Still wondering what all the talk about electronic voting fraud and political suppression of voting is about, and why these ‘rumors’ just won’t go away? Then this is a must read.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. writes about how in the 2004 election Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted - enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.

Like many Americans, I spent the evening of the 2004 election watching the returns on television and wondering how the exit polls, which predicted an overwhelming victory for John Kerry, had gotten it so wrong. By midnight, the official tallies showed a decisive lead for George Bush — and the next day, lacking enough legal evidence to contest the results, Kerry conceded. Republicans derided anyone who expressed doubts about Bush’s victory as nut cases in ‘’tinfoil hats,'’ while the national media, with few exceptions, did little to question the validity of the election. The Washington Post immediately dismissed allegations of fraud as ‘’conspiracy theories,'’(1) and The New York Times declared that ‘’there is no evidence of vote theft or errors on a large scale.'’(2)

But despite the media blackout, indications continued to emerge that something deeply troubling had taken place in 2004. Nearly half of the 6 million American voters living abroad(3) never received their ballots — or received them too late to vote(4) — after the Pentagon unaccountably shut down a state-of-the-art Web site used to file overseas registrations.(5) A consulting firm called Sproul & Associates, which was hired by the Republican National Committee to register voters in six battleground states,(6) was discovered shredding Democratic registrations.(7) In New Mexico, which was decided by 5,988 votes,(8) malfunctioning machines mysteriously failed to properly register a presidential vote on more than 20,000 ballots.(9) Nationwide, according to the federal commission charged with implementing election reforms, as many as 1 million ballots were spoiled by faulty voting equipment — roughly one for every 100 cast.(10)

This really is an excellent piece of investigative legal work and journalistic reporting by RFK, Jr. here, and why this isn’t front page news on every newspaper and the lead story on every evening newscast is in itself an indictment of the nearly total corruption of our corporate media system today.

Read the full report in Rolling Stone Here

Mark Crispin Miller weighs in as well by taking Salon to task for its pooh-pooing of the whole issue, and weak and illogical attack on RFK’s well-researched piece.

And Here is a follow up interview in PRWeek with RFK, Jr. with more details and explanation regarding his recent bombshell report.

Will the major media finally cover the electronic election fraud issue?

Bob Fitrakis, editor of The Free Press, Green Party candidate for governor of Ohio and past guest on UnCommon Sense TV, presents this report with his colleague Harvey Wasserman.

That the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004 were stolen has become an article of faith for millions of mainstream Americans. But there has been barely a whiff of coverage in the major media about any problems with the electronic voting machines that made those thefts possible—until now.

A recent OpEdNews/Zogby People’s poll of Pennsylvania residents, found that “39% said that the 2004 election was stolen. 54% said it was legitimate. But let’s look at the demographics on this question. Of the people who watch Fox news as their primary source of TV news, one half of one percent believe it was stolen and 99% believe it was legitimate. Among people who watched ANY other news source but FOX, more felt the election was stolen than legitimate. The numbers varied dramatically.”

Here, from that poll, are the stations listed as first choice by respondents and the percentage of respondents who thought the election was stolen: CNN 70%; MSNBC 65%; CBS 64%; ABC 56%; Other 56%; NBC 49%; FOX 0.5%.

With 99% of Fox viewers believing that the election was “legitimate,” only the constant propaganda of Rupert Murdoch’s disinformation campaign stands in the way of a majority of Americans coming to grips with the reality of two consecutive stolen elections.

That the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post finally ran coverage of problems with electronic voting machines this week is itself big news. It says the scandals surrounding computer fraud and financial illegalities at Diebold and other electronic voting machine companies have become simply too big and blatant for even the bought, docile mainstream media (MSM) to ignore.

Read The Complete Report

Deibold voting machine is destroyed by irate voter.

http://www.newsnet5.com/politics/9146477/detail.html

The last line of this story says it in that the report claims it is ‘unclear what caused him to become upset’. I can easily see how there is certainly no shortage of potential reasons.

Thanks to Brad Friedman for the heads up on this. He has been an indispensable stalwart in rooting out the truth behind the utter scam of electronic voting.

Our Constitution and Our Democracy Are Not Negotiable
By Paul R. Lehto, Attorney at Law
lehtolawyer@hotmail.com

Is Democracy in danger though newfangled computerized electronic vote counting using trade secret vote counting software, when citizens never get *any* information about the count and its processes, much less see the ballots or the count of them? Where we have to take election results on pure faith? Where even the government officials don’t have access to the underlying computer code used to process and count votes? And even if they did, it’s a simple thing to add a virus or additional code? I’d like to show that democracy “in danger” is an understatement, as is democracy “under attack”. Our Constitution has been partially *eliminated* and our Democracy has been *totally eliminated* simply by contracts to purchase electronic voting machines. I’d like to ask a favor that you allow me a couple minutes, a bit more than a typical email, to show why this is not mere rhetoric on my part. Like I say again below, I’m a lawyer and I’m in litigation on this subject, so I am subject to enormous pressure to choose my words accurately and carefully, so as not to either undermine my own credibility in the end, or to create potential for misunderstanding.

Here’s my argument:

First, democratic elections consist only of Substantive results and Procedural processes. Note well that the substantive RESULT of an election need not be just, and quite often isn’t, because Hitler can be legitimately elected (for example). That is, it is absolutely not required that the most just candidate or issue win an election. WHAT THIS MEANS IS THAT “DEMOCRACY” HAS NO MORAL, POLITICAL OR ETHICAL CLAIM TO LEGITIMACY UNLESS IT IS VERY STRONG IN THE AREA OF **PROCEDURAL** INTEGRITY.

So let’s look at the procedural integrity issue, regarding today’s elections.

At the heart of democracy is elections, and then further at the heart of elections is vote counting, which is the corest of the core government functions, and regular elections are absolutely indispensable in a real democracy. The counting of the vote governs the transfer of 100% of all legitimate political power and tax authority in the world’s sole superpower. That core democratic function of vote counting is then delegated VIA MERE CONTRACT (*abdicated* via contract would be a more accurate word than “delegated”) to an incestuously friendly private corporate crony of the elections officials who are supposed to be the *servants* of the public.

The primary and immediate effect of this delegation/abdication via contract to electronic voting vendors is that the COUNTING OF THE VOTE IS NOW IN SECRET BECAUSE OF TRADE SECRET SOFTWARE………… Under such conditions of unverifiable secret counting where only totals are reported, Democracy is not “in danger”, democracy is literally **nonexistent**.

I say “nonexistent” not as overheated political rhetoric but in the sense of a lawyer (which I am) choosing his words for accuracy. Choosing them for fairness, even. Nonexistent: Because if you can’t prove that something exists like a real valid vote count with integrity, it’s fair to say that it’s nonexistent. Nonexistent democracy is a quantum leap more than “democracy in danger”.

It’s not just *democracy* that can’t be proved to exist (on the whole), but also the Constitution which is being downsized and renegotiated.

Downsized Constitution??? More overblown political rhetoric on my part?? No. My Constitutional Law professor attended the forum I did with Bev Harris and Richard Borkowski last night (Richard is a computer expert) and gave me the ConLaw Good Housekeeping seal of approval on this general argument below. Here’s precisely why these contracts (as do all privatization contracts of core governmental functions) gut our Constitutional rights:

(1) With rare exception like the amendments outlawing slavery, the Constitution ONLY limits the **government’s** power and provides rights assertable only against the government, it does not provide us with protection against private power or corporate power.

(2) Thus, when a privatization contract transfers, delegates or abdicates a core government function like vote counting away from the protective Constitutional umbrella in the public sector, and into the non-protection of the private sector, the Constitutional rights of each and every member of the public have literally and immediately been *downsized*. Their rights have been terminated, in significant part.

(3) Publicly minded lawyers then often sue under various theories amounting to the idea that the Constitution must go along with the function if it is to be transferred into the private sector. They then have mixed success, sometimes the Constitutional rights of citizens *will* be assertable in private prison contexts (for example) sometimes they will not be. It’s a mixed bag. So AFTER LITIGATION TAKING YEARS, part of our constitution lives on perhaps, part definitely does not.

(4) The end result of the privatization of core functions via contract, then, is the RENEGOTIATION OF OUR CONSTITUTION VIA CONTRACTS AND THEN THE COURTS.

(5) But that CAN NOT be right. Why? Because the constitution is only changeable by AMENDMENT. And the rights of citizens can only be increased or decreased, if at all, by an act of the Legislature or by Constitutional amendment. A contract can only affect the parties who SIGN it.

(6) So our complaint regarding Sequoia, after pointing out that certainly we would not accept the “offer” of a foreign nation to forsake control of our ports, cities and factories in exchange for the MERE right to count our votes in secret, states as follows: “The plaintiffs will not abide a conquest by contract”. That’s what this election privatization of our vote counting is: A conquest of our Constitution and our Democracy by contractual means. An “extreme takeover” of government with a techno-makeover to baffle us with bullshit. It’s war by contractual means. And it’s dirty pool since a contract can never affect the rights of *non*-parties. To unite all anti privatization forces with lovers of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, and to defend our democracy, I think our rallying cry should be:

OUR CONSTITUTION IS NON-NEGOTIABLE.

OUR DEMOCRACY IS NON-NEGOTIABLE.

And maybe:

YOU CAN HAVE MY BALLOT WHEN YOU PRY IT FROM MY COLD, DEAD FINGERS.

Last week I attended a speech by an incredible leader, Holly Jacobson of www.Voteraction.org, an organization well worth supporting. During that speech she shared her feeling that this election integrity fight is for all the marbles, that “it’s all at stake” or some other similar expression. I don’t know precisely what Holly’s reasoning is, but she too uses the phrase “election privatization” to describe her motivations in this fight. I obviously agree, this is extremely serious, possibly the most serious fight regarding democracy in our history, because while many have been denied the right to vote wrongfully, never has the very possibility of democratic legitimacy been destroyed. This can not stand, and will not stand. Americans have never lost a battle for democracy on their own soil, when they understood what was at stake.

Please write to me and tell me I’m wrong and why I’m wrong at lehtolawyer@hotmail.com. All debate is respected. I don’t want to go on wild goose chases. I have two fairly young children, and bills to pay.

But, if in the end I am right, then it would be more important than anything else to fight this, and to leave no stone unturned in doing so, and to ask you to do your part to do the same.

For complete details in regards to this lawsuit against Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc….
www.votersunite.org/info/lehtolawsuit.asp

Paul R Lehto
lehtolawyer@hotmail.com
425-422-1387 (cell)
(c) 2006 by Paul R. Lehto
(may forward or republish on not for profit basis in whole with attribution intact, if copy to author provided)

Here is a handy dandy little picture guide report by The Washington Post on how America protects its ability to engage in vice (ie slot machines) better than it guards the integrity of its liberties through voting rights.

And for those who are calling attention to the shady dealings of companies like Diebold, they don’t get rewarded as the American heroes that they are. They get threatened by the machinery of ‘justice’. Bob Koehler reports here in his column “Whistling Diebold” about this disturbing case in California.

As election-reform advocate Peter Soby wrote on Huffington Post: “So in a nutshell, Diebold was defrauding the state government and taxpayers of California, and disenfranchising the voters of California. And the documents prove it.”

Read The Full Article

This is disturbing, but not unexpected by anyone paying attention to what has been going on with America’s voting system these last few years. The internal logs of at least 40 Sequoia touch-screen voting machines reveal that votes were time- and date-stamped as cast two weeks before the election, sometimes in the middle of the night.

Read the Full Article

And here is a recent update on what is going on in Florida from Brad DeLong and The Brad Blog, one of the very best bloggers and sites around today in respect to exposing this issue. The corporate media could learn a thing or two about investigative journalism from Mr. DeLong (but I fear they know full well about real journalism, they just choose not to bother).

Ion Sancho, the Election Supervisor of Leon County, Florida who exposed a number of security flaws in Electronic Voting Machines made by the Diebold corporation of North Canton, Ohio, has earlier today launched legal “breach of contract” proceedings against the company. The action has been filed on behalf of the Leon County Supervisor of Elections office.

Read The Brad Blog Report

For more on the problems of electronic voting devices and the threat they pose to democracy, visit Blackboxvoting.org

Yet more evidence and insight into the serious problems afflicting our electoral system, and how the marriage of the infrastructure of our public democracy and that of private corporate interests is simply not tenable. Here are a few brief excerpts of this important expose…

In an exclusive interview with Raw Story, a whistleblower from electronic voting heavyweight Diebold Election Systems Inc. raised grave concerns about the company’s electronic voting technology and of electronic voting in general, bemoaning an electoral system the insider feels has been compromised by corporate privatization.

The company insider became disillusioned after witnessing repeated efforts by Diebold to evade meeting legal requirements or implementing appropriate security measures, putting corporate interests ahead of the interests of voters.

“I’ve absolutely had it with the dishonesty,” the insider told Raw Story. Blasting Wally O’Dell, the current president of Diebold, the whistleblower went on to explain behind-the-scenes tactics of the company and its officers.

“There’s a lot of pressure in the corporation to make the numbers: `We don’t tell you how to do it, but do it.’ [O’Dell is] probably the number one culprit putting pressure on people,” the source said.

Previous revelations from the whistleblower have included evidence that Diebold’s upper management and top government officials knew of backdoor software in Diebold’s central tabulator before the 2004 election, but ignored urgent warnings—such as a Homeland Security alert posted on the Internet.

“This is a very dangerous precedent that needs to be stopped—that’s the corporate takeover of elections,” the source warned. “The majority of election directors don’t understand the gravity of what they’re dealing with. The bottom line is who is going to tamper with an election? A lot of people could, but they assume that no one will.”

Read The Complete Report

Its starting to become more and more known, and the proven facts unavoidable.

As the Leon County supervisor of elections, Ion Sancho’s job is to make sure voting is free of fraud. But the most brazen effort lately to manipulate election results in this Florida locality was carried out by Sancho himself.

Four times over the past year Sancho told computer specialists to break in to his voting system. And on all four occasions they did, changing results with what the specialists described as relatively unsophisticated hacking techniques. To Sancho, the results showed the vulnerability of voting equipment manufactured by Ohio-based Diebold Election Systems, which is used by Leon County and many other jurisdictions around the country.

More people are finally beginning to notice that these machines are a greater threat to our democratic republic than any terrorist. Anyone can attack us. Only we can allow commit suicide. And allowing these infernal machines to operate as the barometer of the will of the people is truly dangerous.

Read the complete Washington Post report here.

For more on this, visit Blackboxvoting.org

Election theft? In America?

The facts really are not debatable at this point, at least to anyone who wants to take a few moments to study the actual data at hand on the issue. What is debatable is whether our compliant and corrupt media and the dozing American public will concern themselves of this most important issue.

Here, Mark Crispin Miller talks about how the right stole the 2004 presidential election - and how they’ll do it again unless we stop them.

Read The Full Article

What They Did Last Fall
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times

August 19th, 2005

By running for the U.S. Senate, Katherine Harris, Florida’s former secretary of state, has stirred up some ugly memories. And that’s a good thing, because those memories remain relevant. There was at least as much electoral malfeasance in 2004 as there was in 2000, even if it didn’t change the outcome. And the next election may be worse.
In his recent book “Steal This Vote” - a very judicious work, despite its title - Andrew Gumbel, a U.S. correspondent for the British newspaper The Independent, provides the best overview I’ve seen of the 2000 Florida vote. And he documents the simple truth: “Al Gore won the 2000 presidential election.”

Two different news media consortiums reviewed Florida’s ballots; both found that a full manual recount would have given the election to Mr. Gore. This was true despite a host of efforts by state and local officials to suppress likely Gore votes, most notably Ms. Harris’s “felon purge,” which disenfranchised large numbers of valid voters.

But few Americans have heard these facts. Perhaps journalists have felt that it would be divisive to cast doubt on the Bush administration’s legitimacy. If so, their tender concern for the nation’s feelings has gone for naught: Cindy Sheehan’s supporters are camped in Crawford, and America is more bitterly divided than ever.

Meanwhile, the whitewash of what happened in Florida in 2000 showed that election-tampering carries no penalty, and political operatives have acted accordingly. For example, in 2002 the Republican Party in New Hampshire hired a company to jam Democratic and union phone banks on Election Day.

And what about 2004?

Mr. Gumbel throws cold water on those who take the discrepancy between the exit polls and the final result as evidence of a stolen election. (I told you it’s a judicious book.) He also seems, on first reading, to play down what happened in Ohio. But the theme of his book is that America has a long, bipartisan history of dirty elections.

He told me that he wasn’t brushing off the serious problems in Ohio, but that “this is what American democracy typically looks like, especially in a presidential election in a battleground state that is controlled substantially by one party.”

So what does U.S. democracy look like? There have been two Democratic reports on Ohio in 2004, one commissioned by Representative John Conyers Jr., the other by the Democratic National Committee.

The D.N.C. report is very cautious: “The purpose of this investigation,” it declares, “was not to challenge or question the results of the election in any way.” It says there is no evidence that votes were transferred away from John Kerry - but it does suggest that many potential Kerry votes were suppressed. Although the Conyers report is less cautious, it stops far short of claiming that the wrong candidate got Ohio’s electoral votes.

But both reports show that votes were suppressed by long lines at polling places - lines caused by inadequate numbers of voting machines - and that these lines occurred disproportionately in areas likely to vote Democratic. Both reports also point to problems involving voters who were improperly forced to cast provisional votes, many of which were discarded.

The Conyers report goes further, highlighting the blatant partisanship of election officials. In particular, the behavior of Ohio’s secretary of state, Kenneth Blackwell - who supervised the election while serving as co-chairman of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio - makes Ms. Harris’s actions in 2000 seem mild by comparison.

And then there are the election night stories. Warren County locked down its administration building and barred public observers from the vote-counting, citing an F.B.I. warning of a terrorist threat. But the F.B.I. later denied issuing any such warning. Miami County reported that voter turnout was an improbable 98.55 percent of registered voters. And so on.

We aren’t going to rerun the last three elections. But what about the future?

Our current political leaders would suffer greatly if either house of Congress changed hands in 2006, or if the presidency changed hands in 2008. The lids would come off all the simmering scandals, from the selling of the Iraq war to profiteering by politically connected companies. The Republicans will be strongly tempted to make sure that they win those elections by any means necessary. And everything we’ve seen suggests that they will give in to that temptation.

E-mail: krugman@nytimes.com

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