Another Rigged Election? The Elephant in the Voting Booth

[Guest guest]

http://www.buzzflash.com/farrell/04/11/far04038.html

 

November 9, 2004

 

Another Rigged Election? The Elephant in the Voting Booth

 

by Maureen Farrell

 

" Citing concerns about potential terrorism, Warren County officials

locked down the county administration building on election night and

blocked anyone from observing the vote count as the nation awaited

Ohio's returns. County officials say they took the action Tuesday

night for homeland security, although state elections officials said

they didn't know of any other Ohio county that closed off its

elections board. Media organizations protested, saying it violated the

law and the public's rights. The Warren results, delayed for hours

because of long lines that extended voting past the scheduled close of

polls, were part of the last tallies that helped clinch President

Bush's re-election. " -- The Cincinnati Enquirer

 

" Bush was to supposed to have watched the election from Crawford but

was spirited back to Ohio today [election day] by his jittery

advisors. Now he's in Washington. " (Why?!) " -- Max Blum, Nov. 2, 2004

 

On election night, Peter Jennings looked measurably surprised when he

learned that President Bush had provided a tape of himself, sitting in

the White House, commenting on his impending victory. It was an

unprecedented move. No sitting president had ever addressed the nation

while polls were still open. It was just not done. But there was

George, exuding confidence, offering an election day reminder of our

leader's legitimacy.

 

It was all so perfectly Rovian, too. And why not? The Bush family

filmed a similar made-for-TV moment in 2000, you might recall, when

they assured America that Florida belonged to George. " There was one

exact moment, in fact, when I knew for sure that Al Gore would Never

be President of the United States, no matter what the experts were

saying, and that was when the whole Bush family suddenly appeared on

TV and openly scoffed at the idea of Gore winning Florida, " Hunter S.

Thompson wrote, two weeks before the Supreme Court's fateful

decision. " Of course Bush would win Florida. Losing was out of the

question. Here was the whole bloody Family laughing & hooting &

sneering at the dumbness of the whole world on National TV. "

 

Election night 2004, however, was not punctuated by any such hooting.

It was the end of a long and grueling journey for the President of the

United States and his supporters. Tales of voter intimidation,

computer glitches and " partisan mischief, " were reported during early

voting in Florida, but somehow those things usually worked in the

President's favor. (Would anyone have complained, do you suppose, if

John Kerry's brother had been running the show?).

 

And luckily for Mr. Bush, he had friends in high places in the Buckeye

State, too. After all, Walden " Wally " O'Dell, " head of the voting

machine company Diebold, had already expressed a commitment " to

helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President " and Ohio

Secretary of State Ken " Paper Weight " Blackwell appeared to have

Bush's back, as well.

 

Good thing, too. As early as March, 2004, Ohio had been crowned the #1

potential election day hotspot. " Ohio could become as decisive this

year as Florida was four years ago, " Mother Jones reported. " Which is

why the state's plan to use paperless touch-screen voting machines has

so many up in arms. "

 

In late October, a letter written by former deputy director of Ohio's

Auglaize County Board of Elections Ken Nuss revealed why electronic

voting machine concerns were well founded. It seems that " against

election protocol, " former Election Systems and Software (ES & S)

employee Joe McGinnis had been " on the main computer that is used to

create the ballot and compile election results. " < Insert your own

fox, hen house and/or " stinking to high heaven " cliche here>.

 

Why do you suppose Bush's " jittery " advisors whisked him away to Ohio

on election day and then back to the White House that night? Why did

he appear on TV to assure Americans that victory was his? And why did

the federal government advise Ohio's Warren County to prevent the

media from watching the vote count? Did it have anything to do with

the fact that the Warren results were among the last tallies to help

Bush " win " ? These questions are as much of a mystery as the bump on

Bush's back during the debates.

 

But the unraveling saga of election 2000-style fraud, suppression and

disenfranchisement is becoming clearer by the day.

 

Everything Old is New Again

 

" Kerry may never be allowed to be president. All of the plots that

were in line during the 2000 election are still there, from the purge

list of supposed felons to computer touch screen voting and so on. " --

Gore Vidal, Buzzflash, election eve

 

Despite recent calls for unity, it's impossible to overlook Mr. Bush's

past abuses -- particularly since evidence of vote fraud and tampering

have yet to be addressed from the last election -- and early warnings

about this one have already proven prescient.

 

Of course, this time, international monitors were dispatched across

the country, while thousands of lawyers and more than 1,200 filmmakers

traveled to Florida and Ohio to catch signs of voter fraud and corruption.

 

But, while hacking is not the sort of activity that's readily caught

on tape, old-fashioned ballot pilfering is and photos of possible

nefarious activity in Ohio made their way to the Internet Wednesday

morning. But larger questions of fraud centered mostly on

inconsistencies in electronic voting machines -- discrepancies that

many had come to expect. Stanford computer specialist David Dill, for

example, told Newsweek that the risk of a stolen election was

" extremely high, " while exit polls raised suspicions that Zogby and

the Washington Redskins had gotten it right after all.

 

The White House, you might recall, discounted early exit polls which

showed Kerry winning because they were too heavily skewed by heavy

female turnout. Yet Bush supposedly won the election largely thanks to

support of married women in the suburbs. Wouldn't the early female

vote count in his favor, then? Who was more likely to be voting during

the day? Working women or so-called " security moms " ?

 

Coup D'etat?

 

" First of all, this election was definitely rigged. I have no doubt

about it. " -- Mark Crispin Miller, Salon.com, Nov. 4, 2004

 

On Sunday, the New York Times ran an editorial which touched upon the

risks associated with voting via computer. " For voters to trust

electronic voting, there must be a voter-verified paper record of

every vote cast, made public so it can be widely reviewed, " the Times

noted, calling for other democracy-ensuring changes, including

measures to make certain that voting roll purges are " accurate and

transparent " and that election administrators are " impartial. "

 

In 2000, however, when journalist Greg Palast uncovered the shameful

Database Technologies voter roll purge in Florida, the Times refused

to carry the story. A little more than three years later, however, the

paper admitted: " In 2000, the American public saw in Katherine

Harris's massive purge eligible voters in Florida, how easy it is for

registered voters to lose their rights by bureaucratic fiat. " Why

didn't they publish this information when it might have done some good?

 

By now, most fair-minded folks realize that the 2000 Florida debacle

involved deliberate disenfranchisement of voters and massive civil

rights violations and that because of Katherine Harris's efforts,

America crowned the wrong king. This time, with all eyes on Ohio,

people are wondering: Could it be that the wrong guy once again

occupies our White House?

 

Between iffy e-voting, voter purges, deliberate disinformation, voter

intimidation " spoilage " and other kinks, democracy has taken a direct

hit. " Web wonders if electronic voting machines stole the election, "

Slate announced early on, as election day oddities were being reported

across the country -- with this election's two most important states,

Ohio and Florida leading the way.

 

While more is sure to come, one week out of the gate, some

eyebrow-raising pieces of information have already surfaced:

 

* Before the election, Greg Palast described " ethnic cleansing of

voter rolls " and other odious measures to yank as many as a million

votes from John Kerry before voting even began – and later bluntly

asserted: " Kerry won. Here are the facts "

* Citing " new information " suggesting " that hackers may have

targeted the central computers that are counting our votes, "

http://blackboxvoting.org/ is conducting " the largest Freedom of

Information action in history " and has already asserted, based on

" hard evidence " that " fraud took place in the 2004 election through

electronic voting machines. " (While a guest on Topic A With Tina

Brown, Black Box Voting founder Bev Harris actually demonstrated how

easy it would be to tamper with election results. " We just edited an

election, and it took us 90 seconds, " she told guest host Howard Dean,

after an on-air demonstration. http://www.votergate.tv/)

* Jeff Fisher, a Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of

Representatives from Florida's 16th District, told Thom Hartman that

he was giving the FBI evidence that voting machines in Florida were

hacked in 2002 and 2004, along with information regarding " who hacked

it and how. " Meanwhile, House Democrats have asked the GAO to

investigate voting machine irregularities.

* The day after the election, the AP reported that voters

nationwide " reported some 1,100 problems with electronic voting

machines " and that in many cases, (particularly in Florida and Ohio),

citizens complained that though they intended to choose John Kerry,

when the computer asked them to verify their vote, " it showed them

instead opting for President Bush. "

* Palm Beach reportedly logged 88,000 more votes than voters while

thousands of votes were added to Bush's tallies in Ohio. (Magic ballot

theory, anyone?) A previously discovered glitch in Florida's Broward

Country caused computers to subtract votes once the absentee tally

reached 32,500, casting " doubt on the accuracy of the elections.''

* Despite a post-election CNN puff piece on the success of

electronic voting, Wired collected reports of e-voting problems and

the organization " Count Every Vote 2004 " documented " hundreds of

voting irregularities affecting poor and minority voters in seven

Southern states. "

* After officials in Warren County, Ohio " blocked anyone from

observing the vote count as the nation awaited Ohio's returns, "

WCPO-TV (Channel 9) News Director Bob Morford said he's " never seen

anything like it. " The county cited homeland security reasons for

restricting media access to the vote count, to which Morford replied,

" Frankly, we consider that a red herring. . .That's something that's

put up when you don't know what else to put up to keep us out. "

* Prompted by requests from voting rights activists, Ralph Nader

asked for a hand recount of ballots in New Hampshire due to

" irregularities in the vote reported on the AccuVote Diebold

Machines. " Saying that the discrepancies between exit polls and

election results favored Bush, Nader explained that " Problems in these

electronic voting machines and optical scanners are being reported in

machines in a variety of states. " His request was rejected, however,

due to a technicality.

 

Mr. Nader's stymied attempt aside, lawyers in Ohio and elsewhere are

working diligently to compile cases of vote fraud and

disenfranchisement. And as previously mentioned, the GAO and FBI have

been made aware of the problem. " Spurred by the unwillingness of the

broadcast media to report voting problems during the 2004, " citizens

are also attempting to expose irregularities themselves.

 

But chances are, this story, like Florida's 2000 debacle, will remain

on the back burner, if it gets much mainstream exposure at all.

Because that's how it is in our brave new world, where networks are

compromised, journalists are neutered and in comparison to current

corruption, Watergate really does seem like a third rate burglary.

 

In Wednesday's wee hours, before John Kerry conceded, reaction to

morning news shows felt all too familiar -- it was like watching a

rerun of pre-Iraq invasion WMD hype. There was a story line about

unity and concession and doing what's best for the country – and it

pretty much felt like a mushroom cloud lie. How can we possibly

overlook the lying and cheating and incompetence of the past four

years? Thanks, but no thanks.

 

Despite Orwellian broadcasts from " Democracy Plaza, " it's obvious that

democracy is not doing just fine. And more and more, it looks like

something is rotten in the state of the union.

 

Pundits have been asking how exit polls, which have historically been

accurate, could have been so wrong. Well, that's easy: There's an

elephant in the voting booth. Now, will someone please alert the media?

 

 

BACK TO TOP

 

Maureen Farrell is a writer and media consultant who specializes in

helping other writers get television and radio exposure.

 

© Copyright 2004, Maureen Farrell