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Ever since the ratification of the15^th Amendment, in 1870, African Americans were supposedly guaranteed the Constitutional right to vote. The methods and attempts to hinder that right since have been numerous. From the current exhibit “Of Ballots Uncast: the African American Struggle for the Right to Vote” on display in Atlanta at the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site Visitor Center through March 7, 2006:

From poll taxes, gerrymandering, lynching, intimidation, the “Jelly Bean Test” in which African American voters would be asked to guess the number of jelly beans in the jar to be allowed to vote---to the infamous 1965 "Bloody Sunday " attack ordered by Alabama Governor George Wallace against 600 peaceful civil rights marchers attempting to walk from Selma to Montgomery. Discrimination and voter intimidation had prevented the black population of Selma (half the city) from registering and voting. Marchers got no further than six blocks before the lawmen attacked them with billy clubs, bull whips and tear gas, leaving many injured and 17 hospitalized.

In the wake of our most recent election, we can also cite scores of methods used to disenfranchise voters of all colors, but it would appear the black vote today is still, unfortunately, a target for those who would suppress it. Here are just a few of the multi-pronged approaches reportedly used to nullify votes last time around:

Pre-punched ballots for Bush (explaining perhaps the unusual number of Ohio votes discarded due to “double-punching”); Touch Screen switches; rigged tabulator systems; unfair provisional ballot regulations; provisionals tossed out; more absentee votes than absentee voters; switches of voting sites on Election Day; voter suppression and intimidation; double voting; technicians “recalibrating” machines mid-election... Roving bands of police officers backed by Republican public officials threatening voters and poll workers. Poll “challengers” interrogating voters, tampering with voter registration lists, calls to voters reminding them to vote on November 3, and hours spent in line due to insufficient machinery, spoils, incestuous Secretaries of State. I’m sure I forgot a few.

Absent Minded Absentees

Five communities in Ohio had at least 580 absentee votes with no voters listed in their poll books to cast them! Dr. Werner Lange was attempting to do a scientific study of the absentee problem in Ohio when Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell decided he didn’t feel like being cooperative, and he ordered all the 88 boards of elections to prevent public inspection of any poll books until after certification of the Ohio vote. The five communities examined before the ‘closing of the books’ represented an average of 5.5 fraudulent voters per precinct. Ohio has 11,366 precincts. Do the math.

Provide ‘em with Provisionals

Investigative reporter and author Greg Palast has a good beef about Provisional ballots and Spoiled ballots that would burn the ears of any corrupt Ohio election official if he got the chance. He maintains that in a typical Presidential election, there are near 2 million ballots/votes that are “simply chucked in the garbage, marked ‘spoiled’”-- that never get counted. What spoils them? The overvote and the undervote. Ohio is said to have tossed away 93,000 of them.

After the spoilers we have the Provisional ballots that comprised approximately 155,000 of Ohio’s votes. The decision to count or toss these ballots lies in the hands of the state’s top election officials. In the case of Ohio - Mr. Kenneth Blackwell again. So Kenny devised some brand new rules this past year for Provisionals. Like he won’t count any cast in the “wrong precinct” - first time regulation. Like your date of birth has to be printed on the envelope - maybe he’s planning on sending a birthday card? And so on.

Partisan Secretaries of State

One excellent way to steal an election is to have the Secretary of State - the final arbiter of all things election-related in the state - to be closely tied into one of the candidates’ campaigns. Sounds unlikely? Unfair? Incestuous? Nahhh..... Look here at some 2004 statistics:

Kansas; Secretary of State Rod Thornburgh: Bush-Cheney ‘04 State Campaign Associate Chair.

Swing state of Michigan: Secretary of State Terry Lynn Land: Co-Chair Bush-Cheney ’04 Campaign. Land was criticized for restricting voter access to provisional ballots and failing to take action against voter intimidation in Democratic areas.

Swing state of Missouri: Secretary of State Matt Blunt: Bush-Cheney ’04 Campaign Chair, restricted access to provisional ballots as well.

Swinging swing state of Florida: Secretary of State Glenda Hood: Well known for pushing the controversial purged list of voters, also restricted access to provisional ballots and fought to ensure Ralph Nader would appear on the ballot for 2004. Hand-picked for her spot at the head of Florida elections by Jeb Bush himself.

Swing state of Ohio: Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell: Co-Chair Bush-Cheney ’04 Campaign, has restricted access to not only provisional ballots, but to voting while Democratic in general! Blackwell issued the now famous edict asserting that the registration applications in Ohio had to be cast only on white, uncoated paper under an 80 lb. weight in order to be accepted - get out your paper scales before mailing. This dictate was also illegal.

One cannot say too much about Mr. Blackwell and Ohio. It was recently revealed, by Bob Fitrakis of the Free Press, that Blackwell’s very office in Columbus had direct access to the Ohio central tabulators on Election Day.

The vendor’s sub-contractor / ‘technician’ who had performed the installation verified this to Fitrakis, along with the fact that Blackwell had access to overwrite or “correct” the tabulators’ data from the site. A press release issued in March 2004 from Blackwell’s own office confirmed that, for the first time, the Secretary of State’s office would be able to exchange election data in real time with the County Boards of Elections... where the tabulators count the vote.

Meanwhile, Blackwell seemed bound and determined to keep all prying eyes away from the Ohio polls on Election Day. He issued unprecedented directives before the election pushing media exit pollsters back 100 feet, and banning reporters from the polls altogether. These directives however were immediately overturned in federal court. (That sticky wicket First Amendment again). On Election Day, he denied poll admission to the foreign monitors, invited by the State Department to observe and report on the election. During the well-publicized lockdown at the ballot-counting site in Warren County, Blackwell did manage to have reporters banned during vote tabulation, when officials claimed the FBI had warned of an impending terrorist attack (the FBI denied having ever issued any such warning )-- a violation not only of Ohio law, but of the 14^th Amendment of the Constitution as well.

It’s almost as if he had something to hide.

When Congressman Conyers and his committee came to town to hold their investigative hearings on the November election in Ohio—Blackwell denied him even a ROOM!

When the first Congressional challenge since 1876 was presented to a state’s Electoral College delegation (Ohio), Blackwell and Ohio’s Attorney General James Petro dismissed it as “frivolous”. When asked to testify in the historic Moss v Bush case in Ohio, Blackwell not only refused, but simultaneously removed critical documents related to the vote count from public access so the attorneys couldn’t proceed with discovery. He then personally attacked one of the election protection attorneys who had filed the suit, Bob Fitrakis, by calling him a “complete idiot” in public.

Dr. Fitrakis, by the way, besides being an attorney, holds a Ph.D. in political science, served as an international observer in the 1994 El Salvador elections, co-authored and edited the international observer’s report to the United Nations and is one of the preeminent leaders of the voting rights movement.

In other words - a complete idiot.

In Green County, Blackwell obstructed the recount by withdrawing access to voting poll records forcing the effort to halt mid-count. In a piercing letter of condemnation, Representative John Conyers of Michigan, an attorney of Watergate notoriety, listed each Ohio state code violation as well as federal violation that Blackwell had committed during the 2004 election and aftermath. To read Conyers’ pointed letter, go here.

Voting Machine Shortages

Access or lack of it to the actual voting machines can play a major role in preventing certain sectors of voters from having their votes counted. William Anthony, from the Franklin County Ohio Board of Elections, revealed that on November 2, a number of voting machines were transferred from inner city precincts to Pastor Rod Parsley’s suburban World Harvest Mega-Church ( **Parsley is backing SOS Blackwell’s run for Governor in ‘06) Thousands of African American voters were deprived of their vote due to a lack of sufficient balloting hardware per Bob Fritakis of the Free Press.

Together, both Blackwell and Parsley led the Anti Gay Partnership ballot initiative.

In Gahanna 1-B precinct of Ohio, Bush garnered over 4200 votes. And why shouldn’t he? The precinct is the site of the New Life Church founded by a Jerry Fallwell Liberty University grad and pastored by yet another Falwell protégé. The congregation prayed for 30 days for a Bush victory, and got it. Only hitch was the 4258 votes came from a total of only 638 citizens. Oops, again. The New Life Church must have thought they’d witnessed a modern version of the multiplying fish and loaves Bible miracle from Matthew-14. Only this time it manifested in thousands of extra votes instead of loaves.

Ohio reportedly had somewhere from 70 to 90 additional machines available on Election Day, but the state refused to release them to the frantic poll workers who were requesting them in their precincts. They sat unused in a warehouse instead - dark and dry - while thousands of Ohio voters stood drenched in the rain for hours craning their necks to see the line ahead of them.

How Long Can You Wait?

Per Congressman John Conyers of Michigan, some Ohio voters in Democratic precincts waited up to 10 hours in line. The Washington Post estimated that between 15-20,000 people in Columbus alone left the lines without voting after waiting for hours. In Knox County, Ohio, Kenyon College students finished voting at 4:00 AM - only after a court order forced the polling station to remain open allowing the students to cast their votes.

Perhaps the most dramatic extreme reported was in Columbus Ohio. While one woman was standing in line to vote - for four hours - her husband had passed away. Her friend, Marion Brown reported the story after the woman, shaken from the news, had come to see her at her house with the sad story.

For an account of what Greg Palast refers to as the “Apartheid Ballot Counting System” where a black person’s vote has an 800% higher chance of being tossed out than a white voter’s vote, click here. At the link you can also download some visual examples of voter disenfranchisement and long lines in Ohio that are as impressive as they are disturbing.

When it was all said and done, Bush Co-Chair Kenneth Blackwell calmly pronounced that Ohio’s Election Day 2004 had run “smoothly” - despite the fact that he was being subpoenaed to testify in the case of suspected Ohio vote fraud.

Old Fashioned Dirty Tricks

Snips from an article, written by Robin Erb, published October 13, 2004, entitled:

“Thieves hit Democratic Party offices; computers containing sensitive data removed.”

Thieves shattered a side window overnight at Lucas County Democratic headquarters in Toledo, stealing computers with sensitive campaign information and jeopardizing the

party's ability to deliver crucial votes on Election Day.

Among the data on the stolen computer of the party's office manager were: e-mails discussing campaign strategy, candidates' schedules, financial information, and phone numbers of party members, candidates, donors, and volunteers. Also taken were computers belonging to a Lucas County Commissioner and to a Texas attorney working

with the Kerry campaign to ensure election security.

Article Here

More Techie Tricks

Per the Phoenix News site: One could implement a Trojan Horse that, as soon as a particular candidate’s vote passes a predetermined ‘tipping point’, will start to throw votes to the other candidate’s side. One could program the systems so that when the modem transmits a result, the receiving computer (tabulator) sends data back to change the database. Or a good programmer can have the code erase itself as soon as it’s done its work. One could have the program perform “random errors” scattered across the system. And then you can read of countless other examples of technological tricks to rig the vote throughout this report—in the Technology; Glitches, Hitches, Anomalies and Irregularities chapters, and in each of The Companies chapters.

Low Techie Tricks

In Cleremont County, Ohio (again--Ohio!), during the Presidential hand recount of 2004, it was discovered that stickers had been placed over the Kerry/Edwards ovals on optical scan ballots. Raw Story website reports that witnesses stated that, beneath those stickers, the Kerry/Edwards ovals had been selected.

Let’s move up to New Hampshire, where they still have actual paper ballots and hand recounts using them, where they are on record as the state having conducted the highest number of election recounts of all 50 states. But the wolf is at the door. Even though their Secretary of State, Bill Gardner, could only recall two instances of voter fraud in his three decades as head of the department—there is a rallying cry for the need to prevent massive voter fraud in New Hampshire, and across the United States. This is one of the excuses frequently employed in the argument against the providing of paper trails. Or the argument in favor of electronification of all stages of elections, including all-encompassing voter registration databases, and the requirement of National voter ID cards or state drivers licenses as a prerequisite to voting.

It would seem the Republican Party is not too keen on New Hampshire and their old-fashioned transparent election style. During the 2002 elections, (per Paul Krugman’s “What They Did Last Fall” New York Times article of August 19, 2005) the Party hired a company to jam the Democratic phone banks on Election Day. And as if that weren’t enough—they also had them jam the union phone banks at the same time. See how infuriated some people get over little low tech hand-counted paper ballots?

There are two distinct movements afoot in American elections today. One involves voter disenfranchisement based on an inherent distrust of the voters, based on scant to no evidence. I call them the “Conspiracy Theorists”—as they have not demonstrated any mass conspiracy by the citizenry to steal elections via their vote, yet they maintain such a conspiracy exists. The other involves an enfranchisement and trust of the voters accompanied by a solid distrust of the equipment being offered to them and the companies controlling that equipment’s software. This second group is armed with volumes of evidence showing the ability of one malicious programmer to tamper with hundreds of thousands of votes within a few minutes.

Hire your own Programmer

The Clint Curtis / Tom Sweeney Saga

Additionally, there is the actual case of programmer & whistleblower Clint Curtis of Florida, who claims that prior to the 2000 election, Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Fla.) had requested some vote-altering software be written by Curtis and his firm, Yang Enterprises, Inc., for Florida’s electronic machines. At the time of the request, Feeney was not yet a Congressman, but was corporate counsel representing Yang, as well as a lobbyist for them, and Florida Speaker of the House. The former 1994 running mate of Jeb Bush, Tom Feeney was elected to Congress in 2002, and is now a member of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee.

Curtis maintained that his employer at Yang Enterprises, a software design firm, told him the code Feeney requested would be used to “control the vote” in West Palm Beach. The type of code Feeney solicited was purportedly one that could go undetected on a voting machine and be easily triggered. Once the code was activated, it would search to see if the “favorite” candidate was trailing and - if so - the code would then award 51% of the vote total to that ‘preferred’ candidate and redistribute the remaining 49% of the votes amongst the left over candidates.

Curtis, a lifelong Republican himself, did take his time coming forward to tell authorities about the alleged meeting and request. And we don’t really know why this is. He did however tell an investigator for the Florida Inspector General’s Office, Raymond C. Lemme, who had spent about a year working diligently on the case alongside Curtis.

In mid-June 2003, Lemme had at last brought Curtis some big and overdue news - he said he had “tracked the corruption all the way to the top” and the story would break within the next few weeks. The imminent cracking of the case was confirmed by Lemme’s wife, Mary Ann. Then on June 30, 2003, just two weeks later, the investigator was found dead in a Valdosta, Georgia motel room bathtub, his wrist slashed, a short suicide note, his belongings neatly arranged on the bathroom counter. Police pronounced the death a suicide. Had he committed suicide in his home state of Florida, there would have been a mandatory autopsy. Not so in Georgia. Valdosta, Georgia is just over the Tallahassee, Florida border, where Lemme lived and worked.

Lemme had a cherished daughter, his only child, whom he reportedly spoke of with great affection to everyone who met him. She was due to marry in September, just a few months after the “suicide”. He had recently been honored at his work with a service award. He expressed great excitement over the up and coming culmination of his past year’s hard work - when the case would break. He is pegged as depressed and suicidal.

The Valdosta police report, written by Detective Shannon Floyd, stated that their camera had not functioned at the scene due to memory flash card problems resulting in ‘no useable crime scene photos’. Then something strange happened - 15 photos of the entire scene appeared, clear and in full grisly detail on Insider Magazine’s website. The photos authenticity was subsequently confirmed by the Valdosta Police Force. Floyd, the officer who wrote the report denoting the failed flash card, has since left the police department and did not wish to be contacted further about the case.

Due to mounting Internet pressure for further investigation, (largely from BradBlog) the case was reopened, and then swiftly shut down again following a mystery conversation between someone at the Florida Department of Transportation and the Valdosta Police Captain Brian K. Childress. No further comments were forthcoming. The death has been ruled a suicide and the case closed.

There were other wild claims from Curtis; that Yang Enterprises, who contracted with NASA, was employing a Chinese national - who was also a spy...

So what did Yang Enterprises or Rep. Feeney have to say about Curtis’ accusations?

Feeney’s spokeswoman would not return calls for comment, but Feeney was quoted as saying they were, “--some of the most ridiculous, fictional charges you could ever imagine.”

Yang’s executive assistant, Mike Cohen, insisted that the meeting with Curtis never occurred and that Curtis was “100% wrong.”

Yang’s attorney Michael O’Quinn labeled Curtis’ assertions, “absurd and categorically untrue.” As attorneys are want to do - he went further, tagging on some character assassinations claiming that Curtis was an opportunist, a liar, and a “disgruntled former employee.” Curtis had quit Yang in Feb. 2001 due to the company’s “questionable ethics.” When Curtis produced the “farewell” card from the party Yang had thrown in his honor, they dropped the disgruntled charge.

The interesting turn of events came when Curtis, who was being largely dismissed or ignored, signed an affidavit in 2004 to take a polygraph test. In the affidavit, he mentioned that Sweeney had also boasted that he’d already found several ways to successfully impede the “black vote.”

Guess what happened next? In March 2005, Curtis passed the lie detector test with flying colors. He was found to be “completely truthful in all his responses.” And, around the same time, the alleged Yang Chinese spy - Hai Lin Nee - was arrested in a 4 year sting operation for trying to mail sensitive computer chips to Beijing in 1999. In the end, Nee admitted to sending American missile guidance chips to Communist China - over 20 times. In fact, between the CIA, FBI, and various members of Congress working on the Clint Curtis case, not one of Curtis’ many allegations has yet been shown to be incorrect.

All in all, an intriguing caper to say the least, yet - I’m wondering why we didn’t hear anything about this case on the “news”? Congress members seeking to rig elections, Chinese national spies compromising American missile security, suspicious suicide circumstances of an investigator about to break the case open implicating people “all the way to the top,” 100% polygraph confirmation --

Nah, nothin’ to see here, but did you hear about the runaway bride???

I’ll bet you did.

"No such voter disenfranchisement occurred in the election of 2004--- and, for that matter, the election of 2000. Everybody knows it. The voters know it, the candidates know it, the courts know it, and the evidence proves it."

- Representative Tom DeLay

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