"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." - Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860)
1) “Democrats are sore losers, get over it---“
Election integrity is NOT a partisan issue. Both parties have been complicit in some form of vote rigging for decades... to a degree. Both parties react poorly to a last minute loss when all signs had pointed to their victory. Both have accused the other of vote rigging and fraud. Witness current Governor Gregoire of Washington State and the ongoing fight by Republicans to invalidate her win by claims of vote fraud. Pendulums swing.
I have been, for my near 3 decades of voting life, primarily a registered Independent. (Truth told however, I did register Democratic for the last primary—but only so that I might be able to vote for my candidate of choice, General Wesley Clark http://www.securingamerica.com).
2) “Your guy lost, Bush won. Stop beating a dead horse--get over it—“
Although I campaigned for Kerry, at the request of my candidate after he stepped down....my interest in compiling this report was not in “overturning the election and installing a President Kerry”. He was not “my guy”.
The inspiration for this intense ‘labor of love’ was NOT strictly based upon the last election per se or who won it. But upon widely recognized anomalies and so-called irregularities that began to surface with the advent of the “new voting systems”. Harrowing reports from recognized professionals sounded multiple alarms which eventually evolved into this in depth study, spanning nearly one year -- which in turn sparked the drive towards seeking assurance of Election Integrity. For everyone who votes.
It’s about all the votes in a democracy being counted, and accounted for. Simple.
I cannot fathom why anyone, regardless of party affiliation, would not support such a basic concept.
The horse is sick, but he’s not dead.
To quote Republican IT Auditor and computer systems expert Chuck Herrin http://www.chuckherrin.com/ConservativeEmpathy.htm,
“The problem is not that Kerry lost the election. That is just the
SYMPTOM of the real problem, which is that the electorate
may not be under the control of the American people.
There appears that there was definitely a grab for power,
but it was NOT the Republicans stealing power from the Democrats.
If it happened, then a small group of Republicans stole the power from the
American People as a whole.”
The pendulum, he says, was designed to swing back and forth between the parties-- pushed by the will of the American Voter.
3) So there were a few glitches & irregularities. Elections aren’t perfect. Get over it-
The following 140 plus pages will address the misconceptions of the first part. We have glitches galore! They are not only well established but thoroughly documented as evidenced within. We are presently on a quest to begin minimizing those risks in the systems that have been repeatedly exposed.
It’s true...elections aren’t perfect, but there are degrees of imperfection. We’d like to vastly improve them. As the self-proclaimed model of democracy, currently in the process of exporting that model to other countries around the world -- shouldn’t we at least aim to have them as transparent and free of suspicion as possible? Even if it were only to save face on the international scene? Must we as a country be satisfied with less accuracy and integrity than Brazil, Canada, Australia, Venezuela, Germany, Switzerland, etc? We can do better and we should.
4) “If there were any fraud, the Media would’ve reported it. Get over it!”
Hey, where’d all the Reporters go?
After the election, nationally syndicated journalist Robert Koehler, editor of Tribune Media Services, published a piece entitled; “The Silent Scream of Numbers: The 2004 election was stolen, will someone please tell the media?”
http://commonwonders.com/archives/col290.htm
As for the Media—well that has an easy explanation, but outside the scope of this report as well. Those of you who’ve studied it since the consolidation understand. Those of you who haven’t can begin by looking here http://www.mediachannel.org/ownership/chart.shtml
at the six corporate conglomerates currently in control of our “news”, bearing in mind that as recently as 1983—there were 50 companies controlling the information. But that was before consolidation. Now, it’s down to a mere six. You can click on each of the Big Six to learn more at the above site.
In 1945, the Supreme Court declared that
“the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public”-- and, “—that a free press is a condition of a free society.”
Those were the good old days....
Flash forward to June 2, 2003, Chairman Michael Powell (son of former Secretary of State Colin Powell) and the Federal Communications Commission voted to relax media ownership rules, thereby reshaping news sources - from TV and Radio to newspapers and websites. For a clearer picture, in 1990—the major broadcasters; ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox owned just 12.5% of the new series they aired. By 2000, it was up to 56.3%. In 2004… it surges to 77.5%. And if you research the political leanings of these big six corporations.... well, let’s just say you’re going to have a tough time subscribing to the ongoing chatter about the “Liberal Media”.
5) “Time to move on now.....Get over it!”
Indeed it is! And that is precisely what this report is about...moving on. Towards a more fair and secure voting system where every voter can rest assured their ballot was counted and recorded just as they intended it to be. Where the parties in control of the voting machinery are not partisan, and the parties controlling the elections at the State level are not simultaneously chairing the election campaign of any of the candidates. Moving on to help eradicate the temptations of collusion and the rampant conflicts of interest so prevalent in this current election climate.
Election reform is in fact so serious and consequential an issue-- that it is now being heralded by some as rivaling even the urgency of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s. With 14th amendment equal protection rights not dissimilar between all disenfranchised voters and those discriminated against by race at the polls or elsewhere, it’s not surprising that some of the top crusaders in election integrity come from the ranks of the Congressional Black Caucus
6) ”You wild-eyed Liberals are out of touch with the mainstream,. You don’t know what you’re talking about. And you should get over it—“
I’m actually a stable, hard-working Midwestern bred girl who migrated westward years ago. Raised in a suburban middle-class family of conservative lifelong Republicans, many of whom proudly served in the Military. D.A.R. Graduated with honors. Never bounced a check or ran out of gas. Never been fired, sued, arrested, committed or investigated. No drug or alcohol abuse. Self-employed professional, homeowner, taxpayer. Contributor to charity, loving wife. We were an A.C. Nielsen family for goodness sakes – how much more mainstream can you get? Can I get a little respect now?
I have two professions: one is in business/ sales—the other is creative/ the arts. Both are flourishing at present, but my true passion lies in seeking election integrity.
I am NOT a computer geek, although I get by on a home and business operational level.
I’ve deferred to the research of countless information technology specialists-- from academics to professional systems programmers—for that portion of this study.
I’m not a scholar. I’m not a manufacturer of any electronic equipment. I am not a politician or civil servant. I’m not a professor of any related subject matters. I’m not an author or researcher by trade. I am not a technician. I am not a campaign staffer.
I’m a voter.
After one year of in-depth study of our American voting systems-- I am now a very worried voter.
And I’m not alone.
Collective research over the past few years has revealed some startling and disturbing information about our voting systems here in America. As you may be unaware of the problems, due to a disquieting lack of media coverage, I’d like to share some findings with you from the past year of research on the topic.
You’ve likely heard about the Ukraine’s election protests, they received widespread media coverage in the West...but did you know that—according to a post-election Harris Poll—an estimated 20-30 million Americans at that time did NOT trust the legitimacy of our Presidential election? A CNN poll reached the same results. Before the November 2nd election 2004, a poll by the legal website http://company.findlaw.com/pr/2004/090704.electronicvoting.html FindLaw.com showed that 42% of the voters already did not trust the electronic DRE machines and were concerned about their being tampering with during the election. With the highest percentage voter turnout since 1968, our last Presidential election drew over 120 million voters to the polls.
More recently, a January 2005 National Annenberg Election Survey, http://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/naes/index.htm
sampling 100,000 interviewees, reveals that an alarming 30% of American voters were “not confident that their vote had been counted accurately” in 2004. That represents over 36 million voters. Significantly up over the 20% result of the survey taken only one month earlier. The trend is clear-- casting more doubt over an already cloudy issue. Something is seriously awry when a preponderance of Americans display such low confidence that their vote is being counted.
David Dill, http://verify.stanford.edu/dill/ Computer Science Professor, Stanford, and founder of VerifiedVoting.org has currently collected over 40,000 reports of 2004 election problems. The Congressional Judiciary Committee has over 57,000 complaints. Common Cause, a citizens lobby group, received 210,000 hotline calls about the election.
Ohio, the scene of much of the disputed election activity, featured a story in the Akron Beacon Journal with the headline—“Group Says Chance of Exit Polls Being So Wrong is 1 in 959,000 ” referring to the report signed off by 12 statistical scholars. But the report that had sounded the doom to democracy as we knew it failed to incite any widespread media interest. Of all the exit poll analyses performed post-election, and there were many,the odds quoted in the Akron Beacon Journal were some of the more conservative estimates.
Christopher Hitchens’ (no “wild-eyed Liberal”) article in Vanity Fair, “Ohio’s Odd Numbers” states;
“Given what happened in that key state on Election Day 2004,
both democracy and common sense cry out for a court ordered inspection
of its new voting machines.”
Common sense. That’s the key ingredient to a realistic overview of the current systems’ inherent security flaws and the very real threat they pose to democracy, to voters, to elections and to candidates alike.
The Irish Times followed up on our election with;
“The Internet is still flickering with allegations of a conspiracy to steal the election,
fueled by the discrepancies between exit polls that
predicted Kerry would win by a margin of 3% and the official results
which saw Bush win by a margin of 2.5%.”
Foreign press ran with the story and reported any updates as they developed. American press looked the other way.
The work of grassroots election reformers contesting the Ohio vote count led to the first Congressional challenge to a state’s Electoral College delegation since 1876. I think if I were a journalist, I might find some newsworthy story in there...somewhere.
I remember when the historic lawsuit was first filed.; December 17th, 2004—Moss V Bush, attorney Cliff Arnebeck was claiming proof that Kerry had won Ohio—by over 130,000 votes, charging several methods used to steal the election, including naming Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell for criminal violation of Ohio election code, and citing exit poll manipulation by media to conform to vote tabulations, and “unconstitutional discrimination”. This all seemed rather momentous at the time. A Presidential election is being declared to be fraudulent and taken to the courts! Big story...reporters must be crawling all over it?
Nope. No story. I had to scour the internet for updates on the trial. A virtual media blackout on the story. Keith Olbermann was one of the very few who dared to even mention it.
Did you hear about Cliff Arnebeck’s notable case? I suspect not...
But you surely heard about Congressman John Conyer’s (ranking Democrat on House Judiciary Committee) extensive report released in January 2005, entitled, “Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio”? Detailed within were violations of the US and the Ohio constitutions, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Civil Rights Act of 1968, HAVA, and more. The effort was the result of a five-week investigation into the Ohio election covering thousands of complaints, containing hundreds of interviews transcribed from public hearings held by the Judiciary Committee Democrats. (For some reason, displaying characteristic lack of curiosity, the Committee’s Republican members declined their invitation to join in the inquiry.)
And today as this report is being readied for its internet launch -- we hear of the bizarre arrest of election integrity advocate Jim March in California. His crime? He wanted to move the tabulator a few feet from it’s location to assure the vote counting could be observable to the voters in the San Diego Mayoral election. He wanted the citizens to see their votes being counted as best possible by electronic systems.
For this heinous crime, Mr. March - a computer consultant - was handcuffed and escorted by police to a waiting squad car, where he was taken to the local police station to be booked and put in jail... all the while complying with the officers.
For this-- Jim March is being charged with a Felony!
http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/board-auth.cgi?file=/1954/8556.html
The chief irony here is that the system he was attempting to place into the voters’ field of vision was designed and programmed by a real convicted felon, Jeff Dean, bearing 23 counts of first degree fraud on his record, having served a six year sentence for embezzlement with electronic accounting systems. But that felon is free and working with Diebold Election Systems.
Based upon rigorous test after test of the electronic systems, we first see the professionals http://www.acm.org/announcements/acm_evoting_recommendation.9-27-2004.html
coming out against them—the computer scientists, academicians, information technology auditors—trying for years now to warn us against the security risks inherent in our electronic voting systems.
Limping along a bit behind them, we’ve glimpsed the public’s growing distrust of the systems, based largely on their own voting experiences. Then we find a faction of Congress, the legal profession, and the eventually even some Electors http://minorjive.typepad.com/hungryblues/2004/12/electors_across.html
in this past Presidential election joining in the outcry for election protection.
And, only now... finally—bringing up the caboose in recognizing needed election reforms—we have the U.S. Government itself.
The GAO http://www.gao.gov/ (the Government Accountability Office)—the nation’s ‘top cops’ and America’s lead investigative agency; known for unimpeachable integrity, and penetrating, thorough analyses—has just published its own report
confirming a general lack of security and protections in our voting systems today. In it they cite the existing potential for altering audit logs, memory cards, ballots already cast, and ballot definition files. Their studies revealed poor password protections and a failure to conduct background checks on programmers and system developers, as well as on election officials. They also noted that security standards for electronic voting were often vague and un-enforced, such as the inadequate ITA testings similarly discovered by BlackBoxVoting.
There was, however one unfortunate declaration made within the GAO report that dampens some of the enthusiasms initially fueled by its publishing....Their recommended intitiatives for reform and security improvements to the electronic systems are--
“-- not expected to be completed until after the 2006 elections.”
Who knows, with all of these credible reports and official denouncements on the topic, perhaps even the media might pick up on the story soon? Sometime, oh... say, next year? Why hurry... After all, there appear to be new strains in Britney Spears’ marriage to Kevin Federline they’ll need to cover.
“When the autopsy of our democracy is performed, it is my belief that media silence will be given as the primary cause of death.”
-- Jonathan Simon, Exit Poll Analyst
“Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says to us, 'Something is out of tune.'”
-Carl Jung
There is a phenomenon I refer to as the Threshold Concept wherein we human creatures, as if driven by some powerful survival instinct, effectively deny the admission of certain information into our belief systems, even in the presence of evidentiary proof. We close our eyes and ears to information that may be too painful or too uncomfortable for us to bear at that specific time. That lies just beyond our threshold of tolerance.
We all experience a degree of it when confronted with the news of a sudden death of someone close. The initial shock that voices itself in the, “No! I can’t believe it!” Or the physical manifestation of it when injured, all the while maintaining—“No, I’m just fine”... right before passing out.
The concept may be theoretical, but the actual mental process is insidious and formidable. Insidious because you can summarily “brainwash” yourself into a deep denial of otherwise important information – small to large scale. Formidable because you often don’t even recognize that you’re doing it. Many amongst us who are involved in seeking election integrity had to cross over that steep threshold to come to terms with some very distressing possibilities.
Lifelong Republican and front-line voting reform activist, Chuck Herrin, again, sums it up nicely;
“Every day I struggle with myself, because I don’t want to believe it,
even though it’s staring me in the face. It took me HOURS of research
before I accepted it, and I still don’t want to believe that it’s true.”
Chuck Herrin is not some uniformed bandwagon alarmist out to kick up some dust—He’s a respected, highly educated Information Technology Auditor (“professional white hat hacker”) with a dozen or so letters after his name as testimony. He analyzes and troubleshoots computer systems, breaks into them for a living with a 96% success rate, and he found nothing but trouble when he starting poking around in our current election systems.
The roster of computer science professionals and academics that have publicly come out against the current voting technology in America is impressive both in quantity and in credentials. Here are a few you can read for yourself to get the gist:
ACM.org Weblog http://www.acm.org/usacm/weblog/index.php?p=73
Notable Software http://www.notablesoftware.com/RMstatement.html
Wired News Article - Less Tech At The Polls
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,56370,00.html?tw=wn_story_related
As Herrin tells readers of his site, I reiterate—DON’T TAKE MY WORD FOR IT. Any of it. Do the research, educate yourself, use the links on this site and others, and the information contained within to satisfy your questions. And always use logic. Don’t lose logic while you consider this topic. Ask the tough questions: Who stands to gain or lose, and how much, and what are they willing to do to retain that position?
Our vote in America is meant to be a function ‘of the people’—a public process that is observable and observed at each stage to assure voter confidence. Most states’ Constitutions require “free and fair elections”. Election law identifies “secret ballot counting” as illegal. It’s a simple democratic principle you probably took for granted. Many of us now cast our ballots blindly – trusting that the software will comply with our wishes—although we have no meaningful way to substantiate whether it did or didn’t.
Subsequently, the bulk of the votes that we cast are then counted in secrecy. The counting is the crucial heartbeat of any election’s integrity-- anytime, anywhere. What should be, and what used to be a transparent and openly public affair-- the counting-- has now been relegated to a behind closed-doors, backroom corporate controlled, shrouded in secrecy, covert operation. The sanctity of voting has been unceremoniously desecrated and sullied by a tiny handful of tight-lipped corporations who have piratized America’s free election systems
...It’s time to declare Mutiny and reclaim our precious lost vote.
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