In other words: A discussion of The Bush Administration
Today's "Election" 2004 Round-up
- Don't just sit there, well actually you can sit - it helps when typing, send a letter to the House Judiciary Committee and have them continue to investage not only Ohio's irregularities but the state of voting in America everywhere. You can send a nice email from here:House Committee on the Judiciary, Democratic Members. Thanks. Every email will help. This is what I wrote:
I'm writing in reference to voting issues that have occurred not only in this election in Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, and other places, but in 2002 in Georgia, and in 2000 in Florida.
The government of America has spent over 100 billion dollars of the people's money in an effort to bring democracy to Iraq, and yet has done nothing to make sure our democracy is secure at home.
States have been unwilling to pay for the negligible additional cost of auditable paper receipts for electronic voting machines. States have been willing to allow poor districts to use old equipment to vote on leading to drastically higher "spoiled" ballots in these poorer communities. Suddenly only the rich in America are assured their votes count?
There seems to be a conscious effort for election boards to make sure that African American communities are not being given sufficient equipment to allow for all willing voters to vote. Suddenly Martin Luther King Jr's dream is farther away in the 21st century then it was in the 1970's?
In 2004 we have seen two things that endanger are democracy and bring into question the actual legitimacy of our "leaders" in Washington.
- Decades of neglect have left the most important day of a free society - election day - a day in which people stand in line for hours to enter a poorly lit gym, vote on the same equipment their grandparents voted on, and are greeted by volunteers who are under appreciated and under trained. A day that should be a celebration turns into a hassle and a joke. To imagine people used to dress up to vote, now you'd dress down, so as not to wrinkle your clothes as you lean against the wall waiting for the line to move.
- This pathetic state of the actual election process has opened it up for easy manipulation, and some have taken advantage of that. Campaigns have moved from encouraging people to vote to purposefully blocking people from voting. Campaign consultants who talk of ways to dissuade people from voting or challenge and harass legitimate voters are not showing poor ethical behavior, they are showing outright distain for being in a free country. These are the people who hate our freedom. Taking away a vote is - plain and simple - an attempt to destroy our democracy.
Please continue to investigate any problems with these elections from either party, but don't stop there. Work to defend the right to vote. Reform America's elections. National standards, transparent methods of tabulation, the ability for a voter to verify their vote was correctly registered, and an audit trail. These aren't a wish list. These are required to keep America free. Don't let America have another election that can be compared to Ukraine's.
Folks pretend to worry about America falling because, like Ancient Rome, we have become weak. They often use this "worry" to promote costly and unnecessary military expenditures (while forgetting to armor the Humvees). But we have grown weak. We have taking voting for granted, and because of that we may have lost it.
Reform, legislate, and spend. $100 Billion plus for democracy in Iraq. How much are we willing to spend for democracy in the United States?- Clint Curtis' "show stopper" testimony causes "gasps" at hearing
Then, he asked curtis something like whether voting machines could be hacked. He said yes. Arnebeck asked him on what he based that opinion. He said because I wrote a program that could do it. Arnebeck asked when that happened. Curtis said feeney had asked him to design such a program at yang enterprises.
Jaws dropped. Tubbs jones and waters looked shocked.
Tubbs jones, waters and nadler asked questions. Waters asked him to repeat who asked him to do it. Congressman feeney, he said. Nadler asked him some questions, as did tubbs jones and a state senator.
Curtis was asked what he would conclude if there was such a substantial deviation btwn exit polls and actual results. He said he would conclude the election had been hacked. Gasps. Could have heard a pin drop.
In the end, curtis was very very convincing to everyone in attendance. He was a show stopper, a stunner. It was a really amazing moment.
...
Wired Magazine revealed today in their article on Curtis that it was staffers in Sen. Bill Nelson's office with whom Curtis met last week in D.C.
Nelson oversees NASA in the Senate. Curtis had charged in his affidavit that an employee, Hai Lin Nee (a/k/a Henry Nee) with whom Curtis worked at Yang Enterprises, Inc. (YEI) had inserted "wiretapping routines" into programs that YEI had been contracted to create for NASA, among other companies (including the Florida Dept. of Transportation).
Nee was charged with shipping chips used in Hellfire anti-tank missiles to the Peoples Republic of China in March of this year, and has since plead guilty to one of those counts (more on Nee soon!)
At the time of the alleged October 2000 meeting at YEI when Curtis claims that Feeney asked him to create a "vote-rigging software prototype", Feeney was a member of the Florida Legislature, a corporate attorney for YEI, as well as being a registered lobbyist for the company.
Feeney was said to have been, at the time, the only registered lobbyist known to have been serving concurrently as a legislator in the 160 member Florida statehouse.
Shortly thereafter, Feeney became Speaker of the Florida Legislature.- Green says voting company tampered with recount effort
Cobb says that a witness who had requested anonymity watched a representative of Triad Systems enter the Columbus Board of Elections unannounced and tamper with a vote tabulator which then lost all data.
The representative then, Cobb said, tried to convince employees to post false information so that it would appear as if the data was valid and had never been lost.- Startling new revelations highlight rare Congressional hearings on Ohio vote - Kerry getting more involved.
On Sunday, John Kerry spoke with Rev. Jesse Jackson and urged him to take an more active role in investigating the irregularities and ensuring a fair and impartial recount. Kerry said there were three areas of inquiry that should be addressed: 92,000 ballots that recorded no vote for president; qualifying and counting provisional ballots; and supported an independent analysis of the software and set-up of the optical scan voting machines.Please read, there's lots more.
What follows are excerpts from some of the affidavits for the election challenge.
- In Warren County, where election officers declared a homeland security emergency on Election Day, and barred reporters and others from watching the vote count, it now has been revealed that county employees were told the previous Thursday they should prepare for the Election Day lockdown. That disclosure suggests the lockdown was a political decision, not a true security risk. Moreover, statements also describe how ballots were left unguarded and unprotected in a warehouse on Election Day, and they were hastily moved after county officials received complaints.
- And of course - Olbermann: Xenia-phobia
Here is Kerry, insisting he is not invested in the outcome of an Ohio recount, asking through his lawyers to inspect the 92,000 ballots that contain no vote for president. And, through his interactions with Jesse Jackson and John Conyers, connecting into the Alliance for Democracy lawsuit to overturn or freeze the Ohio Electoral count, and into the assessment that Blackwell’s behavior “appears to violate Ohio law.”
And here is Blackwell, having insisted on 'Countdown' that there would be a re-count and his office would take no steps to prevent it, stepping on his own feet in Xenia, Ohio. Last Friday, Greene County election officials there tossed out two Green Party observers who had been given access to the examine the voting records there, attributing their actions to Blackwell’s directives that the so-called ‘canvassing period’ which follows every election be extended from ten days to more than a month because of the fact of the recount. Those county records, Blackwell’s people reasoned, needed to be sealed and handled with the “utmost care” until the recount was completed.
Just to round out the absurdity, those same two Greens returned to the Election Board building in Greene County (and what script editor would’ve permitted that coincidence?) on Saturday morning to find, they say, the facility unlocked, and all those ‘sealed’ voting machines and records out in the open where any passing vandal or political memorabilia junkie could’ve walked off with them
...
It took us several phone calls today to get any explanation out of Secretary Blackwell’s office as to the events in Xenia. Carlo LoParo, the Secretary’s Press Secretary, finally came through just before dinner time. “When a county board of elections receives a formal request for a recount,” he said on Blackwell’s behalf, “all ballots, poll books and lists must be sealed to protect the record. Those documents can only be accessed in the presence of all parties involved in the recount through bi-partisan election officials — at least one Democrat and one Republican.”
In other words, the Greens’ observers were kicked out because they were neither Democrat nor Republican, even though the recount is being sponsored by, and funded by, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans.
- rob 5:11 PM - [PermaLink] -
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