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November 19, 2004
'Stinking Evidence' of Possible Election Fraud Found in Florida
Published on Thursday, November 18, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
by Thom Hartmann
There was something odd about the poll tapes.
A "poll tape" is the phrase used to describe a printout from an optical scan voting machine made the evening of an election, after the machine has read all the ballots and crunched the numbers on its internal computer. It shows the total results of the election in that location. The printout is signed by the polling officials present in that precinct/location, and then submitted to the county elections office as the official record of how the people in that particular precinct had voted. (Usually each location has only one single optical scanner/reader, and thus produces only one poll tape.)
Bev Harris of www.blackboxvoting.org, the erstwhile investigator of electronic voting machines, along with people from Florida Fair Elections, showed up at Florida's Volusia County Elections Office on the afternoon of Tuesday, November 16, 2004, and asked to see, under a public records request, each of the poll tapes for the 100+ optical scanners in the precincts in that county. The elections workers - having been notified in advance of her request - handed her a set of printouts, oddly dated November 15 and lacking signatures.
Bev pointed out that the printouts given her were not the original poll tapes and had no signatures, and thus were not what she'd requested. Obligingly, they told her that the originals were held in another location, the Elections Office's Warehouse, and that since it was the end of the day they should meet Bev the following morning to show them to her.
Bev showed up bright and early the morning of Wednesday the 17th - well before the scheduled meeting - and discovered three of the elections officials in the Elections Warehouse standing over a table covered with what looked like poll tapes. When they saw Bev and her friends, Bev told me in a telephone interview less than an hour later, "They immediately shoved us out and slammed the door."
In a way, that was a blessing, because it led to the stinking evidence.
"On the porch was a garbage bag," Bev said, "and so I looked in it and, and lo and behold, there were public record tapes."
Thrown away. Discarded. Waiting to be hauled off.
"It was technically stinking, in fact," Bev added, "because what they had done was to have thrown some of their polling tapes, which are the official records of the election, into the garbage. These were the ones signed by the poll workers. These are something we had done an official public records request for."
When the elections officials inside realized that the people outside were going through the trash, they called the police and one came out to challenge Bev.
Kathleen Wynne, a www.blackboxvoting.org investigator, was there.
"We caught the whole thing on videotape," she said. "I don't think you'll ever see anything like this - Bev Harris having a tug of war with an election worker over a bag of garbage, and he held onto it and she pulled on it, and it split right open, spilling out those poll tapes. They were throwing away our democracy, and Bev wasn't going to let them do it."
As I was interviewing Bev just moments after the tussle, she had to get off the phone, because, "Two police cars just showed up."
She told me later in the day, in an on-air interview, that when the police arrived, "We all had a vigorous debate on the merits of my public records request."
The outcome of that debate was that they all went from the Elections Warehouse back to the Elections Office, to compare the original, November 2 dated and signed poll tapes with the November 15 printouts the Elections Office had submitted to the Secretary of State. A camera crew from www.votergate.tv met them there, as well.
And then things got even odder.
"We were sitting there comparing the real [signed, original] tapes with the [later printout] ones that were given us," Bev said, "and finding things missing and finding things not matching, when one of the elections employees took a bin full of things that looked like garbage - that looked like polling tapes, actually - and passed by and disappeared out the back of the building."
This provoked investigator Ellen Brodsky to walk outside and check the garbage of the Elections Office itself. Sure enough - more original, signed poll tapes, freshly trashed.
"And I must tell you," Bev said, "that whatever they had taken out [the back door] just came right back in the front door and we said, 'What are these polling place tapes doing in your dumpster?'"
A November 18 call to the Volusia County Elections Office found that Elections Supervisor Deanie Lowe was unavailable and nobody was willing to speak on the record with an out-of-state reporter. However, The Daytona Beach News (in Volusia County), in a November 17th article by staff writer Christine Girardin, noted, "Harris went to the Department of Elections' warehouse on State Road 44 in DeLand on Tuesday to inspect original Nov. 2 polling place tapes, after being given a set of reprints dated Nov. 15. While there, Harris saw Nov. 2 polling place tapes in a garbage bag, heightening her concern about the integrity of voting records."
The Daytona Beach News further noted that, "[Elections Supervisor] Lowe confirmed Wednesday some backup copies of tapes from the Nov. 2 election were destined for the shredder," but pointed out that, according to Lowe, that was simply because there were two sets of tapes produced on election night, each signed. "One tape is delivered in one car along with the ballots and a memory card," the News reported. "The backup tape is delivered to the elections office in a second car."
Suggesting that duplicates don't need to be kept, Lowe claims that Harris didn't want to hear an explanation of why some signed poll tapes would be in the garbage. "She's not wanting to listen to an explanation," Lowe told the News of Harris. "She has her own ideas."
But the Ollie North action in two locations on two days was only half of the surprise that awaited Bev and her associates. When they compared the discarded, signed, original tapes with the recent printouts submitted to the state and used to tabulate the Florida election winners, Harris says a disturbing pattern emerged.
"The difference was hundreds of votes in each of the different places we examined," said Bev, "and most of those were in minority areas."
When I asked Bev if the errors they were finding in precinct after precinct were random, as one would expect from technical, clerical, or computer errors, she became uncomfortable.
"You have to understand that we are non-partisan," she said. "We're not trying to change the outcome of an election, just to find out if there was any voting fraud."
That said, Bev added: "The pattern was very clear. The anomalies favored George W. Bush. Every single time."
Of course finding possible voting "anomalies" in one Florida county doesn't mean they'll show up in all counties. It's even conceivable there are innocent explanations for both the mismatched counts and trashed original records; this story undoubtedly will continue to play out. And, unless further investigation demonstrates a pervasive and statewide trend toward "anomalous" election results in many of Florida's counties, odds are none of this will change the outcome of the election (which exit polls showed John Kerry winning in Florida).
Nonetheless, Bev and her merry band are off to hit another county.
As she told me on her cell phone while driving toward their next destination, "We just put Volusia County and their lawyers on notice that they need to continue to keep a number of documents under seal, including all of the memory cards to the ballot boxes, and all of the signed poll tapes."
Why?
"Simple," she said. "Because we found anomalies indicative of fraud."
Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is a Project Censored Award-winning best-selling author and host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk show. www.thomhartmann.com His most recent books are "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight," "Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights," "We The People: A Call To Take Back America," and "What Would Jefferson Do?: A Return To Democracy."
Posted by John at 10:06 AM | Comments (0)
November 12, 2004
School Talent Show Draws Secret Service
This is interesting in that it seems like such a massive over-reaction. But I guess that's part of the culture of fear that the Bush administration has brought to America. For instance, the attitude at the Edwards rally was more open and relaxed with much less security while the Cheney and Bush visits were like military occupations with helicopters and jet fighters. I really don't think Bush is in that much danger from school kids, Southern Oregon liberals, or much of anyone really. But the appearance of danger adds to the culture of fear.
--John
School Talent Show Draws Secret Service
Colorado Band Singing Dylan Song Seen as Threatening President Bush
- Parents and students say they are outraged and offended by a proposed band name and song scheduled for a high school talent show in Boulder this evening, but members of the band, named Coalition of the Willing, said the whole thing is being blown out of proportion.
The students told ABC News affiliate KMGH-TV in Denver they are performing Bob Dylan's song "Masters of War" during the Boulder High School Talent Exposé because they are Dylan fans. They said they want to express their views and show off their musical abilities.
But some students and adults who heard the band rehearse called a radio talk show Thursday morning, saying the song the band sang ended with a call for President Bush to die.
Threatening the president is a federal crime, so the Secret Service was called to the school to investigate.
Students in the band said they're just singing the lyrics and not inciting anyone to do anything.
The 1963 song ends with the lyrics: "You might say that I'm young. You might say I'm unlearned, but there's one thing I know, though I'm younger than you, even Jesus would never forgive what you do ... And I hope that you die and your death'll come soon. I will follow your casket in the pale afternoon. And I'll watch while you're lowered down to your deathbed. And I'll stand o'er your grave 'til I'm sure that you're dead."
'We Were Just Singing'
The students told KMGH they never threatened the president and never changed the lyrics to the song.
"It's just Bob Dylan's song. We were just singing Bob Dylan's song ... If you think it has to do with Bush that's because you're drawing your own conclusions. We never conveyed that Bush was the person we were talking about," said Allysse Wojtanek-Watson, a singer for the band.
"She never said anything about killing Bush ... It's crazy, it's chaos. We have nothing in there it says about killing Bush," band leader Forest Engstrom told KMGH.
The principal of the school said he stands behind the students.
"Never was it rehearsed or auditioned with a change of lyrics. I want to be very clear about that," Boulder principal Ron Cabrera said.
Cabrera said Secret Service agents questioned him for 20 minutes and took a copy of the lyrics. They did not ask to speak to any of the students but they did question a teacher who had supervised a student protest that was held at the school last weekend.
Despite the controversy, the Boulder School District said it will allow the students to perform this evening.
"Boulder High School has expectations for the appropriateness of talent show acts and those expectations are communicated to the performers. Over the course of the rehearsals, the faculty has worked with the performers to create a show that falls within those expectations. School staff have monitored the performance and spoken with the students and are satisfied that the performance is simply student expression and not a threat against anyone," Boulder Schools spokeswoman Susan Cousins said in a statement.
During the rehearsals for the show, teachers Jim Vacca and Jim Kavanaugh played backup in the band at the students' request but the teachers decided not to perform this evening because they don't want to detract from the students' performance, Cousins said.
The band had at one point considered calling itself The TaliBand, but the students decided against it after discussing with Vacca whether the name would be offensive to some people, she said.
Promoting a 'Leftist View?'
Vacca praised a group of 70 students after they camped out overnight in the school library last week to protest the results of the presidential election and to announce their worries about the direction of the country. The students wanted to meet with Colorado's political leaders to get assurances that they were being heard.
The students said they worried about war, a return of the draft and the future of the environment after the election in which they could not participate.
"In an age where narcissistic college students riot in an inarticulate drunken stupor, you have students here at Boulder High School, principled, thoughtful and yet scared of four more years of pre-emptive war, the Patriot Act and an increase in militarism at school through the No Child Left Behind Act," Vacca had said. But other people said they are upset students and teachers are allowed to put on such a performance, and some say the high school students are being manipulated by the adults.
"These kids are being used to promote an extreme leftist point of view on the taxpayers' dime," Boulder resident James Lemons told KMGH.
He said other students who saw the tryouts and were upset by the presentation discussed it with their parents but are afraid of speaking up because of the political environment within the school and in Boulder, considered the most liberal city in Colorado.
The principal said Lemons' accusations and allegations are untrue and unfounded.
"I feel that the school and these students have been accused without being able to confront their accusers," Cabrera said, adding that no student or parent had talked to him about the allegations. "Why would someone do that?"
Copyright © 2004 ABC News Internet Ventures
Posted by John at 10:04 AM | Comments (0)
KERRY WON OHIO - JUST COUNT THE BALLOTS AT THE BACK OF THE BUS
KERRY WON OHIO
JUST COUNT THE BALLOTS AT THE BACK OF THE BUS
In These Times
Friday, November 12, 2004
Most voters in Ohio chose Kerry. Here's how the votes vanished.
By Greg Palast
This February, Ken Blackwell, Ohio's Secretary of State, told his State Senate President, "The possibility of a close election with punch cards as the state's primary voting device invites a Florida-like calamity." Blackwell, co-chair of Bush-Cheney reelection campaign, wasn't warning his fellow Republican of disaster, but boasting of an opportunity to bring in Ohio for Team Bush no matter what the voters wanted. And most voters in Ohio wanted JFK, not GWB. But their choice won't count because their votes won't be counted.
The ballots that add up to a majority for John Kerry in Ohio -- and in New Mexico -- are locked up in two Republican hidey-holes: "spoiled" ballots and "provisional" ballots.
OHIO SPOILED ROTTEN
American democracy has a dark little secret. In a typical presidential election, two million ballots are simply chucked in the garbage, marked "spoiled" and not counted. A dive into the electoral dumpster reveals something special about these votes left to rot. In a careful county-by-county, precinct-by-precinct analysis of the Florida 2000 race, the US Civil Rights Commission discovered that 54% of the votes in the spoilage bin were cast by African-Americans. And Florida, Heaven help us, is typical. Nationwide, the number of Black votes "disappeared" into the spoiled pile is approximately one million. The other million in the no-count pit come mainly from Hispanic, Native-American and poor white precincts, a decidedly Democratic demographic.
Ohio Republicans, simultaneously in charge of both the Bush-Cheney get-out-the-vote drive and the state's vote-counting rules, doggedly and systematically insured the spoilage pile would be as high as the White House.
Vote spoilage comes in two flavors. There are "overvotes" -- too many punches in the cards -- and "undervotes." Here we find the hanging, dimpled and "pregnant" chads created by old, dysfunctional punch card machines, in which the bit of paper covering the hole doesn't fall out, but hangs on. Machines can't read these, but we humans, who know a hole when we see one, have no problem reading these cards ... if allowed to. This is how Katherine Harris defeated Al Gore, by halting the hand count of the spoiled punch cards not, as is generally believed, by halting a "recount."
Whose chads are left hanging? In Florida in 2000 federal investigators determined that Black voters' ballots spoiled 900% more often than white voters, mainly due to punch card error. Ohio Republicans found those racial odds quite attractive. The state was the only one of fifty to refuse to eliminate or fix these vote-eating machines, even in the face of a lawsuit by the ACLU.
Apparently, the Ohio Republicans like what the ACLU found. The civil rights group's expert testimony concluded that Ohio's cussed insistence on forcing 73% of its electorate to use punch card machines had an "overwhelming" racial bias, voiding votes mostly in Black precincts. Blackwell doesn't disagree; and he hopes to fix the machinery ... sometime after George Bush's next inauguration. In the meantime, the state's Attorney General Jim Petro, a Republican, strategically postponed the trial date of the ACLU case until after the election.
Fixing a punch card machine is cheap and easy. If Ohio simply placed a card-reading machine in each polling station, as Michigan did this year, voters could have checked to ensure their vote would tally. If not, they would have gotten another card.
Blackwell knows that. He also knows that if those reading machines had been installed, almost all the 93,000 spoiled votes, overwhelmingly Democratic, would have closed the gap on George Bush's lead of 136,000 votes.
JIM CROW'S PROVISIONAL BALLOT
Add to the spoiled ballots a second group of uncounted votes, the 'provisional' ballots, and -- voila! -- the White House would have turned Democrat blue.
But that won't happen because of the peculiar way provisional ballots are counted or, more often, not counted. Introduced by federal law in 2002, the provisional ballot was designed especially for voters of color. Proposed by the Congressional Black Caucus to save the rights of those wrongly scrubbed from voter rolls, it was, in Republican-controlled swing states, twisted into a back-of-the-bus ballot unlikely to be tallied.
Unlike the real thing, these ballots are counted only by the whimsy and rules of a state's top elections official; and in Ohio, that gives a virtually ballot veto to Secretary of State Blackwell.
Mr. Blackwell has a few rules to make sure a large proportion of provisional ballots won't be counted. For the first time in memory, the Secretary of State has banned counting ballots cast in the "wrong" precinct, though all neighborhoods share the same President.
Over 155,000 Ohio voters were shunted to these second-class ballots. The election-shifting bulge in provisional ballots (more than 3% of the electorate) was the direct result of the national Republican strategy that targeted African-American precincts for mass challenges on election day.
This is the first time in four decades that a political party has systematically barred -- in this case successfully -- hundreds of thousands of Black voters from access to the voting booth. While investigating for BBC Television, we obtained three dozen of the Republican Party's confidential "caging" lists, their title for spreadsheets listing names and addresses of voters they intended to block on any pretext.
We found that every single address of the thousands on these Republican hit lists was located in Black-majority precincts. You might find that nasty and racist. It may also be a crime.
Before 1965, Jim Crow laws in the Deep South did not bar Blacks from voting. Rather, the segregationist game was played by applying minor technical voting requirements only to African-Americans. That year, Congress voted to make profiling and impeding minority voters, even with a legal pretext, a criminal offence under the Voting Rights Act.
But that didn't stop the Republicans of '04. Their legally questionable mass challenge to Black voters is not some low-level dirty tricks operation of local party hacks. Emails we obtained show the lists were copied directly to the Republican National Committee's chief of research and to the director of a state campaign.
Many challenges center on changes of address. On one Republican caging list, 50 addresses changed from Jacksonville to overseas, African-American soldiers shipped Over There.
You don't have to guess the preferences registered on the provisional ballots. Republicans went on a challenging rampage, while Democrats pledged to hold to the tradition of letting voters vote.
Blackwell has said he will count all the "valid" provisional ballots. However, his rigid regulations, like the new guess-your-precinct rule, are rigged to knock out enough voters to keep Bush's skinny lead alive. Other pre-election maneuvers by Republican officials -- late and improbably large purges of voter rolls, rejection of registrations -- maximized the use of provisional ballots which will never be counted. For example, a voter wrongly tagged an ineligible "felon" voter (and there's plenty in that category, mostly African-Americans), will lose their ballot even though they are wrongly identified.
KERRY BLACKS OUT
It was heartening that, during his campaign, John Kerry broke the political omerta that seems to prohibit public mention of the color of votes not counted in America. "Don't tell us that in the strongest democracy on earth a million disenfranchised African Americans is the best we can do." The Senator promised the NAACP convention, "This November, we're going to make sure that every single vote is counted."
But this week, Kerry became the first presidential candidate in history to break a campaign promise after losing an election. The Senator waited less than 24 hours to abandon more than a quarter million Ohio voters still waiting for their provisional and chad-spoiled ballots to be counted.
While disappointing, I can understand the cold calculus against taking the fight to the end. To count the ballots, Kerry's lawyers would, first, have to demand a hand reading of the punch cards. Blackwell, armed with the Supreme Court's Bush v. Gore diktat, would undoubtedly pull a "Kate Harris" by halting or restricting a hand count. Most daunting, Kerry's team would also, as one state attorney general pointed out to me, have to litigate each and every rejected provisional ballot in court. This would entail locating up to a hundred thousand voters to testify to their right to the vote, with Blackwell challenging each with a holster full of regulations from the old Jim Crow handbook.
Given the odds and the cost to his political career, Kerry bent, not to the will of the people, but to the will to power of the Ohio Republican machine.
We have yet to total here the votes lost in missing absentee ballots, in eyebrow-raising touch screen tallies, in purges of legal voters from registries and other games played in swing states. But why dwell on these things? Our betters in the political and media elite have told us to get over it, move on.
To the victors go the spoils of electoral class war. As Ohio's politically ambitious Secretary of State brags on his own website, "Last time I checked,” Blackwell said, “Katherine Harris wasn't in a soup line, she's in Congress."
NEW MEXICO GOES KERRY - BUT WHO'S COUNTING?
Why single out Ohio? So it also went in New Mexico where ballots of Hispanic voters (two-to-one Kerry supporters) spoil at a rate five times that of white voters. Add in the astounding 13,000 provisional ballots in the Enchanted State -- handed out "like candy" to Hispanic, not white, voters according to a director of the Catholic Church's get-out-the-vote drive -- and Kerry wins New Mexico. Just count up the votes ... but that won't happen.
Investigative reporter Greg Palast is author of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (Penguin 2004).
Oliver Shykles and Matthew Pascarella of GregPalast.com contributed to this article.
View Greg Palast's BBC Television film, "Bush Family Fortunes," now available on DVD, at http://www.gregpalast.com/bff-dvd.htm
To receive Greg's investigative reports go to: http://www.gregpalast.com/contact.cfm
Posted by John at 10:03 AM | Comments (0)
November 09, 2004
Summary of available analysis on election fraud and one long opinion
There is much discussion at Daily Kos and quite a bit of news at
BradBlog.
Kathy Dopp and Elizabeth Liddle are crunching numbers at Us Together with the analysis in http://ustogether.org/election04/. I find this one http://ustogether.org/election04/Liddle_Analysis.html to be compelling as it eliminates the 'dixiecrat factor' by using data from the larger Florida counties.
Verified Voting has data on voting machines used by county.
Idea Mouth covers Florida and other states.
Black Box Voting is the central clearinghouse of information on electronic voting.
MSNBC is running a story with transcript here.
To summarize : numerous counties in Ohio are reporting more votes than registered voters. Numerous counties in Florida are showing an unusual number of democrats voting for Bush (to understate it a bit). Nader is asking for a hand recount in New Hampshire because the count is off by a large margin from the exit polls.
What do I think about all this election fraud stuff - As a computer programmer I know how vulnerable systems are to foul play - at the code level, or at the system level. Gross incompetence as described by Bev Harris (the Diebold database for accumulating votes is neither proprietary, nor encrypted. It's a simple old MS Access database and it doesn't even require a password to open it) provides significant evidence that these machines in use are susceptible to tampering. The statistical data accumulates showing that something unusual happened that may not be able to be explained by exit polls or post election polls. Perhaps a New Hampshire recount will reveal more discrepencies.
It's a case that is growing stronger but I believe there needs to be a forensic study done to achieve a level of certainty that will clamp this case closed with compelling and damning evidence. In certain counties in Ohio and Florida, voting machines and the central tabulation systems need to be confiscated and analyzed. A forensic computer scientist can peel away layers and possibly uncover the missing smoking gun.
So what do we need to do:
1. In every state, we must have legislation that requires that the voting systems be analyzed by a third party. The OS, the software, and all processes and procedures must be examined.
2. In every state, we must have legislation that requires either a paper receipt from a touch screen system, or a paper ballot with the optical scan system. Recounts happen and there must be a backup method to count. Counting by hand is all the rage in certain functional democracies (or so I read in the international press).
3. It seems to me our best bet for a forensic analysis of the voting machines is coming from Rep Conyers and his request that the GAO step in and investigate. I don't think there is any other entity with authority to do that. We must support Rep. Conyers any way we can in this. Phone calls to Rep Walden's office are futile, I know, but at least their free. Senator Wyden too. And Sen Smith if you are feeling particularly extra masochistic.
4. Zogby is doing a post-election poll. I think MoveOn, ACT, TrueMajority and others need to hit the road, and walk the precincts again. (Sorry canvassers, I know you are bushed.) Collecting anecdotes and performing a post-election polling can help solve this mystery.
Posted by John at 09:58 AM | Comments (0)
November 07, 2004
What do we do now (part 2)
I've been thinking about the concrete and definitive steps that I can take to keep my momentum going, to keep working towards the progressive future I desire, and to stay proactive now, instead of falling into defeatist reactions against the administration.
And I think the first thing that needs to be done, that we all can do, and that will have the greatest impact in the long and short run is pretty simple. Just three things:
Discover the truth Document it and Disseminate it
In the past, we, the people, were reliant upon a small minority of trusted journalists to do this for us. Yet since the rise of 'yellow-journalism' and the Hearst papers, the integrity and strength of our media has deteriorated, leaving us with a huge library of irrelevant, slanted, biased, agenda-oriented, newspapers and TV programs, doing more to spread hate, fear and party lies than keeping political power in check.
Today, we are in the middle of an information revolution that is changing our means of information in radical ways. The influence of Internet based media has grown to national significance and continues to grow. In the same way that Howard Dean's campaign financing has changed how candidates find funding, weblogs, mail lists, and direct access to our choice of national, international and regional journalists is deteriorating the power once concentrated solely in editorial offices in remote office buildings.
Today, we have the means of information at our disposal which can be used to counteract the lies of political power. We have mass influence through the internet, through the weblogs like thedailykos.com, counterpunch.org, indymedia.org, and so on. Yes, we are preaching to the choir, which makes spreading the truth quicker. And yes, these sites have great influence outside of the choir. TV news wanted to have the writers of thedailykos.com available for comment throughout election day. Mass media does pick up stories that start as peer to peer communications on these sites. The influence grows.
As evidence of errors in the tabulation of votes in certain counties in certain states mount, as evidence of foul play is uncovered, as the truth about November 2 becomes known, we must not let the lies prevail. We have until December 13, when the Electoral College meets. We must demand the truth before then.
--John
Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or
persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest
friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with
none; the support of the State governments in all their rights,
as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns,
and the surest bulwarks against anti-republican tendencies; the
preservation of the general government in its whole
constitutional vigour, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home
and safety abroad;...freedom of religion; freedom of the
press; freedom of person under the protection of the habeas
corpus; and trial by juries impartially selected; these
principles form the bright constellation which has gone before
us, and guided our steps through an age of revolution and
reformation.
Thomas Jefferson
First Inaugural Address.
March 4,1801.
Posted by John at 04:16 PM | Comments (0)
November 06, 2004
Evidence Mounts That The Vote Was Hacked
This just in from http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1106-30.htm.
The whole article is worth a careful read.
--John
Published on Saturday, November 6, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
Evidence Mounts That The Vote Was Hacked
by Thom Hartmann
When I spoke with Jeff Fisher this morning (Saturday, November 06, 2004), the Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida's 16th District said he was waiting for the FBI to show up. Fisher has evidence, he says, not only that the Florida election was hacked, but of who hacked it and how. And not just this year, he said, but that these same people had previously hacked the Democratic primary race in 2002 so that Jeb Bush would not have to run against Janet Reno, who presented a real threat to Jeb, but instead against Bill McBride, who Jeb beat.
Posted by John at 08:38 PM | Comments (0)
November 05, 2004
It's a Purple Country
Here's a great visual aid showing how close the election really was.
And here are a few good points about the "mandate myth":
# Assuming Bush gets New Mexico and Iowa, he will have gotten the lowest percentage of electoral votes (54%) of any incumbent running for reelection since Wilson. If those two states should swing Kerry's way (NM might), it'll be even lower.
# He will have won with the lowest percentage of the popular vote (51%) of any incumbent running for reelection since Truman (well, technically since Clinton, but he also ran against Perot, who was a more significant 3rd-party candidate than Thurmond and Wallace were in '48)
# He will have won by the lowest margin of the popular vote (3.5M) of any incumbent running for reelection since Truman (2.1M, and back then only 50M voted).
# He will have won the three states that put him over 270 (OH, NM and IA--assuming the last two go his way) by only 161,989 (not counting the provisional ballots, absentee, etc.).
(from: http://interestingtimes.typepad.com/interesting_times/2004/11/some_historical.html)
The supposed 'liberal media' is lieing to us with talk of a "mandate" and great victory. Let's keep it in historical perspective.
Posted by John at 08:34 PM | Comments (0)
November 04, 2004
What do we do now
The shock is wearing off now and I've recovered my lost sleep and the 'post-mortems' are rolling in. One great comment so far from the Christian Science Monitor http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1104/p09s01-codc.html about the "mandate". One thing is for sure, Bush will act fast. He's a kind of lame duck from the start (Cheney won't be running in 2008) so he has virtual political impunity. So next year should be the worst of it. Yeah right.
Even with the terrible national defeat, we have a tremendous local victory as Cate Hartzell is re-elected to Ashland City Council, and John Morrison, Russ Silbiger, Jack Hardesty all win city seats. Peter Buckley will serve in Salem and Alan Bates is our state Senator. Teresa Keane had a great race winning 38,893 votes. Awesome and congrats to all involved!
The statewide turnout was fantastic with just a hair over 80% turnout. I'd say the Oregon Bus Project, ACT, OSPRIG, and MoveOn are all forces to be reckoned with now! Each of these (and all the other organizations involved) have served two purposes. Besides getting out the vote, they have been training organizers and leaders. If you want to run for office and need an experienced campaign organizer, canvassing coordinator, and precinct data? Call ACT. Need an email list of local progressives? Call MoveOn. Need to raise some money? We have an incredible political machine available now.
So, where do we go from here?
Locally, we can look forward to a strong progressive city council. They will continue to need our support and our positive encouragement. The forces of development will be barking loud and strong.
Statewide, we lost measure 34, 36 and 37.
For the Tillimok Forest, we'll have to take that to the streets and the trees.
For the Constitutional amendment limiting marriage's definition to "one man and one woman" I believe there are two ways to go. First, a court challenge on the grounds that the purpose and intent of the state Constitution is to preserve the rights of minorities, not to restrict them. We can not legislate discrimination, even by majority act. Remember how 4 years ago "Equal Protection" was used. Well it really means something strong and this is a case where people are not experiencing equal protection.
Second, it might be interesting if gay couples paired up with lesbian couples and started getting marriage certificates.
For Measure 37, I can't imagine that this will hold up in court for very long. I hope there are a few well funded and knowledge lawyers available. Looks like the majority has been hood winked and I'm sure that after a few large development projects occur, there will be many that regret their Yes vote on it.
Nationally, it's clear that the Democratic Leadership Council, Terry McCauliffe, Matt McClure, James Carville and the dominant Democratic wonks are finished. Clearly, they can not win an election with their current strategy of running to the middle, acting like a Republican and trying to attract cross over votes. So far, it looks to me like more Democrats voted for Bush than the other way around. (I'm still stunned by this actually - perhaps a complete accounting and a statistical analysis of exit polls will reveal some discrepancies in particular states and dare I say, foul play.) What the Democrats need is an ideology of progress and positivity from the likes of Dennis Kucinich, Howard Dean, Joe Trippi, David Cobb, Michael Badnarik and yes, Ralph Nader. Now more than ever the truth of Ralph Nader's critique and analysis of contemporary politics is clearly true. The Democrats can't win on so-called centrist strategies. They can win with visionary optimism and progressive reform. Well, that's my opinion. They certainly can't do more than lose and they've got that down.
Nationally, I believe the time for protest is over. The oppositional strategy of the anti-war movement can be replaced with a strategy of positive coalition building and a reform movement. We need to stop saying "NO!" and starting offering the alternatives we believe in. We need to write legislation, write initiatives, and organize our next group of candidates. We must continue to pressure the media to participate in truth, to question authority and to expose the corruption at all levels of government. We need to build a national progressive caucus to bridge between the Kucinich Democrats and the national Greens. We only have 2 years until the next national election and with the lessons learned, we can win.
Finally, there will be change in the Bush administration. It's likely that Rudy Guilliani will take a prominent role, perhaps heading Homeland Security or the Justice Department (rumors fly). No doubt this will be his grooming for 2008. It's also likely that Powell will step down and we can only hope that Rumsfeld will also. It's rare for cabinets to carry over. I'm also curious as to how John McCain will be rewarded for his support. Perhaps 2008 will see a Guilliani/McCain ticket from the Republicans.
Well that's about all for now. I'm curious to hear what you think.
--John
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"[expletive deleted]" - John F. Kerry
Posted by John at 08:32 PM
November 02, 2004
Spin Doctor Antidote
This is a collection of translations of the Osama Bin Laden video - one from Al Jazeera, one from Reuters, AP, CNN and a private individual in Europe. The variation is telling. When the New York Post runs a headline that Osama "Urges Bush Defeat" you have to wonder just what kind of reporting and research they are doing.
http://cryptome.org/us-eu-gap.htm