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If the NYT hasnt run with this there is probably a lot of wholes to this.. otherwise this seems interesting..
Powerful Government Accounting Office report confirms key 2004 stolen election findings
by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
October 26, 2005
The Free PressAs a legal noose appears to be tightening around the Bush/Cheney/Rove inner circle, a shocking government report shows the floor under the legitimacy of their alleged election to the White House is crumbling.
The latest critical confirmation of key indicators that the election of 2004 was stolen comes in an extremely powerful, penetrating report from the General Accounting Office that has gotten virtually no mainstream media coverage.
The government's lead investigative agency is known for its general incorruptibility and its through, in-depth analyses. Its concurrence with assertions widely dismissed as "conspiracy theories" adds crucial new weight to the case that Team Bush has no legitimate business being in the White House.
Nearly a year ago, senior Judiciary Committee Democrat John Conyers (D-MI) asked the GAO to investigate electronic voting machines as they were used during the November 2, 2004 presidential election. The request came amidst widespread complaints in Ohio and elsewhere that often shocking irregularities defined their performance.
According to CNN, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee received "more than 57,000 complaints" following Bush's alleged re-election. Many such concerns were memorialized under oath in a series of sworn statements and affidavits in public hearings and investigations conducted in Ohio by the Free Press and other election protection organizations.
The non-partisan GAO report has now found that, "some of [the] concerns about electronic voting machines have been realized and have caused problems with recent elections, resulting in the loss and miscount of votes."
The United States is the only major democracy that allows private partisan corporations to secretly count and tabulate the votes with proprietary non-transparent software. Rev. Jesse Jackson, among others, has asserted that "public elections must not be conducted on privately-owned machines." The CEO of one of the most crucial suppliers of electronic voting machines, Warren O'Dell of Diebold, pledged before the 2004 campaign to deliver Ohio and thus the presidency to George W. Bush.
Bush's official margin of victory in Ohio was just 118,775 votes out of more than 5.6 million cast. Election protection advocates argue that O'Dell's statement still stands as a clear sign of an effort, apparently successful, to steal the White House.
Among other things, the GAO confirms that:
1. Some electronic voting machines "did not encrypt cast ballots or system audit logs, thus making it possible to alter them without detection." In other words, the GAO now confirms that electronic voting machines provided an open door to flip an entire vote count. More than 800,000 votes were cast in Ohio on electronic voting machines, some seven times Bush's official margin of victory.
2. "It is easy to alter a file defining how a ballot appears, making it possible for someone to vote for one candidate and actually be recorded as voting for an entirely different candidate." Numerous sworn statements and affidavits assert that this did happen in Ohio 2004.
3. "Falsifying election results without leaving any evidence of such an action by using altered memory cards" can easily be done, according to the GAO.
4. The GAO also confirms that "access to the voting network was easily compromised because not all digital recording electronic voting systems (DREs) had supervisory functions password-protected, so access to one machine provided access to the whole network." This critical finding confirms that rigging the 2004 vote did not require a "widespread conspiracy" but rather the cooperation of a very small number of operatives with the power to tap into the networked machines and thus change large numbers of votes at will. With 800,000 votes cast on electronic machines in Ohio, flipping the number needed to give Bush 118,775 could be easily done by just one programmer.
5. Access "to the voting network was also compromised by repeated use of the same user IDs combined with easily guessed passwords," says the GAO. So even relatively amateur hackers could have gained access to and altered the Ohio vote tallies.
6. "The locks protecting access to the system were easily picked and keys were simple to copy," says the GAO, meaning, again, getting into the system was an easy matter.
7. "One DRE model was shown to have been networked in such a rudimentary fashion that a power failure on one machine would cause the entire network to fail," says the GAO, re-emphasizing the fragility of the system on which the Presidency of the United States was decided.
8. "GAO identified further problems with the security protocols and background screening practices for vendor personnel," confirming still more easy access to the system.
In essence, the GAO study makes it clear that no bank, grocery store or mom & pop chop shop would dare operate its business on a computer system as flimsy, fragile and easily manipulated as the one on which the 2004 election turned.
The GAO findings are particularly damning when set in the context of an election run in Ohio by a Secretary of State simultaneously working as co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign. Far from what election theft skeptics have long asserted, the GAO findings confirm that the electronic network on which 800,000 Ohio votes were cast was vulnerable enough to allow a a tiny handful of operatives -- or less -- to turn the whole vote count using personal computers operating on relatively simple software.
The GAO do entation flows alongside other crucial realities surrounding the 2004 vote count. For example:
# The exit polls showed Kerry winning in Ohio, until an unexplained last minute shift gave the election to Bush. Similar definitive shifts also occurred in Iowa, Nevada and New Mexico, a virtual statistical impossibility.
# A few weeks prior to the election, an unauthorized former ES&S voting machine company employee, was caught on the ballot-making machine in Auglaize County
# Election officials in Mahoning County now concede that at least 18 machines visibly transferred votes for Kerry to Bush. Voters who pushed Kerry's name saw Bush's name light up, again and again, all day long. Officials claim the problems were quickly solved, but sworn statements and affidavits say otherwise. They confirm similar problems in Franklin County (Columbus). Kerry's margins in both counties were su iously low.
# A voting machine in Mahoning County recorded a negative 25 million votes for Kerry. The problem was allegedly fixed.
# In Gahanna Ward 1B, at a fundamentalist church, a so-called "electronic transfer glitch" gave Bush nearly 4000 extra votes when only 638 people voted at that polling place. The tally was allegedly corrected, but remains infamous as the "loaves and fishes" vote count.
# In Franklin County, dozens of voters swore under oath that their vote for Kerry faded away on the DRE without a paper trail.
# In Miami County, at 1:43am after Election Day, with the county's central tabulator reporting 100% of the vote - 19,000 more votes mysteriously arrived; 13,000 were for Bush at the same percentage as prior to the additional votes, a virtual statistical impossibility.
# In Cleveland, large, entirely implausible vote totals turned up for obscure third party candidates in traditional Democratic African-American wards. Vote counts in neighboring wards showed virtually no votes for those candidates, with 90% going instead for Kerry.
# Prior to one of Blackwell's illegitimate "show recounts," technicians from Triad voting machine company showed up unannounced at the Hocking County Board of Elections and removed the computer hard drive.
# In response to official information requests, Shelby and other counties admit to having discarded key records and equipment before any recount could take place.
# In a conference call with Rev. Jackson, Attorney Cliff Arnebeck, Attorney Bob Fitrakis and others, John Kerry confirmed that he lost every precinct in New Mexico that had a touchscreen voting machine. The losses had no correlation with ethnicity, social class or traditional party affiliation---only with the fact that touchscreen machines were used.
# In a public letter, Rep. Conyers has stated that "by and large, when it comes to a voting machine, the average voter is getting a lemon - the Ford Pinto of voting technology. We must demand better."
But the GAO report now confirms that electronic voting machines as deployed in 2004 were in fact perfectly engineered to allow a very small number of partisans with minimal computer skills and equipment to shift enough votes to put George W. Bush back in the White House.
Given the growing body of evidence, it appears increasingly clear that's exactly what happened.
Here is a link to the complete GAO report.
Why does the GAO hate America?
If the NYT hasnt run with this there is probably a lot of wholes to this.. otherwise this seems interesting..
I wouldn't be one bit surprised
Your President is George Bush so it's a moot point.
Oh, whatthe ever.
It's a sad say when Dan has to trust one government agency to dis another.
With all the things going wrong with the Bush Administration, and the golden opportunity for the left to capitalize on it, why oh why do they insist upon focusing on the crazy conspiracy-theory moonbat ?
Are y'all more interested in coming up with crazy ways to explain away your defeats than you are in um, I don't know, actually winning?
I don't know, I'm thinking, given how awful the Republicans are looking right now, one might think your side might be straightening your ties and saying, "Hey, look at us! We're responsible, sane, and trustworthy! Give us a shot at running the government!"
Instead, the more the GOP s up, the more we see "BU LER STOLEN ELECTION WAR REPUGS NO BLOOD FOR OIL CINDY SHEEHAN YEEAAAARRGGHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!" it's almost as if you're afraid that you might actually get the opportunity to have your side win and it up too.
Are y'all trying to marginalize yourselves?
I wouldn't put anything past Bush and his friends. We already know he's an idiot.
So he's an idiot, and yet at the same time, he and his friends successfully executed an evil-genius plot to steal an election undetected?
Bush is an idiot regardless, and evil,
But he did steal another election that was detected and got away with it.
mmmmmKay.
Rasho will burn for this!
What does that say about the people who voted for Kerry, and are accepting the results? What kind of idiots are they?
And if you people really believe that the government has been subverted through a coup, and all you do about is about it on conspiracy websites and sports forums, what kind of people are you? Idiots? Pussies?
I mean, either start an insurrection and put your blood on the line, or shut the up. You're not helping anybody. Nobody except your fellow tinfoil-hat travelers believes you. All you do is make it easier for your political opponents.
Well, I didn't really call you any names, but your so upset about Bushs' severe integrity issues that you have to start name calling. I called bush an idiot, well because he really is one.
And I didn't say he stole the last election, I'm just saying I wouldn't put it past him, because regardless of how you want to insult me or others, he did steal the 2000 election, fuss or not.
He's an idiot that according to you little tin foil hat guys repeated pulls off the most intricate scams imaginable under constant public scrutiny.
Well, somebody needs to call y'all names and start slapping you around a little bit. One would figure if you disliked Bush so much, you would like to see his party lose Congress in 2006. The GOP has become so incompetent that it is all but handing power over to the Democrats gift-wrapped on a silver platter.
But see, when all the leftie media does is rehash the same old "BUSH IS STUPID EVIL HITLER WAR REPUGS STOLEN ELECTION CHIMP GREEDY OIL HALLIBURTON CHENEY SPIN POLICE STATE GO INSURGENTS GO YEEEEEEEAARRRGGGHHH!!!! over and over again, with no coherent message, it makes it easy for the right to say, "Yeah, we're not doing so well, but whaddya gonna do about it? You gonna vote for those freaks? Didn't think so. Here, have another nice highway project. China's paying!"
Given my disgust with the current state of the GOP, it would be nice to have a legitimate opposition party that actually was enough of an electoral threat to keep the GOP honest a little bit. Instead, the Dems are trapped because their left-grassroots are so unhinged and totally ed in the head that they scare normal people away, but they hold enough of the purse strings that Dem politicians dare not cut them loose.
So the Repubs can do whatever they feel like, knowing there's nothing to hold them accountable, because the Democrats are such a disaster they have no chance of kicking the bloated GOP estbalishment out of power anytime soon.
So, every time you indulge in intellectual laziness and repeat a mindless, useless left-wing talking point that communicates nothing but frustration and denial, you make a Halliburton executive breathe a little bit easier.
The 2000 election was under public scrutiny, but he got away with it. Repeating it or not, it's the facts.He's an idiot that according to you little tin foil hat guys repeated pulls off the most intricate scams imaginable under constant public scrutiny.
"BU LER STOLEN ELECTION WAR REPUGS NO BLOOD FOR OIL CINDY SHEEHAN YEEAAAARRGGHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Gold.
I remain amazed at the apparent inability of the Left to decide whether President Bush is an evil genius or a bumbling dolt.
C'mon guys, he can't be both. Pick one and let's move forward.
But see, when all the leftie media does is rehash the same old "BUSH IS STUPID EVIL HITLER WAR REPUGS STOLEN ELECTION CHIMP GREEDY OIL HALLIBURTON CHENEY SPIN POLICE STATE GO INSURGENTS GO YEEEEEEEAARRRGGGHHH!!!! over and over again, with no coherent message, it makes it easy for the right to say, "Yeah, we're not doing so well, but whaddya gonna do about it? You gonna vote for those freaks? Didn't think so. Here, have another nice highway project. China's paying!"
He can be a puppet
"evil genius or a bumbling dolt"
is this Repub-designed ballot, of false choices?
He certainly isn't genius of any polarity. He's certainly ignorant. As to whether he's evil...
If the ignorance is a genetic limitation, lack of capacity (perhaps induced by long-term substance abuse and ignorant hand on the cradle), then the evil is more in the Repubs who knowingly put him up as malleable, safe tool, a name-branded robot, whom they could outwit and bamboozle into their agenda of enriching themselves while destroying the US govt.
I expect he's not quite as dumb as he demonstrates, but is willfully and completely unserious and uninterested in the world, in ideas, in governing and running his administration responsibly. ie, he's a ing joker of a privileged slacker tourist through life. Then he shares fully in his own chosen evilness along with the evil assholes who put him into office.
Last edited by boutons; 10-27-2005 at 11:17 AM.
A conspiracy theory is based on mostly fabrications or urban legend with very little if any physical or empirical theoretical proof. When something is proven beyond a reasonable doubt and accepted as truth by the majority, it ceases just being a conspiracy theory. For instance, for years it was a conspiracy theory that Roosevelt knew the Japanese were going to attack the Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor, now so much evidence has been presented to confirm this theory that it is accepted as truth in certain circles.
I think the question Republicans have to ask themselves today is who is really being marginalized by these findings? Those who accept the findings of a inter-governmental agency as truth, or those who simply dismiss these findings as contrived bull because it proves what the opposition has been saying all along?
The GAO is the ideal agency to investigate the 04 election because it is beyond partisan politics. If these findings were announced by Moveon.org they would not have half the legitimacy they have today. These findings further confirm the theory that exit poll data having Kerry winning 51% to W's 49% was not wrong.
What's sad is that just because you feel the conservative regime looks out for your interests the most you are totally incapable of accepting the fact that these machines are subject to fraud much more easily than actual paper-do ented votes.
Wtf's up with all the lol smileys? Are you really that brainwashed to think that a decent hacker could not hack these machines?
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