The law gives anyone who is a citizen, and18 or over, the right to vote, unless you are an uncleared felon. It does not give you the right to have your vote counted if you smear it with peanut butter. Stupidity is your own damn fault.
Governor Arnold.
Caleefornia never had it so good.
voter fraud: the obvious reason when the electorate votes in a conservative. Note: voter fraud is impossible when a liberal candiate is elected.
By Norman D. Livergood
Americans must act now to stop the Bush II junta's already ongoing criminal initiative to steal the 2004 election. The Republican-owned voting machine corporations, the defense industry, and the entire criminal gang in the White House are already working in every way possible to rig the 2004 election in their favor.
On August 26, 2003, voting industry insiders held a secret meeting to hire a public relations (propaganda) firm to sell electronic voting to a gullible American public, as reported by Bev Harris
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/082603Harris/082603harris.html The meeting, a private teleconference among voting industry insiders, was supposed to have been top secret, but David Allen, publisher of Black Box Voting, was able to obtain a transcript
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0308/S00175.htm of the conspiratorial meeting.
During the top secret meeting, the voting machine corporate leaders discussed how they could get the defense industry leaders to assist in their campaign to promote computerized voting. These same defense industry moguls earlier assisted in pushing Bush's initiative, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which gave money to states to purchase computerized voting systems.
What we should be asking is why the defense industry is involved in the voting machine industry. The answer is clear: all these corporations are a part of the computerized voting scam.
"The vendors who have advertised the new voter registration system are: Northrop Grumman, SAIC
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles7/Landes_SAIC-VoteHere-Diebold.htm and Election.com which is owned by Accenture. The vendors for voting machines are: Northrop Grumman (through an alliance); Diebold (ties to Bush administration); Diversified Dynamics (a weapons manufacturer; its machines created by SAIC); General Dynamics (defense contractor); ES&S; Hart Intercivic (alliance with Accenture); Sequoia, and VoteHere which is seeking to provide a new 'vote verification' software which will go into every machine made by every vendor."
~Bev Harris, "Voting industry insiders hold secret meeting to hire PR firm to sell electronic voting to public," 8/26/03, Online Journal
The defense industry corporations already have monopolistic control of the nation's financial accounting information systems and computing systems. According to Washington Technology Magazine (March 4, 2002), top outsourcing vendors to the US Government for financial accounting and computing in fiscal 2002 were Lockheed Martin Corp (30% market share), CSC (13%), EDS (7%), DynCorp (5%), TRW (5%), Raytheon (4%) SAIC 4%) Northrop Grumman (3%) and Unisys (2%).
"When a handful of federal contracting firms with lucrative insider deals control federal accounting and computer systems, does US Government sovereignty even exist anymore?
"In other words, if the US Government and its agencies do not control their proprietary accounting, payment and information systems, it becomes even questionable whether we have a sovereign government at all.
"The outsourcing of these systems, then, in essence has become a silent coup d'etat by Corporate-Government Insiders."
~Uri Dowbenko, "Dirty Tricks, Inc.: The DynCorp-Government Connection," ConspiracyDigest.com
http://www.dyncorp-sucks.com/ The Bush II junta and its corporate and military cohorts have actually let the cat out of the bag. The fact that they are pushing computerized voting to this extent--making federal money available, meeting in secret to plan a propaganda blitz, involving all the conspirators in the criminal action--this makes it clear that they see computerized voting as the way to steal the 2004 election!
One of a series of studies indicating that current touch-screen technology is seriously flawed is a recently published study
http://www.americanfreepress.net/08_25_03/Concerns_Over/concerns_over.html that documents a host of security flaws in a leading touch-screen voting system. This report has caused election officials across the United States to question the use of electronic voting machines. The report comes from a team of computer experts from Johns Hopkins and Rice University who examined the “source code,” the software that runs the Diebold AccuVote-TS voting system used in 37 states.
In light of this recent study, Representative Rush Holt (D-N.J.) stated recently that “unless Congress acts to pass legislation that would make sure that all computer voting machines have a paper record that voters can verify when they cast their ballots, voters and election officials will have no way of knowing whether the computers are counting votes properly.” Holt has introduced a new bill, H.R. 2239, which would require computerized voting machines to provide voter-verified audit trails.
If Americans don't act now to stop this total destruction of our voting rights, we might as well kiss our democracy goodbye.
"The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery, for slavery consists in being subject to the will of another, and he that has not a vote in the election of representatives is in this case. "
~Thomas Paine, Dissertation on the First Principles of Government
In the presidential election of 2000, our right to elect our leaders was hijacked and we are now being ruled by a junta who rigged the election in Florida through criminal action and perpetrated a coup d'etat with the complicity of the Supreme Court.
It is absolutely imperative that we fight to regain our voting rights and take back our country from this puppet of the "High Cabal." As Thomas Paine indicated, without our voting rights we are reduced to the status of slaves.
Hitler rose to power through a rigged election in 1933 Germany in exactly the same way Bush II did in 2000 America. The cowed German people in 1933 refused to rise up against Hitler and the Nazi horror ensued.
The growing list of Bush II's terrorist acts against the American people and the world now stares us in the face. Decent Americans are ashamed to view Dubya's face on TV or in newspapers and realize that we have allowed this mindless gangster to remain in power.
"Personal rights, of which the right of voting for representatives is one, are a species of property of the most sacred kind: and he that would employ his pecuniary property, or presume upon the influence it gives him, to dispossess or rob another of his property or rights, uses that pecuniary property as he would use fire-arms, and merits to have it taken from him."
~Thomas Paine, Dissertation on the First Principles of Government
The Menace of Electronic Manipulation of Voting Data
In the 2000 and the midterm 2002 elections, electronic manipulation of voting data meant that our democratic right to have our votes counted fairly and accurately was taken from us by the Bush junta.
Greg Palast, the investigative reporter for BBC and the Observer, was the first to expose the 2000 Florida vote crimes.
http://www.gregpalast.com/columns.cfm?subject_id=1&subject_name=Theft%20of%20Presidency He discovered that ninety-four thousand (94,000) people -- over half of them African American --were put on a "scrub list" in Florida by then Secretary of State Katherine Harris and Governor Jeb Bush. This criminal behavior resulted in the people on the scrub list being blocked from voting in the 2000 election.
When the NAACP sued the voting data company, ChoicePoint's DBT, for violating the civil rights of thousands of Florida black citizens, they won their suit. DBT admitted that only 5% of the people listed on the "scrub list" were unqualified to vote. In other words, 89,300 voters on the 2000 scrub list should be re-entered on the Florida election rolls as qualified voters. Florida did not rectify this mistake and reinstate the illegally disqualified voters by the time of the 2002 election. And as yet there is no evidence to indicate that they have been reinstated for the 2004 election.
The fact that Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris were never prosecuted for this heinous crime is part of the Bush II junta's long line of illegal activities, which include the non-prosecution of such criminals as Bush friend, Ken Lay.
Because of the use of electronic voting, we can't be sure that key races in 2002--such as that of Mondale in Minnesota and Carnahan in Missouri--were not the result of massive vote fraud. We can be sure that the Florida gubernatorial race was completely fixed. In Georgia, the supposed defeat of Democratic incumbent and war-hero Max Cleland by Saxby Chambliss was very likely a vote-rigging effort on the part of the state officials in charge.
November 2002, Baldwin County, Alabama - No one at the voting machine company can explain the mystery votes that changed after polling places had closed, flipping the election from the Democratic winner to a Republican in the Alabama governor’s race. “Something happened. I don’t have enough intelligence to say exactly what,” said Mark Kelley of ES&S. Baldwin County results showed that Democrat Don Siegelman earned enough votes to win the state of Alabama. All the observers went home. The next morning, however, 6,300 of Siegelman’s votes inexplicably had disappeared, and the election was handed to Republican Bob Riley. A recount was requested, but denied.
At present, there is no effective way to guard against election fraud when electronic, touch screen voting is used in specific precincts. For example, votes can easily be lost through "software glitches" and Democratic votes can mysteriously become Republican votes and no one can prove the rigging took place.
The "touch" screen computers are made by ES&S, the vendor chosen by Katherine Harris, then Florida Secretary of State and current congressperson. The lobbyist who sold that company's system to Jeb and Katherine was Sandy Mortham, founder of Women for Jeb and Harris' predecessor as Secretary of State. Mortham was the person who instigated the scam in 1998 to find black voters who could be disqualified.
ES&S machines, not surprisingly, failed to work in black precincts in 2002. And of course with electronic voting there is ordinarily no paper ballot back-up.
"When you become entitled to exercise the right of voting for public officers, let it be impressed on your mind that God commands you to choose for rulers, 'just men who will rule in the fear of God.' The preservation of [our] government depends on the faithful discharge of this Duty; if the citizens neglect their Duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made, not for the public good so much as for selfish or local purposes; corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the Laws; the public revenues will be squandered on unworthy men; and the rights of the citizen will be violated or disregarded. If [our] government fails to secure public prosperity and happiness, it must be because the citizens neglect the Divine Commands, and elect bad men to make and administer the Laws."
~Noah Webster (1758-1843)
The Republican-dominated Congress has pushed through new legislation that gives the Secretaries of State almost total control in purging voters from the election rolls. Previously, local election boards controlled this process and representatives of both Parties in local precincts watched the process carefully. With these new laws, there is a significant threat that partisan Secretaries of States will create voting rolls that favor Republicans.
Three companies (Election System & Software-ES&S, Diebold, and Sequoia) tabulate as much as 85 percent of the vote in the United States. These voting machine companies are privately held, with the second largest (Sequoia) foreign-owned.
Key members of active political campaigns own stock in some of the voting machine companies, constituting an obvious conflict of interest. For example, Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) and his campaign treasurer, Michael R. McCarthy, hold top executive positions and have investments in companies that produce the machines that counted Hagel's votes for the 1996 and 2002 elections. A number of investigators of voting machine "glitches" have discovered that most often these benefit Republican candidates rather than Democratic candidates.
"The vitality of America's democracy depends on the fairness and accuracy of America's elections," President George W. Bush said as he signed Help America Vote Act into law on October 29, 2002. This act allocated $3.9 billion in federal money to the states over the next three years to buy electronic voting machines to replace paper ballot voting systems. It's clear from Bush's endorsement of this bill that it's part of the overall Republican game plan to deliver all electoral precincts into the hands of the voting-machine manipulators.
The handful of election technology companies that have positioned themselves to reap the bulk of the money from the legislation all have direct ties to the Republican party in general and to Republican politicians in particular. The most expensive direct recording electronic (DRE) system (computerized touch-screen voting machine) is the one these companies are pushing most aggressively across the United States.
DRE computerized touch-screen voting machines offer no real-time verification of a vote beyond what appears on the screen. The source codes behind these machines are proprietary to the company that makes them. Any computer programmer knows that it is a simple matter to add a line of code to switch votes from one candidate to another or lose those votes you don't want recorded.
Palm Beach County, Florida, the county plagued by the chad-recount issue in November 2000, spent $14.5 million in 2002 to purchase 3800 new touch-screen voting machines from Sequoia Voting Systems.
Florida: A Long History of Election Rigging
Florida seems to be the vote fraud capitol of the United States. It's clear that's why Florida--with Jeb Bush as governor--was chosen by the Bush family controllers as the scene for the Stealing of the Presidency, 2000.
From 1970-1989, Journalists James and Kenneth Collier discovered a string of vote fraud activities going on in a number of Florida counties. The brothers actually managed to videotape members of the League of Women voters forging ballots and found hard evidence that Shouptronics and Printomatic voting machines were rigged in the Dade County Elections. Their book Votescam: The Stealing of America
http://www.votescam.com/frame.html was the result of their long-term investigations.
Along with attorney Ellis Rubin, the Colliers turned over the evidence to the Assistant State Attorney for Florida. Unfortunately, that happened to be Janet Reno, who killed the investigation immediately. Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes taped a segment on the Dade County Vote Fraud, but it never aired.
Investigations into Electronic Vote Rigging
Independent tests on computerized touch-screen voting machines and other electronic voting technology have shown repeatedly that there is no way to assure that vote tampering has not occurred at any step in the election process.
A 1988 test of Illinois voting machines worked with tens of thousands of ballots instead of the few dozen normally used for the accuracy testing. The results: over one fourth of the machines which had passed the standard accuracy test were found to have mistabulated the larger test vote results.
There is no good reason to change from a paper ballot system to a computerized voting system--except if you plan to rig elections. Most of Europe still uses paper ballots. In Canada's last national election, paper ballots were hand-counted in 4 hours. Yet today, 98% of votes in America are tabulated by voting machines.
"It’s not the voting that’s democracy, it’s the counting.
~Tom Stoppard, British playwright
There are a number of dedicated people who investigate the possibility of voting machine fraud on an ongoing basis. One of the most courageous investigators of vote fraud is Bev Harris, who recently demonstrated how voting machines are being used to rig elections.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0307/S00078.htm Harris has proven that votes can be changed, passwords can be bypassed, and audit trails can be altered.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0307/S00065.htm Harris' new book Black Box Voting
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/ rips open the world of electronic vote fraud.
Sandeep Atwal's provocative article How George W. Bush Won the 2004 Presidential Election
http://www.infernalpress.com/Columns/election.html is must reading for Americans intent on taking back their voting rights from the Bush II junta.
Rebecca Mercuri, a Research Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University and president of Notable Software, testifies frequently before Congress and numerous state agencies about computer fraud. She states:
"I am adamantly opposed to the use of fully electronic or Internet-based systems for use in anonymous balloting and vote tabulation applications. The reasons for my opposition are manyfold, and are expressed in my writings as well as those of other well-respected computer security experts. At the present time, it is my strong recommendation that all election officials REFRAIN from procuring ANY system that does not provide an indisputable paper ballot."
Mercuri has developed a computerized voting system model
"A Better Ballot Box?"
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/publicfeature/oct02/evot.html which includes a paper ballot.
Additional papers:
"Florida 2002: Sluggish Systems, Vanishing Votes"
http://www.notablesoftware.com/Papers/CACM1102.html "Electronic Voting"
http://www.notablesoftware.com/evote.html The last article listed includes guidelines as to what to do if you believe an election has been corrupted by voting equipment, including contacting Ms. Mercuri herself.
As with other anomalies occurring under the Bush regime, "the press" has been strangely silent about the the failure of exit polling in the 2000 election, and the lack of exit polling in the 2002 election.
Up till 1964, the major news groups did their own exit polling and broadcast independent election predictions. In 1990, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CNN and the Associated Press combined their exit polling and news prediction operations and formed the Voter News Service (VNS). Until the 2002 election all six organizations used the same data and the same models.
The top-secret private VNS system somehow mysteriously "failed" in the 2000 election, incorrectly predicting one candidate the winner only to announce the other candidate the winner within a short time--and then reversing itself throughout the evening.
On January 14, 2003, Voter News Service was scrapped by the member news organizations, supposedly because of "technical glitches." With the next election already less than two years away, some analysts are speculating that news outlets will simply rely on the Associated Press's system. The networks may wind up devising a new system based somewhat on the old VNS.
The Republicans will likely make sure that no effective exit poll system is in place for the 2004 election. With a functioning exit poll, it's too easy to tell if the fix is in. An examination of exit polling and pre-election polling versus election results could show that the Republicans have rigged the election.
One of the eeriest sights on television on election night, 2000--if you were watching--was poppa Bush, momma Bush and Junior all sitting in their living room and expressing absolute certainty that Florida had not--contrary to Television predictions--gone to Gore. It was as if they KNEW that voting irregularities and recounts and gang action were taking place in Florida--even before it was announced on the air waves.
"Those who cast the vote decide nothing, those who count the vote decide everything."
~Attributed to Joseph Stalin
We must act now to insure that the Bush II junta does not rig the 2004 election. One of the criminal tactics Republicans have used--and will undoubtedly use again in 2004--is voter intimidation at the polling stations. In the 2000 and 2002 elections, the Republican Party posted thousands of party functionaries at polling stations in various parts of the country on election day to intimidate working class and minority voters from casting their ballots. The Republican thugs carry out this anti-democratic operation under the cover of “poll watching.”
Investigations into the 2000 election crisis in Florida exposed pervasive methods of election fraud and discrimination that disenfranchised tens of thousands of minority and working class voters.
The same criminal forces within the Republican Party that organized the theft of the White House in 2000 are currently setting up their 2004 attack on American citizens' right to vote.
"The ballot is stronger than the bullet."
~Abraham Lincoln
For the upcoming 2004 election, we must support a strong Democratic candidate for the presidency who will have the courage to fight for and put in place election safeguards. He must lead the Democratic party to attack the Bush junta's criminal behavior and make sure that any instance of election fraud--prior to and during the 2004 election--is investigated strenuously.
"It is possible to exclude men from the right of voting, but it is impossible to exclude them from the right of rebelling against that exclusion; and when all other rights are taken away the right of rebellion is made perfect."
~Thomas Paine, Dissertation on the First Principles of Government
__________
Reference:
Diebold CEO Promises to Deliver Votes to Bush
http://www.cleveland.com/politics/index.ssf?/base/ispol/106207393874610.xml The Theft of Your Vote Is Just a Chip Away
http://www.opednews.com/hartmann_theft_of_your_vote_just_a_chip.htm The Techno-Voting Nightmare; Digital Vote Corruption
http://www.opednews.com/Kall_computervoting2.htm C.D. Sludge Shows that Voting Machines are Being Used to Rig Elections
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0307/S00064.htm "Diebold - The Face Of Modern Ballot Tampering," by Faun Otter
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0211/S00081.htm VerifiedVoting.Org
http://www.verifiedvoting.org/index.asp Vote Watch
http://www.votewatch.us/ Election.Com for Registering to Vote and More
http://www.election.com/us/index.htm Vote Fraud Links
http://scoop.co.nz/mason/features/?s=usacoup Project Vote Smart
http://www.vote-smart.org/election_president_party.php?party_name=Democrat&PHPSESSID=7c24a3368c81132717ca47990a4b126f Rigged Elections
http://www.oilempire.us/elections.html Will There Be a Presidential Election in 2004?
http://www.oilempire.us/2004.html Paper ballots counted by hand are a prerequisite for an honest 2004 election
http://www.oilempire.us/ballot.html THE SECRETIVE WORLD OF VOTING MACHINES
privatizing the vote - sabotaging the system - around the world
http://www.ecotalk.org/VotingSecurity.htm Diebold Voting Machine Controversy in Ohio
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2003/08/270902.shtml http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=342116&group=webcast the REAL Scoop on Diebold Computer Vote Fraud
Aviel Rubin called allegations by Bev Harris that the Diebold software may have been *designed* to facilitate fraud "ludicrous"--because his team NEVER EVEN EXAMINED the Diebold software in question. Incredibly, this software keeps not one, but two Microsoft Access data tables of voting results--like a business keeping two sets of account books. The two tables are notionally identical copies of the votes collated from all polling stations. The first table is for on-demand reports which might uncover alteration of the data--such as spot checks of results from individual polling stations. The second table is used to determine the election result--but it can be hacked and altered to produce fake election totals without affecting spot check reports derived from the first table.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0307/S00198.htm http://dc.indymedia.org/newswire/display/78452 50 Links to 'Electronic Voting Machine Fraud' & 'Rigged Vote-Counting'
http://www.linkcrusader.com/vote_machines.htm Voting In The New World Order
http://www.govsux.com/voting.htm Voting Machines: Vote Tampering in the 21st Century
http://www.whoseflorida.com/voting_machines.htm Theft of Presidency
http://www.gregpalast.com/columns.cfm?subject_id=1&subject_name=Theft%20of%20Presidency See also:
http://www.hermes-press.com/Voting/vote_rig.htm
Wow. Somebody should sit down and try decaf.