Monitoring Electoral Processes Everywhere: The Ideal Versus The Real

[Guest guest]

As a political 'Independent', Bhakti Ananda Goswami has been a human

rights and human services activist since his youth. His first

experience with poll monitoring to ensure minority voting rights was

in the 1960s. While he was working as a registration volunteer in a

poor black area of Detroit, some of his dear friends were beaten for

trying to assist black voters to register and vote in the Vine City

Voter Registration Drive in Alabama. Such early experiences

with 'white' racist voting suppression in the USA offended his

deepest sense of samata and justice, and had a profound effect on his

committment to all kinds of human rights activism.

 

He has never registered as either a Democrat or Republican, and does

not endorse all of the official positions of either of these parties,

but in his experience with the mechanics of the American voting

process, he has found that the history of Republican Party minority

vote suppression has been shocking.

 

Thus he has agreed to forward this email to others at the request of

another voting rights activist.

 

 

Sun, 28 Nov 2004 09:30:49 -0500

(Recipient list suppressed)

Bill Thomson

URGENT: Election Fraud Synopsis and Antidote to Gloom

 

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

 

Since the election, I have received dozens of reports of election

fraud, all of which I have carefully read. The overwhelming majority

of these reports perform credible analyses (in particular the Penn

and Berkeley studies), and based on 40+ years in the study and

teaching of statistical analysis, I am convinced beyond a reasonable

doubt that the election of 2004 was corrupted and almost certainly

stolen by Republican partisans.

 

We can all argue that the Democrats could have run a better and more

successful campaign. In fact, I made that argument in 2000 and will

soon be sending out a similar report on the 2004 election. However,

the solution for that is relatively long-term. The evidence of 2004

corruption needs to be dealt with immediately.

 

I believe the future of our democracy to be at stake. The Electoral

College meets and votes Dec. 15. Congress then certifies the

election on Jan. 6. If we have not taken sufficient action by that

time, this scandal will passed unnoticed into history.

 

I have appended below the best summary of the overall picture that I

have seen. While I disagee with the conclusion that we need a new

political party (I think it much more efficient to take over the

Democratic party), I urge you to read it carefully and to take action.

 

Peace,

Bill

 

.......................................................................

.............................

 

 

Sun, 28 Nov 2004 00:30:33 -0800

Barbara Deutsch <undone

fwd: election fraud synopsis and antidote to gloom

 

At 5:32 PM -0800 11/24/04, Chalice Productions wrote:

 

 

Greetings, Friends & Activists,

 

Here is a synopsis to date of the election fraud situation with

sources and action items, all compiled by activist and political

blogger extraordinaire Mary Pjerrou (<pirohuck to comment)!

Please pass it along--Mary Bull

 

 

[Friends, feel free to send this to others, and give me feedback if

you have any.

I can document, oh, 95% of what I say below, but I haven't burdened

it with a lot of citations--just a list of info resources. I will be

sending it to others and posting it on the web somewhere. We have to

find more ways to inform

and motivate all those despairing Kerry voters out there who don't

even know what's going on. (Note: Please be careful about passing

along other's email

addresses). -- Mary Pjerrou]

 

_________

 

ACTION MEMO: Election Fraud 2004 - American democracy's final hour?

The evidence of fraud in the 2004 presidential election is so

overwhelming that it is difficult to know where to start. The

evidence encompasses many states and involves several kinds of voting

fraud and vote suppression.

 

Suspect #1 are the central electronic tabulating machines that

supposedly count all our votes.

Shockingly, these machines run on source code that is held as secret,

proprietary information (no public review) by companies whose

executives were committed to Bush's election (including Walden O'Dell

of Diebold who promised in writing to "deliver" Ohio to Bush in 2004,

and Howard F. Ahmanson of ES&S, known for backing rightwing

religious causes.).

 

To make matters worse, a third of the country voted on electronic

machines that provide no paper receipt for the vote, making recounts

impossible and auditing difficult -- all in all, a voting system made

to order for fraud.

 

The evidence so far all points to a Kerry win, possibly by a

landslide, that was changed to a Bush win, with the main part of the

fraud occurring in the central vote tabulators in at least a dozen

states (probably all over), combined with

significant, blatant suppression of Democratic and minority voters by

highly prejudiced Republican election officials, especially in Ohio

and Florida.

 

This memo will summarize the current situation and available

evidence, and the riveting and heroic investigations, re-counts and

lawsuits that are in progress.

 

It will also provide a working hypothesis on the overall election

fraud plan (always helpful), and info. on what you and I can do to

help. Election reform is a must-do, and it's really quite simple.

To regain our right to vote, we need:

a) a paper trail; and b) open source code.

 

THE CURRENT SITUATION:

John Kerry's concession has no legal force. He can un-concede (as Al

Gore did in '00). There is reason to believe that his concession was

a strategic move to avoid the chaos of '00, and quietly gather

evidence. But whatever he decides

to do, this Election is not over, and its outcome is not really up to

him.

 

 

As Kerry himself recently stated, "They're still counting votes."

First the states must complete and certify their counts, and re-

counts must be completed (all on-going). The Electoral College meets

and votes Dec. 15.

 

Congress then certifies the Election on Jan. 6. (And there could

well be fireworks at that event, considering how angry black

Democrats are after '00, and after what was done to black voters

again this year.)

 

Many challenges, re-counts, investigations, and lawsuits are in

progress.

 

Fourteen Congresspeople have requested a GAO investigation, led by

high-ranking members like Congr. John Conyers--and the GAO just

agreed! (on 11/23).

 

The Green Party and Ralph Nader are big heroes, having successfully

raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in one week to obtain

recounts in Ohio and New Hampshire. The Democratic Party has filed a

lawsuit on the "provisional" ballot count in Ohio. There are

investigations and lawsuits in FLA (don't know about a recount there).

 

There is a big citizen and attorney effort to gather evidence

(particularly to secure the "black boxes" that contain the secret

source code, and their printouts). Bev Harris, of

www.blackboxvoting.org -- another hero -- did a Freedom of

Information Act request to every state in the country for "black box

voting" evidence--the biggest FOIA request ever. Recently, she

achieved a lockdown on evidence in Volusia County, FLA. Her group

has launched fraud investigations in FLA, GA, NM, AZ, and OH.

 

One very remarkable man, John B. Kenney, has been on a hunger strike

since Sept. 7, 2004, and will continue until our right to vote is

secured.(www.hungerfordemocracy.com)

 

EVIDENCE OF MASSIVE ELECTION FRAUD

 

* Despite their secret source code, electronic voting machines are

easily hackable and extremely insecure (well established by Johns

Hopkins, CalTech/MIT, blackboxvoting.org and many other studies).

In addition, the

Republican-owned companies who make them, and Republican politicians

(Tom Delay, and the Secretaries of State in OH and FLA) insisted that

no paper trail was needed and strongly fought against any such vote

verification.

A paper trail consists of a paper receipt on which each vote is

recorded and locked away for recounts and audits. A third of the

country voted with no paper trail -- that is, without the ability to

re-count the vote.

 

(Venezuela has a paper trail, and open source code. Our election

system is a disgrace by comparison.) However, expert statisticians

and smart techies can use other methods to track fraud. (Note:

Statistical methods

are admissible in court in a "no paper trail" situation.)

 

 

* Several topnotch statistical studies point a red flag at '04

election fraud:

 

The Freeman study:

On Election Day '04, the Exit Polls (face to face questioning of

voters, just after they voted) showed a big Kerry win --including a

Kerry sweep of all the battleground states--until about 6 p.m. Dr.

Steven J. Freeman (an MIT-PhD,

professor at the U. of Penn.) discovered that, late in the afternoon,

CNN began mixing the Exit Poll data with the incoming data from the

central electronic voters tabulators which showed a turn to Bush late

in the day (odd, because

that's when the working poor and minorities vote). By luck and fast

thinking, Freeman was able to get hold of the pure Exit Poll data

before it was corrupted by the election "results." The Exit Poll

variance from the election "results" is

extraordinary, and always favors Bush. Freeman says that this is

virtually impossible. He establishes the reliability of non-partisan

Exit Polls, which are used worldwide to verify elections. The odds

against Kerry's predicted Exit Poll

vote being wrong in all 3 big battleground states (OH, FLA, PA) are

662,000 to one.

 

He concludes: "As much as we can say in social science that

something is impossible, it is impossible that the discrepancies

between predicted and actual vote counts in

the three critical battleground statesScould have been due to chance

or random error."

 

This shift to Bush (in electronic tally vs. Exit Poll predictions)

occurred in 10 of the 11 states studied. In 4 of the 11 states (OH,

IA, NE and NM), the Kerry win was changed to a Bush win--with enough

Electoral Votes in the balance to turn the

Electoral Vote to Bush.

 

[Note: Jonathan Simon (www.scoop.co.nz) also did critically important

early work on the exit poll issue, analysing 47 states, and showing

that the exit poll variance from the official "results" was

dramatically larger in the battleground states Bush needed to win--a

statistical impossibility.]

 

The UC Berkeley study:

An impressive statistical team at UC Berkeley headed by Professor

Michael Hout reports that irregularities associated with electronic

voting machines may have awarded 130,000 - 260,000 or

more "excess"votes to Bush in Florida. The study

shows an unexplained discrepancy between votes for Bush in counties

where electronic voting machines were used versus counties using

traditional voting methods.

 

Discrepancies this large or larger rarely arise by chance -- the

probability is less than 0.1 percent. The counties studied included

big Democratic areas (Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach). Hout, a

member of the National Academy

of Science, called for an investigation. (This study was recently

endorsed by MIT scientists who also called for an investigation.)

 

* The 4 states in the Freeman study whose result changed from Kerry

(exit poll) to Bush (electronic vote tabulation) don't begin to

exhaust the number of states where serious voting anomalies are

turning up (in addition to FLA, there are

inexplicable numbers in North Carolina, Ohio, New Hampshire,

Nebraska, Iowa, New Mexico, Indiana--at least). Also, if phantom

votes or flipped votes in large numbers occurred as a pattern

nationwide -- as the Berkeley study

showed in FLA -- the popular vote (Bush by about 3.5 million) could

also be wrong enough to overturn the election.

 

* Examples: Another statistician has found an improbable 15% margin

for Bush in North Carolina -- amidst large, inexplicable

discrepancies between the absentee ballot vote (30% of the vote) and

the electronic vote, and between the vote for President and lower

offices.

 

Another: 29 Dem counties in FLA, one with 88% Dem registration,

producing landslides for Bush.

 

Another: more votes than voters (Ohio, 93,000; Nebraska, 10,000).

 

And there is much more. (In one Ohio precinct, 600 voters, 4,000

votes for Bush.)

 

Evidence all over of inexplicable numbers. What the statisticians

are doing -- critically important -- is sorting out the probabilities

of widespread innocent error

always favoring Bush (not possible.)

 

MASSIVE VOTE SUPPRESSION BY REPUBLICAN ELECTION OFFICIALS

Over 30,000 complaints of vote suppression and difficulties in voting

were lodged with the Election Incident Reporting Service (EIRS);

57,000 complaints were sent to Congress; and "265 specific

complaints" were listed at the VotersUnite.org web site. There have

already been big hearings in Ohio, and the testimony is heart-

breaking and infuriating.

 

Most egregious, the Republican efforts to prevent black votes,

including black precincts being shorted on precinct places or number

of voting machines -- resulting in a 30-mile drive to vote, or 10-

hour voting lines, and black voters

arriving at the precinct they'd voted in all their lives, to be told

it's the wrong precinct, then given wrong or no information on where

to vote, and many other kinds of harassment and unlawful behavior.

 

In addition, touchstone voting screens that changed a Kerry vote to a

Bush vote -- all day long, without corrective measures. 60,000

absentee ballots "lost in the mail" just before election day.

Numerous duly registered Democrats,

minorities and students unfairly challenged at the voting place,

sending their votes into "provisional" ballot limbo. New rules

invented by Republican Secretaries of State -- you have to register

on 80 lb. paper; you have to have written your

birthdate on your "provisional" ballot; you can't vote anywhere in

the county anymore, only at your newly assigned precinct (the

location of which we may or may not give you). Electronic machines

with a pre-set limit on the number

of votes, that started counting backwards, and deducting votes when

the limit was reached (thousands of votes lost). Republican

operatives in Nevada and Oregon pretending to be a non-partisan voter

registration group, then throwing

Democratic voter registration forms away. Machines that reached pre-

set vote limits,and then started counting backwards, deleting

thousands of votes. And on and on and on.

 

As I said, the evidence of election fraud is overwhelming. And

virtually all of the weird, inexplicable, and impossible numbers from

electronic voting favored Bush and hurt Kerry. And virtually all vote

suppression was against Democrats,

minorities, and students.

 

To sort all this out, a working hypothesis on the overall picture of

2004 election fraud is helpful. Here's mine--most of which occurred

to me around midnight on Nov. 2.

The context: Kerry was winning, according to pre-election opinion

poll analysis and election day exit polls (after a huge,

unprecedented "get out the vote" campaign featuring Bruce Springsteen

and Michael Moore, and many thousands of volunteers).

 

So, if you had control of all the vote tabulation machines, and no

paper trail (and no conscience), and you wanted to manufacture a Bush

win, you would:

1) Tweak several of the "red" states that were threatening to

turn "blue" at the time of the election, toward Bush, to keep Bush

competitive in the Electoral Vote.

2) Grab %'s here and there, all over the map, wherever detection had

been minimized (f.i., no paper trail), to manufacture a popular

majority for Bush -- not huge, just enough -- even in big Kerry

states where "excess" Bush votes might not be noticed (or in big

Kerry counties--as the Berkeley study showed!);

3) Make it all come down to Ohio (or FLA), where a lot of prep was

done in vote suppression, to keep it close, and where it now SEEMS to

all turn on a relatively few

"provisional" ballots in OH, with a highly partisan Republican

Secretary of State to judge their validity--whereas the main fraud

actually occurred way back upstream,

 

and

4) (Unknown to me, or any observer, on Election Night) Get your

friends at CNN and Fox News to start mixing your electronic vote data

into the Exit Poll data, to hide the big Kerry numbers in the Exit

Poll data, and make it appear that

Bush was winning late in the day.

 

All the evidence so far has confirmed this working hypothesis.

 

HOW HACKABLE IS THE ELECTION SYSTEM?

People think of CIA "black ops" and a vast conspiracy. To hack a

Diebold voting machine is as easy as pie (one hacker, a couple of

minutes). As demonstrated for Keith Olberman on Countdown (MSNBC), by

Chuck Herrin

at chuckherrin.com (a computer expert, hacker and remorseful

Republican), as Johns Hopkins concluded, and as repeatedly

demonstrated and described by Bev Harris, these machines are

extremely insecure. (The source code runs

on Windows--a good laugh for techies. Notoriously unreliable,

hackable, buggy, crash-prone, inferior software.)

 

 

A hair-raising Johns Hopkins study of our electronic voting system,

prior to the election, rips into the Diebold electronic voting

system, exposing the vulnerability of "smartcards" which are needed

for each vote (easily duplicated by a 15 year old in a garage), the

highly insecure language of the code (C++), and the ease with which

anyone -- a poll worker, a janitor -- could access and alter voting

results

leaving no trace.

 

Means. Motive. Opportunity. You begin to get the picture. (Why

would these Bush supporters and pro-Bush voting machine companies

insist on no paper trail?)

 

WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY LEADERSHIP? HOW COULD

THEY LET THIS HAPPEN?

I'm not sure. A Republican-owned, extremely fraud-prone voting

system that will vote Democrats out of office forevermore? Go

figure. You'd think they would've burned down the Capitol to get

this changed. Here's my gut feeling: Some porkbarrel (funneling

federal election funds to the

states). Some corruption (Diebold spent zillions wining and dining

election officials.)

 

But mostly, a catastrophic failure of leadership. When you look at

the numerous articles and reports on the dangers of e-voting over the

last several years, you can't imagine that the Democrats didn't

know. And I guess they were just too busy to give a damn about our

right to vote, the future of the Republic, and their own ability to

actually get elected (have us vote for them, get our votes counted).

 

It's very strange.

The Democratic Party leadership owes an apology--to all those voters

who stood in lines for 12 hours to vote for them, and to all of us

fabulous grass roots democracy workers who gave them a smashing

victory, if the truth were known.

And the Democrats CAN redeem themselves if they would just step up to

the plate and help us NOW to challenge this election! If they don't,

forget them! Let's form a new party!

 

WHAT YOU AND I CAN DO

* Write letters/emails and call Congressional reps, state election

officials, and the mainstream news media, and rake them over the

coals (or praise them, if they're doing their jobs to your

satisfaction). (Praise is impoortant, where warranted.)

 

* Groups that need our immediate financial support (and volunteers):

 

Bev Harris: www.blackboxvoting.org (or donations to: Black Box

Voting, PO Box 25552, Seattle, WA 98165)

 

The Green Party and the Cobb campaign (donations, volunteers):

http://www.votecobb.org

 

John B. Kenney (hunger strike-donations):

http://hungerfordemocracy.com

 

Alliance for Democracy (action resource!):

http://www.thealliancefordemocracy.org

 

 

MORE INFORMATION [it's all over the web--here's for starters:]

 

[on-going investigation, info on e-voting:]

http://www.blackboxvoting.org

 

[many articles:] http://www.votersunite.org/news.asp

 

[Diebold hacking demonstration:]

http://www.chuckherrin.com/hackthevote.htm

 

[an amazing list of Election Fraud '04 articles:]

http://www.bopnews.com/archives/002328.html#2328

 

[excellent archive:]

http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2004/995

 

[a really good explanation of the '04 exit poll thing--very

dramatic:]http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0411/S00142.htm

 

[detailed info, analysis, discussion of everything - takes patience -

see 2004 Election forum:] http://www.democraticunderground.com

 

[The Freeman report:]

http://www.buzzflash.com/alerts/04/11/The_unexplained_exit_poll_discre

pancy_v00k.pdf

 

[Freeman report update:]

http://www.buzzflash.com/alerts/04/11/ale04090.html

 

[The Jonathan Simon-Alastair Thompson Report]

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0411/S00142.htm

 

[The Berkeley report:] http://ucdata.berkeley.edu/ [scroll down

to "Voting": "The Effects of Electronic Voting Machines..."]

 

[04 Election in Ohio:]

http://www.dkosopedia.com/index.php/2004_Ohio_Irregularities

 

[a great general resource:] http://en.wikipedia.org

 

Some other good sites: www.votersunite.org, www.verfiedvoting.org,

www.commoncause.org, www.ballotintegrity.org, www.truevotemd.org,

www.truthout.org, www.commondreams.org

 

Also, for inspiration - "Granny D"--a fabulous 94 year old woman who

ran for Senate in NH: http://www.grannyd.com/

 

Info Media: Randi Rhodes, Janeane Garofola, Sam Seder and Mike

Malloy of Air America (www.airamericaradio.com).

Keith Olberman (MSNBC-Countdown).

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/ And some interesting Olberman

reportage posted at:

http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/NewsArticle.cfm?ID=2369

 

 

A CURE FOR KERRY VOTER DEPRESSION:

 

In my opinion, we are one minute to midnight as to losing our

democracy. I figure we've already gone beyond Germany 1933, to

Germany 1934 -- the consolidation of all state power. The fascists

now own the presidency,

the Congress, the courts, the media, AND the election system.

 

It is easy to get scared--or worse, to bury your head in the sand.

 

The day after the Election, there were 100,000 hits on the Canadian

immigration site. That's one solution, I guess. On the other hand,

our children and the entire world are counting on us to restore

democracy in the U.S., especially to stop Bush Inc.'s madness in the

Middle East, and also impending federal bankruptcy. We are the only

ones who can do it.

 

The rest of the world is far more aware than many American citizens

of how fraudulent this election was, and how close the parallel is to

Germany 1933-34. In Europe, they've lived it. And they are pulling

for us.

 

We were born to -- or consciously chose -- the great heritage of

American democracy. It has fallen to us to try to save it, in what

looks to be its final hour. It is a time for clarity, unity, and

focused action.

 

I think it's panic-inducing to try to address the million issues

raised by Bush Inc. actions and policy, and a delusion to think that

the Left can influence them or can re-gain power, after what they've

pulled in this election. Our right to vote is first and fundamental,

and we must salvage it -- by trying to overturn this election; and by

focused efforts, to achieve, state by state

a) paper trail; b) open source code (Congress isn't going to do

this!).

 

But it's not up to you or me alone. It's a collective burden. So

don't let yourself be depressed or feel powerless.

 

Take care of yourself; help create a sustainable

local economy; think creatively of other important ways of collective

action (there is a corporate news media product boycott in the works,

for instance).

 

 

And make time to write that letter, send that donation, spread the

word -- and do more if we can. Together, we shall overcome.

 

Mary Pjerrou

November 24, 2004

Elk, CA

 

 

Mary Bull

Greenwood Earth Alliance

Save the Redwoods - Boycott the Gap Campaign

252 Frederick, San Francisco, CA 94117 http://www.gapsucks.org

415-731-7924 chalicenew

 

What you can do/resources:

 

***Nail environmental destruction, worker exploitation, and the

privatization of public services & resources on the home-front,

BOYCOTT the GAP, Banana Republic, & Old Navy!***

http://www.gapsucks.org

 

***Dismantle the Racist Prison-Industrial Complex!***

http://www.booksnotbars.org

 

***Take Direct Action to Stop the War and End US/Corporate Empire-

Building!*** http://www.actagainstwar.org

 

***End Corporate Rule!*** http://www.ifg.org http://www.canadians.org

http://www.citizen.org

http://www.foodfirst.org http://www.globalexchange.org

 

***Expose Corporate Greenwashing, starting with the Forest

Stewardship Council, the NRDC, and the WWF!***

http://www.rainforestfoundationuk.org

 

***Join the Reclaim the Commons Mobilization!***

http://www.reclaimthecommons.net