Diebold sued by more investors

Diebold sued by investors

CLEVELAND (AP) - Two groups of investors are suing Diebold Inc., claiming that misleading comments about the company's electronic voting machine business artificially inflated share prices.

The lawsuits filed this week in U.S. District Court in Cleveland claim Diebold was ``unable to assure the quality and working order of its voting machine products,'' which are being scrutinized by election officials in several states.

The plaintiffs claim that the company tried to conceal the problems from investors and that Diebold lacked the internal controls necessary to accurately monitor its financial performance.

Both lawsuits seek class-action status.

The North Canton, Ohio-based company denied the allegations Friday, saying in a statement that ``the lawsuits are without merit.''

Colchester, Conn., firm Scott & Scott LLC sued on behalf of investors who held Diebold stock between Oct. 22, 2003, and Sept. 21, 2005. Stull, Stull & Brady of New York also sued, representing people whose employers bought Diebold stock for their retirement accounts during that same period.

The lawsuits claim the company's actions led to poor earnings guidance. Restructuring charges revealed on Sept. 21 caused share prices to plummet 16 percent that day.

Diebold said then that rising fuel costs, poor automated-teller machine sales and unexpected delays of voting machine sales because of Hurricane Katrina forced it to slash third-quarter earnings by more than half.

These suits come just days after CEO Walden W. O'Dell quit. Besides concerns about security and reliability of Diebold's election equipment, O'Dell was criticized in 2003 when he invited people to a Bush fundraiser.

Devastating voting machine hack; Leon County (FL) dumps Diebold

> BREAKING : Due to contractual non-performance and security design
> issues,
> Leon County (Florida)
> supervisor of elections Ion Sancho told Black Box Voting that he will
> never again use Diebold in an
> election. He has requested funds to replace the Diebold system from the
> county. He will issue a formal
> announcement to this effect shortly. This comes on the heels of the
> resignation of Diebold CEO Wally
> O'Dell, and the announcement that a stockholder's class action suit has
> been filed against Diebold by
> Scott & Scott.
>
See source for more: http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/board-auth.cgi?file=/1954/15595.html

Organization Seeking Plaintiffs for Potential Securities Fraud Class Action Lawsuit Against Diebold Inc.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/usnw/20051208/pl_usnw/organization_seeking_plaintiffs_for_potential_securities_fraud_class_action_lawsuit_against_diebold_inc402_xml

To: National Desk

Contact: Eileen Proctor, 310-271-5857, for VelvetRevolution.us

WASHINGTON, Dec. 8 /U.S. Newswire/ -- VelvetRevolution.us, a coalition of more than 130 progressive organizations demanding electoral reform, is seeking plaintiffs for a potential class action securities litigation against Diebold, Inc. (stock symbol: DBD). The class for the suit will involve shareholders who purchased or owned stock in the Ohio-based company any time between Oct. 22, 2003 and Sept. 21, 2005. The lawsuit will involve securities fraud violations and other troubling matters by the controversial company, its CEO, and other current and former members of its Board of Directors.

VelvetRevolution is seeking additional individuals and groups who may qualify as plaintiffs in the specified class. Those who owned or purchased Diebold stock, or mutual funds which held Diebold stock during the period mentioned, are asked to contact LawSuit@VelvetRevolution.us for possible addition to the plaintiff class.

Union groups who own or owned shares of Diebold or mutual funds which invest in the company are specifically urged to contact VR about joining the class action. For more information see http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002126.htm

http://www.usnewswire.com/

California Secretary of State being difficult Update On California Diebold Voting Machine "Hack" Testing

Source: Me & http://www.ss.ca.gov/executive/bio.htm
California's secretary of state, Bruce McPherson is giving the Black Box Voting.org group some foot dragging. Bruce McPherson became the 30th Secretary of State of California on March 30, 2005, after being nominated by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and unanimously confirmed by both the Assembly and the Senate. He will serve until January 8, 2007, when the term expires.

Bruce is a member of the Republican party.

Here are the letters between Black Box Voting.org and Bruce: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0512/S00217.htm

Diebold insider alleges company plagued by technical woes, Diebold defends 'sterling' record

Diebold insider alleges company plagued by technical woes, Diebold defends 'sterling' record

Miriam Raftery
source: http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Diebold_insider__alleges_company_plagued_1206.html

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In an exclusive interview with RAW STORY, a whistleblower from electronic voting heavyweight Diebold Election Systems Inc. raised grave concerns about the company’s electronic voting technology and of electronic voting in general, bemoaning an electoral system the insider feels has been compromised by corporate privatization.

The Diebold insider, who took on the appellation “Dieb-Throat” in an interview with voting rights advocate Brad Friedman (BradBlog.com), was once a staunch supporter of electronic voting’s potential to produce more accurate results than punch cards.

But the company insider became disillusioned after witnessing repeated efforts by Diebold to evade meeting legal requirements or implementing appropriate security measures, putting corporate interests ahead of the interests of voters.

“I’ve absolutely had it with the dishonesty,” the insider told RAW STORY. Blasting Wally O’Dell, the current president of Diebold, the whistleblower went on to explain behind-the-scenes tactics of the company and its officers.

“There’s a lot of pressure in the corporation to make the numbers: `We don’t tell you how to do it, but do it.’ [O’Dell is] probably the number one culprit putting pressure on people,” the source said.

Diebold spokesman David Bear rebuts the charges. “Diebold has a sterling reputation in the industry," Bear said. "It’s a 144-year-old company and is considered one of the best companies in the industry."

Previous revelations from the whistleblower have included evidence that Diebold’s upper management and top government officials knew of backdoor software in Diebold’s central tabulator before the 2004 election, but ignored urgent warnings—such as a Homeland Security alert posted on the Internet.

“This is a very dangerous precedent that needs to be stopped—that’s the corporate takeover of elections,” the source warned. “The majority of election directors don’t understand the gravity of what they’re dealing with. The bottom line is who is going to tamper with an election? A lot of people could, but they assume that no one will.”

Concerns about Georgia, Ohio elections

The insider harbors suspicions that Diebold may be involved in tampering with elections through its army of employees and independent contractors. The 2002 gubernatorial election in Georgia raised serious red flags, the source said.

“Shortly before the election, ten days to two weeks, we were told that the date in the machine was malfunctioning,” the source recalled. “So we were told 'Apply this patch in a big rush.’” Later, the Diebold insider learned that the patches were never certified by the state of Georgia, as required by law.

“Also, the clock inside the system was not fixed,” said the insider. “It’s legendary how strange the outcome was; they ended up having the first Republican governor in who knows when and also strange outcomes in other races. I can say that the counties I worked in were heavily Democratic and elected a Republican.”

In Georgia’s 2002 Senate race, for example, nearly 60 percent of the state’s electorate by county switched party allegiances between the primaries and the general election.

The insider’s account corroborates a similar story told by Diebold contractor Rob Behler in an interview with Bev Harris of Black Box Voting.

Harris revealed that a program patch titled “rob-georgia.zip” was left on an unsecured server and downloaded over the Internet by Diebold technicians before loading the unauthorized software onto Georgia voting machines. “They didn’t even TEST the fixes before they told us to install them,” Behler stated, adding that machines still malfunctioned after patches were installed.

California decertified Diebold TSX touch screen machines after state officials learned that the vendor had broken state election law.

“In California, they got in trouble and tried to doubletalk. They used a patch that was not certified,” the Diebold insider said. “They’ve done this many times. They just got caught in Georgia and California.”

The whistleblower is also skeptical of results from the November 2005 Ohio election, in which 88 percent of voters used touch screens and the outcome on some propositions changed as much as 40 percent from pre-election exit polls.

“Amazing,” the Diebold insider said.

Diebold is headquartered in Ohio. Its chairman Wally O’Dell, a key fundraiser for President Bush, once promised in an invitation to a Republican fundraising dinner to deliver Ohio’s electoral votes for Bush. The staffer said the company has a deep conservative culture.

“My feeling having been really deep inside the company is that initially Diebold, being a very conservative and Republican company, felt that if they controlled an election company, they could have great influence over the outcome,” the source, a registered independent, said.

“Does that mean fixing elections? Not necessarily, but if your people are in election departments and they are biased toward Republicans, you will have an influence…I think this is what they were buying, the positioning. Obviously screwing with the software would be a homerun—and I do think that was part of their recipe for getting into the election business. But the public got involved and said 'Hey, what’s going on?' That pulled the sheet off what their plan was with these paperless voting machines.”

The difficulties of installing paper trails

Responding to public demand for paper trails, Diebold has devised a means of retrofitting its paperless TSX system with printers and paper rolls. But in Ohio’s November 2005 election, some machines produced blank paper.

The whistleblower is not surprised. “The software is again the culprit here. It’s not completely developed. I saw the exact same thing in Chicago during a demonstration held in Cook County for a committee of people who were looking at various election machines… They rejected it for other reasons.”

Asked if Ohio officials were made aware of that failure prior to the recent election, the source said, “No way. Anything goes wrong inside Diebold, it’s hush-hush.”

Most officials are not notified of failed demonstrations like the one in Cook County, the insider said, adding that most system tests, particularly those exhibited for sale are not conducted with a typical model.

California, which recently conducted a test of the system without public scrutiny that found only a three percent failure rate—far lower than earlier tests that found a 30 percent combined failure due to software crashes and printer jams.

Asked if the outcomes of the newest test should be trusted, the whistleblower, who does not know the protocols used in the California test, warned, “There’s a practice in testing where you get a pumped-up machine and pumped-up servers, and that’s what you allow them to test. Diebold does it and so do other manufacturers. It’s extremely common.”

Neither the TSX nor the older TS6 election equipment systems used by Diebold were designed to be retrofitted with paper trails. “The TSX was designed and brought to market after the paper trail issue erupted, yet it was introduced as a paperless system. But the uproar became so great… The public forced Diebold to put printers on their machines.” Adding printers to existing computer hardware together poses challenges.

The TS6 machines can’t be retrofitted with paper at all, leaving 35,000 voters in Maryland and Georgia to rely on paperless, faith-based voting.

Even if the blank paper problem could be solved, there are other serious problems with some TSX equipment. “The system that was offered to San Diego was purely experimental—the TSX and the electronic poll book, the check-in device,” the Diebold insider stated. “Voters couldn’t access the system to vote with the electronic poll book if the batteries died.” The high rate of breakdowns involving access cards for the poll book caused major problems, the source added. “The interesting part about this device is that it had never been used before. That was probably not certified.”

San Diego has since warehoused its TSX system, pending a decision by the state on whether to recertify. San Diego County now uses Diebold optical scanners—but those pose security problems as well.

Although Black Box Voting demonstrated during a demonstration in Leon County, Florida that computer experts could hack into a similar system in less than a minute and alter a memory card to switch votes, election officials still brush off concerns for additional security precautions.

San Diego County Registrar of Voters, Mikel Haas, for example, was questioned by this reporter for the city’s local paper, Citybeat. He insisted that no additional security measures were needed.

Asked if Diebold had implemented any changes to close security holes revealed by the Leon County hack, the source replied, “None that I know of.”

Informed that Haas allowed over 700 voting machines with memory cards inside to be sent home overnight with poll-workers, the insider raised alarm. “These memory cards need to be protected every single step of the way, like money. If they have people taking these machine home with memory cards, that’s out the window.”

The Diebold whistleblower also criticized election officials in San Diego and elsewhere for allowing Diebold personnel to be present when votes reach the server. “The election office’s employees—people who are paid with our tax dollars to conduct elections and have proper security elections and background check should do this – and no one else.” Manufacturers should be a mile away on election night, the source added.

The best way for concerned citizens to detect fraud is to “be there on election night” to observe vote tabulations, the insider said. But in some cities, citizens have been barred from watching votes being counted on Diebold tabulators – and in San Diego, Black Box Voting activist Jim March was arrested in July 2005 and charged with felony trespassing after entered a secured room to watch votes being counted. The charges were later dismissed.

But no amount of observation can totally protect the public from the dangers inherent in electronic voting, the whistleblower says. “People are going to end up losing their rights in many ways that they will never, never understand. For example, the new electronic databases for voter registration is a great idea, but it passes control away from local boards of elections and puts it in the hands of the states…The final database is manipulated by states instead of counties. Every state must have it. It’s mandated by [the Help America Vote Act]. It’s a sleeper issue.”

The source, who once supported the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), now concedes “it’s terrible…Most of this is a big money grab.”

The Diebold hand believes many election officials are naпve, while others are “downright arrogant. They are serving politicians and in many cases, vendors.”

How Diebold woos state officials

The insider described a systematic process Diebold uses to woo election officials via cash doled out by lobbyists or attorneys and favors to assist budget-strapped public officials. “They promise the election directors the moon and deliver things to them that really aren’t legitimate parts of the contract.” Those promises range from providing personnel to equipping warehouses with electrical systems to recharge batteries in voting machines.

“The corporation pretty much takes over. That’s how they capture so many of these people. Diebold is making them look good and they’re not going to bite the hand that feeds them.”

Diebold creates a “monetary incentive” to stay involved via future servicing contracts after selling election equipment, the whistleblower noted, adding, “The machines are purposely complex and poorly designed.”

Noting that the GEMS software runs on Microsoft Access, Dieb-Throat observed, “There are problems that can’t be fixed. I understand they are going to redesign it around Oracle.”

Diebold spokesman David Bear denied that the company is redesigning software around an Oracle platform. “No, that’s not true to my knowledge,” he said.

Asked whether any TSX machine produced blank paper during a demonstration in Cook County, he replied, “I’m not aware of that.”

Bear initially denied that any Diebold machines in Ohio produced blank paper rolls.

“That’s not true,” he said. “They just ran an election November 8th with over 15,000 of the units and the Secretary of State was overwhelmingly pleased.” After being told of news reports describing blank paper rolls produced in Ohio, however, he replied, “It would not surprise me if a paper roll was installed upside down.”

Diebold consultant convicted for embezzlement

The Diebold insider noted that the initial GEMS system used to tabulate votes for the Diebold Opti-scan systems was designed by Jeffrey Dean, who was convicted in the early 1990s of computer-aided embezzlement. Dean was hired by Global Election Systems, which Diebold acquired in 2000. Global also had John Elder, a convicted cocaine trafficker, on its payroll. Diebold spokesman David Bear told Citybeat that Dean left shortly after the acquisition and that Elder also left “long ago.” Black Box Voting reported that Diebold gave Elder a “golden parachute” in 2004 and that he was let go only after his criminal past was revealed by BBV and mainstream publications.

But the Diebold whistleblower told RAW STORY that Elder remained working for Diebold “as recently as the summer of this year… [Elder creates ] the paper ballots for absentee voting…They were making the ballots for the November election for sure, for all over the country.”

Bear denied that Elder is still on Diebold’s payroll as either an employee or independent contractor.

“He was with the company two companies ago, never was an employee of Diebold, and worked for a company that was acquired by Diebold,” he said.

Asked if Elder works for a company producing ballots for any of California’s Diebold systems, Bear responded, “The counties contract for that. I don’t have the slightest idea… There are probably several different companies that produce ballots for California.”

Bear denied allegations that Diebold has installed uncertified patches. “Nothing is done in any state except under guidance and authority of election officials in the state.”

He also stated that the California Secretary of State’s staff has recommended recertifying the Diebold TSX system retrofitted with paper rolls.

Bear defends Diebold's record.

“In the last presidential election, over 150,000 touch screens were run. They were recognized by CalTech and MIT for having accurately captured the vote. From the presidential election 2004, they believe over 1 million more votes were captured. They singled out touch-screens; the state with the most improvement was Georgia.” (Full text of the Caltech/MIT report)

The Diebold insider says Americans who care about their vote must remain vigilant. “I don’t look for the paperless people, the corporations, to back off at all. They will continue to try to keep the public in the dark.”

North Carolina Illegally Certifies Diebold E-voting System

Source: http://www.infozine.com/news/stories/op/storiesView/sid/11726/

North Carolina Illegally Certifies Diebold E-voting System

Board of Elections Ignores Rules to Escrow Code, Identify Programmers

Raleigh, North Carolina - infoZine - - The North Carolina Board of Elections certified Diebold Election Systems to sell electronic voting equipment in the state yesterday, despite Diebold's repeated admission that it could not comply with North Carolina's tough election law. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) believes that this raises important questions about the Board of Elections' procedures as well as the integrity of Diebold's bid for certification.

In all, three companies were certified for e-voting in North Carolina: Diebold, Sequoia Voting Systems, and Election Systems & Software. However, Keith Long, an advisor to the Board of Elections who was formerly employed by both Diebold and Sequoia, has said that "none of them" could meet the statutory requirement to place their system code in escrow. Instead of rejecting all applications and issuing a new call for bids as required by law, the Board chose to approve all of the applicants.

"The Board of Elections has simply flouted the law," said EFF Staff Attorney Matt Zimmerman. "In August, the state passed tough new rules designed to ensure transparency in the election process, and the Board simply decided to take it upon itself to overrule the legislature. The Board's job is to protect voters, not corporations who want to obtain multi-million dollar contracts with the state."

Last month, Diebold obtained a broad temporary restraining order that allowed it to evade key transparency requirements without criminal or civil liability. The law requires escrow of the source code for all voting systems to be certified in the state and identification of programmers. Diebold claimed that it could not comply because of its reliance on third-party software.

Monday, responding to EFF's arguments, a judge dismissed Diebold's request for broad exemptions to the law and told Diebold that if it wanted to continue in its certification bid, it must follow the law or face liability. Diebold had told the court that it would likely withdraw from the bidding process if it was not granted liability protection. But instead, Diebold went forward with the certification bid.

Diebold's certification now means it is permitted to sell e-voting equipment in North Carolina. But Zimmerman says that any county that buys from Diebold is taking a risk.

"If Diebold's certification is revoked, counties using their equipment could be left holding a very expensive bag," Zimmerman said.

Despite Long's assertion, at least one Diebold competitor -- Nebraska-based Election Systems & Software -- has publicly stated that it is capable of meeting the escrow requirement for the code used it its system.

For more on the judge's decision Monday


Related article in infoZine

EFF Convinces North Carolina Judge to Throw Out Diebold E-voting Case

Diebold Attempts to Evade Election Transparency Laws

Diebold loses legal case, certified anyway

12/2/2005 10:33:57 AM, by Nate Anderson

source: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051202-5671.html

Diebold, the manufacturer of ATM and e-voting machines, does a great job of keeping themselves in the news. Hopefully, they subscribe to the theory that "all publicity is good publicity" because most of the news that they make is negative. You'll remember, of course, the good times Diebold had in the great state of California, or the way their CEO was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president," or even the way they sought to gouge American taxpayers who demanded that e-voting machines produce a paper trail. From one employee's internal e-mail:

"Let's just hope that as a company we are smart enough to charge out the yin if they try to change the rules now and legislate voter receipts."

Ah, yes, the sweet smell of corporate altruism.

Diebold's latest foray into the world of dubious public relations was their recent lawsuit against North Carolina. The brouhaha was touched off in August of this year when North Carolina passed a tough new e-voting law that demanded to see the source code behind the machines. All code would be put in escrow with the state, who would review it before certifying a company to sell their machines. From the law:

"Prior to certifying a voting system, the State Board of Elections shall review, or designate an independent expert to review, all source code made available by the vendor pursuant to this section and certify only those voting systems compliant with State and federal law. At a minimum, the State Board's review shall include a review of security, application vulnerability, application code, wireless security, security policy and processes, security/privacy program management, technology infrastructure and security controls, security organization and governance, and operational effectiveness, as applicable to that voting system." [emphasis added]

Thoughts on e-voting, courtesy of the EFF

Straightforward, yes? Not according to Diebold. They went to court, asking a judge to shield them from criminal and civil liability if they did not release all of the relevant source code. Diebold's systems are built on Windows technology and the company argued that it could not release that source code, nor could it come up with a list of all the programmers who worked on Microsoft's software. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) saw this as a red herring designed to let Diebold keep its code secret and filed a brief in the case. The judge agreed with the EFF's argument and on November 28, threw out Diebold's case.

Today the plot thickens. The EFF is now upset that North Carolina went ahead and certified Diebold, despite Diebold's own statements that it could not release all of its code.

"Despite Diebold's asserted inability to meet the requirements of state law, the North Carolina Board of Elections today happily certified Diebold without condition. Never mind all of that third party software. Never mind the impossibility of obtaining a list of programmers who had contributed to that code."

The EFF makes it sound as though shady political machinations were at work, going so far as to call the event the "Immaculate Certification." The Charlotte Observer, though, has a slightly different take on the certification. They quote Keith Long, an adviser to the state elections board, who says that of the three vendors certified, "none of them have the source code for all of their software they use."

What seems to have happened is that the state approached the vendors, found that all of them rely to some degree on operating system code they don't own, and decided simply to check the actual application code instead. Given limited time and resources, this seems a pragmatic choice. North Carolina's counties are facing a January 20, 2006 deadline for having a contract with a vendor, and there would certainly have been no time to check the entire Windows codebase for problems. Instead the state has decided to look only at the vendor's own software and at any modifcations the vendor may have made to the commercial version of whichever OS they use. Is this political skullduggery or a wise use of public funds? We may find out at the next election. If North Carolina can avoid losing any votes this time around, their decision may look to be a smart one.

Diebold would rather withdraw from North Carolina than allow inspection of its source code

source: http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000680070378/

Embattled Diebold withdraws from North Carolina

Posted Nov 30, 2005, 1:10 PM ET by Evan Blass
Related entries: Misc. Gadgets

In a classic case of “if we don’t play my way I’m taking my toys and going home,” electronic voting machine manufacturer Diebold has announced that it will no longer do business in North Carolina because the state refused to grant an exception that would let Diebold keep its source code secret. After more voting machine blunders in 2004 (little things, like how it was discovered that even monkeys can hack Diebold gear), North Carolina passed a law that requires e-voting vendors to place their source codes in escrow as a precaution against future irregularities, meaning that the state is not even asking Diebold to reveal its code publicly. Nonetheless, Diebold claims that because their machines contain some Microsoft software, they don’t have to right to release the code. Okay folks, which explanation sounds more reasonable: A. Diebold is willing to lose an entire state’s worth of business in order to protect Microsoft or themselves on the off-chance of a successful lawsuit or B. Diebold is petrified that their code is so full of security flaws, and other “issues” that should it ever be scrutinized, the company would most likely go out of business? Now before you answer, remember once again that this is Diebold we’re talking about here.

Leader of local Republican Party Obstructs Voting

In what is becomming a common them for members of the Republican party, in the Seattle area elections in 2005 they are trying to keep the "wrong people from voting". This noble cause is being executed in the same tradition that Republicans protected the country from Florida ballots that have crimps or folds during the 2000 election: Voters in democratic communitees are held to a high standard than republican.

In this regard, the wrong people are those who vote democrate and if the Republicans can keep the elections close, they will win by conditional enforcement of laws.
Who are these "bad guys" trying to vote in King County? Some of them are people who registered to vote using PO boxes, have registered multiple times because they move a lot, or the addresses are storage units (in which they live). In either case, they are citizens who deserve the right to vote. We don't say people have to live in 2,000 square foot houses to vote. If we did, then the election landscape would change in interesting ways. (I'm sure someone in the RNC is writing this one down.) Why didn't Sotelo challenge these voters months before the election instead of two days before the election? (mostly too late for these voters to take action, but not too late to generate some bad publicity for Dem. elect Ron Sims, King County Comissioner.)

A reacurring pattern
Members of the Rebublican party, we know this trick and we aren't going to put up with it. If you want to be fair, then for every voter you investigate in democratic districts, bring to the table evidence of the same number from you district. No, on second thought, take the high road and bring to the table twice as many people from your district that have misfiled their voter regstration. Prove to everyone how ethically strong you are.

Are all Republicans election cheats and theives? I doubt it. At least I hope not since there are a lot in our government. There are a lot of Republicans that don't show up in the news applying their conditional standards to others in order to win at any cost. Though it does seem that they all are willing to look the other way or to speak apoligetically about their collegues that when faced with adversity, aren't above legal (though immoral) and illegal manipulations to gain an edge.

People of the US, stop being fooled! Members of the republican party are taking advantage of your nature to believe what authority figures say. You want to believe in the good nature in people, that all CEOs are more credible than car salesmen (hint: they sell their company's shares on wallstreet instead of cars), and that politician are going to serve the interests of the people (they do when it is their best interests, the cash on the table can buy someone's best interests). You don't rise through the ranks of a political party on good speeches alone. When your party asks you to help them win an election, you do it.

A call to action for residents of King County, Washington:

Sign the petition asking Prosecutor Norm Maleng to investigate Lori Sotelo for fraudulently declaring, 2 working days before the recent election, that voters' addresses in a Democratic neighborhood of King County were invalid. Then forward the below link to your friends.

http://www.petitiononline.com/perjury/petition.html

Here are some news feeds about what the Republican obstructionists have done.
As you read the below, remind yourself than Lori Sotelo didn't bother to check Repbulican districts for voters who have registered with PO boxes or other incorrect means.

Partisan Pruning

Republican Party Wrongly Tries to Prevent at Least 140 King County Residents from Voting

BY ELI SANDERS

Source: http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=24932

exceprt:

It turns out that Lacey and his neighbors were just a few among at least 140 King County voters who were wrongly challenged by Sotelo, who chairs the King County Republican Party’s “Voter Registration Integrity Project.” Sotelo could not be reached for comment on Friday morning, when The Stranger first reported the mistakes on our blog, but Chris Vance, chairman of the state Republican Party later confirmed for The Stranger that a serious mistake had been made.

“We are withdrawing those challenges today and apologizing to those folks,” he said. He added that it is “just coincidence” that a significant number of the wrongly challenged voters live in a strongly Democratic neighborhood.

State's voters deliver an as-you-were verdict

By NEIL MODIE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
source: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/247654_overview09.html

For King County voters, one of the biggest issues was the election process itself and how the Sims administration has handled -- or mishandled -- it. Republicans hammered Sims for innumerable ballot-processing blunders in the 2004 general election.

The tempest continued into Election Day, with Democrats continuing to counterattack the Republican Party's challenge of the legality of 1,944 King County voter registrations, mostly in Democratic Seattle.

After GOP officials admitted they were mistaken about 140 of the challenges, County Council Chairman Larry Phillips Tuesday asked County Prosecutor Norm Maleng to investigate possible perjury charges against county GOP Vice Chairwoman Lori Sotelo for signing sworn declarations that the challenged voter registrations were invalid.

Thrown Out

King County Canvassing Board Rejects Republican Lori Sotelo's Voter Challenges

BY ELI SANDERS

Source: http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=25403

Exceprt:

To understand the story of this prolonged voter-challenge skirmish, one must delve into a complicated set of numbers that have been spun in wildly different ways by Republicans and Democrats. At the beginning of the story is a set of 1,944 challenges to King County voter registrations that Sotelo filed in late October, days before the November 8 election. At the time, Sotelo bragged that her unpaid interns, using digital cameras and internet searches, had done a better job of cleaning up the voter rolls than the King County Elections office. Almost immediately, however, it became clear that Sotelo's army of partisan watchdoggers had been more slapdash in creating their list than even the Republicans' worst caricature of the hapless King County Elections office. A considerable number of the voters Sotelo had challenged for registering illegally at P.O. boxes or storage units had perfectly legal addresses. Because of this, Sotelo ended up withdrawing 178, or about nine percent, of her challenges before the canvassing board could hear them. When this happened, furious Democrats saw it as proof that Sotelo had been intentionally careless with her challenges in an attempt to suppress votes in Democratic King County.

Republicans strenuously denied that charge, as well as the charge that they were trying to help Republican David Irons in his ultimately failed attempt to unseat King County Executive Ron Sims. (Any preelection accusations of incompetence by King County Elections, which Sims oversees, were likely to help Irons and hurt Sims.) Then, as the angry rhetoric flew back and forth between the parties, observers waited to see how many of the remaining Republican challenges actually held up in hearings before the canvassing board.

Now we know. Of the 1,944 voters whose registrations Sotelo initially challenged, only 199 decided to vote anyway. Of those 199 challenges, the canvassing board rejected 141 as lacking "clear and convincing" supporting evidence, allowing those votes to count—a rejection rate of about 70 percent.

How many legitimate voters just gave up and never voted because of the challenges? We'll never know, although Sims has an estimate. "The sad fact is that the vast majority of the voters—more than 1,000—challenged by Ms. Sotelo ended up not voting in this election," Sims said. "In that sense, Ms. Sotelo and other party officials involved in her effort can say, 'mission accomplished.'"

If one adds the Sotelo challenges rejected by the canvassing board to those she has already withdrawn, her error rate so far, out of the 1,944 original challenges, is about 16 percent. Sotelo wasn't at the Monday hearing to watch those rather negative results come in, but state Republican Party Chairman Chris Vance quickly flipped the results around and pointed to the 58 challenges that were upheld, and the hundreds of challenged voters who changed their addresses before the election in response to Sotelo, calling them a vindication of her efforts.

With regard to those 58 voters, Vance said, "King County's error rate was 100 percent, because they didn't find any of those faulty registrations." As for the more than 1,000 challenges that still have to be examined, Vance said, "we are going to achieve exactly what we set out to achieve. King County is going to scour the list."

GOP says it will keep contesting voter registrations

By GREGORY ROBERTS
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Excerpt:

"It's perfectly logical to see that we're tying to prevent vote fraud," state GOP Chairman Chris Vance said.

His Democratic counterpart, Paul Berendt, countered, "The Republicans have been fighting to take away the right of people to vote."

To Vance, it's simple: The votes of voters registered at private mail boxes or commercial storage units are illegal and shouldn't be tallied.

Excerpt:

History of voter purges

Challenges nothing new

Partisan efforts to limit voter participation are an established feature of the American political landscape. And they are not the exclusive province of any one party: It was white Democrats who spearheaded the systematic exclusion of black Southerners from the polls for most of the century after the Civil War, employing techniques that ranged from literacy tests to murder. The reaction to those practices produced the federal Voting Rights Act in 1965.

But in the past 40 years, Republican attempts to disenfranchise voters have generated the lion's share of controversy. Generally called "ballot security" programs, they have involved confrontations with voters at the polls on election day, uniformed guards at polling places, posters warning of the criminal penalties for illegal voting and challenges to voter registrations.

Ironically, in light of Southern political history up to the 1960s, the GOP voter purges have been criticized for zeroing in on black voters and other minorities, a constituency that has proved solidly Democratic since Republicans reversed the racial dynamic of politics in the '60s by their courtship of Southern white voters.

A GOP ballot-security program in 1981 in New Jersey prompted a federal lawsuit by the Democrats, who claimed harassment of black and Hispanic voters violated the U.S. Constitution and the Voting Rights Act. The result was a consent decree in which the Republican National Committee agreed not to target districts with large minority populations in any efforts that might discourage eligible voters.

That decree was modified after the 1986 U.S. Senate race in Louisiana, in which the Republicans mailed non-forwardable letters to 350,000 voters in districts that voted at least 75 percent Democratic in the 1984 presidential election -- which in practice meant predominantly black districts. When 30,000 of the letters came back, the GOP moved to challenge the affected registrations based on unreported changes of address.

Voters sued to stop the purges, and the legal wrangling turned up a memo from an RNC staffer expressing optimism that the ballot security program "could keep the black vote down considerably." The disclosure galvanized black voters, and the Democrat won the election. In the 1986 modification to the federal consent decree, the RNC forswore future use of direct-mail address-change strategies.

VOTE FRAUD AND THE BANKRUPTCY OF THE UNITED STATES

VOTE FRAUD AND THE BANKRUPTCY OF THE UNITED STATES
Collective Bellaciao - Paris,France

Rally to focus on election fraud claims

http://tennessean.com/local/archives/04/12/63568178.shtml?Element_ID=63568178

Rally to focus on election fraud claims


By HOLLY EDWARDS
Staff Writer

Organizers insist that congressional inquiry needed

Civil rights leaders, social scientists, elected officials and local activists will rally tomorrow afternoon for a federal investigation into allegations of fraud in the November presidential election.

The House Judiciary Committee reported after the election that it received some 57,000 complaints about voting problems on election day, ranging from a shortage of voting machines to glitches with electronic vote casting machines. The U.S. Government Accountability Office has launched an investigation into the complaints.

Rally organizers said the sheer volume of complaints warrants a Congressional investigation into possible election tampering and points to the need for a massive overhaul of the country's voting system. They said they hope Congress looks into the complaints before it accepts the decision of the Electoral College.

''After looking at all the evidence, this appears to be a fraudulent election,'' said Bernie Ellis of Murray County, who organized the rally. ''In the future, we need an election that's verifiable with a paper trail. The sanctity of the voting process is in question and we're tampering with the future of our democracy here.''

At the third ''Gathering to Save Our Democracy'' rally tomorrow, leaders of the 1960s Nashville civil rights movement will discuss what was necessary to secure voting rights in the past, social scientists will review the latest evidence of election problems in Ohio and other states, and elected officials will discuss what can be done now.

Among the top concerns of the group is the lack of an election ''paper trail.'' Electronic voting machines are not audited for accuracy and provide no receipt. With complaints that some machines registered a vote for President George Bush when voters selected Sen. John Kerry, rally organizers said the need for an auditing mechanism is clear.

Controversy about the machines surfaced last year after the chief executive of one of the main providers of the machines, Diebold, Inc., wrote that he was ''committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president.''

The CEO, Walden O'Dell, later changed his company's policy to prohibit top officials from engaging in any political activity except voting.

''We need to either go back to a paper ballot or get a receipt, just like you get when you use your ATM card,'' said Alma Sanford of the Tennessee Democratic Party. ''If people don't have confidence in elections, we don't have a democracy anymore.''

If you go

The third Gathering to Save Our Democracy will be from 2 to 5 p.m. Sunday at Vanderbilt University's Benton Chapel. The public is invited to attend.

Holly Edwards can be reached at 259-8035 or hedwards@tennessean.com.

Will John Kerry Report for Duty?

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/010405.html

Will John Kerry Report for Duty? By Robert Parry January 4, 2005

Early in Campaign 2004, Sen. John Kerry challenged George W. Bush’s operatives to “bring it on,” fully expecting that they would try to smear his patriotism despite his Vietnam War medals. In accepting the Democratic nomination, Kerry again highlighted his national service by snapping off a salute with the words: “Reporting for duty.”

Yet one of the biggest disappointments for many Democrats was that the “bring it on” John Kerry didn’t show up at key moments in Election 2004. He failed to respond aggressively when a Republican front group spread lies about his war record. He then meekly conceded defeat on the day after the Nov. 2 election rather than fight for a full examination of voting irregularities.

Now, John Kerry may have one more chance to “report for duty.” On Jan. 6, after the new Congress convenes, he could join with Reps. John Conyers, Maxine Waters and other members of the House of Representatives in supporting their expected motion for a full-scale investigation of Election 2004, particularly the widespread allegations of voting fraud in the pivotal state of Ohio.

For the House motion to have any standing, it must be signed by at least one U.S. senator. So far, no U.S. senator has stepped forward despite petition drives from rank-and-file Democrats demanding that Bush’s victory be contested.

Black Opposition

A similar situation arose dramatically after Election 2000, when House members from the Congressional Black Caucus rose to challenge election fraud in Florida that disenfranchised thousands of African-Americans and put Bush over the top. At that time, Kerry and other Democratic senators refused to join them.

The painful tableau was captured in Michael Moore’ “Fahrenheit 9/11” with then-Vice President Al Gore presiding over a joint congressional session and repeatedly ruling African-American representatives out of order due to the absence of a senator’s signature. Out of apparent desire not to further divide the country, Gore and the Democratic senators accepted Bush’s dubious election. [For details on how Bush “won” in 2000, see Consortiumnews.com’s “So Bush Did Steal the White House.”]

Now, on Jan. 6, 2005, assuming Conyers and other representatives go ahead with their challenge, it would be Vice President Dick Cheney gaveling down African-American Democrats unless a U.S. senator agrees to sign their motion.

Of course, even if the motion gets a senator’s signature and is ruled to be in order, the Republican congressional majority is sure to block a full-scale investigation and instead simply certify Bush’s election. Still, the challenge would mark a new determination among the Democrats to fight the Republicans over principles of democracy.

The motion also presents John Kerry with a difficult political and ethical choice. He basically would have three options: He could join the demand for a full investigation and risk being dubbed a “sore loser”; he could choose to sit silently while Cheney pounds his gavel; or he could stay away from the session altogether. One Kerry adviser told me the senator may be traveling outside the country on Jan. 6.

Political ‘Viability’

Since Election Day, most of Kerry’s political advisers have been counseling him to accept defeat gracefully and protect his “political viability,” possibly with an eye toward another run for the presidency in 2008. By contrast, many rank-and-file Democrats have demanded that Kerry and other national Democratic leaders dig in and fight.

To many of these grassroots Democrats, Kerry should have ignored the advice of the professionals even before the election and waged a more aggressive campaign against Bush. These Democrats have complained that Kerry’s political advisers, such as consultant Bob Shrum, staged a Democratic National Convention in July 2004 that tried so hard to be positive that it largely avoided telling the American people why a second Bush term would be a national disaster. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Campaign 2004’s Jedi Mind Tricks.”]

Kerry’s advisers also turned a deaf ear to early warnings about the political damage that could be inflicted on Kerry by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a pro-Bush group that accused Kerry of lying about his war record and faking his wounds. Kerry’s advisers didn’t believe the mainstream news media would give the accusations much credibility and then were shocked when CNN and other mainstream outlets pushed the allegations. [For more on the Swift boat case, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Bushes Play the ‘Traitor’ Card” and “Reality on the Ballot.”]

Instead of responding in kind – by hammering Bush’s contradictory accounts about how he ducked service in the Texas Air National Guard – the Kerry campaign sought the high ground, even urging pro-Kerry groups to mute their criticism of Bush’s National Guard record. [For more on Bush’s National Guard contradictions, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Bush the ‘Infallible.’”]

For his part, Bush refused to specifically denounce the attacks on Kerry’s patriotism and indeed presided over a Republican convention where some delegates wore Purple Heart band-aids to mock Kerry’s war wounds. Kerry’s negatives soared as Bush built a double-digit cushion that helped him absorb opinion-poll blows that followed his stumbling performances in the three presidential debates.

Bush’s ‘Late Vote’

Then, for a few hours on Election Day, Kerry’s advisers thought their finessing strategy had worked. Exit polls showed Kerry winning by about a three-percentage-point margin nationwide and carrying almost all the battleground states. Kerry’s advisers informed him that he would likely be the next President of the United States.

At the White House, Republican advisers also broke the news to Bush about Kerry’s impending victory. Bush’s political guru Karl Rove was one of the few optimists, reportedly assuring Bush that his vote “would come in late.”

And, indeed, as the “official” results rolled in, Bush took the lead nationally and was awarded six of the battleground states that had appeared headed for Kerry’s column. By the end of the tally, Bush had amassed a record total of more than 61 million votes and had registered about a three-percentage-point win over Kerry. [See Consortiumnews.com “Election 2004’s Myths & Mysteries.”]

Though Ohio’s 20 electoral votes could have tipped the Electoral College to Kerry – and rank-and-file Democrats already were howling about voting irregularities there – Kerry’s political advisers concluded that Bush’s Ohio margin, then around 136,000, could not be erased by the provisional and absentee ballots yet to be counted.

So Kerry agreed to concede on Nov. 3 while still vowing to fight for the principle that all the outstanding votes must be counted. But Kerry’s concession effectively prevented any thorough examination of voting irregularities in Ohio and across the country.

Two small parties – the Greens and Libertarians – filed for a recount in Ohio, but Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell slow-rolled the process on the grounds there was no compelling need for speed. Blackwell, a co-chairman of the state’s Bush-Cheney campaign, refused to permit any recounting until an official tally was certified on Dec. 6, more than a month after the election. By then, Bush’s lead had dwindled to about 119,000 votes.

Blackwell next held off the start of a limited recount until Dec. 13, the day the Electoral College met to formalize Bush’s victory. The delayed recount was limited to a three-per-cent sampling of Ohio precincts, amounting to little more than a re-tabulation of the count, with Bush’s total shaved to about 118,500 votes. Tens of thousands of rejected ballots were never examined to determine whether they actually did record preferences for president.

Reasons to Challenge

In perhaps the most comprehensive coverage of Ohio’s flawed election and problems in the recount, the Columbus (Ohio) Free Press described “10 preliminary reasons why the Bush vote does not compute, and why Congress must investigate rather than certify the Electoral College.”

The Free Press reported that in Ohio and other key states, the Bush campaign appears to have followed a “do-everything” strategy to suppress the vote in Democratic precincts, including providing inadequate numbers of voting machines that forced long lines and caused many voters with children or other duties to give up and not vote.

The Free Press also reported that more than 106,000 Ohio ballots were left unexamined, mostly for supposedly not registering a choice for president, again predominantly in Democratic precincts. Meanwhile, the Free Press said voting in pro-Bush precincts appears to have been exaggerated, at times exceeding 100 percent of the registered voters.

“Crucial flaws in the national vote count, most importantly in Ohio, New Mexico and Florida, indicate John Kerry was most likely the actual winner on Nov. 2, as reported in national exit polls,” according to the Free Press article by Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld and Harvey Wasserman. “At very least, the widespread tampering with how the election was conducted, and how Ohio's votes were counted and re-counted, has compromised this nation's historic commitment to free and fair elections.” [Free Press, Jan. 3, 2005]

Nationwide, many rank-and-file Democrats remain angry over what they see as a Bush campaign that relied on dirty tricks, voter suppression, vote tampering and stonewalling of recount demands. Indeed, a large number of Democrats appear convinced that Bush stole a second presidential election on Nov. 2.

I’ve spoken to or exchanged e-mails with many Democrats from a variety of backgrounds who even believe that the Republicans now have in place electronic means for rigging elections. A surprising number of these Democrats knew details about this controversy although it has received little attention in the major news media.

They know, for instance, that Ohio-based Diebold, with more than 75,000 electronic voting stations operating across the United States, is headed by Walden O’Dell, a major Bush fundraiser who announced that he was “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes for the president.” [See a Plain Dealer article about O’Dell’s statement, Sept. 16, 2003, posted at Diebold’s Web site.]

Political Chasm

Because of a wave of these Democratic e-mails in the days after the Nov. 2 election, I wrote a story about the technological feasibility of computer tampering. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Evidence of a Second Bush Coup?”] We also have run stories about the anomalies in voting patterns in traditional Democratic precincts in south Florida and elsewhere [see Consortiumnews.com’s “Bush’s ‘Incredible’ Vote Tallies.”], as well as stories contrasting the major U.S. news media’s outrage over electoral problems in Ukraine with ridicule heaped on U.S. citizens challenging the Nov. 2 election here. [See “Big Media’s Democracy Double Standards.”]

Whatever the truth about systematic vote rigging, it’s now clear that the growing suspicions represent another threat to Democrats in the future. Many rank-and-file Democrats now believe that national elections are being rendered meaningless, with a Republican victor preordained through computer hacking, so why vote?

A chasm also seems to be opening between the Democratic base and the Democratic professionals in Washington over how to deal with today’s Republican-dominated government. With the Jan. 6 congressional session looming, many rank-and-file Democrats want to escalate the fight with Republicans over democracy in the United States, while the Democratic professionals seem ready to move on to other issues.

This division represents a political risk, too, for John Kerry. While his Washington advisers may have assured the senator that his future political “viability” is best protected by him playing the part of “good loser,” many Democrats want him to stand with members of the Congressional Black Caucus in demanding a full investigation of the Nov. 2 election even if he gets called a “sore loser” for doing so.

For many in the Democratic base, it may be Kerry’s last chance to show that he meant what he said when he challenged the Bush dirty tricksters to “bring it on.”

---

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His new book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'

Re-Vote Ohio

Re-Vote Ohio

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=90&ItemID=6944

(This article was put together with much assistance from colleagues who have been deeply involved in the Ohio recount.)

“Our next governor should enter office without any doubt about the legitimacy of his or her office. The people of Washington deserve to know that their governor was elected fair and square. Unfortunately, the events of the past few weeks now make it impossible for you or me to take office on January 12 without being shrouded in suspicion.”

-Dino Rossi, Republican candidate for Governor of Washington, in open letter to Democratic candidate Christine Gregoire Rossi’s argument is equally applicable to the Presidential election. Following an extremely flawed and probably illegal “recount” in Ohio, no one can say for sure who won that state’s 20 Electoral College votes, and these 20 votes are necessary for either George Bush or John Kerry to claim a victory in the 2004 election.

Following the example of the people of the Ukraine, we should demand that Ohio’s 5.5 million voters be given a chance to vote for president again in a fair and transparent process.

What Happened in Ohio?

Many thousands of duly-registered African American voters did their civic duty and went to the polls in Ohio on Election Day.

Many stood for three, four or even eight hours in the cold and rain with tired, hungry children and sick or elderly relatives.

These people, whose children are disproportionately represented in the U.S. military and the Iraq war, suffered disproportionately from misallocation of voting machines, biased application of voting standards, outright harassment, and the ultimate indignity for a voter:

unbeknownst to them, many of their votes were not even counted.

Concerns that the votes of African Americans and other Ohio voters were not fairly counted were one of the main reasons that David Cobb of the Green Party and Michael Badnarik of the Libertarian Party demanded a recount of the votes in Ohio. Now that the recount is finished, the picture is a lot worse than any of us thought. Not only were African Americans in huge numbers denied the right to vote on Election Day, but something even more shocking was discovered: we have no idea who won the presidential vote in Ohio.

And because we have no idea who won the vote on November 2, we must immediately raise the call for an Ohio re-vote.

The vote totals we are seeing in the newspapers assume that there has been no tampering with the vote totals.

While no one has as yet proven definitively that there was vote tampering, any impartial observer can say with certainty that it would be impossible to say that there was NO tampering.

How can we say this so unequivocally? Private company technicians from Triad and possibly Diebold had unsupervised access to ballots and vote counting machines after the initial vote counting and before the recount.

In some counties, ballots were not locked up in ways that would preserve their integrity.

In almost all counties, the recounts did not comply with the dictates of Ohio election law that the precincts re-counted must be “randomly” selected.

Whether in the interest of hiding something, or merely in the interest of wanting to go home for the Christmas holiday, pre-selecting the precincts to be re-counted could lead to re-counting precincts without problems instead of those where machines failed, ballots were soiled, or other problems occurred.

Thankfully, the Ohio recount fulfilled its purpose. It helped us to see the extent of the problems in Ohio’s voting processes.

It reminded us that many Ohio state and local elections officers should either be fired for incompetence or criminally indicted for allowing voters to be disenfranchised on Election Day.

It provided a way to keep the reform process in public view so that changes can be made in time for the 2006 election season.

Most importantly, however, the Ohio recount has led us to a conclusion that should be obvious to fair-minded people of any political party:

no one can claim victory in a contest when the score-keeping system was broken.

If you take a few minutes to read County Recount Reports from the observers who monitored the recount in Ohio's 88 counties, you will see why Ohio’s Electoral College votes are tainted and must be rejected by Congress.

For example, in Fairfield County, Ohio, a full recount should have been ordered when the 3% test sample required under Ohio election law did not match the official vote totals. Instead, based on what county officials said was a recommendation from Secretary of State Blackwell's office, the recount was "suspended" so that they would not have to do a full recount. http://www.votecobb.org/recount/ohio_reports/

In Champaign County, a precinct signature book, necessary to verify that the number of votes that were cast, will not be made available to recount observers until after January 10 (four days after Congress has counted the Electoral College votes), per orders of the Secretary of State.

Meanwhile, in Van Wert County, an observer reported:

"When asked if Triad had serviced the machine, the deputy director and a board member stated that they had serviced the machine over the phone via modem on December 9th."

Many other counties used vote tabulation machines that were “serviced” by technicians outside the supervision of anyone else between the November 2 election and the recount date.

In Ashland County, there were other security issues: "The cast ballots are stored by precinct in open cubicles along one wall of this room, completely open and visible to anyone who enters this room....Piled on top of the cubicles holding the vote are baskets, Doritos, paper plates, mugs, cleaning products, Fresh-n-Soft, Glad Wrap, etc."

These "chain of custody" issues are especially important when you consider that, as reported in the New York Times, "Voting machine companies and their supporters have been given a large say in the process [of setting federal standards for electronic voting machines], while advocates for voters, including those who insist on the use of voter-verified paper receipts, have been pushed to the margins. The chairman of the working group preparing the standards for voting machines is a top executive of Election Systems and Software [ES&S], a large and controversial voting machine maker." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/27/opinion/27mon1.html

Didn’t Impartial Democrats Monitor the Process?

Yes, both Democrats and Republicans supervised the voting and recounting processes.

According to the Columbus (Ohio) Free Press, however, their impartiality is not a given, because Ohio election law calls for directors, deputy directors, and members of all county boards of elections to be assigned by the Secretary of State.

“They hold these paying jobs at his discretion regardless of whether they are Democrat or Republican. A major argument of those who claim Ohio’s 2004 presidential election was fraud-free centers on the myth that local precincts are run as bipartisan operations, deflecting charges of partisan interference while failing to account for the fact that the principals all owe their jobs to the Secretary of State, who in this case served as co-chair of the state's Bush-Cheney campaign.” http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/1046

The Constitution calls for a convening of Electors in each state, who cast ballots that then are opened and read by Congress.

This year, the Electors met on December 13, 2004, and Congress receives and counts their votes on January 6, 2005.

The problem we have this year is that the 20 Electoral votes cast by Ohio Electors are fundamentally flawed because they were cast before the recount even began, and because it was a seriously problematic recount.

Therefore, John Kerry’s concession has no legal meaning. If a re-vote results in his winning the Ohio popular vote, he will win Ohio’s 20 Electoral votes and the presidency.

The issue facing us now, however, is not the election of Bush, Kerry, or even the Green or Libertarian presidential candidates. The issue is that we do not know who won Ohio.

And as the people of the Ukraine have shown us, a re-vote is possible.

Indeed, there are 48 million voters in the Ukraine and only 5.5 million in Ohio, so the process would be ten times easier.

How Could a Fair Re-Vote Take Place?

If the voting processes are so fundamentally flawed, you ask, how could we trust a new re-vote?

Simple.

A

paper ballot can be easily produced with the names of the presidential candidates on it.

Every voter will hand in one piece of paper with a check mark next to one candidate’s name, and another piece of paper with his or her name, address, and other necessary voter registration information.

These two piles will be kept in case a recount is needed.

Observers from the various presidential campaigns should be allowed to monitor the 88 county election proceedings, and we also may want to bring in some international election observers comparable to those who supervised the election in the Ukraine.

President Bush can issue a call for a re-vote himself, following the lead of Dino Rossi in Washington State. He can declare that he wants to be elected by a fair and transparent process.

Or Congress can demand a re-vote when it convenes to receive the Electoral votes on January 6, 2005. If neither of those take place, it is imperative that the mushrooming pro-democracy movement that has been developing since the elections escalate its pressure and its tactics to reflect the urgency of what is at stake. We must assert out Tenth Amendment power to reclaim our right to a fair election in Ohio and a fairly elected President of the United States.

If we let this one go by without the political fight of our lifetimes, we just might have kissed what’s left of our democracy goodbye.

Ted Glick is the outgoing National Coordinator of the Independent Progressive Politics Network (www.ippn.org) and is very active with the Winter Democracy Campaign. He can be reached at futurehopeTG@aol.com.

academic research exposes vote-rigging across several states

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/pdfs/Exitpoll_discrep_v00p1_Part_I.pdf

Kenneth Blackwell, Ohio GOP Election Operative, is still dancing the dance

Expect to see Blackwell to get a cushy appointment from his good friend George W Bush. Kathrine Harris, the Florida secretary of state first got a seat in the House, and now is in the Senate. I expect nothing less for Blackwell.
Apparently in June 2000, some insiders thought he might be GWB's running mate rather than Cheney:
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2000/06/04/loc_wilkinson_blackwell.html

He has Heritage Foundation credentials:
Let Freedom Ring: Making the Dream a Reality by J. Kenneth Blackwell
January 14, 1998 (Heritage Lecture #606)
Let Freedom Ring: Making the Dream a Reality


Anyway, Blackwell is working hard to position himself as defensively as possible. It will be interesting if he comes out as shiney clean as JEB and Cathrine Harris of the 2000 election fraud. Past history is on his side.

Ohio Official Refuses Interview Over Vote
Monday December 27, 2004 11:46 PM

AP Photo OHWS101

By ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS

AP Statehouse Correspondent

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4696816,00.html

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell has requested a protective order to prevent him from being interviewed as part of an unusual court challenge of the presidential vote.

Blackwell, in a court filing, says he's not required to be interviewed by lawyers as a high-ranking public official, and accused the voters challenging the results of ``frivolous conduct'' and abusive and unnecessary requests of elections officials around the state.

Citing fraud, 37 people who voted for president Nov. 2 have challenged the election results with the Ohio Supreme Court. The voters refer to irregularities including long lines, a shortage of voting machines in minority precincts and problems with computer equipment.

President Bush defeated John Kerry by 119,000 votes, according to the official count by Blackwell. Ohio's 20 electoral votes gave Bush the 270 he needed for victory. Kerry conceded the morning after Election Day.

The challenge, with support from the Rev. Jesse Jackson, is based on comparison of reports of exit polling data with the official vote. Columbus lawyer Cliff Arnebeck and other lawyers on the case say they would like to see the supporting data that produced the exit poll results.

The voters ``are not trying to actually contest the presidential election but are merely using this litigation to cast public doubt on the voting system of the State of Ohio without a shred of evidence supporting their theories,'' Attorney General Jim Petro, representing Blackwell, said in last week's filing with the Ohio Supreme Court.

Petro said the voters ``are again engaging in frivolous conduct'' after a Dec. 20 request to interview elections board officials in 10 counties was denied.

Petro also argued that the state Supreme Court does not have jurisdiction over a federal election. Even if the court did, the attorneys for the voters aren't following the proper timelines for collecting evidence.

Arnebeck said Blackwell's request shows ``a lack of good faith'' in the process to contest elections.

On Dec. 21, officials named in Arnebeck's challenge learned that he planned to issue subpoenas to several high-ranking officials, including Blackwell, Bush and the president's political adviser, Karl Rove, according to Petro.

The state Supreme Court ``should halt their ability to subpoena any person until such time as they make a good faith showing for the reason to take any deposition,'' Petro said.

The last time a similar challenge was made to a statewide race came in 1990 when Paul Pfeifer contested Lee Fisher's 1,234-vote victory in the attorney general's race. Six justices of the court sided with Fisher.

^---

On the Net:

Secretary of State: http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos//

Truthout Video Exposing Election Fraud

My reaction to the video is the guy has polished social skills despite being under fire for election fraud. His emotions are tightly rained. I think he will make a good presidential press secretary someday. I find him too polished to trust. Someone like this has had some practice at facing questions about his work, I wonder what he has been doing before he got the gig of manipulating election machines and coaching people on how to respond to answers from election audit investigators.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/122404X.shtml