than stuffing ballot boxes, a canny programmer just has to alter a little bit of code.
And there are an awful lot of computer programmers in liberal strongholds like the San Francisco Bay Area and Austin.
So I don't think it behooves an avowed conservative to look the other way.
"that is quite an uninformed and politically negligent position you have taken there."
No surprise, it's Crooky. Mind closed since age 9.
Nice generalization.
I would be in favor of a paper receipt if it was not counter-intuitive to electronic voting. How about we make the entire electronic ballot process more transparent with higher accountability for local, state and federal officials?
Well, at least a few things on that list could stick to the majority of past Presidents from both parties. I don't think that Bush has a patent on it.
There is no way to verify a re-count. If the tally was incorrect initially the re-count would be incorrect as well.
What if each vote was recorded internally on the machine, and also transmitted to a database on an independent server?
You could have two separate means of tabulation that way.
So how would I know if my vote went to the proper party/candidate? How do I know the voting machine recorded my vote?
Yeah, a paper printout would be better because you could verify its accuracy before submittal, and it is something tangible. Doing that electronically would require you to sign off somehow, and since we have secret ballots, that won't work.
All I want is to know my vote was recorded properly. When I vote now I have to trust that a machine records my intetnions correctly.
So, we're back to the recommended scheme of having electronic voting and tabulation, but having paper cards printed out for the voter to review for accuracy, and submit to a ballot box for use in case of a recount.
To speed up the recount, perhaps there could be a way to format the paper printout so that it could be optically scanned.
Sorry, I'm thinking about this like an engineer.
ES - I guess I should have used thisso that you would know I was being somewhat facetious.
I like electronic voting. I was making the point that it's the environmentalists (who are usually democrat) who make such a stink about killing trees - so shouldn't they be more inclined to be in favor of electronic voting?
The other point was that IF one of the purposes of electronic voting was to reduce the amount of paper, THEN doesn't it defeat that purpose by having a paper receipt? I don't care if they want to do it that way, I was just playing devil's advocate.
I think EVERY effort should be made to make it as hard as possible to cheat; if only for the reason that people today have much less confidence in the results of elections.
Then you must be against the latest Diebold machines. They've made it pretty easy to cheat.I think EVERY effort should be made to make it as hard as possible to cheat
I omit the icon so that I can enjoy hooking people. I guess you hooked me.ES - I guess I should have used this
They would just use unbleached recycled paper.
Reducing the paper wasn't really that high on the list of priorities. Being able to count returns within a couple of hours follwing the polls' closing is a bigger benefit.
Although I wonder, if libs really believed in their hearts that elections were rigged, why do they still try to win elections? Shouldn't they be trying to gain power by other means?
As ES says, the problem with electronic voting is that is not auditable. Your are putting our democracy in the hands of a programmable machine, which are not by any means secure (http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting/).
Given that we want secret ballots, I think there is little choice but to have a corresponding paper ballot for recounting.
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