Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News WEDNESDAY, 12/21/05

Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News WEDNESDAY, 12/21/05

Na na na na, na na na,
hey hey Good Bye!

Never forget the pursuit of Truth.

Only the deluded & complicit accept election
results on blind faith.

Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News WEDNESDAY, 12/21/05

All members welcome and encouraged to participate.

Please post Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News on this thread.

If you can:

1. Post stories and announcements you find on the web.

2. Post stories using the "Election Fraud and Reform News Sources" listed here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x371233

3. Re-post stories and announcements you find on DU, providing a link to the original thread with thanks to the Original Poster, too.

4. Start a discussion thread by re-posting a story you see on this thread.

If you want to know how post "News Banners" or other images, go here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=371233#371391



All previous daily threads are available here:
http://www.independentmediasource.com/DU_archives/du_2004erd_el_ref_fr_thr_calenders.htm

Please

"Recommend"

for the Greatest Page (it's the link just below).

The modern Republicans have created a pool of talent in election manipulation like no other party. This is their big play, three stooges on the FED, all at recess. Buyer beware!
http://electionlawblog.org/archives/004661.html

Election Law

The law of politics and the politics of law: election law, campaign finance, legislation, voting rights, initiatives, redistricting, and the Supreme Court nomination process
Rick Hasen's web log

December 19, 2005
Campaign Legal Center Worried About FEC Recess Appointments; Others React, Accusing CLC of Hypocrisy on Issue

The Campaign Legal Center has issued a press release, on the new FEC nominations. A relevant part:
The apparent intention to push these nominees through as recess appointments, without debate or an up-or-down vote, would deny the public the right to give these nominees serious scrutiny. And the background of the nominees themselves raises serious questions about whether they would firmly enforce campaign finance law, or continue the agency's 'business as usual' tendency to protect powerful political interests, rather than the public interest in clean elections.

Allison Hayward reacts, noting "UPDATE: Apparently making a recess appointment during the complex rulemaking of 2002, necessitated by BCRA, was A-OK. See 'McCain placed hold on all pending nominations' from July 2002. Here's the CLC's account - an article from the Washington Post on their site. How times change." Former FEC chair Brad Smith offers similar thoughts. See also these thoughts on the nomination from the Lonely Centrist.

Posted by Rick Hasen at December 19, 2005 10:46 AM

There must be HUGE problems with Diebold. The Arnie picked replacement for Secretary of State, Bruce McPherson, has dumped Diebold pending further testing. Of course, his testing showed a 10% to 20% error rate. Isn’t that enough Bruce. This comes shortly after McPherson backed off of the Harri Hursti Hack Test. Hmmm….

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/breaking_news/13452214.htm

State refuses to approve Diebold voting machines

Posted on Tue, Dec. 20, 2005

By Edwin Garcia
Mercury News Sacramento Bureau

SACRAMENTO - Suggesting the ``security and integrity'' of electronic voting could be at risk, Secretary of State Bruce McPherson on Tuesday refused to approve the use of thousands of electronic voting machines pending a federal evaluation.

The touch-screen and optical-scan machines, made by Diebold Election Systems and used in 17 counties, including Alameda, were found to have ``unresolved significant security concerns'' with a memory card that stores votes in each machine, McPherson's elections chief, Caren Daniels-Meade, said in a letter to the company's vice president, David Byrd.

At issue is whether the removable cards, which are used to program and configure the machines, will keep data secure.

The Secretary of State's office is asking Diebold to submit the machine's source code for review by the federal Independent Testing Authorities before resubmitting the company's application for certification in California.

Enough said!

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/12/20/state/n174200S20.DTL#sections

SFGate: Secretary of State asks for more testing of Diebold machines

By JULIET WILLIAMS, Associated Press Writer

Tuesday, December 20, 2005
(12-20) 17:42 PST SACRAMENTO, (AP) --

Secretary of State Bruce McPherson on Tuesday told electronic voting machine manufacturer Diebold Election Systems that it must submit two of its machines for more rigorous federal testing before they can be certified in California.

The memory cards on the systems have "unresolved significant security concerns," according to a letter sent to Diebold Tuesday from McPherson's elections chief, Caren Daniels-Meade.

(She asked Diebold for their source code!!!)

The problems were discovered during routine testing of the machines by state employees and independent consultants, said Secretary of State spokeswoman Jennifer Kerns. She said each system approved for use in California must meet 10 security requirements, and the Diebold machines did not meet one of those standards.

WORLD: This is where it all started--Thursday, 11 November 2004, 1:45 pm
Jonathan Simon, with www.verifiedvoting.org at the time, downloaded material intended to be private to the media consortium. That data was the start of the election fraud controversy. We knew they screwed us with machines, centralized databases, voter suppression in Ohio and elsewhere. This data, as it was elaborated here and elsewhere, was the basis for the charge, THEY STOLE THE WHOLE DAMN THING. I came across this in some research and was reminded just how historic this document is. It’s also the truth revealed!!!

CALIFORNIA SEC. OF STATE REFUSES TO RE-CERTIFY DIEBOLD VOTING MACHINES! (For Now...)

SoS: 'Unresolved significant security concerns', 'Source Code Never Ever Reviewed'
State 'Punts' Issue Back to Feds for Further Testing, State Senator Objects -- Complete Letter from SoS, Senator Bowen's Full Statement...

Late this afternoon, Sec. of State Bruce McPherson's office sent a letter to Diebold Election Systems, Inc. Vice President David Bryd, informing him that the state is declining -- for the time being -- to re-certify Diebold AccuVote touch-screen machines in the state of California pending further testing and certification by Federal authorities.

In the letter, on McPherson's letterhead (complete letter at bottom of this article), Caren Daniels-Meade, chief of the Elections Division writes that "Unresolved significant security concerns exist with respect to the memory card used to program and configure" the Accu-Vote operating system and touch-screen equipment.

In a statement reported by AP, SoS spokeswoman Jennifer Kerns announced problems "discovered during routine testing...by state employees and independent consultants":

snip

http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002183.htm


Discussion:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x406077

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x406070

By Press Relase from Debra Bowen, California State Senator

December 20, 2005

SECRETARY OF STATE PUNTS QUESTION OF RE-CERTIFYING DIEBOLD MACHINES FOR USE IN CALIFORNIA TO FEDERAL GOVERNMENT & VOTING MACHINE VENDORS

SACRAMENTO – “The Secretary of State shouldn’t punt the decision about whether Diebold machines should be used to count ballots in California to the federal government and an ‘independent’ testing authority that’s financed by the voting machine vendors. That decision needs to be made in the open, right here in California.”

That’s how Senator Debra Bowen (D-Redondo Beach), the chairwoman of the Senate Elections, Reapportionment, & Constitutional Amendments Committee, reacted to today’s decision by the Secretary of State to send Diebold to the federal government and the Independent Testing Authorities for more information before deciding whether to re-certify the company’s touch-screen machines for use here in California.

“The federal testing process is notoriously weak and it’s done in secret,” continued Bowen. “Plus, these supposedly ‘independent testing authorities’ the Secretary of State wants to rely on are financed by the voting machine industry and conduct their tests in secret as well. That’s why California shouldn’t be relying on proprietary software that uses secret code to count ballots. If we want to ensure we have voting systems that are reliable and secure – and that voters have confidence in – we need to be moving toward an open source software structure."

snip

“Basically, the Secretary of State decided not to make a decision, which is certainly better than opting to re-certify the Diebold machines, but at some point, he’s going to have to decide whether he wants to make Californians vote on these error-prone touch-screens,” concluded Bowen.

snip

http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=604&Itemid=113

By Kim Zetter
Dec. 21, 2005 PT

Election officials spooked by tampering in a test last week of Diebold optical-scan voting machines should be equally wary of optical-scan equipment produced by other manufacturers, according to a computer scientist who conducted the test.

snip

"Looking at these systems doesn't send off signals that ... if we just get rid of Diebold and go to another vendor we'll be safe," Thompson said. "We know the Diebold machines are vulnerable. As for ES&S, we don't know that they're bad but we don't know that they're (good) either."

snip

Thompson said a second vulnerability in the cards makes it easy to program the voting machine so that it thinks the card is blank at the start of the race. This is important because before voting begins on Election Day, poll workers print a report of vote totals from each machine to show voters that the machines contain no votes.

"The logic to print that zero report is contained on the memory card itself," Thompson said. "So all you do is alter that code ... to always print out a zero report (in the morning)."

David Jefferson, a computer scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and chair of California's Voting Systems Technical Assessment and Advisory Board, said that programming software on a removable memory card raises grave concerns.

"The instant anyone with security sensibility hears this, red flags and clanging alarms happen," Jefferson said. "Because this software that is inserted from the memory module is not part of the code base that goes through the qualification process, so it's code that escapes federal scrutiny."

snip

http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,69893,00.html?tw=wn_1techhead

Diebold e-voting approval is delayed

California wants outside lab evaluation after memory cards hacked in Fla. test

By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER

12/21/2005

snip

Diebold Election Systems relies on its own, nonstandard software language, known as AccuBasic, to program local election details into virtually all of its voting machines, using memory cards or PC cards. Voting-system experts say the practice appears to violate federal voting system standards, and independent computer experts have been using Diebold's own code to hack vote totals on its machines.

snip

Such reviews typically take weeks to monthsand stand to cost Diebold market share in California, which buys more voting equipment than any other state. A third of the state's counties — including Los Angeles, Alameda, San Diego, San Joaquin and Marin counties — have been planning or considering use of Diebold's latest system for the 2006 elections.

All California counties face Jan. 1 state and federal deadlines to purchase voting systems that are handicapped accessible and produce a paper record for recounts. Many counties now are unlikely to meet that deadline. County elections officials also typically want to have a new voting system in hand four to six months before an election.

snip

The California move is not actually a new requirement. At least one private laboratory, known as an "independent testing authority," is supposed to perform a line-by-line review of all software used in Diebold's voting systems, to check for compliance with federal standards.

Those rules forbid the use of nonstandard programming languages and prohibit the insertion of executable programs on a system after it has been approved. Like past systems, Diebold's latest system uses nonstandard language and can change voting-machine software after approval.

But in a letter Tuesday to Diebold, McPherson said the memory cards and PC cards containing the programs never were reviewed by the testing labs.

snip

http://www.insidebayarea.com/localnews/ci_3329849

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0411/S00142.htm

47 State Exit Poll Analysis Confirms Swing Anomaly

Thursday, 11 November 2004, 1:45 pm

Article: Alastair Thompson
47 State Exit Poll Analysis Confirms Swing Anomaly

By Jonathan Simon
Introduction by Scoop Co-Editor Alastair Thompson

" In the 12 critical states (CO,FL,MI,MN,NE,NV,NH,NM,OH,PA,WI,IA) the average discrepancy was a 2.5% red shift (= total movement of 5.0%), nearly twice that in the safe states. "
- Jonathan Simon

Introduction by Scoop Co-Editor Alastair Thompson

By the time of the close of polls at around 5pm EST on election day the buzz on the world wide web – including here at Scoop - was that Kerry had was a shoe in for election 2004. Slate Magazine and the Daily Kos had published the swing state exit polls before the polls had even closed. The news was very good for Kerry supporters.

According to the exit polls Kerry was showing a 1% popular vote margin over Bush. But more importantly he was shown leading by a nose in Florida and a solid 4% in Ohio. Because of the way the Electoral College system works this meant that he had almost certainly won.

The polls have significant sized samples in all states and ask actual voters who they actually voted for and so are traditionally very accurate.

As we now know they weren't very accurate once midnight came and went.

Or were they?

A STATISTICAL ANALYSIS

How about this! Pre-cognitive…

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=19390

George Bush's 8 Million New Votes Found – A STATISTICAL ANALYSIS

Edited on Thu Nov-04-04 05:58 AM by althecat
George Bush's 8 Million New Votes Found – STATISTICAL ANALYSIS

By Alastair Thompson - Co-Editor http://scoop.co.nz
(exclusively so far.. on DU..)

In an earlier thread I discussed the issue of Where Did * Suddenly Get 8 Million New Voters.... To recap this is important because:
"If you think about it , had the Bush Cheney campaign really signed up 8 million odd new republican voters... wouldn't they have been telling us about it for the past six months. Yelling it on the front page of every newspaper. Somewhere in the election statistics is the answer to a simple question. Where were Bush's 8 million new voters..-. find them and you find where this election was stolen.


WHAT I DID
Noticing that nobody was really taking a lot of notice of my ramblings I decided to take a closer look. The raw data is below and I will post an excel spreadsheet of this online soon so people can fill in the gaps (this is really a bit of a work in progress as is the DU tradition). I picked and chose my states on the basis of where I thought it likely that the votes came from and stopped when I got to 90% of the vote difference this only took 31 states.

FINDINGS

1. Bush did not pick up any vote at all on the West Coast.. in fact he lost ground in both Washington and California. This is interesting as this is arguably where the BBV machine manufacturers have been receiving the most heat. However it could reflect a relative lack of interest in so-called "moral issues" out west.

2. The five states I picked on the basis that they are known to have lots of voting machines (and particularly Diebold machines) had a significantly higher percentage increase in bush voters than average… 25% compared to 17% nationally.

3. Likewise the swing states also had a higher average rate of new bush voters at 21%. This however might be expected as they also had much more active campaigns.

4. Among the 31 states I examined were three big democratic states NY, NJ and IL. I selected them on a hunch because a) they are unlikely to be suspected of being used in a vote rigging exercise, but b) necessary to include if you want to achieve a large across the board popular vote gain that does not look too suspicious. These three states averaged a 21% vote gains for Bush and NJ and NY achieved around 25%. However between them they contributed 1.7 million new bush votes, or nearly 20% of Bush's total vote gain.

5. The remainder of my selection of states is broadly defined as "red states", they averaged 20% in terms of voting gain for bush. Notably both Kansas and Utah achieved % gains for bush below the national average. I am guessing here but I would have thought both states were "moral issue" based voter heavy.

DISTRIBUTION OF THE VOTES

6. In sheer numeric terms Bush gained far and away the most votes in Texas and Florida, 900k and 700k respectively.

7. 60% of all Bushes new votes, 5.2 million votes, were gained in just 11 states…FL, TX. NY, OH, PA, GA, MI, NJ, TN, NC, IL

8. Add in another 8 states and you get to 82% of all bush's new votes or 7.1 million… the states are WI MN IND AL OK KY AZ LOU & MD

9. Put another way 7.1 million votes or 82% of bushes gain was achieved in states totalling 65% of the popular vote. Within these states he achieved an average vote gain of an astonishing 23%.

10. 92% of the vote gain is found in the 31 states I selected data for.

11. The rate of bush vote growth in the remaining 20 states was just 5% on average.

12. In percentage terms Florida and Georgia (both heavily Diebold equipment using states) were the standouts with 32% gains respectively.

13. In percentage terms five other states showed more than 25% growth in the bush vote, in ascending order they were Arizona, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Tennessee. Of these AZ, NM and OK both recently upgraded their machines to new tech machines. NJ and TN also both use computerised voting machines, albeit older models.

CLICK HERE TO SEE WHICH MACHINES ARE USED WHERE – VerifiedVoting.Org's Verifier

RAW DATA FOLLOWS


SOURCES
2000 Results Via CNN
2004 Results Via C-Span

TruthIsAll

Thu Nov-04-04 11:07 PM
Original message
To believe that Bush won the election, you must also believe...


To believe that Bush won the election, you must also believe:

1- That the exit polls were WRONG...

2- That Zogby's 5pm election day calls for Kerry winning OH, FL were WRONG. He was exactly RIGHT in his 2000 final poll.

3- That Harris last minute polling for Kerry was WRONG. He was exactly RIGHT in his 2000 final poll.

4- The Incumbent Rule I (that undecideds break for the challenger)was WRONG.

5- The 50% Rule was WRONG (that an incumbent doesn't do better than his final polling)

6- The Approval Rating Rule was WRONG (that an incumbent with less than 50% approval will most likely lose the election)

7- That Greg Palast was WRONG when he said that even before the election, 1 million votes were stolen from Kerry. He was the ONLY reporter to break the fact that 90,000 Florida blacks were disnfranchised in 2000.

8- That it was just a COINCIDENCE that the exit polls were CORRECT where there WAS a PAPER TRAIL and INCORRECT (+5% for Bush) where there was NO PAPER TRAIL.

9- That the surge in new young voters had NO positive effect for Kerry.

10- That Bush BEAT 99-1 mathematical odds in winning the election.

11- That Kerry did WORSE than Gore agains an opponent who LOST the support of SCORES of Republican newspapers who were for Bush in 2000.

12- That Bush did better than an 18 national poll average which showed him tied with Kerry at 47. In other words, Bush got 80% of the undecided vote to end up with a 51-48 majority - when ALL professional pollsters agree that the undecided vote ALWAYS goes to the challenger.

13- That Voting machines made by Republicans with no paper trail and with no software publication, which have been proven by thousands of computer scientists to be vulnerable in scores of ways, were NOT tampered with i[n this election

Bush election policies inspire civil war. That should be the headline. They must have had Secretary of State Blackwell consult on this one. What a mess. What a waste

http://news.monstersandcritics.com/middleeast/article_1070416.php/Claims_of_vote_fraud_rekindle_risk_of_civil_war_in_Iraq

From Monsters and Critics.com

Middle East Features

Claims of vote fraud rekindle risk of civil war in Iraq

By Anne-Beatrice Clasmann
Dec 21, 2005, 19:00 GMT

Cairo - While Iraq's Shiites are dancing in the streets of Baghdad celebrating their parties' good results in the parliamentary elections, the responses of Sunni representatives have produced outbursts of a different sort.

'Election fraud', the delegates of the two leading Sunni lists shouted as soon as the head of the election Adel al-Lami announced new partial results from the provinces.

Sunni Saleh al-Mutlak, who had presented himself as a moderate and open politician during the debate on the new constitution in October, was immediately talking of 'our brothers the jihadists who are on the path of rightfulness.'

Wow, are these people gratefule for their "liberation." What a sad, sad story.

http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2005/12/21/sunnis_see_fraud_call_for_new_election/
Secular parties also question victory of Shi'ites

By Doug Struck, Washington Post | December 21, 2005

BAGHDAD -- Sunni and secular political parties angrily asserted yesterday that Iraq's national election was rigged, threatening to leave in shambles the delicate plan to bring the country's wary factions together in a new government.

Faced with an emerging strong victory by the religious Shi'ite group that has close ties to Iran, the minority Sunnis demanded a new election and hinted that the violence of the insurgency would be accelerated by the suspicions of fraud.

''What would we tell those whom we indirectly convinced to stop the attacks during the election period?" demanded Adnan Dulaimi, a chief of the main Sunni coalition. ''What would we tell those people who wanted to boycott and we convinced them to participate?"

The preliminary results, he said, are ''not in the interest of stability of the country."...



This Is American “Democracy”: Iraqis Complain Of Election Fraud

http://www.jihadunspun.com/intheatre_internal.php?article=105518&list=/home.php

Dec 21, 2005
By Omar al-Faris, JUS

It should come as no surprise that Iraqis are complaining of “election” fraud considering this is a business George Bush knows intimately, having risen to power on a fixed election and this time, the scam is intended to divide Iraq as the American agenda calls for.

According to reports from AP, some Sunni Arabs and a secular party charge that the so-called parliamentary elections were riddled with fraud, and have demanded an inquiry into preliminary results that show the Shiite religious bloc with a proportional larger than expected lead.

While Bush pitched a “unified” Iraq in his many speeches last week, the hostile climate that now exists threatens to divide the entire country. Adnan al-Dulaimi, head of the Sunni Arab alliance the Iraqi Accordance Front, listed several complaints, including voting centers failing to open, shortages in election materials and reports of multiple voting.

“There are many violations and there is forgery,” al-Dulaimi told The Associated Press. Electoral commission official Farid Ayar said he has received more than 1,000 formal complaints, 20 of which were serious, or “red.” He said he did not expect the complaints would change the overall result, which is to be announced in January. A secular coalition charged that the election commission was a tool of the religious Shiite-dominated government...

Well, if this is a 'mixed verdict' then I'm an academic! What is this all about. The guy is going "upstate" as we used to say in NY (or "downstate" as we say in VA) for some serious time. He's guilty, he did it. That's not all they did. Remember, NH was the "belle weather" for the Republican "surprise" in 2004--and what was it, 8% outside the margin of error in the exit polls...


http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1410673&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312

Jurors Return Mixed Verdict in Election Phone-Jamming Case Against Ex-GOP Official

CONCORD, N.H. Dec 15, 2005 — A former top Republican Party official was convicted on telephone harassment charges Thursday for his part in a plot to jam the Democrats' phones on Election Day 2002.

<snip>

(Tobin, 45, faces seven years in jail and $500,000 in fines upon sentencing.).
For nearly two hours on Election Day 2002, hundreds of hang-up calls overwhelmed Democratic get-out-the-vote phone banks in New Hampshire and a ride-to-the-polls line run by Manchester's firefighters union.

Tobin, who at the time was New England chairman of Bush's re-election campaign and a top regional official of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, was accused of orchestrating the phone-jamming.

...chose. See the Wizard. Get a brain. The paper is just that. The machine can record any vote it wants. Unless the paper receipts are kept and counted, in their entirety, there is no reason to believe the receipt. What a bunch of idiots. Can’t the press or the election officials in these states do the least bit of logical thinking? Or is it that they just can’t tell the truth? We report, you decide.

http://www.mcall.com/news/local/quakertown/all-b1-2machinesdec09,0,2115926.story?coll=all-newslocalquakertown-hed

Officials check out voting machines
12/19/2005 9:36 PM
By: Adam Shub, News 14 Carolina

Counties across the state are approaching the deadline to approve and purchase new voting machines that meet federal and state guidelines.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. – It’s not the high-tech touch screen or the fancy new keypad that has election officials across the state checking out new voting machines – it’s the simple print-out confirming for voters who they picked on Election Day, and it’s costing counties millions of dollars.
“Is it worth it? It’s not for me to decide,” said Michael Dickerson, Mecklenburg County elections director. “It’s not my choice to change out equipment at this point in time.”
The General Assembly made the choice to require voter verification. But for counties like Mecklenburg, the state’s only coming up with about a quarter of the $8 million to pay for it.

=========================
"and it’s costing counties millions of dollars." AND IT DOESN'T EVEN WORK. DUH, A COMPUTER CAN PRINT OUT ANYTHING IT WANTS AND STILL RECORD THE VOTE OTHERWISE. "A Confederacy of Dunces" should be the title of those in the election bureaucrcy and press who can't even understand what a 14 year old hacker knows on about day three of his or her ventures into the internet.

http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002179.htm

Conyers, House Judiciary Dems Release Massive New Pre-War Intel Report, File Several Resolutions
Resolutions Call for Censure of Bush, Cheney and Creation of 'Select Committee' to Investigate Impeachable Offenses

Lots of fur flying this morning, and us West Coast bloggers, of course, are as ever behind the time-zone eight-ball. So consider this a first volley as we try to bring you the nuts and bolts and offer a lot of summarized raw data and links for you to read through it all yourselves, even as we do same.

The skinny is that the U.S. House Judiciary Committee Democrats, led by ranking minority member John Conyers (D-MI) have now released their full 250-page report, said to be more than six months in the making, on the Administration's use/abuse of pre-war intel, torture policies and much more. The BRAD BLOG first reported exclusively on all of this as 'coming soon' last week. Yesterday, we added quite a few details about what to expect in this report. Our friends at RAW STORY have several articles, including links to the Full Report and its Executive Summary.


-- Report Executive Summary here
-- Report in full here
-- Report by chapters here (Includes links to all exhibits, key documents, etc.)

Along with the report, Conyers has introduced three resolutions in the House which call for the Censure of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for failure to provide oversight materials to Congress and for "misstatements" in their lead-up to war. One of the resolutions also calls for the creation of a new "Select Committee" -- with subpeona power -- to discover whether there are grounds for Impeachment of both Bush and Cheney. This committee has been described to us by a Judiciary Committee staffer as "similar to the Ervin Committee on Presidential Campaign Acitivites that kicked off Watergate, to conduct further investigation of the matters described in the report." The committee would then refer evidence constituting impeachable offenses to the House Judiciary Committee.

Democrats question vote results

LONG GONE ELECTION: Tabulation method, reliability of machines are doubted.

By LISA DEMER

Anchorage Daily News

Published: December 20, 2005

The official vote results from the 2004 general election are riddled with mistakes and discrepancies, are impossible for the public to make sense of, and should be corrected as soon as possible, the Alaska Democratic Party says.

snip

For instance, when district-by-district vote counts are totaled, President Bush received 292,267 votes, according to an analysis by the Democrats. But his official total was 190,889, a difference of more than 100,000 votes, according to the state Web site.

Everyone agrees you cannot figure out how many votes a statewide candidate got in a particular district with the present system.

"The numbers just do not add up, and we'd like to get to the bottom of why," Brown said.

The Democratic Party on Monday filed a request with the state Division of Elections for the electronic data file of voting results, the record of who voted in the 2004 general election, and paper results from machines used in early voting.

snip

http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/7301446p-7213196c.html


Discussion:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x405991#top

Voting machine maker takes a side step

Durham offered reassurances

Eric Ferreri, Staff Writer

A spokesman for voting machine manufacturer Diebold Inc. attempted Monday to put some distance between his company's products -- which Durham County may soon buy -- and some of the political problems his business is experiencing in other parts of the country.

snip

At the outset of a presentation stretching for more than four hours, Diebold official Mark Radke emphasized his company's interest in distancing itself from those controversies.

"I will tell you point-blank, we are doing everything we can to disassociate ourselves from political turmoil," said Radke, the company's voting director. "Our company is nonpartisan."

snip

"Is there a system that's perfect? No," Ashe (Durham County's elections chief) said. "I think it's probably hackable. But you have to have some access, and just like our old system ... we don't leave it out in the parking lot."

snip

http://www.newsobserver.com/102/story/379908.html

Never give up.

New York: Testimony Before the State Board of Elections

By Bo Lipari, New Yorkers for Verified Voting
December 19, 2005

The following testimony on the Draft Voting Systems Standards was delievered by Bo Lipari to the New York State Board of Elections on December 16, 2005 in Albany, NY.

My name is Bo Lipari. I am the Executive Director of New Yorkers for Verified Voting, a grassroots citizen advocacy group concerned with ensuring the integrity of our vote in an age of computers. I had a long career as a software engineer developing commercial and custom software, and managing software development teams and projects for several companies. Most recently I held the position of Senior Software Engineer in the Ithaca NY branch office of Autodesk, the fifth largest software company in the world. I have spent the last three years educating the public, state, county and town officials, about the potential problems with computerized electronic voting systems, and advocating for adoption of a paper ballot based systems using precinct based optical scanners and ballot marking devices for the disabled.

I understand that the purpose of these hearings is to comment on the Draft Voting Systems Standards, and I will do so in just a moment. In a few weeks, New Yorkers for Verified Voting will submit to the State Board of Elections a technical analysis detailing the significant problems and omissions of the proposed standards. Today, due to the time limitations, I will only present a high level overview of the problems with the Draft Standards. But before I do that, I would like to first comment on the State Board of Elections approach to this important moment in New York State.

We are on the cusp of fundamental and far reaching changes to our elections. New York State has not seen such deep seated changes in generations. The public has a vested interest in the integrity, accuracy, and security of our elections, and citizens all around this great state have been voicing their concerns and demanding a transition process that is open and fully visible to the public. We have demanded that all types of voting systems be objectively evaluated and analyzed, and that fair, accurate and thorough evaluations of voting systems in widespread use throughout the United States be performed and presented to the public.

This is what the public has demanded of the State Board. Unfortunately, none of this has happened.

snip

http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=601&Itemid=113

fraud, takes many forms

but in general it is malice conducted under the guise of good

All the streets are filled with laughter and light
And the music of the season
And the merchants’ windows are all bright
With the faces of the children
And the families hurrying to their homes
As the sky darkens and freezes
We’ll be gathering around the hearths and tales
Giving thanks for all God’s graces
And the birth of the rebel Jesus

Well they call him by the prince of peace
And they call him by the savior
And they pray to him upon the seas
And in every bold endeavor
As they fill his churches with their pride and gold
And their faith in him increases
But they’ve turned the nature that I worship in
From a temple to a robber’s den
In the words of the rebel Jesus

We guard our world with locks and guns
And we guard our fine possessions
And once a year when Christmas comes
We give to our relations
And perhaps we give a little to the poor
If the generosity should seize us
But if any one of us should interfere
In the business of why they are poor
They get the same as the rebel Jesus

But please forgive me if I seem
To take the tone of judgement
For I’ve no wish to come between
This day and your enjoyment
In this life of hardship and of earthly toil
We have need for anything that frees us
So I bid you pleasure
And I bid you cheer
From a heathen and a pagan
On the side of the rebel Jesus

merry christmas :)

Editorial:

Posted on Tue, Dec. 20, 2005

Accuracy in voting

Choice of optical scanners sells Summit voters short

"Most counties in Ohio and all others in this region have chosen modern voting technology that allows decisions to be made (and corrected) by touching a computer screen. Not in Summit. Here, the elections board deadlocked. Republicans insisted on a half-step forward, opting for a low-tech system that scans marks on paper. Democrats embraced a fully computerized, touch-screen system. Neither side would budge.

"On Friday, J. Kenneth Blackwell, the secretary of state, broke the stalemate, siding with fellow Republicans Alex Arshinkoff and Joseph Hutchinson over Democrats Wayne Jones and Russ Pry. Sadly, the primary reason for choosing an optical scanner was cost. The selection will save the state nearly $1.1 million, money that can be used to offset other costs of complying with the federal Help America Vote Act."

snip

Most important is that touch-screen voting automatically eliminates the most common ballot error, overvoting, Diebold machines producing error rates as low as 0.3 percent and 0.4 percent in some states. (Wilms notes: Diebold machines produce error rates as as high as 20 percent in some states...like CA.)

snip

http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/news/editorial/13447717.htm

Discussion:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x406052

Legislator’s tie to New Times paper questioned

By Dennis Welch, Tribune

December 21, 2005

snip

Harper, chairman of the Government Accountability and Reform Committee, said he wants to find out why an additional 489 votes turned up during a recount of a District 20 House primary race.

The recount overturned the election in that district, which covers parts of Mesa, Tempe and Phoenix.

snip

On Tuesday, Douglas Jones, a computer expert from the University of Iowa, began examining the voting machines at a county building in downtown Phoenix.

snip

http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/index.php?sty=55590

http://www.freetimes.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=2898

DIE, DIEBOLD, DIE … In perhaps the best local example of karma in action since Carlos Boozer’s descent into obscurity, Diebold Inc. — the Canton-based manufacturer of electronic voting machines — recently suffered through a week like something out of the Book of Revelations.

• Dec. 12: Diebold CEO Walden O’Dell — who stated he was “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president” before the 2004 election — abruptly resigned his position and was replaced by Thomas Swidarski.

• Dec. 13: The election supervisor in Leon County, Florida, once again demonstrated that Diebold’s machines can be hacked using consumer electronics and in such a way as to leave no trace of the deceit on the paper trail. That same day, Connecticut-based law firm Scott & Scott LLC filed a securities fraud class-action lawsuit against Diebold and its chief officers in federal court...

Oh, also last week: Diebold machines were delivered to Cuyahoga County for use in this spring’s election. Here’s hoping someone kept the receipt.

http://www.freetimes.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=2898

FREEDOM TO PILFER … In the far reaches of the right side of the political spectrum, just past the ultra-conservatives, dwell the libertarians. Their passion for individual rights (regardless of whom you love or what you smoke) and teeny-tiny government makes most modern Republicans look like old-school Democrats. But they don’t win many elections.

Ohio Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate Kenneth Blackwell is as right-wing as they come. He’s so far right, in fact, that he may be doing the unthinkable for a God-fearin’ social conservative: stepping into libertarian territory.
A few weeks ago, Nick Brusky, Amherst area chairman for Blackwell’s campaign, wrote in an e-mail to prospective supporters that Blackwell promises to give Ohioans the “freedom to prosper by restricting government spending.” He later wrote, “I believe that government should give people the freedom to prosper.”

Ohio Libertarian Party Chairman Robert Butler couldn’t help but notice the similarities to the theme of his party’s gubernatorial campaign, devised last summer: “Freedom to Prosper.”
“We’re glad that Mr. Blackwell agrees so strongly with the Libertarian Party on this issue,” writes Butler in a statement. “I just didn’t know he would take his campaign theme directly from our Web site.”...

It's Granny's birthday. Please go to http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=5661310&mesg_id=5661310 and send her your wishes. She is monitoring this post.

I find it amazing but am not surprised this woman was born on the solstice.

Now get back to election fraud & reform work!