Debunking the Debunkers: Randi Rhodes interviews Bev Harris

[Guest guest]

S

Sat, 13 Nov 2004 06:31:10 -0000

" Debunking the Debunkers " : Randi Rhodes interviews Bev Harris

 

 

I typed this out particularly because it covers the " rebuttals " to the

screwy figures in Cuyahoga county (starting about 4th paragraph down).

------

 

" Debunking the Debunkers " : Randi Rhodes interviews Bev Harris of Black

Box Voting on AirAmericaRadio, November 11, 2004 [partial transcription]:

....

Bev Harris: Here's something many people don't know about the Help

America Vote Act (more like the Help Yourself to America's Vote Act)

-- the HAVA originally had a very strong provision to have a

voter-verified paper ballot backup for recount, and that was right at

the last minute lobbied out of there by a couple of senators who had

ties to companies like Cisco; Cisco had ties to other voting machines,

in fact they had a huge investment in a voting machine manufacturer at

the time that was doing internet voting called Vote Here -- so it was

just that curious last minute deletion on that bill that has allowed

this to just go all over America

 

But it's not just the touch-screens, because at the same time that

they're putting in these touchscreens that don't have a paper ballot,

they were removing our right to look at the paper ballot with our

optical scanner punch-card system. There was this slow migration among

some Secretaries of State who were saying, well no you can't really

look at the paper ballot, the only procedure you can do is run it

through a machine, lock it in a box -- " for it's own protection " of

course -- and then without a court order you can never open that box

again.

 

Randi: what have you been able to accomplish?

 

BH: Well, certainly over the last couple of years we've been able to

bring attention and awareness among the american people to the fact

that this is an issue. We are pretty much locked out of network tv

that has a company line that this is actually -- some of their own

journalists are just so frustrated because they've been told they are

not to cover anything except this company line, you know, they can

talk a little bit about vote suppression, they can talk a little bit

about bizarre mathematically impossible elections and call them

anomalies and glitches but they can't talk about fraud, period. No

matter what. And I gotta tell you because I get booked all the time,

like every other day, and then the story gets killed by management ...

and then about half an hour before, we get told " we were told we can't

have you on. "

....

[Olberman of MSNBC cancelled because he knows that] I'm going to use

the F word, fraud, because we know it existed, we've got reports which

have not hit the news -- how strange -- and we're just proceeding

ahead, because we have had an election where there's been fraud, and

it appears to involve the machines, -- and you know, it's strange, you

know they'll come to us and say " we have all kinds of lawyers and

things for different candidates so tell us exactly what you have but

don't give it to us until you have the entire case wrapped up with a

bow ready to go to court and prosecute. " And we say okay, there's a

handful of us in an office, where are the FBI and the police who are

supposed to investigate this stuff when it's so clearly messed up?

 

But you know the kinds of things that we're seeing, even when they try

to explain them, the explanations just don't make sense at all. It's

like well, the reason that the number of people who came and voted

does not match at all with what showed up in our machine is that well,

um, yeah, we mixed in the absentees and didn't identify them.

 

Randi: Yeah, I heard that, and I heard another lame excuse too. One of

them in Ohio was, Oh well, you had districts that overlapped for

congress, which is why they counted twice in precincts that shared a

congressman --? What does that MEAN?

 

BH: (laughs) I've seen the software, it completely handles that

problem. You know it divides it into districts and subdistricts, it's

not a complex database problem. And the software is completely

designed to handle that particular problem. So it's just bogus.

 

You know, here's another example, you'll have slips from the polling

place that say here's the result from that polling place, and it

doesn't match what shows up in the central tabulator downtown, and

they'll say " Oh we mixed some other stuff in with the polling place

votes -- well, WHY?

 

You know, I've seen accountants do that, and usually when they do that

kind of commingling of funds, they're doing something they're not

supposed to do and they're trying to obfuscate. What you do if you

have other kinds of votes is you don't mix them into something, you

put them on line items and you say here's our absentee votes, here's

our provisional ballots...

 

Randi: and also I would think that the only way my congressional vote

could be mixed in with my presidential vote is if I voted a straight

party ticket and a lot of people don't do that, so why would it matter

that I voted for congress in an overlapping district?

 

BH: It doesn't

 

Randi: Of course not. These excuses that they're giving, and the more

they come up with excuses and the more jargon and the more math they

put in it, the less likely it is that any of it's true -- they're

trying to bamboozle us

 

BH: And here's the thing, network TV -- which is what isn't covering

this -- you can quickly turn the conversation into this technobabble

argument, which makes it not interesting to the American public, so

you have to keep turning it back and saying, whoa whoa, this is basic

bookkeeping, this doesn't match this, and that don't make sense ...

....

 

[then they talk about the exit polls showing a landslide for Kerry but

Bush wins -- and then they talk about the sophisticated hack attacks

against blackboxvoting.org that are crashing that site every few

minutes, that max their bandwidth, etc., ... more about the lockdown

on the media ... the recount challenges in Ohio ... AND the

blackboxvoting.org recount in Florida, " unless they change Florida law

next week. " ...]

 

download and listen to the interview in full at:

http://www.randirhodesarchives.com (one-week rotating archive,

commercials deleted -- this interview is in part 2, starts at about

minute 18)

http://www.whiterosesociety.org (permanent archive, with commercials

-- this interview is somewhere around 2/3s from the beginning)

see also http://www.blackboxvoting.org