Update 1/6/05 - Here's the video clip:

Bloggers As Person Of The Year On ABC World News Tonight (5 MB)

Hey did anyone record last night's ABC World News Tonight? I did, but the recording's kinda screwy. (My new cable really sucks here in the East Bay.)

I'll put it up later anyway, but just in case there's already a better version floating around, please let me know!

It's nice to finally get a little credit from the "traditional" press.

The story had an 11-year-old girl who they're calling "the world's youngest video blogger." I love it.

Happy New Year everybody!

According to RAW STORY, this is straight from Conyers' Office:

December 30, 2004

Dear Senator,

As you know, on January 6, 2005, at 1:00 P.M, the electoral votes for the election of the president are to be opened and counted in a joint session of Congress, commencing at 1:00 P.M. I and a number of House Members are planning to object to the counting of the Ohio votes, due to numerous unexplained irregularities in the Ohio presidential vote, many of which appear to violate both federal and state law. I am hoping that you will consider joining us in this important effort to debate and highlight the problems in Ohio which disenfranchised innumerable voters. I will shortly forward you a draft report itemizing and analyzing the many irregularities we have come across as part of our hearings and investigation into the Ohio presidential election...

Here is the whole text of the letter (as obtained from):

http://www.bluelemur.com/index.php?p=521

December 30, 2004

Dear Senator,

As you know, on January 6, 2005, at 1:00 P.M, the electoral votes for the election of the president are to be opened and counted in a joint session of Congress, commencing at 1:00 P.M. I and a number of House Members are planning to object to the counting of the Ohio votes, due to numerous unexplained irregularities in the Ohio presidential vote, many of which appear to violate both federal and state law. I am hoping that you will consider joining us in this important effort to debate and highlight the problems in Ohio which disenfranchised innumerable voters. I will shortly forward you a draft report itemizing and analyzing the many irregularities we have come across as part of our hearings and investigation into the Ohio presidential election.

3 U.S.C. §15 provides when the results from each of the states are announced, that “the President of the Senate shall call for objections, if any.” Any objection must be presented in writing and “signed by at least one Senator and one Member of the House of Representatives before the same shall be received."1. The objection must “state clearly and concisely, and without argument, the ground thereof."2 When an objection has been properly made in writing and endorsed by a member of each body the Senate withdraws from the House chamber, and each body meets separately to consider the objection. “No votes . . . from any other State shall be acted upon until the [pending] objection . . . [is] finally disposed of."3 3 U.S.C. §17 limits debate on the objections in each body to two hours, during which time no member may speak more than once and not for more than five minutes. Both the Senate and the House must separately agree to the objection; otherwise, the challenged vote or votes are counted.4

Historically, there appears to be three general grounds for objecting to the counting of electoral votes. The language of 3 U.S.C. §15 suggests that objection may be made on the grounds that (1) a vote was not “regularly given” by the challenged elector(s); and/or (2) the elector(s) was not “lawfully certified” under state law; or (3) two slates of electors have been presented to Congress from the same State.

Since the Electoral Count Act of 1887, no objection meeting the requirements of the Act have been made against an entire slate of state electors.5 In the 2000 election several Members of the House of Representatives attempted to challenge the electoral votes from the State of Florida. However, no Senator joined in the objection, and therefore, the objection was not “received.” In addition, there was no determination whether the objection constituted an appropriate basis under the 1887
Act. However, if a State - in this case Ohio - has not followed its own procedures and met its obligation to conduct a free and fair election, a valid objection -if endorsed by at least one Senator and a Member of the House of Representatives- should be debated by each body separately until “disposed of".

Please contact me at 225-5126 to appraise me of your thoughts on this important matter. If your staff has questions, that may be forwarded to Perry Apelbaum or Ted Kalo of my Judiciary Committee staff at 225-6504. Thank you.

Sincerely,

John Conyers, Jr.

Representative John Conyers has announced that he'll be filing an official Objection to the Ohio Electoral votes on January 6, 2005. We need to mobilize and get our Senators to support him. (article underneath senator information below)

Here's the same list of historically-progressive Senators I cite in my report on the Ohio Situation from yesterday:

Note that Russ Feingold is the one senator that voted against the Patriot Act, so he's got the guts to do this kind of thing, and I put him at the top of the list.

When the Senate offices reopen after January 2, 2005, you can call their offices directly:

Senator Russ Feingold, (202) 224-5323, russ_feingold@feingold.senate.gov

Senator Tom Harkin, (202) 224-3254, tom_harkin@harkin.senate.gov

Senator Jim Jeffords, (202) 224-5141, Vermont@jeffords.senate.gov

Senator Edward Kennedy, 202/224-4543, senator@kennedy.senate.gov

Senator Patrick Leahy, (202) 224-4242, senator_leahy@leahy.senate.gov

Senator Barbara Boxer, (202) 224-3553, senator@boxer.senate.gov

Senator Dick Durbin, (202) 224-2152, dick@durbin.senate.gov

Representative John Conyers, ranking minority member of the House Judiciary Committee, will object to the counting of the Ohio Electors from the 2004 Presidential election when Congress convenes to ratify those votes on January 6th. In a letter dispatched to every Senator, which will be officially published by his office shortly, Conyers declares that he will be joined in this by several other members of the House. Rep. Conyers is taking this dramatic step because he believes the allegations and evidence of election tampering and fraud render the current slate of Ohio Electors illegitimate.

"As you know," writes Rep. Conyers in his letter, "on January 6, 2005, at 1:00 P.M, the electoral votes for the election of the president are to be opened and counted in a joint session of Congress. I and a number of House Members are planning to object to the counting of the Ohio votes, due to numerous unexplained irregularities in the Ohio presidential vote, many of which appear to violate both federal and state law."

The letter goes on to ask the Senators who receive this letter to join Conyers in objecting to the Ohio Electors. "I am hoping that you will consider joining us in this important effort," writes Conyers, "to debate and highlight the problems in Ohio which disenfranchised innumerable voters. I will shortly forward you a draft report itemizing and analyzing the many irregularities we have come across as part of our hearings and investigation into the Ohio presidential election."

Here is the full text of the entire article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/123104W.shtml

Conyers to Object to Ohio Electors, Requests Senate Allies
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Report

Thursday 30 December 2004

Representative John Conyers, ranking minority member of the House Judiciary Committee, will object to the counting of the Ohio Electors from the 2004 Presidential election when Congress convenes to ratify those votes on January 6th. In a letter dispatched to every Senator, which will be officially published by his office shortly, Conyers declares that he will be joined in this by several other members of the House. Rep. Conyers is taking this dramatic step because he believes the allegations and evidence of election tampering and fraud render the current slate of Ohio Electors illegitimate.

"As you know," writes Rep. Conyers in his letter, "on January 6, 2005, at 1:00 P.M, the electoral votes for the election of the president are to be opened and counted in a joint session of Congress. I and a number of House Members are planning to object to the counting of the Ohio votes, due to numerous unexplained irregularities in the Ohio presidential vote, many of which appear to violate both federal and state law."

The letter goes on to ask the Senators who receive this letter to join Conyers in objecting to the Ohio Electors. "I am hoping that you will consider joining us in this important effort," writes Conyers, "to debate and highlight the problems in Ohio which disenfranchised innumerable voters. I will shortly forward you a draft report itemizing and analyzing the many irregularities we have come across as part of our hearings and investigation into the Ohio presidential election."

There are expected to be high level meetings with high ranking Democratic officials next week to coordinate a concerted lobbying effort to convince Senators to challenge the vote. The Green Party and David Cobb, as has been true all along, will be centrally involved in this process, as will Rev. Jesse Jackson.

The remainder of the Conyers letter reads:

3 U.S.C. §15 provides when the results from each of the states are announced, that "the President of the Senate shall call for objections, if any." Any objection must be presented in writing and "signed by at least one Senator and one Member of the House of Representatives before the same shall be received." The objection must "state clearly and concisely, and without argument, the ground thereof." When an objection has been properly made in writing and endorsed by a member of each body the Senate withdraws from the House chamber, and each body meets separately to consider the objection. "No votes...from any other State shall be acted upon until the (pending) objection...(is) finally disposed of." 3 U.S.C. §17 limits debate on the objections in each body to two hours, during which time no member may speak more than once and not for more than five minutes. Both the Senate and the House must separately agree to the objection; otherwise, the challenged vote or votes are counted.

Historically, there appears to be three general grounds for objecting to the counting of electoral votes. The language of 3 U.S.C. §15 suggests that objection may be made on the grounds that (1) a vote was not "regularly given" by the challenged elector(s); and/or (2) the elector(s) was not "lawfully certified" under state law; or (3) two slates of electors have been presented to Congress from the same State.

Since the Electoral Count Act of 1887, no objection meeting the requirements of the Act have been made against an entire slate of state electors. In the 2000 election several Members of the House of Representatives attempted to challenge the electoral votes from the State of Florida. However, no Senator joined in the objection, and therefore, the objection was not "received." In addition, there was no determination whether the objection constituted an appropriate basis under the 1887 Act. However, if a State - in this case Ohio - has not followed its own procedures and met its obligation to conduct a free and fair election, a valid objection -if endorsed by at least one Senator and a Member of the House of Representatives- should be debated by each body separately until "disposed of".

A key legal aspect of this is the second clause referenced in the letter. Rep. Conyers and the other House members involved do not believe the electors have been lawfully certified. They believe that there has been too much illegal activity on the part of Blackwell, other election officials, and Republican operatives on the ground and therefore, as stated in the letter, the electors were not "lawfully certified" under state law. Next week, the House Judiciary Committee Democratic staff will release the report referenced in the letter, which is now still in draft form, and which led Mr. Conyers to this decision.

The Senators who shall receive the greatest focus from Conyers in this matter are Biden, Bingaman, Boxer, Byrd, Clinton, Conrad, Corzine, Dodd, Dorgan, Durbin, Feingold, Harkin, Inyoue, Jeffords, Kennedy, Kerry, Lautenberg, Leahy, Levin, Lieberman, Mikulski, Nelson (FL), Jack Reed, Harry Reid, Rockefeller, Sarbanes, Stabenow, Wyden and Obama.

William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and international bestseller of two books - 'War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know' and 'The Greatest Sedition is Silence.'

Well it took a few days, but here's my Roundup Of The Recent Events Surrounding Election 2004's Ohio Recount and Voting Machine Fraud Situation:

It Ain't Over Till It's Over

Including a bunch of
Resources organized by subject and a
What You Can Do section.

I've made all of the evidence -- Congressional letters, videos, affidavits, etc. available in multiple formats (HTML, PDF, Text, etc.), and stored them locally.

I hope you will find it useful. Please spread the word!

Here's the Index:

* Video and Affidavits Confirm Tampering of Recount Machines
* Rep. John Conyers Gets Involved
* Specific Laws That Were Allegedly Violated
* Kerry Surfaces
* Electors Of Several States Pass Resolutions and Call For Congressional Investigation
* Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell's Role In Obstructing The Ohio Recount
* What You Can Do
* Resources

Here is the full text of my article in case the link goes bad:

http://video.lisarein.com/election2004/ohioreport/recount.html

It Ain't Over Till It's Over
A Roundup Of The Recent Events Surrounding Election 2004's Ohio Recount and Voting Machine Fraud Situation
By Lisa Rein
December 29, 2004

Here's What You Can Do now to help influence the situation.
Index

* Video and Affidavits Confirm Tampering of Recount Machines
* Rep. John Conyers Gets Involved
* Specific Laws That Were Allegedly Violated
* Kerry Surfaces
* Electors Of Several States Pass Resolutions and Call For Congressional Investigation
* Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell's Role In Obstructing The Ohio Recount
* What You Can Do
* Resources

Download this report and all its documents (video and mp3 excluded) as a zip file.
Video and Affidavits Confirm Tampering of Recount Machines

Although things are just heating up over the last week, the events in question took place over two weeks ago, on December 10, 2004. According to a signed affidavit by Sherole Eaton, Hocking County Deputy Director of Elections, Triad employee Michael Barbian, dropped by, free of charge, to "check out your tabulator, computer, and that the attorneys will be asking some tricky questions and he wanted to go over some of the questions they maybe ask."

In her affidavit, Eaton also claims that Barbian worked unsupervised on one or more recount machines for over two hours. She also states that: "He advised Lisa and I on how to post a "cheat sheet" on the wall so that only the board members and staff would know about it and what the codes meant so the count would come out perfect and we wouldn't have to do a full hand recount of the county."

According to a December 20th Wired article written by Kim Zetter, when Wired contacted her for comment, Eaton tried to downplay her statements, saying that they were blown out of proportion, and that she only filed the affidavit in order to prove that no wrongdoing had occurred. However, the affidavit itself seems to do just the opposite, by explaining the details surrounding the Triad techician's unsupervised handling of at least one, and perhaps more than one recount machine, and the existence of a "cheat sheet" in order to assist recount officials with deriving the "right answer" for vote tallies so they wouldn't have to actually conduct a recount by hand.

In a video interview with Triad staffer Michael Barbian, he confirms that the recount machines were taken completely apart and put back together and reprogrammed with new software without any of the supervision required by Ohio State Law. He also says that he has done the same thing in several other counties.
Rep. John Conyers Gets Involved

Representative John Conyers (D-MI), the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) and Rep. Stephanie Tubbs-Jones (D-OH), have been the only three of our elected representatives to take the last two months of voting fraud allegations seriously. They conducted a Judiciary Democratic 2004 Election Forum in Washington DC on December 13, 2004, and continued with more hearings in Ohio for many days afterwards.

On December 22, after viewing the video, Conyers wrote a letter to Brett Rapp, President of Triad Systems, and Michael Barbian, asking them to explain their actions in Hocking County on December 10, 2004.

On December 23, Conyers learned that Triad Systems had remote access capabilities to the voting machines in numerous counties, prompting him to send a second letter to Rapp and Barbian inquiring about these capabilities and how exactly they were utilized by Triad during the recount.
Specific Laws That Were Allegedly Violated

According to a letter from Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) to Kevin Brock, Special FBI Agent in Charge of the Democratic Staff's investigation into irregularities in the 2004 election, and attorney Larry E. Beal, Hocking County Prosecutor, three federal laws and five Ohio State laws could have been violated by Triad's behavior.

Additionally, according to the Votecobb.org website (a cached google copy), the events in Hocking County represent the compromise of the required randomness of the recount precincts:

(Section 3515 of the Ohio Revised Code) "The board must randomly select whole precincts whose total equals at least 3% of the total vote, and must conduct a manual count."

"If the tabulator count does not match the hand count, and after rechecking the manual count the results are still not equal, all ballots must be hand counted. If the results of the tabulator count and the hand counted ballots are equal, the remainder of the ballots may be processed through the tabulator (for optical scan and punch cards)."

Conyers brings this up in his first letter to Triad's President and Michael Barbian:

I am concerned that your company has operated - either intentionally or negligently - in a manner which will thwart the recount law in Ohio by preventing validly cast ballots in the presidential election from being counted.

You have done this by preparing "cheat sheets" providing county election officials with information such that they would more easily be able to ignore valid ballots that were thrown out by the machines during the initial count. The purpose of the Ohio recount law is to randomly check vote counts to see if they match machine counts. By attempting to ascertain the precinct to be recounted in advance, and than informing the election officials of the number of votes they need to count by hand to make sure it matches the machine count is an invitation to completely ignore the purpose of the recount law.

You as much as admitted that this was your purpose at the December 20 hearing:

Rapp: "Remember: the purpose was to train people on how to conduct their jobs... and to help them identify problems when they conducted their recount... If they could not hand recount the ballots correctly, they would know what they needed to look for in that hand count."

[break]

Observer: "Why do you feel it was necessary to point out to a team counting ballots the number of over-votes and under-votes when the purpose of the team is to in fact locate those votes and judge them?"

Barbian: "It's an easy mistake as you're hand counting... It's just human error. The machine counts it right. We're trying to give them as much information as possible to help them out.

[break]

Interviewer: "You were just trying to help them so that they wouldn't have to do a full recount of the county, to try to avoid that?"

Barbian: "Right."(1)

In a separate interview, Barbian admits that none of the six counties he serviced during the recount actually conducted a full recount:

Interviewer 1: Did any of your counties have to do the full recount?

Michael Barbian: Not that I am aware of.

As of the time of this writing, Triad had not responded to either of Conyers' letters.
Kerry Surfaces

Although the Kerry/Edwards campaign had sent official recount rules to each individual Board of Elections in the state of Ohio, it had remained relatively quiet throughout most of the process.

Then, last week, Kerry seemed to get personally involved in the recount effort. For the first time ever, Daniel Hoffheimer, Kerry's attorney in Ohio, made a statement to MSNBC's Countdown With Keith Olbermann suggesting that the Bush-Cheney result may not be valid:

"Senators Kerry and Edwards are very concerned that the law for conducting the recount should be uniformly followed. Only then can the integrity of the entire electoral process and the election of Bush-Cheney warrant the public trust."

On Monday, December 27, 2004, the Kerry/Edwards presidential campaign filed two important motions to preserve and augment evidence of alleged election fraud in the November election. Note: not only in the recount, but in the election itself.

As truthout explains: "Specifically, Kerry will be filing a request for expedited discovery regarding Triad Systems voting machines, as well as a motion for preservation order to protect any and all discovery and preserve any evidence in this matter."

The "Yost" lawsuit is the one brought about by David Cobb and the Green Party. There is another suit that has been filed against Bush, Cheney, Rove, Moyer, and Blackwell that is a separate matter.

Here's more from the truthout report on the "Yost" suit and Kerry's involvement:

The motions were filed in the matter titled Yost et al. v. Delaware County Board of Elections and J. Kenneth Blackwell (Civil Action No. C2-04-1139) with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio. The document is titled "Motion Of Intervenor-Defendant Kerry-Edwards 2004, Inc. For A Preservation Order And For A Leave To Take Limited Expedited Discovery."

The purpose of the motions is twofold: A) To preserve all ballots and voting machines pertaining to the Yost matter for investigation and analysis; and B) To make available for sworn deposition testimony a technician for Triad Systems, the company that produced and maintained many of the voting machines used in the Ohio election. The technician has been accused of tampering with the recount process in Hocking County, Ohio, though other counties are believed to have also been involved. Any officers of Triad Systems who have information pertaining to said tampering are likewise subject to subpoena for sworn deposition testimony.

It would appear that the ever-increasing mountain of evidence was starting to gain Kerry's attention, and was perhaps starting to change his mind about getting more involved. But then, at the end of the day on Monday, December 27, Keith Olbermann posted a blog post and video story that took the wind out of the sails for those of us who were hopeful after the first statement. I think it pretty much speaks for itself that the Kerry/Edwards campaign isn't going to be doing anything drastic anytime soon:

"I would caution the media not to read more into what the Kerry-Edwards campaign has said," Mr. Hoffheimer advised us by e-mail, "than what you hear in the plain meaning of our comments. There are many conspiracy theorists opining these days. There are many allegations of fraud. But this presidential election is over. The Bush-Cheney ticket has won. The Kerry-Edwards campaign has found no conspiracy and no fraud in Ohio, though there have been many irregularities that cry out to be fixed for future elections. Senator Kerry and we in Ohio intend to fix them. When all of the problems in Ohio are added together, however bad they are, they do not add up to a victory for Kerry-Edwards. Senator Kerry's fully-informed and extremely careful assessment the day after the election and before he conceded remains accurate today, notwithstanding all the details we have since learned.

Electors Of Several States Pass Resolutions and Call For Congressional Investigation

Electors across the country have been watching the developments closely. Historically, we never hear much from these people, who quietly cast the votes to actually choose our President every four years. Last week, history was made, when numerous electors from across the country spoke out in favor of a full congressional investigation into the numerous alleged voting violations during the November 2 election and the recounts afterwards.

On December 20, 2004, a group of electors from five different states called for a congressional investigation of voting violations during the Nov. 2 election for president. Electors in Vermont, Maine, Massachusetts, California, and North Carolina all registered their concerns as they cast their votes.

On December 22, the entire lot of electors in Massachusetts passed a motion urging members of Congress to object to the vote. They also requested an investigation of "all voting complaints that might have any validity" and remedies for "any voting rights violations or electoral fraud verified by its own agents or through the courts."

It is the electors' hope to get the message read on the floor of Congress prior to certification on Jan. 6, when the ballots are opened.
Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell's Role In Obstructing The Ohio Recount

The Greens and Libertarians filed for a recount, and got one. Trouble is, much of the recount has not been allowed to actually take place, due to constant interference by Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, who has been sealing off the buildings and ballots required to conduct a full recount. Blackwell is earning the reputation of being "the Katherine Harris of Ohio," and with good reason.

Even though he promised in an interview with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann that he would not obstruct a recount in any way, in reality, he has done exactly that. Here's one article which details how one Ohio Recount team that had been assigned to Greene County was stopped in mid-count by a surprise order from Secretary of State Blackwell's office, where the Director Board of Elections stated that "all voter records for the state of Ohio were "locked-down," because "they are not considered public records."

Here's one of the specific laws Blackwell is violating (in an excerpt from Ohio's State Election Code):

Ohio Revised Code Title XXXV Elections, Sec. 3503.26 that requires all election records to be made available for public inspection and copying. ORC Sec. 3599.161 makes it a crime for any employee of the Board of Elections to knowingly prevent or prohibit any person from inspecting the public records filed in the office of the Board of Elections. Finally, ORC Sec. 3599.42 clearly states: "A violation of any provision of Title XXXV (35) of the Revised Code constitutes a prima facie case of election fraud within the purview of such Title."

Blackwell also took six weeks to certify the election in Ohio, which made it impossible for the recount to proceed in a timely manner. As David Cobb's website put it: "Kenneth Blackwell, who served both as Ohio Secretary of State (the man in charge of Ohio's vote-counting process) and the partisan co-chair of the Bush-Cheney Re-election Campaign in Ohio, took six weeks to certify the Ohio vote count, the same time needed by Washington State to certify the vote, complete a state-wide recount, and start a second one."

Here's Blackwell during his interview from November 29, 2004 with Keith Olbermann promising to let the recount move forward unhindered:

Olbermann: As it plays into the recount though sir, are you saying that your office does not anticipate taking any steps to try to prevent a recount in Ohio?

Blackwell: No. We haven't! We've told the two officials..candidates that once we certify on December 6th, they have five days to certify. I mean, to ask for a recount. Once they ask for a recount, we will provide them with a recount. And that's what I've said from the very first indication that they were interested in a recount. Once it was established that they were statewide candidates with standing, our law says that they can ask for a recount. We will regard this as yet another audit of the voting process. The reason it takes us from November the second to December the sixth to certify is because we have a very tedious, very comprehensive process where we audit by precinct, across the state, every vote that was cast to make sure that every vote that was legally cast is counted.

Blackwell is also named in a lawsuit filed on behalf of number of civil rights groups, but Attorney General Jim Petro, representing Blackwell, is claiming that the plaintiff voters of the suit "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."

The argument is that Blackwell (and, of course, the argument would carry over to the deposition of Bush, Cheney, Rove and Moyers -- the others named in the suit), is too important and busy as a high-ranking official to be deposed, and that the lawsuit is frivolous anyway. Here's an article from the NY Times explaining just how real the problems with the Ohio vote and recount are, and demonstrating how the claims against Blackwell are in no way frivolous.

Unfortunatlely, only time will tell on these court cases. And, of course, time is the one thing we don't have.
What You Can Do

I wish I had a better answer for what you, or any of us, can really do to rectify this situation. What we really need is another vote in Ohio, not another, properly conducted recount. In my opinion, recounts are not good enough. A recount only gives you a better chance of having your vote counted when you haven't been deprived of casting your vote in the first place. There were, at this point in the tally, hundreds of thousands of people who were not allowed to cast their vote. These are the votes that would have made the difference in the final numbers. As was the case in Florida in 2000, these people were systematically silenced before they even had a chance to speak.

That point made, there are three different ways that you can actually make your voice heard over this next week before the final electorate vote is cast on January 6, 2005:

1.

You can take 30 seconds and send an email to the House Judiciary Committee expressing your concerns on the matter and asking for a full investigation. Conyers is trying to get a million emails by January 3, 2005 in the hopes of turning a few heads there.
2.

If you are in Ohio or Washington D.C., you can show up at one of the protests scheduled to happen from January 3-6, 2005. Looks like there are protest scheduled around the country for the week of January 15-20 too, but that, of course, will be after the fact with regard to the January 6 electoral votes being cast.
3.

You can send emails now to these Senators who might actually endorse the challenge scheduled to be submitted by Rep. Maxine Waters and/or Rep. John Conyers on January 6, 2005.

Note that Russ Feingold is the one senator that voted against the Patriot Act, so he's got the guts to do this kind of thing, and I put him at the top of the list.

When the Senate offices reopen after January 2, 2005, you can call their offices directly:

Senator Russ Feingold, (202) 224-5323, russ_feingold@feingold.senate.gov

Senator Tom Harkin, (202) 224-3254, tom_harkin@harkin.senate.gov

Senator Jim Jeffords, (202) 224-5141, Vermont@jeffords.senate.gov

Senator Edward Kennedy, 202/224-4543, senator@kennedy.senate.gov

Senator Patrick Leahy, (202) 224-4242, senator_leahy@leahy.senate.gov

Senator Barbara Boxer, (202) 224-3553, senator@boxer.senate.gov

Senator Dick Durbin, (202) 224-2152, dick@durbin.senate.gov

Resources

Index of Resources:

* Triad Voting Machine Fraud Evidence Links
* Congressional Action Links
* Kerry's Re-Emergence Links
* Electoral College Speaks Out Links
* Blackwell Interfering With Recount Links
* January 3, 6, and 15-20 Protest Information
* Law Suits Against Bush, Cheney, Rove, Moyers and Blackwell Links
* Other Relevant Articles and Websites

Triad Voting Machine Fraud Evidence Links

*

Video and MP3 Files Of Interview With Michael Barbian
(Video - 3 MB, Video - 6 MB, MP3, HTML Transcription)
via truthout
*

Affidavit of Sherole Eaton, Hocking County Deputy Director of Elections
December 13, 2004
(HTML, PDF-original, Text)
via t r u t h o u t
*

American Democracy Hangs by a Thread in Ohio
By Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld and Harvey Wasserman
The Columbus Free Press
December 15, 2004
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/986
via t r u t h o u t
*

Ohio Recount Stirs Trouble
December 20, 2004
By Kim Zetter for Wired News.
http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,66072,00.html?tw=rss.TOP
*

Ohio Voting Bombshell
December 24, 2004
By Ken Hoop for the American Free Press.
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/ohio_voting_bombshell.html
*

Map Of Triad's Ohio County Customers
jpeg of this pdf file
http://www.votingindustry.com/VR_Review/2nd%20Tier/PDFs/triadcustomers.pdf
http://video.lisarein.com/election2004/ohioreport/triadcustomers.pdf
*

Votingindustry.com Listing for Triad Systems
http://www.votingindustry.com/VR_Review/2nd%20Tier/triad_GSI.htm
*

Triad GSI Website
http://www.triadgsi.com/

Congressional Action Links

*

First Letter From Representative John Conyers To Triad GSI
December 22, 2004
(HTML, PDF)
*

Second Letter From Representative John Conyers To Triad GSI
December 23, 2004
(HTML, PDF)
*

Letter from Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) to Kevin Brock, Special FBI Agent in Charge of the Democratic Staff's investigation into irregularities in the 2004 election, and attorney Larry E. Beal, Hocking County Prosecutor
December 15, 2004
(HTML, PDF-original)
*

Judiciary Democratic 2004 Election Forum
December 13, 2004
http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/voteforum2.html
*

Representative John Conyers' Website
http://www.house.gov/conyers/
*

Representative Stephanie Tubbs-Jones' Website
http://www.house.gov/tubbsjones/
*

Representative Maxine Waters' Website
http://www.house.gov/waters/
*

House Committee on the Judiciary
http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/index.html

Kerry's Re-Emergence Links

*

Keith Olbermann's Blog Post From December 27, 2004
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6667405/#041227b
*

Kerry Files Motion to Protect Ohio Vote Evidence
December 27, 2004
By William Rivers Pitt for Truthout.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/122804V.shtml
*

MSNBC's Countdown With Keith Olberman's Report On Ohio Recount
December 22, 2004
(Video, MP3, Text)
Keith Olbermann's Blog
*

MSNBC's Countdown With Keith Olberman's Report On Kerry's Involvement
December 27, 2004
(Video, MP3)
Keith Olbermann's Blog
*

Kerry to Enter Ohio Recount Fray
December 23, 2004
By William Rivers Pitt for Truthout.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/122404Y.shtml
*

Vote-cobb.org Website (Google Cache)
Retrieved on December 27, 2004
http://video.lisarein.com/election2004/ohioreport/cobbcached.txt
*

Coming Up For Air
Kerry Preparing Grounds To Unconcede - Election Challenge Likely On Jan 6th
December 25, 2004
http://www.breakfornews.com/articles/kerrypreparinggroundstounconcede.htm
*

The Official Kerry-Edwards Position on How to Handle the Ohio Recount, Sent to the Individual Boards of Election in the State
http://www.buzzflash.com/alerts/04/12/ale04101.html

Electoral College Speaks Out Links

*

Massachusetts electors pass unanimous resolution calling for an investigation
December 23, 2004
http://votefraudinfo.blogspot.com/2004/12/massachusetts-electors-pass-unanimous.html
*

Electors Call for National Voting Reforms
December 23, 2004
http://www.vermontguardian.com/national/0904/Electors.shtml

Blackwell Interfering With Recount Links

*

Video and Transcription of Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell's Interview With Keith Olbermann
November 29, 2004
http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/002325.php
*

Video and Transcription of Jesse Jackson's Interview With Keith Olbermann
November 30, 2004
http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/002326.php
*

Blackwell Locks Out Recount Volunteers
December 10, 2004
By Ray Beckerman
http://fairnessbybeckerman.blogspot.com/2004/12/blackwell-locks-out-recount-volunteers.html
*

Ohio Official Refuses Interview Over Vote
December 28, 2004
By Andrew Welsh-huggins for the AP.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4696816,00.html
*

Ohio GOP election officials ducking subpoenas as Kerry enters stolen vote fray
December 28, 2004
by Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld and Harvey Wasserman
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/1046

January 3, 6, and 15-20 Protest Information

*

Information About January 3rd and 6th, 2005 protests in Ohio and Washington DC
December 27, 2004
*

Information on the January 15-20 protests
http://www.counter-inaugural.org/

Law Suits Against Bush, Cheney, Rove, Moyers and Blackwell Links

*

Lawsuit Before the Ohio Supreme Court
December 24, 2004
Summarized by Mary Anne Saucier
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/1028
*

Ohio electoral fight becomes 'biggest deal since Selma' as GOP stonewalls
December 22, 2004
By Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld and Harvey Wasserman for the Free Press.
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/1015

Other Relevant Articles and Websites

*

Voting Problems in Ohio Spur Call for Overhaul
December 24, 2004
By James Dao, Ford Fessesfen and Tom Zeller Jr. for the NY Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/24/national/24vote.html
Blogged Text of Article (In case original link is broken.)
*

Election 2004 - Aftermath Category
On Lisa Rein's Radar
http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/election_2004_aftermath/index.php
*

Votecobb.org Daily Updates Website
http://www.votecobb.org/recount/daily_update/

List of Specific Laws That Were Allegedly Violated

Everything below is quoted from Representative John Conyers' Letter to Kevin Brock, Special FBI Agent in Charge of the Democratic Staff's investigation into irregularities in the 2004 election, and attorney Larry E. Beal, Hocking County Prosecutor.

* Alleged Violations Of Federal Law
* Alleged Violations of Ohio State Law

Alleged Violations Of Federal Law

1.

Tampering with ballots and/or election machinery would violate the constitutional rights of all citizens to vote and have their votes properly counted, as guaranteed by the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
2.

42 U.S.C. 5 1973
provides for criminal penalties against any person who, in any election for federal office, "knowingly and willfully deprives, defrauds, or attempts to defraud the residents of a State of a fair and impartially conducted election process, by . . .the procurement, casting, or tabulation of ballots that are known by the person to be materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent under the laws of the State in which the election is held."
3.

42 U.S.C. 3 1974
also requires the retention and preservation, for a period of twenty-two months from the date of a federal election, of all voting records and papers and makes it a felony for any person to "willfully steal, destroy, conceal, mutilate, or alter" any such record. Further, any tampering with ballots and/or election machinery would violate the constitutional rights of all citizens to vote and have their votes properly counted, as guaranteed by the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Alleged Violations of Ohio State Law

1.

OHIO REV. CODE ANN. 3599.27
provides "[n]o person shall tamper or attempt to tamper with, deface impair the use of, destroy or otherwise injure in any manner any voting machine...No person shall tamper or attempt to tamper with, deface, impair the use of, destroy or otherwise change or injure in any manner any marking device, automatic tabulating equipment or any appurtenances or accessories thereof."
2.

OHIO REV. CODE ANN. 3599.24
provides "[n]o person shall...destroy any property used in the conduct of elections."
3.

OHIO REV. CODE ANN. 3599.34
provides "[n]o person, from the time ballots are cast or voted until the time has expired for using them in a recount or as evidence in a contest of election, shall unlawfully destroy or attempt to destroy the ballots, or permit such ballots or a ballot box or pollbook used at an election to be destroyed; or destroy, falsify, mark, or write in a name on any such ballot that has been voted."
4.

OHIO REV. CODE ANN. 53599.33
provides "[n]o person, from the time ballots are cast or counted until the time has expired for using them as evidence in a recount or contest of election, shall willfully and with fraudulent intent make any mark or alteration on any ballot; or inscribe, write, or cause to be inscribed or written in or upon a registration form or list, pollbook, tally sheet, or list, Iawfully made or kept at an election, or in or upon a book or paper purporting to be such, or upon an election return, or upon a book or paper containing such return the name of a person not entitled to vote at such election or not voting thereat, or a fictitious name, or, within such time, wrongfully change, alter, erase, or tamper with a name, word, or figure contained in such pollbook, tally sheet, list, book, or paper; or falsify, mark, or write thereon with intent to defeat, hinder, or prevent a fair expression of the will of the people at such election.".
5.

Ohio Revised Code 3505.32
which provides that during a period of official canvassing, all interaction with ballots must be "in the presence of all of the members of the board and any other persons who are entitled to witness the official canvass," given that last Friday, the Ohio Secretary of State has issued orders to the effect that election officials are to treat all election materials as if they were in a period of canvassing,(2) and that "Teams of one Democrat and one Republican must be present with ballots at all times of processing."(3)

eXTReMe Tracker

This is from the December 27, 2004 program of MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann.

There's the one with the latest from Kerry's Ohio lawyer, an analysis by Howard Fineman of the Kerry situation, more about Washington State, Feinstein pushing the popular vote, one big clip of everything - 18 MB, and MP3s of everything.

Here's a mirror for it all.

The strangest thing about this interview with Triad Employee Michael Barbian is that the only damning part of his words is the below quote, where he admits that a recount didn't actually take place in any of the counties Triad services:

Interviewer 1: Did any of your counties have to do the full recount?

Michael Barbian: Not that I am aware of.

Otherwise, there isn't a lot there. Apparently, Barbian said a lot more when he testified in Ohio at Conyers' investigative hearings. (More on this coming up.)

This was originally distributed via Truthout. I've copied the videos to my own server, generated and MP3 from them, and transcribed the interview myself (see "more" below).

Video Of Interview With Michael Barbian (6 MB)

Video Of Interview With Michael Barbian (3 MB)

MP3 Of Interview With Michael Barbian (5 MB)

Here is a full transcription of the video located at:

http://video.lisarein.com/election2004/ohioreport/triadtech_100k.mov

Interview with Michael Barbain, Triad Systems Technician.

Words I can't make out denoted with (can't make out) or (?). Periods denote pauses only.

Interviewer 1: Could you ID yourself? I didn't get your ID earlier.

Michael Barbian: My name's Michael Barbian, and I'm the reason we're all here today. I work for Triad Governmental Systems.

Interviewer 1: When you were telling them about the under and over votes, it seems to me, now that I've heard what you've said, that you were just trying to help them so that they wouldn't have to do a full recount of the counties.

Michael Barbian: As much information as possible is what I was trying to provide them with. And that's all it amounts to. It's for elections people to do the best job that they can, and they do a very thorough job. The more information you give someone, the better job they can do.

Interviewer 1: And the information, it sounded to me, unless I've got the wrong piece there. It sounds like the under and over votes per precinct should be information that they had anyway on their computer.

Michael Barbian: It was there.

Interviewer 1: It was on their computer. And then there was that one copy there that was taken back for backup.

Michael Barbian: It's normally not run off. In the last Presidential Election it became an issue in Florida and in this election. It just provides more information. It doesn't affect the outcome of the race, but it's information some counties like to have.

Interviewer 1: So you work quickly with the Board of Elections, trying to help them I mean. You guys are trying to work on this election together.

Michael Barbian: Year round support of elections.

Interviewer 1: So when you heard there was a recount, what did you think your job was gonna be? I mean, did you know you were gonna have to...

Michael Barbian: Same job it always is.

Interviewer 1: Have you done a recount before?

Michael Barbian: Yes ma'am.

Interviewer 1: So...

Michael Barbian: It's just a normal day at the office.

Interviewer 1: How many counties did you go through personally?

Michael Barbian: Probably six. For the recount you mean?

Interviewer 1: Yeah.

Michael Barbian: Six.

Interviewer 1: And which counties. Do you know?

Michael Barbian: Bright (wright?) county, Harrison, (?), Muskingom, and Clark county. I'm not sure...(can't make it out) (Note: I realize that "Bright, Muskingom and Clark aren't counties :-)

Note: Here's a map of the Ohio counties Triad Services.
(PDF, JPEG.)

Interviewer 1: We certainly know more about Ohio counties than we did before, don't we?

Michael Barbian: We always knew. The Board of Elections did a good job.

Interviewer 1: Were you able to help them out at all? Try to help out the other counties -- give them as much information as you could?

Michael Barbian: To answer every question and try to help the witnesses with answering questions for them and educating them on the whole overall process.

Interviewer 1: Did any of your counties have to do the full recount?

Michael Barbian: Not that I am aware of.

Interviewer 1: Thank you very much. (to another person) Do you have any questions?

Interviewer 2: Sure.

Interviewer 2: How long have you been working at Triad?

Michael Barbian: A little over 8 years now.

Interviewer 2: Did Triad do a background check on you when they hired you?

Michael Barbian: I don't know.

Interviewer 2: Okay. How many technicians work for Triad?

Michael Barbian: There are, let's see, we have five.

Interviewer 2: And are you involved in any kind of programming? Or just maintenance?

Michael Barbian: I'm on the technical support side. I don't know how to program. I do tech support for voter registration and ballot counting.

Interviewer 2: And how long to you have to be working there, and how much training do you have to go through before you can start doing what you do now?

Michael Barbian: We work closely. When we bring on a new employee, we don't really turn them loose for about a year or a year and a half...because there are so many things that you have to watch closely. Anytime a new employee comes on, they are watched closely and double checked. All of our work is double checked by Boards of Elections. So they test very thoroughly (can't make it out)...bring anything from our office.

Interviewer 2: So what does that process involve? Does the person just basically tail somebody for a year and a half? And observe what somebody else is doing? How do they earn their money while they're not...

Michael Barbian: They're paid like a regular employee. We put them to work. Normally, once they've watched the process a couple times, then we put them more involved (skip in tape) in overseeing every step of the process.

Back to Interviewer 1: You seem like a senior guy. Have you trained anybody? Have you had anybody tail you?

Michael Barbian: Yes ma'am.

Interviewer 1: Who was that?

Michael Barbian: I worked with one of our current technicians, Brandon, and Jose, one of our other technicians. So they..everyone goes through training. I go through training (can't make it out) something pops up. It's a learning process. Everytime (?) changes or the Board of Elections asks for something new. So every day we always learn something new, and try to help out.

Interviewer 1: Great. Can you give me Brandon and Jose's last names?

Michael Barbian: It's Brandon Sandham (sp?) and Jose Trejo (sp?)

Interviewer 2: How many technicans total did you say you have right now?

Michael Barbian: Five.

Interviewer 2: And you've been with them for how long?

Michael Barbian: Over 8 years. It was eight years I think last week or the week before actually.

Interviewer 2: How long had Triad been in the election business when you joined the company?

Michael Barbian: I'd have to do the math.

Interviewer 2: They started in 1985?

Michael Barbian: 84, 85. (nods head)

Interviewer 2: It is my understanding that some of the software that's used to count the votes now was purchased in 2001? Is that accurate in any way? or...

Michael Barbian: Um. It could of been, but it was the same versions of the program that was used in all of our counties. Some of the counties came on board after, and it's possible. I'd have to look and see which counties...

Interviewer 2: What I mean is that, the software that you guys use was actually purchased in full from a previously existing company?

Michael Barbian: Oh. Not our tabulation. It was from (?) our company wrote it and it's our program. We did not purchase it.

Interviewer 2: So your tabulation program, you guys programmed in-house?

Michael Barbian: Yes sir.

Interviewer 2: And when was that program written?

Michael Barbian: Early 80's. That's when it first got started.

Interviewer 2: So there was no...

Michael Barbian: As far as some of the dates, and when some of the different revisions...I don't know. Before I got there.

Tape ends.

Ohio Official Refuses Interview Over Vote
By Andrew Welsh-Huggins for the 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...

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.

Here is the full text of the entire article in case the link goes bad:

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

Ohio Official Refuses Interview Over Vote

Monday December 27, 2004 11:46 PM

AP Photo OHWS101

By ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS

AP Statehouse Correspondent

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.

So I've got a
Feedburner Feed up and running now. There's a link and icon at the bottom of my homepage too.

It's supposedly working.

I'm sure you guys will let me know if it's sufficient :-)

This just in on the Bloggermann website.
(His permalink-generator isn't working right now, but you can hit the homepage for the time being.)

Keith Olbermann got Kerry's lawyer to clarify his statement from last week.

He practically said "I take it all back. The new information doesn't change anything. We still give up."

Daniel Hoffheimer to Keith Olbermann:

"I would caution the media not to read more into what the Kerry-Edwards campaign has said," Mr. Hoffheimer advised us by e-mail, "than what you hear in the plain meaning of our comments. There are many conspiracy theorists opining these days. There are many allegations of fraud. But this presidential election is over. The Bush-Cheney ticket has won. The Kerry-Edwards campaign has found no conspiracy and no fraud in Ohio, though there have been many irregularities that cry out to be fixed for future elections. Senator Kerry and we in Ohio intend to fix them. When all of the problems in Ohio are added together, however bad they are, they do not add up to a victory for Kerry-Edwards. Senator Kerry's fully-informed and extremely careful assessment the day after the election and before he conceded remains accurate today, notwithstanding all the details we have since learned."

Ug. What does it all mean?

Well I'm still going to finish up my little report and post it tomorrow.

This election will be challenged on January 6th with or without John Kerry.

Although.. I guess I was getting hopeful that Kerry might actually come through in the end. (Like Spiderman! And he had this great plan, see? All along. And he was just waiting for the timing to be just right, so he could spring into action...[echo and fade] in action....action.... )

Anyway, glad I snapped out of my fantasy long enough to go check out what happened in the real world today and read Keith Olbermann's blog.

I'm taping his show from tonight right now, and then I'll put it right up.

Here is the full text of the link (until bloggermann gets a permalink for this post):

December 27, 2004 | 7:45 p.m. ET

Conspiracies theorized, or conspiracies invoked?

SECAUCUS, N.J. — A theory advanced by John Harwood of The Wall Street Journal goes, more or less, that certain politicians are endeavoring to take advantage of the 20 percent of the population that the last Gallup Poll says is not fully convinced of the legitimacy of the last presidential election.

It seems fair to suggest that Sen. John Kerry just might be one of the politicians Harwood means.

Last Thursday night, his lead attorney on the ground in Ohio, Daniel J. Hoffheimer, issued a statement that constituted the third or fourth eyebrow-raiser from the Kerry camp in the post-election period.

In announcing that the Kerry-Edwards group would join the bid in Federal District Court in Ohio to preserve all "evidence" from the election and recount there, Mr. Hoffheimer said, on behalf of the senators, that such preservation was necessary because, "Only then can the integrity of the entire electoral process and the election of Bush-Cheney warrant the public trust."

This evening, after several Web columnists and bloggers joined me in questioning the bluntness of the phrase (one even wildly claiming this was a precursor to a Kerry "un-concession"), Hoffheimer changed his tone.

"I would caution the media not to read more into what the Kerry-Edwards campaign has said," Mr. Hoffheimer advised us by e-mail, "than what you hear in the plain meaning of our comments. There are many conspiracy theorists opining these days. There are many allegations of fraud. But this presidential election is over. The Bush-Cheney ticket has won. The Kerry-Edwards campaign has found no conspiracy and no fraud in Ohio, though there have been many irregularities that cry out to be fixed for future elections. Senator Kerry and we in Ohio intend to fix them. When all of the problems in Ohio are added together, however bad they are, they do not add up to a victory for Kerry-Edwards. Senator Kerry's fully-informed and extremely careful assessment the day after the election and before he conceded remains accurate today, notwithstanding all the details we have since learned."

The problem is, of course, that it was not some great, conspiracy-based, tin-foil-hat, piece of linguistic gymnastics, to infer from the conclusion to Mr. Hoffheimer's Thursday statement, that the Kerry-Edwards campaign did not believe that "the integrity of the entire electoral process and the election of Bush-Cheney" warranted the public trust. It is, in fact, to use Mr. Hoffheimer's phrase, "the plain meaning" of the first statement.

How do I know that? To borrow Chairman Sam Ervin's answer to that same question, as posed by John Ehrlichmann at the Senate Watergate hearings in 1973: "Because I can understand the English language. It's my mother's tongue."

The Kerry campaign spent much of 2004 being accused by its critics of trying to be all things to all people. It seems poised to continue to wear the bull's-eye well into the New Year.

E-mail: KOlbermann@msnbc.com

• December 27, 2004 | 12:11 p.m. ET

Kerry lawyer: does the re-election warrant the public trust? (Keith Olbermann)

NEW YORK - I spent the weekend holding the latest statement from John Kerry’s Ohio attorney up to the light, to see if I could read the secret treasure map written in invisible ink on the other side.

In signing on to the Glibs’ court bid to preserve all the evidence of what has been a severely compromised recount, Daniel Hoffheimer told us at Countdown: “Only then can the integrity of the entire electoral process and the election of Bush-Cheney warrant the public trust.”

Surely, I’m not going out on a limb here to infer that at the moment, Mr. Hoffheimer and the Kerry-Edwards campaign don’t think the entire electoral process and the election of President Bush warrant the public trust.

I mean, the infamous “regardless of the outcome of the election,” phrase in Kerry’s only post-concession comment on the mangled vote was so subtle in both temporality and meaning that it could have been inserted in a statement dealing with any eventuality ranging from a clearly determined vote that was in the past, to a still undecided result.

But not Hoffheimer’s. Them’s (to borrow the language of the noted political pundit Yosemite Sam) fightin’ words. Fightin’ words issued last Thursday evening, as America got out of town for a holiday weekend. Fightin’ words that came just eight working days before the Electoral College votes are opened before Congress, and Maxine Waters or John Conyers or anybody else in the House can crawl all the way out on the limb of formal challenge, and it won’t matter a jot if there isn’t one Senator to crawl out there with them.

It’s unfathomable that Kerry would sign the requisite written challenge. Given his incredibly nuanced response to the entire voting irregularities story, and his evident aspiration to become the Adlai Stevenson or even William Jennings Bryan of the 21st Century, becoming the Senate sponsor of the challenge would seem about as likely and about as consistent as a motorist doing 20 in the right hand lane, suddenly accelerating to 110 and doing the full Bill Murray Groundhog Day bit into the quarry.

Kerry’s signature might not even be sought. There has been “very serious” contact among the staffs of leading Democrats in both houses about the implications of the challenge, according to a congressional figure privy to that contact. He estimates for us that the chance of a Senator actually signing on has — in the last week — risen from almost nothing, to upwards of one third.

And there is still that coda from Hoffheimer’s statement. By itself, it is the thrown gauntlet, and yet it is produced at a time when gauntlets are pretty much symbolic protests. Unless, perhaps, that is the strategy here. The Ohio election was undeniably full of holes, but barring developments unforeseen, the collective verified hole is not likely to be big enough to drive a truck carrying 10,000 uncounted votes through it.

However, the recount has been butchered, badly enough that even an editorial in Sunday’s Toledo Blade noted “the miserable performance of much of the American electoral system.” The Green Party says that 86 of the 88 counties violated Ohio voting law and pre-selected what were to be randomly chosen precincts for hand recounts. It claims that only one county (Coshocton) ran a full hand recount of all of its votes, and, oopsie, its certified total number of votes rose from 16,000 on election night, to 17,000 after the recount (evenly split, we might add, between Bush and Kerry, but indicating 6% of all votes disappeared). The official recount in Fairfield County found added 1,130 votes to the first count of 66,378. Representative Conyers last week wrote again to Triad Systems asking them to refute charges that they had “remote access” to their voting equipment in Fulton and Henry Counties (read as: they could change computer stuff over the internet). In the kindest of all possible lights, a Triad employee tried to save the elections officials of Hocking County the ‘trouble’ of a full hand recount at Christmas time by helping them find a precinct whose second tally would match the first one.

Is the political premise here to redirect attention from the hazy confusion of election day voter suppression or unexplained lockdowns or troubled equipment, to the simpler-to-digest black-and-white issues of the recount? “Law says A. You did Z.” The full Hoffheimer statement includes this: “Senators Kerry and Edwards… want to be sure that all circumstances involved in the Ohio election, including the recount, should be put before the Court and disclosed to the American people.” For the record, Hoffheimer’s full statement to Countdown is included at the bottom of this entry.

Excepting the possibility that the Greens/Libertarians/Kerry-Edwards suit will be immediately dismissed, this court action in Ohio is not going to be processed quickly enough to affect the inauguration. It could, instead, become a kind of institutionalized protest, the exact kind of lingering, evolving post-post game show that Al Gore swore the Democrats off of in 2000. It could become, in effect, the slow-moving symbol of the final line Hoffheimer’s statement, questioning public trust in “the entire electoral process and the election of Bush-Cheney…”

Voters and politicians will have to determine if that is an appropriate playing field for political discourse for the next two or four years.

Speaking of discourse, I’ve received a handful of e-mails since I mentioned in passing in last Tuesday’s post, the claims of a Florida computer software worker that he was asked to write a ‘vote-switching program’ in 2000. There have been several points raised that can, I think, be pretty easily cleared up here:

* Several e-mails noted that the programmer, Clint Curtis, testified before the Conyers Voting Forum in Columbus, Ohio, earlier this month. Well, yes and no. He did tell his story there, but it’s instructive to note that he was not asked to do so until after Representative Conyers left the forum, and had turned the chairing of the meeting over to a local politician. This wasn’t a case of Conyers rushing to catch a bus, nor a problem with too many witnesses, nor a coincidence.
* For weeks, say sources at various levels of the formal investigations into the voting irregularities, Mr. Curtis has promised them corroboration of his accusations — even if it was just the statement of someone to whom he said, in 2000, ‘hey, this guy just asked me to write a vote-switching program.’ These sources say they’ve received no such corroboration, and certainly none has been presented publicly.
* One e-mailer complained that the denial by the politician accused by Mr. Curtis of soliciting the program seemed pretty tepid, and confined itself largely to his comment “I don’t remember meeting Mr. Curtis.” Well, the ambiguity of the denial is partially my fault. Much of the remarks were boilerplate and repetitive, but I did leave out a fairly salient one, in which he said these were: “some of the most ridiculous, fictional charges you could ever imagine.” I wouldn’t classify that as a ‘non-denial denial.’
* Two readers asked why we didn’t simply put Mr. Curtis on 'Countdown' or otherwise interview him. Unfortunately, there is a question of the size of the platform here. If the details of his charges can be found on an innocuous website with limited readership, it doesn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things if the possibility that they are partially or totally untrue, turns out to be the correct one. But if that’s the case — if this is actually the story of a guy out to hurt a politician — and we put him on national television, I will have effectively recreated the Swift Boat Veterans fiasco. Under those circumstances, especially in the absence of corroboration, the truth becomes secondary, and the damage is the only verifiable thing.
* Lastly (and, for my money, most entertainingly): I noted that an attorney for Curtis’s former employers, for whom he was working when he claims to have been asked to develop the nefarious program, described him to MSNBC as a ‘disgruntled former employee.’ However, an e-mailer writes, at the time of his departure from the firm, the company gave him a going-away card. I had to smile at this evidence. When I left ESPN in 1997, the company gave me a tape of my oddest moments on the air, a huge farewell banner, and a going-away party that lasted until sunrise and was so joyous that the authorities were summoned. Still, I have to be the first one to say it: if anybody has the right to call me a ‘disgruntled former employee,’ it’s ESPN.

As promised, the full text of the statement to Countdown from the evening of December 23 of Daniel J. Hoffheimer, State Legal Counsel, Ohio, Kerry-Edwards 2004, Inc., (and, yes, he’s referring to himself in the third person here):

“Daniel Hoffheimer, State Legal Counsel for the Kerry-Edwards campaign, told MSNBC today that Kerry-Edwards will support the third-party candidates in asking the Federal Court in the Ohio recount lawsuit to order the preservation of the evidence obtained during the recount and to expedite discovery of the facts. Hoffheimer said that various problems and errors have occurred in a number of Ohio's 88 county boards of elections during the recount, which will conclude next week. Hoffheimer acknowledged that the most publicized of these problems was the machine manipulation in Hocking County but said that the developing evidence will reveal other problems as well. He said that Senators Kerry and Edwards are very concerned that the law for conducting the recount should be uniformly followed. They want to be sure that all circumstances involved in the Ohio election, including the recount, should be put before the Court and disclosed to the American people. Only then, Hoffheimer said, can the integrity of the entire electoral process and the election of Bush-Cheney warrant the public trust."

E-mail: KOlbermann@msnbc.com

I've been using T r u t h o u t a lot lately, and I just remembered to send them some cash.

I'm sure they need it, because they are a really small organization that runs on the fumes of hope that I run on most of the time. The hope that somehow, someway, we're going to fix our broken country and restore some of the ideals that it was founded on.

People write me all the time and ask if they can send me money. There are a lot of reasons why I can't accept cash from anyone, and even more reasons why I can't explain why right now. ("It's a long explanation and I'm too swamped to take the time" is the main reason.)

So if you get the urge to send me money, send it to them instead.

William Rivers Pitt, Marc Ash, and the other folks over there are doing a lot of my work for me right now by sending me important updates right to my mailbox.

Life would kind of be over for me right now if they weren't around, so, if you can afford it right now, let's all keep them alive.

thanks!

This is from the December 22, 2004 program of
Countdown With Keith Olbermann.

The clip is only 47 seconds long, but it means a hell of a lot. I've transcribed the entire thing below, and Video and an MP3 file is also available.

I'll be posting more about the details of this tonight and all day tomorrow, along with an article that puts everything together in one cohesive post.

I'm doing this for everyone, of course, but I'm also doing it to make it easier for press folks in the mainstream media to cover these developments over this upcoming, critical week.

The situation seems a bit complicated, at first, and I found myself having to print out all of the articles and lay them out on my desk and read them over a couple of times to understand which names kept coming up, and why, and what seemed to be the important story to tell, which, as it turns out, is actually quite simple:

The Ohio Recount has been totally invalidated due to a combination of factors, most notably the obvious and incontestable recount machine tampering by a Triad employee.

Bush can't win without Ohio, so if the results are in question, the entire election is in question. (Final count: Bush: 286 Kerry: 252 - so Ohio's 20 electorates switching to Kerry would make the count Bush 266 Kerry 272.)

The Kerry-Edwards campaign is filing papers tomorrow to impound all of the recount equipment in question until the entire matter can be investigated in a timely manner.

Representative John Conyers (D-MI) and others are planning to challenge the election on January 6th, and they say that, this time around, unlike in 2000, they can get the support of one or more Senators to make the Challenge hold.

Here's the Video (2 MB) and MP3 (1 MB) of the Countdown story quoting Kerry's attorney.

I've transcribed the entire thing right here:

And although the race for president really is all but over tonight, in the state of Ohio, Senator John Kerry's legal team is filing papers in Federal Court, asking in effect that all of the evidence obtained during the recount be saved, and that the court move quickly to uncover the facts.

While Senator Kerry is still technically the third party in all of this, acting in support of the Libertarians and the Greens, the parties that officially requested the recount, the outcome affects him. Kerry's lawyer in Ohio, Daniel Hoffheimer, telling Countdown tonight that the Democratic ticket wants to make sure that things are done right:

"Senators Kerry and Edwards and very concerned that the law for conducting the recount should be uniformly followed. Only then can the integrity of the entire electoral process and the election of Bush-Cheney warrant the public trust."

Yippie! The irregularities have made the NY Times.

Voting Problems in Ohio Spur Call for Overhaul
By James Dao, Ford Fessesfen and Tom Zeller Jr. for the NY Times.

From seven-hour lines that drove voters away to malfunctioning machines to poorly trained poll workers who directed people to the wrong polling places to uneven policies about the use of provisional ballots, Ohio has become this year's example for every ailment in the United States' electoral process.

With a state recount expected to be completed next week, few experts think the problems were enough to overturn President Bush's victory here. And many of the shortcomings have plagued elections for decades.

But with the 36-day Florida recount of 2000 proving that every vote counts and with the two major parties near parity, the electoral system is being scrutinized more closely than ever. Election lawyers and academics say Ohio is providing a roadmap to a second generation of issues about the way the nation votes.

Congressional passage of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 - which mandated the provisional ballot as a failsafe and provided states money to update voting technology - was considered a landmark overhaul that would help prevent another Florida.

But an array of voting rights groups contend that Ohio has underscored shortcomings in the law, including one of its centerpieces, the provisional ballot. Now those groups are pushing for a re-examination not only of the law, but also of other voting issues, including the role of partisan secretaries of state in overseeing elections, electronic voting and the elimination of the Electoral College...

Certainly there were problems on Election Day.

In Franklin County, a computing error initially awarded nearly 4,000 extra votes to President Bush. In Mahoning County, improperly calibrated touch screens resulted in an unknown number of votes incorrectly going to President Bush before the problem was caught.

And most recently, election challengers in various Ohio counties have said that the tabulators used to count punch cards may have been tampered with before the recount...

Perhaps the most visible of Ohio's problems were its long lines. Christopher McQuoid reached his polling place in Columbus at 4:30 p.m., congratulating himself for beating the after-work rush. By 7:30, he was getting impatient. And when he finally voted at 9:30, there were 150 people in line behind him.

"I was lucky," said Mr. McQuoid, a radio announcer. "I had the day off."

But how many people decided not to vote because of long lines, and was it enough to make a difference? No one has been able to say with authority. Much attention has focused on whether elections officials served one constituency better than another.

Among the 464 complaints about long lines in Ohio collected by the Election Protection Coalition, a loose alliance of voting rights advocates and legal organizations, nearly 400 came from Columbus and Cleveland, where a huge proportion of the state's Democratic voters live...

In the Columbus area, the result was that suburban precincts that supported Mr. Bush tended to have more machines per registered voter than center-city precincts that supported Mr. Kerry - 4.6 machines per 1,000 voters in Mr. Bush's 50 strongest precincts, compared with 3.9 in Mr. Kerry's 50 best. Mr. McQuoid's precinct, a Kerry stronghold, lost one of the four machines it had in 2000, despite an increase in registration.

"Somebody came up with a very sophisticated plan for machine distribution which, either by accident or design, greatly enhanced the president," said Robert Fitrakis of Columbus, who is part of a group that has contested the election results in court...

The problem was pronounced in minority areas, typically Kerry strongholds. In Cleveland ZIP codes where at least 85 percent of the population is black, precinct results show that one in 31 ballots registered no vote for president, more than twice the rate of largely white ZIP codes, where one in 75 registered no vote for president.

Here is the full text of the entire article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/24/national/24vote.html

Voting Problems in Ohio Spur Call for Overhaul
By James Dao, Ford Fessesfen and Tom Zeller Jr.
The New York Tmes

Friday 24 December 2004

Columbus, Ohio - William Shambora, 53, is the kind of diligent voter who once assumed that his ballot always counted. He got a rude awakening this year.

Mr. Shambora, an economics professor at Ohio University, moved during the summer but failed to notify the Athens County Board of Elections until the day before the presidential election. An official told him to use a provisional ballot.

But under Ohio law, provisional ballots are valid only when cast from a voter's correct precinct. Mr. Shambora was given a ballot for the wrong precinct, a fact he did not learn until after the election. Two weeks later, the board discarded his vote, adding him to a list of more than 300 provisional ballots that were rejected in that heavily Democratic county.

"It seems like such a confused system," said Mr. Shambora, a John Kerry supporter who blames himself for the mistake. "Maybe if enough people's votes had counted, the election might have turned out differently."

From seven-hour lines that drove voters away to malfunctioning machines to poorly trained poll workers who directed people to the wrong polling places to uneven policies about the use of provisional ballots, Ohio has become this year's example for every ailment in the United States' electoral process.

With a state recount expected to be completed next week, few experts think the problems were enough to overturn President Bush's victory here. And many of the shortcomings have plagued elections for decades.

But with the 36-day Florida recount of 2000 proving that every vote counts and with the two major parties near parity, the electoral system is being scrutinized more closely than ever. Election lawyers and academics say Ohio is providing a roadmap to a second generation of issues about the way the nation votes.

Congressional passage of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 - which mandated the provisional ballot as a failsafe and provided states money to update voting technology - was considered a landmark overhaul that would help prevent another Florida.

But an array of voting rights groups contend that Ohio has underscored shortcomings in the law, including one of its centerpieces, the provisional ballot. Now those groups are pushing for a re-examination not only of the law, but also of other voting issues, including the role of partisan secretaries of state in overseeing elections, electronic voting and the elimination of the Electoral College.

"We're in an environment where people believe that even the tiniest number of votes can have a huge impact," said Doug Chapin, director of Electionline.org, a nonpartisan clearinghouse for voting information.

Ohio is emblematic of that attitude.

In the two weeks since Mr. Bush was certified the winner here by 118,000 votes out of 5.7 million cast, watchdog groups have filed lawsuits contesting the outcome and questioning the counting of provisional ballots. The state has nearly completed a recount, at the request of the Green and Independent Parties. Liberal Democrats have demanded investigations into whether there was voter fraud, tampering and intimidation in urban districts.

"This has fundamentally shocked people's sense of whether any election can be accurately counted," said Daniel Hoffheimer, counsel to Mr. Kerry's Ohio campaign.

It is far from clear that Republicans in Congress will have any appetite to revisit voting issues, and many Republicans here argue that the system suffered only minor glitches, even with high voter turnout. "There are no error-free elections," said Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican whom Democrats have accused of worsening the state's voting problems in the way he interpreted state law.

But Mr. Blackwell acknowledged that the election spotlighted the state's outdated voting system, with 68 of 88 counties still relying on punch cards. In an interview, he called for updating voting machines, and also for early voting, multiple-day voting and other changes that he said would shorten lines and encourage people to vote.

"I don't think it's wrong to have high expectations," he said.

Certainly there were problems on Election Day.

In Franklin County, a computing error initially awarded nearly 4,000 extra votes to President Bush. In Mahoning County, improperly calibrated touch screens resulted in an unknown number of votes incorrectly going to President Bush before the problem was caught.

And most recently, election challengers in various Ohio counties have said that the tabulators used to count punch cards may have been tampered with before the recount.

Yet there were widespread problems, many of which point to defects in the election rules, experts say.

"I think the problems weren't sufficient to cast doubt on the results," said Edward B. Foley, director of the Election Law Program at Ohio State University's law school. "But I do think there were more problems than usual in Ohio."

Provisional ballots are a prime example. In 2002, Congress authorized using the ballots in federal elections for voters whose names do not appear on registration rolls. The ballots are sealed and held until after an election, so a voter's eligibility can be checked. Valid ballots are then counted, others discarded.

But Congress largely left it to the states to promulgate rules for provisional ballots, resulting in a hodgepodge of policies. In Ohio, Mr. Blackwell, who was co-chairman of Mr. Bush's state campaign, ruled that provisional ballots would be counted only when cast from a voter's proper precinct. (At least 26 other states followed the same practice.) Democrats challenged the ruling, but a federal court upheld Mr. Blackwell.

Rules for reviewing provisional ballots also vary widely within the state. Some counties checked voter registration records dating back several years to validate ballots; others searched only recent records. Cuyahoga County, a Democratic bastion that includes Cleveland, did not check older records, and its rejection rate for provisional ballots was about 35 percent. The state average was 23 percent.

Mr. Blackwell says that despite the complaints, Ohio had one of the country's highest acceptance rates for provisional ballots: 77 percent of its 155,000 provisional ballots were counted, the highest in a 16-state survey by Electionline.org. Illinois and Pennsylvania, which went for Mr. Kerry, accepted only about half of their provisional ballots.

Perhaps the most visible of Ohio's problems were its long lines. Christopher McQuoid reached his polling place in Columbus at 4:30 p.m., congratulating himself for beating the after-work rush. By 7:30, he was getting impatient. And when he finally voted at 9:30, there were 150 people in line behind him.

"I was lucky," said Mr. McQuoid, a radio announcer. "I had the day off."

But how many people decided not to vote because of long lines, and was it enough to make a difference? No one has been able to say with authority. Much attention has focused on whether elections officials served one constituency better than another.

Among the 464 complaints about long lines in Ohio collected by the Election Protection Coalition, a loose alliance of voting rights advocates and legal organizations, nearly 400 came from Columbus and Cleveland, where a huge proportion of the state's Democratic voters live.

"It's possible that it made a difference in the outcome but unlikely," said Dan Tokaji, an assistant professor of law at Ohio State, where academics plan a voter survey to test whether large numbers were discouraged.

In Columbus, Franklin County election officials reduced the number of electronic voting machines assigned to downtown precincts and added them in the suburbs. They used a formula based not on the number of registered voters, but on past turnout in each precinct and on the number of so-called active voters - a smaller universe.

By contrast, the state's most populous county, Cuyahoga, allocated machines based on the total number of voters, a move that the county's election director, Michael Vu, said helped stave off even bigger lines.

In the Columbus area, the result was that suburban precincts that supported Mr. Bush tended to have more machines per registered voter than center-city precincts that supported Mr. Kerry - 4.6 machines per 1,000 voters in Mr. Bush's 50 strongest precincts, compared with 3.9 in Mr. Kerry's 50 best. Mr. McQuoid's precinct, a Kerry stronghold, lost one of the four machines it had in 2000, despite an increase in registration.

"Somebody came up with a very sophisticated plan for machine distribution which, either by accident or design, greatly enhanced the president," said Robert Fitrakis of Columbus, who is part of a group that has contested the election results in court.

Matthew Damschroder, a Republican who is the director of elections in Franklin County, said the urban precincts lost machines because many of their voters had not voted recently and because those precincts historically had had low turnout.

Indeed, election results show that a much higher suburban turnout on Nov. 2 meant that machines in Bush areas were more heavily used on average, although whether that was because their voters were less easily discouraged by long lines or simply more efficient in voting is unclear.

"Most of the precincts that stayed open late because of long lines were in the suburbs," said William Anthony Jr., a Democrat who is chairman of the Franklin County election board.

Another area of contention is the large number of ballots - 96,000 by recent counts - that registered no vote for president. Known as "residual" or "lost" votes, they involve cases where no candidate for president appeared to have been selected or where multiple candidates were chosen, rendering the ballot invalid for that race.

The problem was pronounced in minority areas, typically Kerry strongholds. In Cleveland ZIP codes where at least 85 percent of the population is black, precinct results show that one in 31 ballots registered no vote for president, more than twice the rate of largely white ZIP codes, where one in 75 registered no vote for president.

Experts say punch cards contributed to the problem, because the ballots, which require voters to punch a hole through a heavy-stock paper, are prone to partial perforations, or the buildup of chads. Election officials say that nearly 77,000 of the 96,000 residual ballots in Ohio were punch cards.

But Mr. Foley, the election expert at Ohio State, noted that some people consciously withhold their votes for president and that 77,000 residual punch cards is in keeping with failure rates for punch cards nationwide.

Mr. Blackwell said Ohio's residual votes actually declined this year from 2000. Of the 4.8 million votes cast in 2000, about 90,000 - 1.9 percent - registered no vote for president. This year, 96,000 of 5.7 million votes cast - 1.7 percent - did so.

Mr. Blackwell favors changing to a system that uses an optical scanner to read a paper ballot, which, he said, meets federal requirements, is less expensive than other machines and can handle more voters. But he said groups who say that just about every electronic voting system can be hacked are not helping things.

"There is still evidence out there that we need to transform the machinery," he said. "But it will be harder to do now."

"I think the majority of Democrats feel that the election was more or less accurate," said Dan Trevas, the spokesman for the Ohio Democratic Party. "But others are suspicious. Irregularities that are normally overlooked have become the focal point of attention this year. I just can't see those people walking away satisfied."

Electors speaking out like this is absolutely unprecedented.

Electors from five different states are saying the system sucks, and they don't feel good about casting their electoral votes at this time.

One has even cast their vote as "provisional," pending "all votes being counted - provisional, absentee, under- and over-votes, computerized without paper ballots, even getting valid votes from those turned away illegally, intimidated, discouraged by incredibly long waits, etc."

Perhaps now, someone in the Senate will listen. Now is a good time to start writing them. I think we should target Hilary and Barbara Boxer, for starters.

Electors Call for National Voting Reforms
By Greg Guma for The Vermont Guardian.

Breaking with tradition, electors in at least five states have called for a congressional investigation of voting violations during the Nov. 2 election for president. Electors in Vermont, Maine, Massachusetts, California, and North Carolina registered their concerns as they cast their votes last week.

The following day, the Berkeley City Council adopted a resolution "supporting the request that the Government Accountability Office immediately undertake an investigation of voting irregularities in the 2004 elections." Drafted by Berkeley's Peace and Justice Commission, the resolution also lists 17 measures to improve elections...

Massachusetts electors passed a motion urging members of Congress to object to the vote. It also requested an investigation of "all voting complaints that might have any validity" and remedies for "any voting rights violations or electoral fraud verified by its own agents or through the courts."

Massachusetts elector Tom Barbera said his life was threatened during get-out-the-vote efforts.

Another elector spoke of being targeted for intimidation. Noting that many whose voting rights were violated were African American, Barbera, who presented the Massachusetts' motion, said, "we believe that as electors, we have a unique opportunity and obligation to ensure that justice does not again become so delayed as to be denied."

Vermont electors expressed concerns about a reported 57,000 complaints received by a congressional Judiciary Committee and called on Congress and Vermont's congressional delegation to investigate.

In California, one elector cast his ballot provisional upon "all votes being counted - provisional, absentee, under- and over-votes, computerized without paper ballots, even getting valid votes from those turned away illegally, intimidated, discouraged by incredibly long waits, etc."

This is an attempt to get the message read on the floor of Congress prior to certification on Jan. 6, when the ballots are opened.

"Never has such a vote been cast by an elector," said Grace Ross, an organizer of the national effort to support electors to take action, and a member of Truth in Elections. "And without a parliamentarian to rule it in or out at the Electoral College level, we await whether Congress will acknowledge this type of provisional vote and address the issues this elector sought to raise, or whether they, too, will ignore provisional votes."

In North Carolina, Democratic electors and activists talked about local problems while Republicans voted inside. Elector Mary Roe mentioned problems she witnessed as an election observer in her own county. State officials admit that 4,500 votes disappeared in a computerized voting machine crash.

Here is the full text of the entire article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.vermontguardian.com/national/0904/Electors.shtml

Electors Call for National Voting Reforms
By Greg Guma
The Vermont Guardian

Thursday 23 December 2004

Breaking with tradition, electors in at least five states have called for a congressional investigation of voting violations during the Nov. 2 election for president. Electors in Vermont, Maine, Massachusetts, California, and North Carolina registered their concerns as they cast their votes last week.

The following day, the Berkeley City Council adopted a resolution "supporting the request that the Government Accountability Office immediately undertake an investigation of voting irregularities in the 2004 elections." Drafted by Berkeley's Peace and Justice Commission, the resolution also lists 17 measures to improve elections.

After hearing citizens speak, Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates said, "Nothing is more fundamental than a free, fair election. When you start tinkering with that, it throws the whole system into disarray. I am pleased that we are taking this stand."

In Massachusetts, elector Cathleen Ashton of Wayland demanded that "every vote be counted and every vote count," while Maine's electors called for national voting reforms. Their statement pointed to Maine initiatives such as same-day registration, allowing felons to vote, and clean election reforms.

"Our four electoral votes are held meaningless if our sister states cannot hold elections that are fair, accurate, and verifiable," said elector Lu Bauer after the ceremony at the Maine State House.

Massachusetts electors passed a motion urging members of Congress to object to the vote. It also requested an investigation of "all voting complaints that might have any validity" and remedies for "any voting rights violations or electoral fraud verified by its own agents or through the courts."

Massachusetts elector Tom Barbera said his life was threatened during get-out-the-vote efforts.

Another elector spoke of being targeted for intimidation. Noting that many whose voting rights were violated were African American, Barbera, who presented the Massachusetts' motion, said, "we believe that as electors, we have a unique opportunity and obligation to ensure that justice does not again become so delayed as to be denied."

Vermont electors expressed concerns about a reported 57,000 complaints received by a congressional Judiciary Committee and called on Congress and Vermont's congressional delegation to investigate.

In California, one elector cast his ballot provisional upon "all votes being counted - provisional, absentee, under- and over-votes, computerized without paper ballots, even getting valid votes from those turned away illegally, intimidated, discouraged by incredibly long waits, etc."

This is an attempt to get the message read on the floor of Congress prior to certification on Jan. 6, when the ballots are opened.

"Never has such a vote been cast by an elector," said Grace Ross, an organizer of the national effort to support electors to take action, and a member of Truth in Elections. "And without a parliamentarian to rule it in or out at the Electoral College level, we await whether Congress will acknowledge this type of provisional vote and address the issues this elector sought to raise, or whether they, too, will ignore provisional votes."

In North Carolina, Democratic electors and activists talked about local problems while Republicans voted inside. Elector Mary Roe mentioned problems she witnessed as an election observer in her own county. State officials admit that 4,500 votes disappeared in a computerized voting machine crash.

Update 11:30 pm: The answer turned out to be to just mount my camera like a hard drive on my computer and copy the .avi files right over to my hard drive.

Thanks a lot guys! You've come through for me again. Thanks a bunch!

Hey guys I can really use your help here. I can't figure out how to get the movies out of my Casio Exlim Ex-S3. I movie doesn't seem to recognize it as a camera.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me via comments or email at lisarein@finetuning.com.

peace!

lisa

I'll have some video up from Keith Olbermann on this a little later this morning.

After the recount, and before another 700+ votes were counted from the largely democratic Seattle area (King County), Democrat Chris Gregoire is ahead by a slim margin.

Rossi (R) hasn't conceeded yet, but after the King County votes are in, he'll probably have to.

Here's an article on this from the Baltimore Sun:

Democrat is declared governor of Washington
3rd count gives Gregoire the victory by 130 votes

Democrat Christine Gregoire won the Washington governor's race by 130 votes out of 2.9 million ballots cast, according to final recount results announced yesterday from Seattle's King County, the last of the state's 39 counties to report.

Hundreds of belatedly discovered ballots helped extend what otherwise would have been just a 10-vote advantage for Gregoire in her race with Republican Dino Rossi. The first ballot count showed Rossi winning by 261 votes, and a subsequent machine recount had Rossi winning by 42. The latest recount was conducted by hand.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.washgov24dec24,1,807444.story?coll=bal-nationworld-headlines

Democrat is declared governor of Washington
3rd count gives Gregoire the victory by 130 votes
Associated Press
Originally published December 24, 2004
SEATTLE - Democrat Christine Gregoire won the Washington governor's race by 130 votes out of 2.9 million ballots cast, according to final recount results announced yesterday from Seattle's King County, the last of the state's 39 counties to report.

Hundreds of belatedly discovered ballots helped extend what otherwise would have been just a 10-vote advantage for Gregoire in her race with Republican Dino Rossi. The first ballot count showed Rossi winning by 261 votes, and a subsequent machine recount had Rossi winning by 42. The latest recount was conducted by hand.

"Wooo-hooo!" exulted state Democratic Party spokeswoman Kirstin Brost moments after the results were announced. "We're very excited. We always believed she would win."

Secretary of State Sam Reed is scheduled to certify the election Dec. 30. After that, the election results probably will be challenged in court, or possibly the Legislature.

State law allows any registered voter to challenge election results. Republicans have begun asking elections officials to reconsider votes for Rossi that they say were wrongly rejected.

"We're going to be going across the state demanding they make every vote count," Rossi spokeswoman Mary Lane said earlier yesterday.

Since Election Day, Gregoire has gone from favorite to underdog and back to favorite.

A three-term state attorney general, Gregoire, 57, was widely viewed as the anointed successor to Democrat Gov. Gary Locke. Rossi, 45, a real estate agent and former state senator, jumped into the race only after the GOP's first three choices declined to run.

In Washington Democrats hold the majority in the Legislature, both U.S. senators are Democrats, and John Kerry won 53 percent of the statewide vote. But voters also flaunt a strong independent streak, and Rossi's sunny message of change caught on with swing voters.

Gregoire and Rossi spent $6 million each on the campaign, a state record, and outside groups spent millions more.

After Rossi won the first two counts, Democrats paid $730,000 for the hand recount. By law the state has to repay the party if the recount reverses the results.

Kerry to Enter Ohio Recount Fray
By William Rivers Pitt for t r u t h o u t.

2004 Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry will file today, in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, papers in support of the Green Party/Libertarian Party recount effort. Specifically, Kerry will be filing a request for expedited discovery regarding Triad Systems voting machines, as well as a motion for a preservation order to protect any and all discovery and preserve any evidence on this matter...

Kerry's entry into this recount effort changes the math on this matter dramatically. He can likewise show irreperable harm, and unlike the Green and Libertarian candidates, he can also prove a substantial chance for success on the merits because he lost the Ohio vote by a statistical whisker.

It should be noted that Kerry's filing of these requests does not indicate his complete entry into the recount process, but does clearly indicate that he is moving decisively in that direction. His previous stance on the matter was based simply on his desire to defend the right to have a recount in the first place. The evidence of election tampering in Ohio, specifically surrounding Triad, has motivated him to actively join the fight. The Democratic Party is also quietly putting financial resources into the Ohio recount effort.

Here is the full text of the entire article in case the link goes bad:

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

Kerry to Enter Ohio Recount Fray
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Report

Thursday 23 December 2004

2004 Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry will file today, in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, papers in support of the Green Party/Libertarian Party recount effort. Specifically, Kerry will be filing a request for expedited discovery regarding Triad Systems voting machines, as well as a motion for a preservation order to protect any and all discovery and preserve any evidence on this matter.

Triad Systems has come under scrutiny recently after Sherole Eaton, deputy director of elections for Hocking County, swore out an affidavit in which she described her witnessing the tampering of electronic voting equipment by a Triad representative. Rep. John Conyers, the ranking minority member of the House Judiciary Committee, has requested an investigation into this matter by the FBI and the Hocking County prosecutor.

Truthout will have more on this specific Triad allegation later in the day.

Previously, the Green Party and Libertarian Party have not fared well in their efforts to get emergency orders regarding this matter in Ohio. In order to pass muster with a judge, the individual or group requesting an emergency order for such a recount must show both irreperable harm as well as a substantial chance for success on the merits. While Green and Libertarian representatives have been able to show irreparable harm, they could not establish a substantial chance for success on the merits, because no recount would deliver Ohio to either party.

Kerry's entry into this recount effort changes the math on this matter dramatically. He can likewise show irreperable harm, and unlike the Green and Libertarian candidates, he can also prove a substantial chance for success on the merits because he lost the Ohio vote by a statistical whisker.

It should be noted that Kerry's filing of these requests does not indicate his complete entry into the recount process, but does clearly indicate that he is moving decisively in that direction. His previous stance on the matter was based simply on his desire to defend the right to have a recount in the first place. The evidence of election tampering in Ohio, specifically surrounding Triad, has motivated him to actively join the fight. The Democratic Party is also quietly putting financial resources into the Ohio recount effort.

Perhaps the most significant aspect of all this, from the activist point of view, has been the effectiveness of the telephone calls and letters to Kerry. The activist push to get him involved had a very significant effect on his decision to enter this effort. Likewise, calls to other Senators in order to convince them to join House members in challenging the election have likewise had significant effect. If such an effort continues, the activists involved will very likely see the desired result unfold.

Jesse Jackson reminds us to stay focused over the holidays, because
critical developments are taking place, now, in Ohio.

A lawsuit challenging Ohio's election result has been filed successfully
(Moss v. Bush).

Bush, Cheney, Rove, and Blackwell have all been subpoenaed.

Blackwell's attorney considers it harassment, and has already stated that Blackwell has no intention of testifying under oath.

Remember in Farenheight 911, when several members of the house filed a challenge to the election results, but they couldn't get ONE senator to sign on to it? Well Conyers is getting ready to file one of those, but this time I would hope that we could at least get one senator to sign it.

Anyway, there's a lot going on and this article does a good job of explaining it.
I'll be putting up the week's Keith Olbermann probably thursday or friday night.

Ohio electoral fight becomes 'biggest deal since Selma' as GOP stonewalls
By Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld and Harvey Wasserman for the Free Press.

As Republican officials stonewall subpoenas and subvert the recount process, Rev. Jesse Jackson has pronounced Ohio's vote fraud fiasco "the biggest deal since Selma" and has called for a national rally at "the scene of the crime" in Columbus January 3.

Another major national demonstration will follow in Washington on January 6, as Congress evaluates the Electoral College. Should at least one US Representative and one Senator challenge the electors' votes, a Constitutional crisis could ensue.

Meanwhile, volunteer attorneys have poured into Columbus from around the US to help investigate the bitterly contested presidential vote that has allegedly given George W. Bush Ohio's electoral votes and thus a second term. A lawsuit filed at the Ohio Supreme Court charges that a fair vote count would give the state and the presidency to John Kerry rather than Bush.

On December 21, notice of depositions were sent to President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell to appear and give testimony regarding the legal challenge of Ohio's elections results in the case Moss v Bush et al.

But Republican Blackwell's attorney at the Secretary of State's office told the attorneys issuing the notice of deposition and subpoena that Blackwell will not testify under oath. The Republican-controlled Attorney General's office has labeled any attempt to put Blackwell under oath, "harassment." Blackwell supervised the November 2 vote in Ohio at the same time he served as co-chair of the state's Bush-Cheney campaign....

In a December 21 conference call with activists from the around the US, Jackson said he has urged Senators Kerry (D-MA) and Hillary Clinton (D-NY) to stand with US Representatives who intend to challenge the Electoral College's expected approval of George W. Bush for a second term. A challenge by US Representatives in 2000 failed because no Senators would join their motion.

Jackson says this year will be different, urging election protection activists to stay focused over the holiday season. "We can't let [the Republicans] get away with this, he told the conference call. "Do not underestimate the outrage of the people. We are a legitimate force for democracy, here and around the world."

"We will count every vote," he said, and make sure "every vote counts."...

The election challenge suit was filed Dec. 17. Blackwell, the Bush-Cheney campaign, and Ohio�s Republican electors have 10 days to respond. Then, according to court procedural rules, each side has 20 days to do discovery � or additional evidence gathering, with those bringing the suit going first. With January 6 being the date Congress accepts the Electoral College vote, and January 20 being the inauguration, the GOP seems determined to make the recount drag on as long as possible.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/1015

Ohio electoral fight becomes 'biggest deal since Selma' as GOP stonewalls
by Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld and Harvey Wasserman
December 22, 2004

COLUMBUS -- As Republican officials stonewall subpoenas and subvert the recount process, Rev. Jesse Jackson has pronounced Ohio's vote fraud fiasco "the biggest deal since Selma" and has called for a national rally at "the scene of the crime" in Columbus January 3.

Another major national demonstration will follow in Washington on January 6, as Congress evaluates the Electoral College. Should at least one US Representative and one Senator challenge the electors' votes, a Constitutional crisis could ensue.

Meanwhile, volunteer attorneys have poured into Columbus from around the US to help investigate the bitterly contested presidential vote that has allegedly given George W. Bush Ohio's electoral votes and thus a second term. A lawsuit filed at the Ohio Supreme Court charges that a fair vote count would give the state and the presidency to John Kerry rather than Bush.

On December 21, notice of depositions were sent to President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell to appear and give testimony regarding the legal challenge of Ohio's elections results in the case Moss v Bush et al.

But Republican Blackwell's attorney at the Secretary of State�s office told the attorneys issuing the notice of deposition and subpoena that Blackwell will not testify under oath. The Republican-controlled Attorney General's office has labeled any attempt to put Blackwell under oath, "harassment." Blackwell supervised the November 2 vote in Ohio at the same time he served as co-chair of the state's Bush-Cheney campaign.

However, some counties like Clarmont have agreed to cooperate with the attorneys in the election challenge. On December 22, a team of attorneys descended upon the Clarmont County Board of Elections between 8:30-10:30am to pour over election day records.

In a December 21 conference call with activists from the around the US, Jackson said he has urged Senators Kerry (D-MA) and Hillary Clinton (D-NY) to stand with US Representatives who intend to challenge the Electoral College's expected approval of George W. Bush for a second term. A challenge by US Representatives in 2000 failed because no Senators would join their motion.

Jackson says this year will be different, urging election protection activists to stay focused over the holiday season. "We can't let [the Republicans] get away with this, he told the conference call. "Do not underestimate the outrage of the people. We are a legitimate force for democracy, here and around the world."

"We will count every vote," he said, and make sure "every vote counts."

Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus have strongly questioned Bush's purported victory, pointing out that more than half the votes cast in Ohio and the nation were recorded on electronic voting machines owned by Republicans, with no audit trail.

Conyers recently conducted hearings at Columbus City Hall to take testimony from Ohioans who were deprived their right to vote. Another public hearing in Mahoning Valley, at the Warren Heights and Trumball Library, documented "thousands of complaints of voting irregularities" that helped throw the vote count to Bush. Election observers have testified under oath that more than a dozen voting machines in Mahoning County regularly switched Kerry votes to Bush votes while voters watched in amazement. Some 580 more absentee voters were certified than were identified by election board officials. As in Franklin and other counties, there were also strategic machine shortages in largely Democratic precincts. The November vote, said one observer, was "the crime of the century."

As dozens of volunteer attorneys pour into the state to help with the recount, Blackwell's stonewall has prompted widespread suspicion about what the Republicans are hiding.

On Monday the expanded legal team issued subpoenas to top election officials in 10 counties where vote-count fraud is suspected.

The rapid filing of subpoenas, the first step in interviewing people under oath, provoked the shrill rejection from Blackwell. Though Blackwell is a state constitutional officer, his business office is in a private building, where protesters -- including former California Congressman Dan Hamburg---have been arrested without apparent provocation.

�They huffed and they puffed, trying to bully people around,� said attorney Peter Pectarsky, a key member of the election challenge legal team. �Now we�re fighting over discovery. We served 10 depositions. The attorney general blew a gasket. They filed a motion to stop it� We will file our response.�

This past Friday, attorneys refiled their election challenge suit, a day after state Supreme Court dismissed it on a technicality. The challengers are trying to get a meaningful recount before the January 6 Congressional vote, while Blackwell's GOP has done all it can to stall.

The election challenge lawsuit claims that statewide vote patterns reveal vote count fraud on a scale that incorrectly awarded the state�s majority � and the presidency � to George Bush. They are using the litigation process to document that fraud.

�Maybe this (the explanation of the Ohio vote) is much closer to the surface than anybody thinks,� said Pete Pectarsky, a lead challenge attorney. �It doesn�t add up. If everything was above board, why are they hiding everything? They could bury people in the details� Okay, look at these records. Look at those.�

The election challenge suit was filed Dec. 17. Blackwell, the Bush-Cheney campaign, and Ohio�s Republican electors have 10 days to respond. Then, according to court procedural rules, each side has 20 days to do discovery � or additional evidence gathering, with those bringing the suit going first. With January 6 being the date Congress accepts the Electoral College vote, and January 20 being the inauguration, the GOP seems determined to make the recount drag on as long as possible.

�We have stuff that points to big numbers,� Pectarsky said, referring to votes that should have been counted for John Kerry. �What we need now is (someone saying) �We did it. Here�s how. Don�t take my word. Here�s the evidence.��

Tuesday, December 22 is the starting point for Pectarsky's negotiations with election officials from 10 counties as to when they can be deposed. They will be asked a wide range of questions to uncover answers explaining the presence of what are, at the least, voting irregularities.

In the Miami County town of Concord, certified returns show that all but 10 registered voters cast ballots on Election Day. But the election challenge team has already identified more than 10 registered Concord citizens who did not vote, an incongruity that points to election fraud.

In Trumbull County, citizens using electronic machines saw their vote for Kerry register as a vote for Bush. Additional hearings in Trumbull and other counties are adding to the litany of fraud and theft.

In the meantime, among the attorneys who have come at their own expense to join Ohio's presidential election challenge:

# Bonnie McFadden, formerly a deputy public defender, law professor from both the University of New Guinea and the University of Hawaii, and director of the Cambodia Defenders Project in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, currently resides in Maui. Bonnie believes that Conyers� Committee hearings have provided clear evidence of illegal election practices. �Democracy cannot survive without honest elections. The Ohio election fraud lawsuits are about saving our democratic form of government. There is nothing more important than that.�

# Karen Peterson, an attorney who worked for more than a decade in legal services specializing in public benefits, consumer and family law and was a professor at both Cornell and the University of Minnesota law schools, is volunteering in Ohio because she believes that it is critically important that election irregularities are exposed to the light of day. �We will lose our democracy unless we are willing to fight for it. If we allow voter suppression and dirty tricks to go uncovered and unpunished, we should not be surprised if these tactics become more virulent in future elections.�

# Lillian Ritt, formerly a research attorney working for the San Diego Superior Court and the 4th DCA Division 1 for more than twenty years, and part of the team researching election law for Al Gore, is in Ohio because she believes voting is critical to our democracy. �Voting has to be done openly and without any possibility of machine error and/or tampering. The problems in Ohio threaten this world, not just the United States. If they are not solved, then I consider this to be another stolen election by Bush without the courage of the Ukraine people.�

# Steve Chaffin, an attorney in Ohio for twenty-four years, has worked in many ways to provide for those who have needed legal assistance and not been able to afford it. He has worked with those who are facing rising costs of health care and other quality of life issues. His interests and work have been to help those who are disenfranchised. Steve�s latest focus is on election and political issues. Volunteering for this legal battle is just one more way in which he is helping our country.

# Judy McCann, a civil rights attorney from Santa Rosa, California, left for Ohio with one day�s notice promising her children she would be home for Christmas, even if it meant she would be on a plane back to help in Ohio on December, 26th. Judy expressed her concern for the integrity of the voting process. She spent Election Day in Florida monitoring the vote, learning first hand that our votes may be cast but not accurately counted. Judy has been asked by the legal team to take depositions and to travel to counties to collect the evidence of voting irregularities.

# Melanie Braithwaite, an attorney in Columbus, Ohio, wants to volunteer for this election contest because of her concern for her children and grandchildren. �To me free expression and exchange of ideas, and the right to vote in free and fair elections are paramount moral and civic values to be protected at all costs. If it costs me some time and inconvenience to volunteer in this effort, then so be it. It is the price I pay to be an American citizen. I personally witnessed a moral outrage on election day. I am peculiarly in a position to take this one on, as I have personally nothing left to lose.�

As the team of election protection attorneys grows alongside the grassroots demand for a fair vote count in Ohio and around the nation, the likelihood of an unprecedented Constitutional confrontation beginning January 6 continues to escalate.

Stay Tuned!

--
Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of the upcoming OHIO'S STOLEN ELECTION: VOICES OF THE DISENFRANCHISED, 2004, to be published in January. Fitrakis is a co-counsel in the Moss case. Support for this project is welcome through www.freepress.org or by sending a check to The �Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism�, 1240 Bryden Rd., Columbus, Ohio 43205.

I just asked my readers-at-large what the best MP3 Player was, and there was only one other suggestion -- otherwise all email and comments said the same thing: IPOD wins.

So if you're making that last minute gift decision -- make the right one.

Thanks a lot guys. You're the best.

Peace,

lisa

I need to find out what the best MP3 player is out there, and fast :-)

I wanna say the IPOD, but not there's a Pocket DJ or something from Dell that someone told me is comperable (and can actually play more formats than the IPOD).

I have a feeling you guys can set me straight in an afternoon, so I thought I'd ask you.

lisarein@finetuning.com is my email to send suggestions to.

Thanks!

lisa

Yet another reason to send the House Judiciary Committee an email telling them to investigate the election in Ohio.

If nothing else, it demonstrates how these machines weren't treated very securely.

Ohio Recount Stirs Trouble
By Kim Zetter for Wired News.

As a statewide election recount got underway in Ohio last week, a Democratic congressman called on the FBI to impound vote-tabulating computers in at least one county and investigate suspicions of election tampering in the state.

Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan), ranking Democrat of the House Judiciary Committee, sought the investigation after an Ohio election official disclosed in an affidavit (.pdf) that an employee of Triad Governmental Systems, the company that wrote voting software used with punch-card machines in 41 of Ohio's 88 counties, dismantled Hocking County's tabulation computer days before the recount and "put a patch on it."

Conyers called the action "inappropriate and likely illegal election tampering." A spokesman for the Green Party, one of the parties requesting the recount, called it "compelling evidence" of deliberate tampering. A public hearing in Ohio on Monday will determine if there is cause for an investigation.

But Sherole Eaton, a Democrat and the deputy director of elections for Hocking County who wrote the affidavit, said her words have been blown out of proportion. She doesn't think Triad tampered with the votes and is a little angry that the Green Party and others have spun her words to imply that they did.

Ohio Recount Stirs Trouble

By Kim Zetter | Also by this reporter Page 1 of 2 next »

02:00 AM Dec. 20, 2004 PT

As a statewide election recount got underway in Ohio last week, a Democratic congressman called on the FBI to impound vote-tabulating computers in at least one county and investigate suspicions of election tampering in the state.

Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan), ranking Democrat of the House Judiciary Committee, sought the investigation after an Ohio election official disclosed in an affidavit (.pdf) that an employee of Triad Governmental Systems, the company that wrote voting software used with punch-card machines in 41 of Ohio's 88 counties, dismantled Hocking County's tabulation computer days before the recount and "put a patch on it."

Conyers called the action "inappropriate and likely illegal election tampering." A spokesman for the Green Party, one of the parties requesting the recount, called it "compelling evidence" of deliberate tampering. A public hearing in Ohio on Monday will determine if there is cause for an investigation.

But Sherole Eaton, a Democrat and the deputy director of elections for Hocking County who wrote the affidavit, said her words have been blown out of proportion. She doesn't think Triad tampered with the votes and is a little angry that the Green Party and others have spun her words to imply that they did.

Eaton's story came to light only when members of the Green Party contacted her before the recount to discuss the procedures and asked who had access to the counting software. When Eaton mentioned Triad's recent visit, the Green Party took the information to Conyers and presented it at an ad hoc Judicial Committee hearing in Ohio as evidence of possible vote tampering.

Eaton said that after the Green Party started spreading the information around, she decided to write the affidavit to get her account on record so that it would not be distorted or misinterpreted.

Doug Jones, Iowa's chief examiner of voting equipment and a computer scientist at the University of Iowa who has been a leading critic of electronic voting machines, said the matter was less likely a case of election tampering than poor election procedures and oversight. But he added that even if no one tampered with votes, the fact that someone had unsupervised access to tabulating equipment before the recount was a breach of security procedures and might even violate Ohio election law.

"The tabulating room should be viewed as a secure computer systems site where nobody goes in there unsupervised, but the affidavit suggests there was no supervision in the tabulating room," Jones said. He said that suspicions of tampering are just as destructive to the integrity of an election as actual tampering and laws prohibiting unsupervised access to voting equipment should be enforced.

According to Eaton's affidavit, Michael Barbian, a technician for Triad, called Eaton on Dec. 10 to say he'd be coming to the office to "check out" the elections computer before the recount Dec. 14. When he arrived to examine the machine, a 14-year-old Dell PC, the computer wouldn't boot up. Barbian told Eaton the computer's internal battery was dead and that "stored information" on it was "gone."

Barbian told Eaton he "could put a patch on" the computer and "proceeded to take the computer apart and call his office to get information" to put into the computer. When the computer was fixed, Barbian asked Eaton which precinct the county planned to hand-count, then returned to the tabulating room. When he came out again, he said the computer was ready and told them to reboot it once to reset the internal clock, then leave it on so the battery could recharge.

Voting activists have seized the detail about the "patch" and the precinct as proof that Barbian rigged the machine. Under Ohio's recount law, a county must first hand-count 3 percent of ballots and then run them through a machine count. If the hand tally matches the machine tally, the county can recount the remaining ballots by machine only. But if the hand and machine counts differ, the county must hand-count all ballots.

So activists say Barbian asked about the precinct so he could set the machine to record only those ballots correctly, while tampering with votes in other precincts.

Hocking completed its recount Wednesday, and the results differed from the certified results by only three votes. President Bush and Sen. John Kerry picked up an additional vote each when pregnant chads fell out of two ballots that had previously shown no vote in the presidential race. A second extra vote went to Kerry from a previously uncounted absentee ballot. Bush won Hocking County with 6,935 votes to John Kerry's 6,173.

In the end, the county hand-counted a different precinct from the one Eaton told Barbian it would count. The county changed the precinct after members of the Green Party expressed concern that Barbian knew which precinct was planned. The results of that precinct matched the original certified results.

Page Two

Brett Rapp, president of Triad, said Barbian visited the Hocking County elections office before the recount because the state had mandated that only the presidential race would be recounted and Barbian had to set up the computer to count and report only that race on punch cards.

"All Ohio counties had to do that," Rapp said. "Not just ... counties (using Triad software)."

He said that when the computer experienced "a CMOSerror," indicating that the rechargeable battery on the motherboard had died, the computer had lost stored information about the hard drive's specifications, which it needed to make the computer boot up. No other data on the machine was lost.

He said Barbian took the case off the computer to identify the hard drive's make and model.

"He called our office, told us the model and we obtained the hard drive parameters by looking them up on the internet," Rapp said. "That's the information we gave him over the phone. He installed no patches on the computer system. He did not tamper with it. He simply fixed a piece of equipment that was broken." He said that Eaton must have misheard Barbian say he was going to put a patch on the machine.

Rapp said that once Barbian fixed the computer, he tested all of the precincts and showed the election officials that the computer and tabulator were counting correctly. Then election officials ran their own test to make sure the machine was counting properly.

Rapp said he believed Barbian asked about the hand-counted precinct because he was trying to make sure the election officials, who had never conducted a recount before, understood what they were doing and which precinct they were going to count.

"He was trying to help them make sure the process went smoothly," Rapp said.

Eaton and Lisa Schwartze, director of elections for Hocking County, confirmed that they ran a test to make sure the machine was counting properly. But Eaton took issue with Rapp's assertion that she misheard Barbian say he mentioned placing a patch on the computer, which, in computer terms means to install computer code on a machine.

"I wouldn't just come up with that. I don't use that term or know what it means," she said. She added that Barbian used the same word with the 70-year-old chair of Hocking County's elections board, who she said also wouldn't have come up with the term on his own.

Still, she does not believe that Barbian tampered with the machine.

"I have had, and still do have, complete trust in Triad," Eaton said. Eaton, who is 65 and by her own admission not computer-savvy, did not understand much of what Barbian did, and said that when he asked if he could take apart the computer, he had to ask for a screwdriver from one of the office workers. "He brought no tools with him," Eaton told Wired News, "which indicates to me that he wasn't planning on working on the machines."

She also said that Barbian's office visit wasn't out of the ordinary since Triad "ran" the county's primary and general elections this year.

"A lot of the (election) boards hire the company that (makes) their program to come in on election night and do all of the computer work and run the tabulators and do that type of thing," Eaton said. "We pay them for that."

Voting activists have long criticized the practice of allowing voting company employees to run tabulation equipment during elections. Iowa's Doug Jones said the practice allows for the possibility of vote tampering and should be stopped.

"If access is being permitted that even allows for manipulation, that's a serious problem," Jones said. He said he hoped that the issue in Ohio will prompt legislators and election officials to re-examine the practice and strengthen laws that would control access to voting equipment.

Rep. John Conyers has been our one friend in congress who has been compelled to investigate the obvious hanky panky that went on during the Ohio election.

He would like to compel the House Judiciary Committee to hold hearings about the 2004 election, but he feels he would need a million emails to turn their heads enough to go for it.

Let's give him two million!

Go here:
http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/contact.html

Type "Ohio Voting Irregularities" in the "Other" box of the form, and then write your own letter, or cut and paste this email in the body of the form, and send it off. (Update: Yeah, the first version of the below letter was corny, so I amended it.)

Estimated time: 30 seconds.

I am writing to urge the House Judiciary Committee to hold hearings as soon as possible on the irregularities of the 2004 election.

There were too many things that just didn't add up, including several precincts where there were more votes for Bush than registered voters.

It is important to know exactly what happened in Ohio, and many other states, so that it does not happen again.

With all this in mind, I ask you to take these discrepancies seriously by holding hearings immediately to investigate them.

More thoughts on this from an email sent to me:

Please spread this message among your list of friends and associates.

There's a growing awareness, with increasing coverage now in national
papers such as the Washington Post and LA Times, that we need an
investigation of the voter suppression and other fraud in Ohio and
elsewhere.

Like Watergate, this issue will build momentum -- and we, the people, to keep it alive until it can no longer be ignored.

It's late, and I'm taking off in the morning for a couple days to go see my sister's play in Los Angeles, so I want to make sure to let you guys know that in an hour or so I'll have uploaded this week's clips on the Ohio Recount/Voting Fraud situation from our new buddy, a friend to you, me, and democracy...

My man Keith Olbermann.

Keith has continued to be impressive with his coverage of the Ohio situation.
Not to mention that he's the only journalist in America covering this story on a national news channel. It's really astounding. But there he is and we're all just lucky to have him.

He's got a blog too.

With that in mind, here are quicktimes and mp3s from the 13, 14, 16, and 17th:

What The Hell Is Going On In Ohio? (just fixed this link. sorry guys)

(Mirror)

But really guys, after taking so long to file the damn thing, couldn't you at least get the rules right?

Anyway, it looks like it will be refiled, but it is a bit disheartening.

Ohio Justice Throws Out Election Challenge
By Andrew Welsh-Huggins for the Associated Press.

The Ohio Supreme Court's chief justice on Thursday threw out a challenge to the state's presidential election results. The 40 voters who brought the case will likely be able to refile the challenge.

Chief Justice Thomas Moyer ruled that the request improperly challenged two separate election results. Ohio law only allows one race to be challenged in a single complaint, he said.

The challenge was backed by the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Cliff Arnebeck, a Columbus attorney for the Massachusetts-based Alliance for Democracy, who accused Bush's campaign of "high-tech vote stealing."

Claiming fraud, the voters cited reports of voting-machine errors, double-counting of ballots and a shortage of voting machines in predominantly minority precincts as reasons to throw out the results...

Without listing specific evidence, the complaint alleges that 130,656 votes for Kerry and John Edwards in 36 counties were somehow switched to count for the Bush-Cheney ticket.

The allegations are based on an analysis comparing the presidential race to Moyer's Supreme Court race against a Cleveland municipal judge.

But nothing in state law or any previous court decision allows challenges to be combined, Moyer said.

"Were this court to sanction consolidation here it would establish a precedent whereby twenty-five voters could challenge, in a single case, the election results of every statewide race and issue on the ballot in any given election," Moyer wrote.

Here is the full text of the entire article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/121704V.shtml

Ohio Justice Throws Out Election Challenge
By Andrew Welsh-Huggins
The Associated Press

Thursday 16 December 2004

Columbus, Ohio - The Ohio Supreme Court's chief justice on Thursday threw out a challenge to the state's presidential election results. The 40 voters who brought the case will likely be able to refile the challenge.

Chief Justice Thomas Moyer ruled that the request improperly challenged two separate election results. Ohio law only allows one race to be challenged in a single complaint, he said.

The challenge was backed by the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Cliff Arnebeck, a Columbus attorney for the Massachusetts-based Alliance for Democracy, who accused Bush's campaign of "high-tech vote stealing."

Claiming fraud, the voters cited reports of voting-machine errors, double-counting of ballots and a shortage of voting machines in predominantly minority precincts as reasons to throw out the results.

Ohio and its 20 electoral votes determined the outcome of the election, tipping the race to President Bush. The state declared Bush the winner by 119,000 votes, but counties are in the middle of a recount - requested by two minor party candidates and supported by John Kerry's campaign.

The complaint questioned how the actual results could show Bush winning when exit-poll interview findings on election night indicated that Kerry would win 52 percent of Ohio's presidential vote.

Without listing specific evidence, the complaint alleges that 130,656 votes for Kerry and John Edwards in 36 counties were somehow switched to count for the Bush-Cheney ticket.

The allegations are based on an analysis comparing the presidential race to Moyer's Supreme Court race against a Cleveland municipal judge.

But nothing in state law or any previous court decision allows challenges to be combined, Moyer said.

"Were this court to sanction consolidation here it would establish a precedent whereby twenty-five voters could challenge, in a single case, the election results of every statewide race and issue on the ballot in any given election," Moyer wrote.

Messages seeking comment on the court decision were left for Jackson and Arnebeck.

In the interest of being fair and balanced :-)

I thought it was important to post the Official Statement on the vote switching allegations from Yang Enterprises, Inc. (YEI).

To: Friends of YEI and Other Interested Parties

Re: Clinton Curtis

Thank you for the many e-mail messages and telephone calls showing support for YEI during the past weeks. Your interest in and support of YEI is greatly appreciated!

The following statements reflect the position of YEI regarding Mr. Curtis and the allegations made by him against the corporation. Although it is YEI's position that the malicious allegations made by Mr. Curtis against private citizens have no basis in fact, those allegations are not addressed in this response.

1. The allegations made in Mr. Curtis's "affidavit" and elsewhere regarding YEI are categorically untrue and fail the most basic "smell" and logic tests.

2. Mr. Curtis's background includes sworn allegations by a former employer, other than YEI, implicating Mr. Curtis in a corrupt and dishonest scheme.

3. Mr. Curtis has unsuccessfully sued YEI in the past, making spurious and wild accusations, and none of his claims against YEI have been determined to have merit.

4. Mr. Nee has never been an employee of YEI.

5. Touch screen voting was first used in Florida in 2001 in a local municipal election. Mr. Curtis's allegations simply don't add up. A document regarding State of Florida elections can be found at
http://election.dos.state.fl.us/hava/index.shtml

6. YEI is not under investigation by the FBI, and no YEI owners, officers or employees have been arrested. In fact, the officers, including owners, of YEI possess Top Secret Clearances that require thorough investigation of an individual and his/her background.

7. All of YEI's government contracts were awarded through open competition.

We are confident in our opinion that Mr. Curtis will ultimately be exposed as a fraud. Until then and always, thank you for your support.

I'm externalizing the vote-switching software thread into its own category.

I don't want this category to get bogged down in a vote switching software controversy.

Yet, the controversy is interesting, and worth tracking.

So there it is. Look here for stories about this from now on.

This just in from R.U. Sirius:

Does transhumanism suck? Will humanity be transformed in 2012? Are
smart homes stupid? Should the editor of a webzine be interviewed by
his publisher about his own book if that book is a history of counterculture?

NeoFiles Vol.1 Num.11

This was emailed to me today.

PLEASE CALL TODAY TO KEEP ANTI-IMMIGRANT PROVISIONS OUT OF THE 9/11 INTELLIGENCE BILL!!

Take Action: Call the White House at (202) 456-1111 and Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) at (202) 225-2976

It appears that the anti-immigrant groups like FAIR have mobilized and are calling Congressional offices 5 to 1 in favor of the anti-immigrant provisions. PLEASE CALL TODAY!

When you call, the key messages are :

-Keep the anti-immigrant provisions out of the intelligence reform bill.

-The compromise bill closely tracks the recommendations of the 9/11 commission without adding on extraneous immigration measures. No more compromising.

-The compromise already includes tough border measures and federal standards for driver's licenses which make licenses more secure and make us safer, but does not needlessly scapegoat all immigrants.

-Enact the real recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, not the agenda of House immigration restrictionists. The immigration provisions Rep. Sensenbrenner wants would not have prevented the terrorist attacks and will not make us safer.

Here's the entire text of the message that was emailed to me today:

PLEASE CALL TODAY TO KEEP ANTI-IMMIGRANT PROVISIONS OUT OF THE 9/11 INTELLIGENCE BILL!!

Take Action: Call the White House at (202) 456-1111 and Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) at (202) 225-2976

It appears that the anti-immigrant groups like FAIR have mobilized and are calling Congressional offices 5 to 1 in favor of the anti-immigrant provisions. PLEASE CALL TODAY!

When you call, the key messages are :

-Keep the anti-immigrant provisions out of the intelligence reform bill.

-The compromise bill closely tracks the recommendations of the 9/11 commission without adding on extraneous immigration measures. No more compromising.

-The compromise already includes tough border measures and federal standards for driver's licenses which make licenses more secure and make us safer, but does not needlessly scapegoat all immigrants.

-Enact the real recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, not the agenda of House immigration restrictionists. The immigration provisions Rep. Sensenbrenner wants would not have prevented the terrorist attacks and will not make us safer.

-Finally, tell them that we need comprehensive immigration reform--not non-solutions that will only drive people further underground and cause panic among immigrant communities.

DRIVER'S LICENSES The issue of driver's licenses for immigrants has become a key factor in this debate. The 9/11 Commission Report recommended federal standards for driver's licenses and other identification documents. Rep. Sensenbrenner (R-WI, Chair House Judiciary Committee) is insisting that the bill go beyond this recommendation and include provisions prohibiting states from granting licenses to undocumented immigrants be included in the bill. He claims that this provision is crucial for stopping terrorists. Unfortunately much mis-information has been spread about the driver's license provisions.

If you receive questions about the driver's license provisions, here are some key messages:

a.. The compromise bill already includes tough driver's license language that would set federal standards for driver's licenses. However, it would allow states to continue to set eligibility requirements.

b.. The 9/11 terrorists obtained valid licenses and had valid immigration papers. In a few cases, the terrorists lied about their state residency, NOT their legal status. Preventing undocumented immigrants from getting licenses would NOT have stopped the 9/11 terrorists from getting licenses.

c.. We are all safer when all drivers have licenses and insurance, and when all people can correctly identify themselves.

YOUR VOICE IS IMPORTANT!! PLEASE TAKE ACTION TODAY!!

Startling new revelations highlight rare Congressional hearings on Ohio vote
by Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld and Harvey Wasserman of the Free Press

Startling new revelations about Ohio's presidential vote have been uncovered as Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee join Rev. Jesse Jackson in Columbus, the state capital, on Monday, Dec. 13, to hold a rare field hearing into election malfeasance and manipulation in the 2004 vote. The Congressional delegation will include Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), Rep. Stephanie Tubbs-Jones, and others.

Taken together, the revelations show Republicans – in state and county government, and in the Ohio Republican Party – were determined to undermine and suppress Democratic turnout by a wide variety of methods.

The revelations were included in affidavits gathered for an election challenge lawsuit filed Monday at the Ohio Supreme Court. Ohio's Republican Electoral College representatives are also to meet at noon, Monday, at the State House, even though the presidential recount, requested by the Green and Libertarian Parties, is only beginning the same day.

Here is the full text of the entire article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/985_

Startling new revelations highlight rare Congressional hearings on Ohio vote
by Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld and Harvey Wasserman
December 13, 2004

Startling new revelations about Ohio's presidential vote have been uncovered as Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee join Rev. Jesse Jackson in Columbus, the state capital, on Monday, Dec. 13, to hold a rare field hearing into election malfeasance and manipulation in the 2004 vote. The Congressional delegation will include Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), Rep. Stephanie Tubbs-Jones, and others.

Taken together, the revelations show Republicans – in state and county government, and in the Ohio Republican Party – were determined to undermine and suppress Democratic turnout by a wide variety of methods.

The revelations were included in affidavits gathered for an election challenge lawsuit filed Monday at the Ohio Supreme Court. Ohio's Republican Electoral College representatives are also to meet at noon, Monday, at the State House, even though the presidential recount, requested by the Green and Libertarian Parties, is only beginning the same day.

On Sunday, John Kerry spoke with Rev. Jesse Jackson and urged him to take an more active role in investigating the irregularities and ensuring a fair and impartial recount. Kerry said there were three areas of inquiry that should be addressed: 92,000 ballots that recorded no vote for president; qualifying and counting provisional ballots; and supported an independent analysis of the software and set-up of the optical scan voting machines.

What follows are excerpts from some of the affidavits for the election challenge.

- In Warren County, where election officers declared a homeland security emergency on Election Day, and barred reporters and others from watching the vote count, it now has been revealed that county employees were told the previous Thursday they should prepare for the Election Day lockdown. That disclosure suggests the lockdown was a political decision, not a true security risk. Moreover, statements also describe how ballots were left unguarded and unprotected in a warehouse on Election Day, and they were hastily moved after county officials received complaints.

- In Franklin County, where Columbus is located, the election director, Matt Damschroder, misinformed a federal court on Election Day when he testified the county had no additional voting machines – in response to a Voting Rights Act lawsuit brought by the state Democratic Party that minority precincts were intentionally deprived of machines. It now appears as many as 81 voting machines were being held back, out of 2,866 available, according to recent statements by Damschroder and Bill Anthony, the chairman of the Franklin County Board of Elections. The shortage of machines in Democratic-leaning districts lead to long lines and thousands of people leaving in frustration and not voting. Damschroder's contradictory statements raise the possibility of perjury.

- Also in Franklin County, a worker at the Holiday Inn observed a team of 25 people who called themselves the "Texas Strike Force" using payphones to make intimidating calls to likely voters, targeting people recently in the prison system. The "Texas Strike Force" members paid their way to Ohio, but their hotel accommodations were paid for by the Ohio Republican Party, whose headquarters is across the street. The hotel worker heard one caller threaten a likely voter with being reported to the FBI and returning to jail if he voted. Another hotel worker called the police, who came but did nothing.

- In Knox County, students at Kenyon College, a liberal arts school, stood in line for up to 11 hours, because only one voting machine was in use. However, at nearby Mt. Vernon Nazarene University, there were ample voting machines and no lines. This suggests the GOP shorting of voting machines was a more widespread tactic than just targeting inner-city neighborhoods.

- Reports in sworn affadavits affirm numerous instances of direct official interference with the right to vote. In Warren County, Democrats were being targeted and forced to use provisional ballots, even if they had proper identification. These ballots were then subjected to more rigorous standards to be counted than were other ballots. In a half-dozen precincts in Franklin County, people who were not inside polling places by 7:30 PM were told to leave - even if they had waited in line for hours. This is a violation of the Voting Rights Act. Sworn affidavits also confirmed reports of old voter rolls being used, meaning that new voters were not on the list and would be given provisional ballots, if allowed to vote at all.

Affidavits were also filed in support of the election challenge suit raising questions about manipulating exit poll results and computer tabulation of county and statewide votes.

In one exit poll affidavit, Jonathan David Simon, an expert witness, notes that at 12:53 a.m. the exit polls altered the projected winner – even though the same number of votes had been cast. "Although each update reports the same number of respondents (872), the reported results differ significantly, with the latter (12:53 a.m.) exit poll results apparently having been brought into congruence with the tabulated vote results." In other words, the exit polls were made to conform to a political decision to declare Bush the victor.

Another exit poll affidavit, filed by Ron Paul Baiman, an economist and statistician at the University of Illinois and University of Chicago, said the swing in national exit poll results, recorded at 12:33 a.m., when Kerry was winning with 50.8 percent of the vote, to Bush winning with 51.2 percent, was, "in lay terms, impossible."

"This is more than a 100 percent swing in the other direction of the exit poll margin, he said. "There is less than a one in 25,000,000 (1/25,507,308) chance of this occurring."

Another affidavit by Richard Hayes Phillips, a geomorphology Ph.D. from University of Oregon with a special expertise in spotting anomalous data, found dramatic examples of erroneous voting patterns – with votes taken away from Kerry - that can only be explained by computer manipulation.

For instance, in 16 precincts in Cleveland, he found votes that were shifted from Kerry to other candidates. In at least 30 precincts, there was ultra-low voter turnout reported – as low as 7.1 percent or 13.05 percent – and seven entire wards where total turnout was below 50 percent. He writes, "Kerry won Cleveland with 83.27 percent of the vote to 15.88 percent for Bush. If voter turnout were really 60 percent of registered voters, as seems likely based on turnout in other major cities of Ohio, rather than 49.89 percent as reported, Kerry's margin of victory in Cleveland has been wrongly reduced by 22,000 votes."

Phillips points to other counties where has says "there is compelling evidence of fraud." In Miami County early on election night, when 31,620 votes had been counted, and later, when 50,235 votes were counted, "Kerry had exactly the same percentage, 33.92 percent, and the percentage for George Bush was almost exactly the same, dropping by 0.03 percent from 65.80 to 65.77 percent. The second set of returns gave Bush a margin of exactly 16,000 votes, giving cause to question the integrity of the central counting device for the optical scan machines. "

He cites many other examples, but summarizes his findings: "It is my professional opinion that John Kerry's margins of victory were wrongly reduced by 22,000 votes in Cleveland, by 17,000 votes in Columbus, and by as many as 7,000 votes in Toledo. It is my further professional opinion that John Kerry's margins of defeat in Warren, Butler, and Clermont Counties were inflated by as many as 37,000 votes in the aggregate, and in Miami County by as many as 6,000 votes. There are still 92,672 uncounted regular ballots that, based upon the analysis set forth of the election results from Dayton and Cincinnati, may be expected to break for John Kerry by an overwhelming margin. And there are still 14,441 uncounted provisional ballots."

--
Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of OHIO'S STOLEN ELECTION: VOICES OF THE DISENFRANCHISED, 2004, upcoming from www.freepress.org.

My peeps are sending me great links and lots of them. I'll be trying to catch up tonight and tomorrow so just keep em coming as events progress.

Basically:

1) It's time for the electoral college to officially cast their votes in Ohio

even though

2) the recount has just started

and

3) Rep. Conyers held a congressional hearing last week on the matter and

4) He just held another on in Ohio State today

meanwhile

5) The vote switching software allegations are being investigated. The programmer has testified to Conyers and the Judiciary Committee Democrats holding hearings this morning in Columbus, Ohio on Election 2004 Voting Irregularities.

More Questions for Florida
By Kim Zettner for Wired News.
(via
Brad Blog)

A government watchdog group is investigating allegations made by a Florida programmer that are whipping up a frenzy among bloggers and people who believe Republicans stole the recent election.

Programmer Clint Curtis claims that four years ago Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Florida) asked his then-employer to write software to alter votes on electronic voting machines in Florida...

He said his employer told him the code would be used "to control the vote" in West Palm Beach County, Florida. But a fellow employee disputed the programmer's claims and said the meetings he described never took place...

Curtis said Feeney asked for code that could go undetected on a voting machine and be easily triggered without any devices by anyone using the machine. Curtis had never seen source code for a voting machine, but in five hours, he said he designed code in Visual Basic that would launch if someone touched specific spots on the voting screen after selecting a candidate.

Once the code was activated, it would search the machine to see if the selected candidate's total was behind. If it was, the machine would award that candidate 51 percent of the total votes recorded on the machine and redistribute the remaining votes among the other candidates in the race.

Curtis said he initially believed Feeney wanted the code to see if such fraud were possible and to know how to detect it. The programmer told Feeney that such code could never be undetectable in source code, and he wrote a paper describing how to look for it. But when he gave the paper and code to his employer, Yang told him he was looking at it all wrong. They weren't looking at how to find code, Curtis said she told him. They needed code that couldn't be found...

Many questions have been raised about Curtis, the 46-year-old programmer, who said he doesn't know if anyone ever placed the prototype code on voting machines. But this hasn't stopped frustrated voters and bloggers from seizing his story. Daily Kos mentioned the allegations, and Brad Friedman of The Brad Blog has written extensively about them.

Staff members for Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan) met with Curtis last week to discuss the election allegations. Representatives for Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Florida) inquired about other allegations from Curtis that his former company spied on NASA.

In September 2000, Curtis was working for Yang Enterprises in Oviedo, Florida, a software design firm that contracts with NASA, ExxonMobil and the Florida Department of Transportation, among other clients. According to Curtis, Feeney met with him and Lee Yang, the company's president, to request the voting software.

At the time, Feeney was Yang's corporate attorney and a registered lobbyist for the company as well as a member of Florida's legislature. A month later, he would become speaker of Florida's House of Representatives. In 2002 he was elected to Congress.

Here is the full text of the entire article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,66002,00.html?tw=wn_story_page_prev2

Welcome to Wired News. Skip directly to: Search Box, Section Navigation, Content.

Search:

More Questions for Florida

By Kim Zetter | Also by this reporter Page 1 of 2 next »

02:00 AM Dec. 13, 2004 PT

A government watchdog group is investigating allegations made by a Florida programmer that are whipping up a frenzy among bloggers and people who believe Republicans stole the recent election.

Programmer Clint Curtis claims that four years ago Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Florida) asked his then-employer to write software to alter votes on electronic voting machines in Florida.
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He said his employer told him the code would be used "to control the vote" in West Palm Beach County, Florida. But a fellow employee disputed the programmer's claims and said the meetings he described never took place.

Many questions have been raised about Curtis, the 46-year-old programmer, who said he doesn't know if anyone ever placed the prototype code on voting machines. But this hasn't stopped frustrated voters and bloggers from seizing his story. Daily Kos mentioned the allegations, and Brad Friedman of The Brad Blog has written extensively about them.

Staff members for Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan) met with Curtis last week to discuss the election allegations. Representatives for Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Florida) inquired about other allegations from Curtis that his former company spied on NASA.

The FBI in Tallahassee, Florida, has set up a meeting with Curtis, and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, said it was trying to corroborate his claims about possible election fraud and NASA spying.

The group hopes that even if the election allegations aren't proven, they will inspire legislators to pass a law requiring voting software to be open to public inspection to help deter fraud and restore public confidence in the election process. The software code used in voting machines is considered proprietary and it is protected from public examination -- an issue voting activists have been trying to address.

"I think Mr. Curtis helps make that issue a little more difficult to shunt aside," said CREW Executive Director Melani Sloan. "You don't even have to believe what he says (in order to be concerned about voting machines), just that he created a program. If he can do it, anyone can."

In September 2000, Curtis was working for Yang Enterprises in Oviedo, Florida, a software design firm that contracts with NASA, ExxonMobil and the Florida Department of Transportation, among other clients. According to Curtis, Feeney met with him and Lee Yang, the company's president, to request the voting software.

At the time, Feeney was Yang's corporate attorney and a registered lobbyist for the company as well as a member of Florida's legislature. A month later, he would become speaker of Florida's House of Representatives. In 2002 he was elected to Congress.

Curtis said Feeney asked for code that could go undetected on a voting machine and be easily triggered without any devices by anyone using the machine. Curtis had never seen source code for a voting machine, but in five hours, he said he designed code in Visual Basic that would launch if someone touched specific spots on the voting screen after selecting a candidate.

Once the code was activated, it would search the machine to see if the selected candidate's total was behind. If it was, the machine would award that candidate 51 percent of the total votes recorded on the machine and redistribute the remaining votes among the other candidates in the race.

Curtis said he initially believed Feeney wanted the code to see if such fraud were possible and to know how to detect it. The programmer told Feeney that such code could never be undetectable in source code, and he wrote a paper describing how to look for it. But when he gave the paper and code to his employer, Yang told him he was looking at it all wrong. They weren't looking at how to find code, Curtis said she told him. They needed code that couldn't be found.

"Her words were that it was needed to control the vote in West Palm Beach, Florida," Curtis said. "Once she said, 'We need to steal an election,' that put me back. I made it clear that I could not produce code that could do that and no one else should."

Curtis says he left the company in February 2001 because he found its ethics questionable. He doesn't know if his code was ever used.

Neither Feeney's spokeswoman nor election officials in Palm Beach County returned calls for comment. But a man who identified himself as Mike Cohen, Yang's executive assistant at the time whom Curtis said was in the meeting, told Wired News the meeting never occurred. Cohen said Curtis was "100 percent" wrong and that Cohen didn't attend such a meeting. He added he knew nothing of any meeting on the topic that occurred without him.

Story continued on Page 2 »

More Questions for Florida

By Kim Zetter | Also by this reporter « back Page 2 of 2

02:00 AM Dec. 13, 2004 PT

Yang attorney Michael O'Quinn called Curtis' assertions "absurd and categorically untrue." He said Curtis is an opportunist and a disgruntled former employee furthering an agenda by telling lies. According to O'Quinn, Curtis tried the same tactic in 2002 when he leveled other charges against Yang and Feeney.

Some details of Curtis' statements don't check out. West Palm Beach city didn't use touch-screen machines in 2000, something Curtis didn't know when Wired News spoke to him. It was the pregnant chad controversy in that year's presidential election that led Palm Beach county, where West Palm Beach resides, to replace its much-maligned punch-card system with touch-screen machines made by Sequoia Voting Systems in December 2001.
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But Curtis said the program could have been adapted for use in the counting software used with punch-card machines and optical scan machines, or it could have been used on the new touch-screen machines in 2002, the year Feeney was elected to Congress.

Adam Stubblefield, a graduate student in computer science at Johns Hopkins University who co-authored a now-famous report (.pdf) about Diebold's voting machine code last year, thinks the chances that Curtis' code was used in a voting machine are nil.

"(Curtis) clearly didn't have the source code to any voting machine, and his program is so trivial that it would be much easier to rewrite it than to rework it," said Stubblefield.

Stubblefield also found fault in Curtis' statement that any malicious code would be detected in a source code review. This would be true only for unsophisticated malicious code, like Curtis' prototype.

Despite Curtis' concerns about statements Yang and Feeney supposedly made regarding election fraud, Curtis didn't tell the FBI or election officials in West Palm Beach about them, even after the 2000 election thrust Florida into the international spotlight.

He said he didn't worry about the code or Yang's statements because he believed if anyone installed malicious code on a voting machine authorities would find it when they examined the code. It wasn't until he read a news story last spring indicating that voting software is proprietary and is not open for inspection once it's certified that the earlier conversations began to concern him.

He claims he did later tell the CIA, the FBI, an investigator for Florida's Department of Transportation and a reporter for the Daytona Beach News-Journal about the voting issues when he gave them other information about Yang and Feeney. But so far this has not been corroborated. The FBI did not return calls for comment. The Department of Transportation investigator is dead.

And writer Laura Zuckerman who worked closely with Curtis on several stories for the Daytona paper, told Wired News he never mentioned the voting software code.

In 2002, Zuckerman wrote about allegations Curtis made that Yang Enterprises overcharged the Department of Transportation for work it never performed. In addition, Curtis told Zuckerman that Yang employed an illegal Chinese national while working on government contracts for NASA, and that the company was possibly spying on NASA by downloading documents from the NASA computer system.

"I didn't get a hint of anything like that at the time that I was writing any of these stories," Zuckerman (who no longer works for the newspaper) said.

However, other information provided by Curtis has been somewhat corroborated. The overbilling charge was confirmed by a Department of Transportation employee, although an official state investigation found no wrongdoing. Curtis thinks pressure from Feeney and others helped squelch the investigation, charges that Zuckerman did not find implausible from her own research.

And Last March, the Chinese national that Curtis discussed, Hai Lin Nee, was arrested in a 4-year-old Immigration and Customs Enforcement sting operation for trying to mail sensitive computer chips to Beijing in 1999 in violation of export rules.

But no one at Yang has been arrested for spying on NASA or stealing documents, despite a letter Curtis sent to a NASA investigator in February 2002 suggesting the company might be doing so. Curtis believes Feeney squelched that investigation as well to protect Yang. Both CREW and staff for Sen. Nelson's office are looking into those charges.

Curtis recently signed an affidavit (.pdf) and says he's willing to take a polygraph test. In the affidavit, Curtis stated that Feeney once "bragged that he had already implemented 'exclusion lists' to reduce the 'black vote'" and discussed ways of further impeding the black vote through strategic use of police patrols on Election Day.

His willingness to go on record with his vote fraud allegations is what makes some believe him.

Jon Kaney, a prominent Florida attorney who represents the Daytona Beach News-Journal and sparred with Feeney over articles the paper wrote about the lawmaker in 2002, said the affidavit does take things up a notch.

"You don't casually go around swearing under penalties of perjury unless you think you're right," Kaney said. "The affidavit struck me as something somebody ought to be looking at." But he said his first reaction to the affidavit was: "Gag. This can't be believed."

It remains to be seen if any new investigations can uncover the truth.

Protesters Urge Delay for Ohio Electors
By John McCarthy for the Associated Press.

As it has done for 200 years, Ohio's delegation to the Electoral College is to meet Monday to cast ballots for president and vice president - but this time, there are demands that the electors wait until after a recount. A demonstration was held Sunday as about 100 people gathered outside the Ohio Statehouse to protest the delegation's vote.

The Electoral College's vote in the Ohio Senate chamber is expected to be accompanied by demonstrations outside the Capitol sponsored by groups who don't accept that President Bush won the key swing state by 119,000 votes, guaranteeing his victory over Democrat John Kerry.

Protesters Urge Delay for Ohio Electors
By John McCarthy
The Associated Press

Sunday 12 December 2004

COLUMBUS, Ohio - As it has done for 200 years, Ohio's delegation to the Electoral College is to meet Monday to cast ballots for president and vice president - but this time, there are demands that the electors wait until after a recount. A demonstration was held Sunday as about 100 people gathered outside the Ohio Statehouse to protest the delegation's vote.

The Electoral College's vote in the Ohio Senate chamber is expected to be accompanied by demonstrations outside the Capitol sponsored by groups who don't accept that President Bush won the key swing state by 119,000 votes, guaranteeing his victory over Democrat John Kerry.

Led by a coalition representing the Green and Libertarian parties, the dissidents are paying for recounts in each of Ohio's 88 counties that will begin this week. The recount is not expected to be complete until next week.

"John Kerry conceded so early in the process that it's maddening," said Kat L'Estrange of We Do Not Concede, an activist group born after the election that believes Kerry was the real winner in Ohio and nationally.

L'Estrange, Susan Truitt of the Columbus-based Citizens Alliance for Secure Elections, and others demanded that the electoral vote be put off until the recount is completed.

"In Ohio, there has not been a final determination. Therefore, any meeting of the Electoral College in Ohio prior to a full recount would in fact be an illegitimate gathering," said John Bonifaz of the National Voting Rights Institute.

The dissidents claim there were disparities in vote totals for Democrats, too few voting machines in Democrat-leaning precincts, organized campaigns directing voters to the wrong polling place and confusion over the counting of provisional ballots by voters whose names did not appear in the books at polling places.

The Kerry campaign does not dispute that Bush won the election, but supports the Ohio recount. Kerry issued a statement Wednesday saying reported voting problems should be investigated to ensure there are no doubts in future elections.

Monday's Electoral College vote will follow the same script it has since 1804, when Ohio picked Thomas Jefferson, a Democratic Republican, over Federalist Charles C. Pinckney.

The electors will gather in the Senate chamber and cast votes for president, then vice president, on separate paper ballots. The ballots are counted by representatives of Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell's office and then handed to Blackwell, who is the presiding officer of the electoral vote.

Blackwell then signs a "transmittal" of the vote total and sends it to the president of the U.S. Senate, who will announce the national total on Jan. 6.

Ohio's electors are a mix of GOP officials and others who are being rewarded for service to the party.

"It's a great honor to serve as a member of the Electoral College and it's a great honor to vote for President Bush," said Alex Arshinkoff, longtime chairman of the Summit County Republican Party who is an elector for the second straight meeting.

Karyle Mumper, chairwoman of the Marion County Republican Party, will be an elector for the first time. She, too, feels honored but believes the demonstrations outside will be a distraction.

"It's a shame they do not believe in the honesty and the professional people working the polls," said Mumper. "I just think they are sore losers and money and time (for the recount) could be spent on other things."

-------

This goes with this post.

There has been a bit of a tinfoil hat alert with regard to the story I posted the Repubs hiring a programmer to write "vote switching" software.

I still have not personally had a chance to investigate the article, but Bev Harris had this to say on her blackboxvoting.org website, and it seemed important to take her stance into consideration while reading the article.

While MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and I had a run-in recently, I agree
with Olbermann's earlier critique of the Madsen homeland security
story, and this new Madsen story is just as weak. Most of both Madsen
stories are bait and switch. Madsen wanders all over the place,
recapping unrelated information from real news agencies, piggybacking
onto their credibility, with only the most tenuous ties to what he is
actually trying to prove. The work done on BradBlog is much more
focused, and Brad seems to be a responsible researcher.

========================================

In my original critique, I raised questions about the Feeney
vote-manipulation story; some of them related to Madsen's work. Brad
Friedman, the author of BradBlog and the primary researcher for more
credible work on Curtis, answered my original questions here. I have
updated this section.

1. Madsen's article implied that Curtis's vote-rigging program was
used in elections. Brad Friedman correctly points out that the Clint
Curtis affidavit explains that he designed a prototype and did not put
it into machines. (Many people have written vote-rigging prototypes,
and the writing of a program doesn't prove anything about the
integrity of the 2004 election.) The issue then becomes: Are Curtis's
allegations about Tom Feeney correct?

- Documents do confirm that Curtis worked for Yang Enterprises, and
that Feeney was involved with Yang. Documents do not confirm that
Curtis met with Feeney and discussed vote-rigging. Curtis names
witnesses in his affidavit, which is a good sign. The witnesses have
not confirmed the story, yet.

from: http://blackboxvoting.org
------------------
TUESDAY DEC 7 2004:
Why the Feeney vote-rigging story sounds like disinformation, as Wayne
Madsen writes it

The story hangs together better at BradBlog.com.

ABOUT DISINFORMATION: Like a good lie, it has elements of truth.
Trouble is, the truth in Madsen's story doesn't relate to the nuts and
bolts of the story.

DISINFORMATION IS DANGEROUS TO THE CLEAN VOTING MOVEMENT: Getting the
facts is tedious, unexciting work, consisting of auditing and personal
interviews, and it takes time. Many Americans want a magic bullet, a
single shot that will blow the lid off everything at once.

That's risky. If the mainstream media continues to be bombarded with
stories that sound credible, but aren't, when the real thing comes
down the pike it will be ignored.

While MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and I had a run-in recently, I agree
with Olbermann's earlier critique of the Madsen homeland security
story, and this new Madsen story is just as weak. Most of both Madsen
stories are bait and switch. Madsen wanders all over the place,
recapping unrelated information from real news agencies, piggybacking
onto their credibility, with only the most tenuous ties to what he is
actually trying to prove. The work done on BradBlog is much more
focused, and Brad seems to be a responsible researcher.

========================================

In my original critique, I raised questions about the Feeney
vote-manipulation story; some of them related to Madsen's work. Brad
Friedman, the author of BradBlog and the primary researcher for more
credible work on Curtis, answered my original questions here. I have
updated this section.

1. Madsen's article implied that Curtis's vote-rigging program was
used in elections. Brad Friedman correctly points out that the Clint
Curtis affidavit explains that he designed a prototype and did not put
it into machines. (Many people have written vote-rigging prototypes,
and the writing of a program doesn't prove anything about the
integrity of the 2004 election.) The issue then becomes: Are Curtis's
allegations about Tom Feeney correct?

- Documents do confirm that Curtis worked for Yang Enterprises, and
that Feeney was involved with Yang. Documents do not confirm that
Curtis met with Feeney and discussed vote-rigging. Curtis names
witnesses in his affidavit, which is a good sign. The witnesses have
not confirmed the story, yet.

2. I mentioned a second problem, in that several of the Florida
counties used different software in 2000 than they do now, and that
various Florida counties use different manufacturers and different
systems. Writing one program that would tamper with ES&S punch cards
and Diebold optical scans at the same time is unrealistic. However,
since Curtis says he did not insert the software into any voting
system, this is (almost) a moot point.

- The counties Curtis alleges Feeney wanted to rig were Miami-Dade,
Broward, Palm Beach. The first two used punch cards in 2000, switched
to ES&S touch-screens in 2002, and used ES&S touch-screens in 2004.
Palm Beach County used the infamous "butterfly ballot" in 2000, and
switched to Sequoia touch-screens in 2002, and used those also in
2004. The Sequoia system has significant differences from the ES&S
system, and the same software would not likely work for both

- Note that the Wayne Madsen article does a bait and switch when he
discusses Volusia County. He starts by saying it is Feeney's district,
and then actually goes on to report a story broken by Black Box Voting
in October, 2003, about minus 16,022 votes for Bush in Volusia --
which appears to have nothing to do with the Feeney story. BradBlog
takes care not to draw conclusions that aren't supported.

3. The techniques used to program a vote-rigging system in the
affidavit by Clint Curtis still have some technical problems.
Candidate-switching is not difficult, and there are a number of ways
to accomplish it. Programmers have pointed out the the use of VB5
doesn't match use of Unix systems, but several programmers I spoke
with were unaware that the Sequoia touch-screens, used in Palm Beach,
create their ballots from WinEDS, and that program runs on Windows,
and is so replete with security problems that the state of Texas
refused to certify it. Now, when I get a high-speed document scanner,
I'll post the Texas FOIA documents that show how susceptible the
Sequoia WinEDS program is to tampering.

4. Most political shenanigans are not conducted by the candidate
himself, but by operatives. It is certainly possible for a politician
to hold several meetings in which he commits a felony in front of
several witnesses, but that's not usually how it is done. A more
common technique is an envelope full of cash left in a drawer of an
operative, with at least one, sometimes more, buffer layers between
the operative and the politician.

Clint Curtis says Feeney himself had meetings to directly discuss
election rigging software. Could happen, certainly, but this seems
unusual.

But this gets a bit more interesting. As I was checking this out, I
got a report from someone completely unrelated, on an entirely
different kind of vote-manipulation endeavor, and Feeney's name came
up in that, too. So the issue of Feeney's behavior is about as clear
as mud.

5. The author says it will be difficult to write a program that will
escape notice if the source code is examined. That's not quite true.

I originally wrote that putting a trigger into a program can involve a
very small amount of code, hard to detect -- and you can comment the
code such that it looks like it is there for another purpose. Also,
the certifiers do a slipshod job of code analysis, and you could
probably drive a greyhound bus through their examination of the source
code.

But I've been receiving e-mails from programmers that point out
something even more obvious: by slipping the rig into a .dll, a
program that runs in the background in the operating system (which is
never examined at all) you can certainly achieve vote-rigging and
survive a source code review.

Programmers pointed out to me that Curtis, as a programmer, should
have known that. However, according to his affidavit, Curtis got his
degree in Political Science and History, not computer science. He was
apparently a self-trained programmer. I won't go into the technical
merits more here, because if he didn't put the program into voting
systems, they aren't relevant.

6. Now, my most significant objection to the story, which goes to
Curtis's credibility, still involves his statement on the affidavit
saying that he filed a "QUITAM" whistleblower suit, that is "pending."
First, he doesn't spell it correctly. The correct spelling is two
words, "Qui Tam." Next, Qui Tam cases MUST be filed under seal. If a
Qui Tam is filed in Florida, both the evidence and the existence of
the case must be sealed, and only the Florida Attorney General can
unseal it.

People have written to me to explain that Curtis did file a
whistleblower suit, but did so a day after the deadline. That is not a
Qui Tam, but an employment-related suit. In his affidavit, Curtis
refers to filing lawsuits two different places. One is an employment
suit, the other is a "QUITAM" suit. I found documentation of the
employement suit and its dismissal, but saw no documentation at all
about a Qui Tam suit. That means it's either still under seal, and
therefore, by talking about it, Curtis just invalidated the suit and
violated a court order, or there is no Qui Tam suit.

Please do show it to me, if you can find it in the dockets and it has
been unsealed.

Black Box Voting board member Jim March and I filed a Qui Tam suit in
California in November 2003, against Diebold Election Systems. Using a
California law, we refused to seal the evidence, but still had to keep
the existence of the case under seal. It did not come out from under
seal until the California Attorney General got the court to unseal it,
and the Associated Press covered the unsealing of the case. You cannot
keep the unsealing of a Qui Tam case away from the press. The press
has mentioned no FDOT Qui Tam.

This goes directly to Curtis's credibility. I was not able to get hold
of him today, and I will keep trying tomorrow, so that we can learn
the answer to this.

There are two other credibility-checking questions I need answered.
First, a small scrambled egg on my face: I wrote "Court documents
refer to a judgment against Curtis for copyright infringement.
Actually, the court documents referred to might have been papers filed
by an opposing party, i.e. Yang Enterprises, alleging the copyright
infringement without proving it. According to the Daytona
News-Journal, Yang says Curtis was "successfully sued" over copyright
infringement.

Parsing words here: "successfully sued" may mean there was a judgment
entered, but according to Brad Friedman, Curtis says the case was
settled out of court without either side paying the other. ("Each side
paid their attorney's fees and went their merry way.") "Successfully
sued" could also mean an out-of-court settlement in which Curtis paid
a settlement to the other party. It is really stretching it to
interpret "successfully sued" as simply filing a case. The term
"successfully sued" could be a smear by Yang or Feeney, or it could be
that Curtis didn't fully disclose the problems with the copyright
infringement case.

Because this goes to credibility, and in this case credibility is
extremely important, the next two questions that must be answered are:
Who was the former employer and what were the real terms of the
settlement or judgment?

One more credibility test: When Curtis lived in Illinois, he ran for
office as a Republican. While discussing his run for office in a
letter to the Bloomington Pantagraph he accused a local attorney of
stealing $28,000. The accusation might be accurate, since it
apparently was an embezzlement, and those are much more common than
people realize. I'd like to know the names of the attorney and the
injured party.

My gut tells me -- but this is only speculation -- that Curtis was
correct in blowing the whistle on the attorney for misappropriating
$28,000. I say that because I've seen written up several financial
fraud cases, met the embezzlers, it happens frequently. If he blew the
whistle on a $28,000 theft and his charges were correct, that would
shore up his credibility on the Feeney story.

I announced on a national radio show Friday that I will be happy to
take what you folks throw at me, if I am wrong on these points. In the
mean time, because the implications of this story are so significant,
I think we need to continue to exercise caution and get the story to
the point where it is truly bulletproof.

-- Bev Harris # # # # #

Oopsy. Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell promised America that he would not interfere with a recount. Now his office has instructed employees that Ohio voting records are not considered "public records."

That means that Kenneth Blackwell has been caught in a big fat lie. And I've got the proof (I provide video and a transcript):

Last week, he promised in an interview with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann that he wouldn't do anything to interfere with the recount. He said he would consider it "yet another audit of the voting process."

Here's the story detailing Blackwell's "lockdown" of the Ohio voting records:

Blackwell Locks Out Recount Volunteers
By Ray Beckerman.

On Friday December 10 two certified volunteers for the Ohio Recount team assigned to Greene County were in process recording voting information from minority precincts in Greene County, and were stopped mid-count by a surprise order from Secretary of State Blackwell’s office. The Director Board of Elections stated that “all voter records for the state of Ohio were “locked-down,” and now they are not considered public records.”

Here's Blackwell during his interview with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann saying he won't interfere:

Olbermann: As it plays into the recount though sir, are you saying that your office does not anticipate taking any steps to try to prevent a recount in Ohio?

Blackwell: No. We haven't! We've told the two officials..candidates that once we certify on December 6th, they have five days to certify. I mean, to ask for a recount. Once they ask for a recount, we will provide them with a recount. And that's what I've said from the very first indication that they were interested in a recount. Once it was established that they were statewide candidates with standing, our law says that they can ask for a recount. We will regard this as yet another audit of the voting process. The reason it takes us from November the second to December the sixth to certify is because we have a very tedious, very comprehensive process where we audit by precinct, across the state, every vote that was cast to make sure that every vote that was legally cast is counted.

By the way, voting records are public by definition. Here's an excerpt from Ohio's State Election Code:

Ohio Revised Code Title XXXV Elections, Sec. 3503.26 that requires all election records to be made available for public inspection and copying. ORC Sec. 3599.161 makes it a crime for any employee of the Board of Elections to knowingly prevent or prohibit any person from inspecting the public records filed in the office of the Board of Elections. Finally, ORC Sec. 3599.42 clearly states: “A violation of any provision of Title XXXV (35) of the Revised Code constitutes a prima facie case of election fraud within the purview of such Title.”

December 10, 2004

Blackwell Locks Out Recount Volunteers

Subject: Blackwell Locks Down Ohio Voting Records

Ohio Election Investigation Thwarted by Surprise Blackwell Order

Dayton, Ohio Friday December 10, 2004

On Friday December 10 two certified volunteers for the Ohio Recount team assigned to Greene County were in process recording voting information from minority precincts in Greene County, and were stopped mid-count by a surprise order from Secretary of State Blackwell’s office. The Director Board of Elections stated that “all voter records for the state of Ohio were “locked-down,” and now they are not considered public records.”

The volunteers were working with voter printouts received directly from Carole Garman, Director, Greene County Board of Elections. Joan Quinn and Eve Roberson, retired attorney and election official respectively, were hand-copying voter discrepancies from precinct voting books on behalf of the presidential candidates Mr. Cobb (Green) and Mr. Badnarik Libertarian) who had requested the recount.

One of the goals of the recount was to determine how many minority voters were unable to vote or denied voting at the polls. Upon requesting copies of precinct records from predominantly minority precincts, Ms. Garman contacted Secretary of State Blackwell’s office and spoke to Pat Wolfe, Election Administrator. Ms. Wolfe told Ms. Garman to assert that all voter records for the State of Ohio were “locked down” and that they are “not considered public records.”

Quinn and Roberson asked specifically for the legal authority authorizing Mr. Blackwell to “lock down” public records. Garman stated that it was the Secretary of State’s decision. Ohio statute requires the Directors of Boards of Election to comply with public requests for inspection and copying of public election records. As the volunteer team continued recording information from the precinct records in question, Garman entered the room and stated she was withdrawing permission to inspect or copy any voting records at the Board of Elections. Garman then physically removed the precinct book from Ms. Roberson’s hands. They later requested the records again from Garman’s office, which was again denied.

Ohio Revised Code Title XXXV Elections, Sec. 3503.26 that requires all election records to be made available for public inspection and copying. ORC Sec. 3599.161 makes it a crime for any employee of the Board of Elections to knowingly prevent or prohibit any person from inspecting the public records filed in the office of the Board of Elections. Finally, ORC Sec. 3599.42 clearly states: “A violation of any provision of Title XXXV (35) of the Revised Code constitutes a prima facie case of election fraud within the purview of such Title.”

Contact Information: Joan Quinn (937) 320-9680, (916) 396-9714 – cell Katrina Sumner (937) 608-5861

Permanent Link to this Post posted by Ray Beckerman @ 9:57 PM

Update: this post now goes with this one. (Bev Harris weighing in on this story.)
Texas to Florida: White House-linked clandestine operation paid for "vote switching" software
By Wayne Madsen for the Online Journal.

According to a notarized affidavit signed by Clint Curtis, while he was employed by the NASA Kennedy Space Center contractor, Yang Enterprises, Inc., during 2000, Feeney solicited him to write a program to "control the vote." At the time, Curtis was of the opinion that the program was to be used for preventing fraud in the in the 2002 election in Palm Beach County, Florida. His mind was changed, however, when the true intentions of Feeney became clear: the computer program was going to be used to suppress the Democratic vote in counties with large Democratic registrations.

Here is the full text of the entire article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/120604Madsen/120604madsen.html

December 6, 2004—The manipulation of computer voting machines in the recent presidential election and the funding of programmers who were involved in the operation are tied to an intricate web of shady off-shore financial trusts and companies, shady espionage operatives, Republican Party politicians close to the Bush family, and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) contract vehicles.

An exhaustive investigation has turned up a link between current Florida Republican Representative Tom Feeney, a customized Windows-based program to suppress Democratic votes on touch screen voting machines, a Florida computer services company with whom Feeney worked as a general counsel and registered lobbyist while he was Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, and top level officials of the Bush administration.

According to a notarized affidavit signed by Clint Curtis, while he was employed by the NASA Kennedy Space Center contractor, Yang Enterprises, Inc., during 2000, Feeney solicited him to write a program to "control the vote." At the time, Curtis was of the opinion that the program was to be used for preventing fraud in the in the 2002 election in Palm Beach County, Florida. His mind was changed, however, when the true intentions of Feeney became clear: the computer program was going to be used to suppress the Democratic vote in counties with large Democratic registrations.

According to Curtis, Feeney and other top brass at Yang Enterprises, a company located in a three-story building in Oviedo, Florida, wanted the prototype written in Visual Basic 5 (VB.5) in Microsoft Windows and the end-product designed to be portable across different Unix-based vote tabulation systems and to be "undetectable" to voters and election supervisors.

Yang, an engineering and computer services company subcontracted to NASA prime contractors like Lockheed Martin, was founded in 1986 by Dr. Tyng-Lin (Tim) Yang. Granted minority-owned "Section 8A" and woman-owned preferential status by the U.S. government, Yang's clients also include the Florida Department of Transportation (DOT). Yang's President, Li-Woan (Lee) Yang, is Tim Yang's wife. Feeney was the registered agent for another Yang company, Y & H Greens, Inc., a company that was dissolved in 1988 and operated from the Yangs' residence on Merritt Island. The Yangs also serve as co-trustees for an entity called Yang of Merritt Island, Ltd., founded on January 31, 2000, and also run from their residence.

In the autumn of 1999, Curtis, who served as a sort of technology adviser for Yang, first became aware of Feeney's interest in election rigging. Curtis said at one meeting, Feeney "bragged that he could reduce the minority vote and deliver the election to 'George.'" At the same meeting, according to Curtis, Feeney said he had "implemented a list that would eliminate thousands of voters that would vote for Democratic candidates" and that "a proper placement of police patrols could further reduce the black vote by as much as 25 percent."

Feeney's desire to manipulate the vote would be manifested in his home base of Volusia County in the 2000 presidential election. According to The Washington Post, at 10 p.m. on election night, Al Gore was leading Bush in Volusia County by 83,000 to 62,000 votes. One-half hour later, Gore's vote total had been reduced by 16,000 to 67,000 and an obscure Socialist candidate saw a sudden surge to 10,000 votes in a precinct with only 600 voters. The information on the Volusia optical scanner voting anomalies came from a leaked internal Diebold memorandum. In the end, Bush won Florida and the White House by a mere 537 votes in the most controversial U.S. presidential election in history.

Feeney had long been a voice in Florida GOP politics. He was gubernatorial candidate Jeb Bush's running mate in 1994, a race in which Democratic incumbent Lawton Chiles defeated Bush. Chiles once referred to Feeney as "the David Duke of Florida politics."

In 2002, Feeney asked Curtis if he could develop a touch screen voting machine "flip flop" program. According to Curtis, Feeney asked him, "Can you write a program to flip votes around on touch screen machines?" Curtis said Feeney wanted the program to merely reduce votes in heavily Democratic areas and flip Republican votes to 51 percent and keep Democrat votes to 49 percent. Curtis added that Feeney "did not want to win by a lot." In return, Curtis said Feeney offered him "big jobs." Curtis's main tasks at Yang were to develop the Florida DOT's Electronic Document Management System. He also worked on the Project Pipeline Information System at another one of Yang's major clients, Exxon Mobil's Coral Gables facility.

Curtis said he developed the voting program and eventually handed off his prototype to Feeney. The program was also reviewed by Curtis's senior coder, Hai Lin (Henry) Nee, who according to Florida Department of Transportation sources, was an illegal alien working in the United States. According Curtis, not only did Nee review the vote switching program code but he constantly downloaded sensitive data to his computer from NASA's computers. Nee, according to Curtis, moonlighted at an Orlando company called Azure Systems, described by The Orlando Sentinel as a "three person engineering firm" and one of a number of companies linked to Ting Ih-Hsu, a former Lockheed Martin employee. At the same time Nee was reviewing Yang's vote switching program, he was also being investigated by U.S. federal investigators for illegally shipping Hellfire missile parts to China. Oddly, although U.S. law enforcement agents had put Nee and his associates under surveillance for illegal exports of technology to China in 1999, he and his colleagues were not arrested until March of this year.

Curtis claimed that Yang's corporate bosses stressed that the company had "unlimited" sources of money that came "mostly" from China. According to Florida DOT employees, House Speaker Feeney pressured their agency to give money to Yang for nonexistent software. The sources also revealed that Feeney was aware that Yang was employing a number of illegal aliens on State of Florida and federal contracts.

Feeney's ties to Yang paralleled similar close ties to NASA. Feeney's wife Ellen has worked as an engineer for NASA's Kennedy Space Center since 1985. Jeb Bush ensured that Florida's 24th Congressional District was redrawn so that Feeney would have an easy time in his 2002 race against Democratic opponent Harry Jacobs. According to Florida state officials, who spoke on the condition anonymity, 500 Yang employees at the Kennedy Space Center were paid for their time when they agreed to picket against Jacobs. In addition, NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe, according to the same sources, lobbied extensively for Feeney within NASA. In addition, O'Keefe and his close friend and former Pentagon boss, Vice President Dick Cheney, made campaign appearances for Feeney at the Kennedy Space Center.

Feeney's close ties to Jeb Bush and Cheney paid off. In 2002, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in a race that also saw the re-election of Jeb Bush. Early in "vote switch's" development stages, Feeney had told Curtis that he wanted the program "made to control Palm Beach" in 2002. Palm Beach County's Election Supervisor was still the controversial Theresa LePore, nicknamed "Madam Butterfly," who designed the infamous "butterfly ballots" in the 2000 election. LePore had once been an employee of Saudi multi-billionaire Adnan Khashoggi, a Saudi link that is tied to a huge multi-billion tranche of money distributed throughout off-shore trusts, accounts, and corporations with interlocking directorships that are controlled by Bush interests in Houston. It was this Bush-controlled money cache, originating in the East, and known in Houston by the name "Five Star" and other cryptonyms that was, according to U.S. intelligence insiders, used to fund the rigging of the 2004 election.

When he arrived in Congress, Feeney was given a seat on the House Science and Technology Committee, which oversees NASA's operations. Feeney was also appointed to the important House Finance and Judiciary Committees. He was also given a clean bill of ethical health by Florida's Ethics Commission, a panel that has a Republican majority.

After Feeney's ascension to Congress, Yang's questionable billing activities with its Florida DOT contract came to the attention of Ray C. Lemme, a seasoned senior investigator with the Florida DOT Inspector General's Office and a combat veteran of the Vietnam War. Lemme had a lot of evidence to suspect that Yang was overbilling the DOT for "millions." After discovering Yang's dirty laundry, Curtis went to work for the DOT. Mavis Georgalis, the DOT's contracting officer for the Yang contract, was also aware of improprieties with the contract. As a result of pressure from the Florida State House, both Curtis and Georgalis were eventually fired by the DOT because of their complaints about the Yang contract. Someone was obviously trying to send Curtis a message when, on August 14, 2002, he discovered that someone poisoned his pet Pomeranian dog, Emily. Lemme was forced to stop his official investigation of Yang for similar reasons. However, he decided to continue an "unofficial" investigation of Yang and its practices on the side. It was a fateful decision.

According to DOT employees familiar with the Yang case, Lemme was aware that it was Jeb Bush who personally shut down his investigation of Yang. Lemme also leaked details concerning his investigation to the Daytona Beach News Journal. The investigator had previously requested a full audit of the Yang contract with the DOT, a request that was denied. Lemme also became aware of something else outside the framework of the DOT contract—that Yang had been involved in producing a prototype vote switching program for use with touch screen voting machines and that Tom Feeney was in on the scam. The last time Clint Curtis spoke to Lemme, he remembers the silver haired investigator excited about where his case was leading. Lemme told Curtis that the cover up of Yang was coming from "as high up as I could imagine" and that he had "proof" that was "shocking."

On Sunday, June 29, 2003, evidence indicates that Lemme drove from Tallahassee to Valdosta, Georgia, the home of Moody Air Force Base. A motel receipt indicated that Lemme checked in at the Knight's Inn off Interstate 75 at 6:49 p.m. Lemme's wife said that her husband left home for work on Monday, June 30, at 5:15 a.m., an hour earlier than usual. According to a Leon County Sheriff's report, Lemme's wife said she received a voice message after she returned home at 6:45 p.m. on Monday. The message was from her husband's supervisor, Bob Clift, who informed her that earlier in the day, at 6:15 a.m., Lemme called into work, left a message, and said he would not be coming to work that day. Clift said he was checking up on Ray Lemme. Mrs. Lemme called Clift and told him that her husband was not at home. Mrs. Lemme told police that her husband was working on a "big case." Mrs. Lemme filed a missing person report with the Leon County, Sheriff's Office. Clift later determined that Ray Lemme made his earlier call to work at 6:15 a.m., one hour after he supposedly left his home for work, from a pay phone at the junction of Interstate 10 and Highway 1 in Jefferson County, Florida. Shortly after 11:00 a.m. on Tuesday, July 1, the maid assigned to clean Lemme's room—132—received no answer when she knocked. The door was locked. There was no response when the maid called the room's telephone. The hotel manager then called the police.

The following is from the Valdosta Police Detective Report filed by Detective Craig Spencer and dated July 1, 2003: "On July 1, 2003 at approximately 1330 hours, I received a page advising me to be en route to Knights Inn at 2110 West Hill Avenue in reference to an unattended death." When Spencer and other police officers and detectives arrived at the motel, the manager told them that the occupant of Room 132, Ray Lemme, was to have checked out by 11a.m. The officers yelled through the slightly ajar door but received no answer and they discovered the upper swing latch was locked. The officers used a special tool provided by the motel to open the swing latch lock. Spencer said that one of the officers entered the room and found a suicide note and then proceeded to the bathroom where Lemme was found dead in the bathtub. Police also discovered that the inside of Lemmes's left elbow—the cubital tunnel—was slashed. There were spurts of blood on the wall but no blood found on the floor. A belt possibly used as a tourniquet and a double- edged straight razor blade were found on the side of the tub. A bath towel was unfolded and neatly placed on the floor next to the tub.

Later on July 1, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Crime Laboratory in Moultrie informed the Valdosta Police that based on the "suicide" details, no autopsy would be performed on Lemme. Unlike Florida, Georgia does not perform mandatory autopsies. A doctor, with 25 years' clinical experience, who was interviewed for this story claimed that the circumstances of Lemme's death appeared to him to be a classic "mob hit." If the Leon County Sheriff missing person report is to be believed, it is clear that someone other than Lemme checked into the Valdosta motel on Sunday evening using his name. Clearly, the Leon County Sheriff's report contains a number of details that directly conflict with facts found in the Valdosta Police report. In addition, the Lowndes County, Georgia, Coroner's report fails to indicate an estimated time of death based on a full medical examination—it surmised that the time of death was the same time as indicated on the suicide note: 8:10 a.m. on July 1.

An empty manila folder and a blank legal pad notebook were found on the hotel room's desk along with an undated and unsigned suicide note written on lined paper, which lacked any identifiable fingerprints, from Lemme's day planner. The note merely contained the time 8:10 a.m. with the following notation: "I love my family (family underlined once) with all my heart. I am sorry. I am depressed and in pain. Mary Ann (Lemme's wife), I love you." ("I love you" underlined twice). It was certainly not indicative of a person who was ecstatic that he was finally going to nail a long investigation that involved vote rigging, overbilling, and fraud abetted by the very top political leadership in Tallahassee. Interestingly, the last number on Lemme's pager (an 850 960-XXXX) ended with the number "911." It is also interesting that Lemme's watch, when discovered by the police, was stopped at 12:34 p.m. on June 30–a possible indication that Lemme was trying to convey the time of a possible in extremis situation. Also, Lemme's Florida driver's license was in his room while his wallet was in the glove box of his car, which was parked in front of the room. Two motel receipts were found in Lemme's room by the police. One was a check-in receipt dated June 29 and timed at 6:44 p.m. The other was a receipt, without a notation of check-in or check-out, dated June 30 and timed at 6:54 a.m. A witness told police that Lemme's car was parked in front of his room on the afternoon of June 30.

Sergeant Eugene Bell of the Valdosta Police Department interviewed a 39-year old female guest who was staying in Room 236 over the weekend. She and her daughter noticed three men standing in the parking lot across from Lemme's room at 8 a.m. on the morning of July 1. The behavior of the men made the guest suspicious enough that the woman initially believed the men were engaged in a drug deal. According to the police report, the camera used to photograph the crime scene was later discovered to have a defect in the flash memory card. The defect resulted in no usable photographs being submitted with the official police report.

Lemme was no stranger to Florida politics. His wife, Mary Ann, worked as a secretary for Martha Walters Barnett, a partner with the politically-connected Holland & Knight law firm in Tallahassee, where she specializes in campaign finance and election law and government contracts. Another Holland & Knight partner, Ginny Myrick, was appointed by Jeb Bush as the vice chair of the Florida Community Trust, a state land acquisition and grant program. Although officially a bipartisan law firm, even Democrats working for Holland & Knight largely support Jeb Bush. In addition, Bill McBride, Bush's Democratic opponent in the 2002 gubernatorial race and a Holland & Knight partner who had defeated former Attorney General Janet Reno in the Democratic primary amid reports of voting irregularities from around the state, commented that his race against Bush "may be the Democrats' race to lose."

The NASA connection to the money trail that is linked to the development of the vote switching program is of particular note. When the first sketchy details of the vote switching operation emerged, a Houston-controlled money tranche associated with an offshore entity called Five Star Trust, registered in the Isle of Man, was reported by high-level intelligence sources familiar with past Bush-related covert activities to be behind the operation. Five Star has been connected by these informed sources to have originated in 1983, when deposed Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, Saudi billionaire Adnan Khashoggi, and then-Vice President George H. W. Bush were allegedly looking for a repository for an estimated $3 billion in looted Philippine gold and gems. Since that time, Five Star's accounts are said to funnel more funds from Saudi Arabia as well as cash reserves hidden away in offshore artificial shells by Enron before it collapsed. What is not yet certain is whether Sean O'Keefe, the NASA administrator and close Cheney friend who supported Feeney's and Yang's activities in Florida, facilitated the transfer of Five Star funds from Houston to Cape Canaveral using contract vehicles of both the Johnson and Kennedy Space Centers to disburse the funds to the principal players. A NASA insider in Texas said he has long suspected large amounts of money have been moved into the United States and that these transfers involved NASA and Saudi and Chinese money sources.

There is additional information that the election rigging principals connected to the State of Florida and Jeb Bush may have also tried to use contractors tied closely to state contracts to parlay the touch screen software into Maine, which has proportional distribution of its electoral votes by congressional district, and Ohio, the key state in 2004. The information was provided by insiders in Tallahassee who are close to offices involved in procurement by the state government.

Sources close to U.S. intelligence pointed to a $29.6 million check supposedly issued on October 22, 2004, by Laurentian Bank in Montreal, Canada, that was rumored by intelligence circles to have been used to pay for the technicians who developed the software to rig the election. The computer voting machine technicians and maintenance personnel involved with the rigging were reported to have included Russians, Mexicans, and Brazilians.

According to Laurentian Bank, the check, a U.S. dollar "money order," is a bogus instrument tied to Nigerian scamming activities. Laurentian Bank said that a U.S. dollar money order would never be for amounts over $1,000 and any higher amount would be in the form of a bank draft that would require the signature of two senior bank officers. In addition, the bank would never use a cell phone number (514-588-5569) on their checks. The payer on the "check," Equity Financial Trust of Toronto, is said by the Canadian Fraud Office to be involved with Nigerian scammers. In fact, the Canadian Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions reports that Equity Financial Trust, Toronto, Ontario "may be violating provisions of the Bank Act (Canada) or other Canadian financial institution regulations" and "may also be conducting unauthorized banking transactions in the United States."

The payee on the "check," Five Star Investments, Ltd., once registered on the Isle of Man, is a Lexington, Kentucky-based entity tied to Marion "J.R." Horn, convicted in 2002 by Judge Joseph M. Hood of the U.S. District Court for Eastern Kentucky for wire fraud. He was also ordered to serve time in Butner Federal Penitentiary, North Carolina for a "mental study." He eventually served an unusually light 18-month sentence while on parole for another fraud case. When interviewed by a researcher for this article, Horn expressed surprise that the check his lawyer in Nassau was waiting to clear a bank in New York, was, in fact, a fake. According to CIA documents obtained from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Five Star Trust may have, in fact, had a past relationship with Horn. According to Offshorebusiness.com, Five Star Trust has been linked with an "illegal" bank.

The connection of Enron money and Nigerian scammers to Five Star is intriguing because of a September 23, 2004, Houston Chronicle report that said Enron was involved in an off-the-books deal to invest in Nigerian power generation barges. Tina Trinkle, a former Merrill Lynch banker, said she was asked not to do the normal background checks for such a business deal.

A former Justice Department prosecutor who investigated the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) said that the bogus check and those responsible for it are typical "feints" used to mask actual clandestine money movements from law enforcement investigators. In addition, the former prosecutor said the purported check lacked the necessary SWIFT codes in the numbers found at the bottom of the check to facilitate the movement of money through international financial networks. He said that in his experience as a prosecutor, the name "Five Star Trust" came up in relation to the covert activities of the Nugan Hand Bank, a CIA-connected activity that was involved in covert activities in Australia and South East Asia.

Five Star entities, active and dissolved, have been discovered in the Isle of Man, the island of Nevis, the Bahamas, Florida, Kentucky, and Texas. Other Five Star-related entities stored large sums of money in the Cook Islands, according to U.S. intelligence sources, and these funds were directly linked to Khashoggi and BCCI. Khashoggi also approached top Nigerian leaders in 1982 to set up a company there that would deal exclusively in minerals. According to knowledgeable insiders, Khashoggi used a company called Triad to hammer out lucrative international deals on precious minerals. In 1994, Five Star Investments, Ltd., the entity tied to Horn, attempted to buy International Standards Group ISG), Ltd., a consulting company based in Boca Raton, Florida. According to the Palm Beach Post, Horn was the person who proposed the acquisition. ISG was also the target of a bid by UMI, Inc., a mortgage banker based in Coral Gables, Florida. The Palm Beach Post was never able to determine the source of UMI's cash.

Phony checks are not the only telltale signs associated with some of the various Five Star entities. Another bogus document, a bogus UN customs declaration for a shipment to a "Counter Terrorist Unit" in Lagos, Nigeria, was also obtained in the investigation of this story.

Horn has had a running battle with the CIA over allegations that he is owed money for his past activities on behalf of the agency. Although Horn has produced a number of dubious documents to support his claims, one of the names mentioned in documents filed in U.S. court in Washington, DC is that of E. Warren Goss, an actual attorney in Boulder, Colorado. It has not been established if E. Warren Goss has any family connection to Porter Goss, the current CIA director.

In a September 17, 2003, declaration by Marilyn A. Dorn, Information Review Officer in the Directorate of Operations at the CIA, in response to Horn's Freedom of Information Act request, it was determined that the agency had no records containing the names "Five Star Trust" or a reported subsidiary, "U.S. Mortgage and Trust (Bahamas)." Dorn reported that no records containing references to either entity were discovered but that two documents, cables—"field traffic consisting of one and a half pages and eight partial lines of message text, respectively, dating from the early 1980s"—were responsive to Horn's request. It is interesting that the CIA admits the time frame because the genesis of Five Star Trust was 1983, when, according to U.S. intelligence insiders, then-Vice President Bush authorized a Boeing 747 with a special "carriage" to airlift several tons of gold bars from Clark Air Force base in the Philippines to LaGuardia Airport in New York.

The gold bars were then transported to the International Diamond Exchange Vaults near Rockefeller Center. A CIA proprietary firm called Oceaneering International of Houston was reportedly involved in airlifting some of the gold from the Philippines, in addition to sealifting the remainder to Oregon. After George W. Bush's victory in 2000, the last of the gold in New York was moved to UBS Bank in Zurich. Marcos and Khashoggi set about to create Five Star Trust in 1983 as a means to create a vehicle to use the Philippine wealth to create and funnel fungible assets. In 1989, Five Star Trust was officially established in the Isle of Man by a Houston-based attorney who was a close friend of the Bush family.

The CIA's explanation of its decision to withhold the release the two cables was partly based on the use of cryptonyms–artificial words used as substitutes for the actual name or identity of a "person, organization, or project." The CIA statement continues: "when obtained and matched with other information, a cryptonym possesses a great deal of meaning for those who are able to fit it into the proper cognitive framework." The denial of Horn's FOIA request also stated that the two responsive documents could "reveal the existence or location of covert CIA field installations in multiple foreign countries." In addition, the CIA stated that release of the documents in question would "reveal specific and sensitive subjects in which the CIA is or was interested." Finally, disclosure of the requested documents was denied because of "foreign relations." The agency emphasized that, "in carrying out its legally authorized intelligence activities, the CIA engages in activities that if known by foreign nations, could reasonably be expected to cause serious damage to U.S. relations with affected or interested nations."

The story of this corruption is nothing new. What is new is the purpose. The use of this old and covert tranche of money for a special Bush operation to deny the American people their right to a free and fair vote was not the typical illegal sale of arms to a terrorist nation, the overthrow of a foreign government, or the payment of bribes to foreign potentates. It was a high crime in every constitutional sense. The target was the American political system and not just in 2004 but also in 2003, 2002, and 2000. The scandal goes right up to the White House and the Governor's Mansion in Tallahassee. It involves an extremely crooked Florida national politician and other Florida state government officials. And, as with all modern American political scandals, we have at least one dead body, a number of whistleblowers and anonymous "Deep Throats," powerful but corrupt politicians, counterfeit and real documents, con men, and a money trail tied to off-shore foreign bank accounts.

People may wonder why a group of intelligence insiders would come forward to a non-major media outlet with such tantalizing information at this time. The corporate-beholden media cannot be trusted to report such a news story. A common theme from all the intelligence and ex-intelligence officials with whom I have communicated is that George W. Bush made a major mistake in attacking and purging the clandestine service of the CIA. The "agency," which extends far beyond the confines of Langley, Virginia, is having its revenge. It has willingly exposed a portion of a traditional clandestine CIA money route to expose the vote scam that was used to ensure Bush's election.

The clues, for example, the bogus check, were conveyed to us as exactly that—clues. Those markers pointed to the illegal nature of the covert money flows. The connections between NASA contracts, Texas, and Florida were additional clues to one of the major sources of the money used for the vote rigging. There were a number of roads that led to the same destination. But that is the nature of covert intelligence. Some patriotic and brave people, who have served in silence for a number of decades, have chosen their country over a corrupt family and administration. It is now time for the constitutional process to begin. Rectification of the criminal conspiracy that denied John Kerry and John Edwards the White House must begin in Ohio, and extend to Florida, California, Texas, Georgia, and other states where votes were flipped by computers from the Kerry to the Bush column. Past elections must also be investigated and those who were done in by this fraud, namely, people like Max Cleland, Gray Davis, Al Gore, and others must also have their day in court.

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and syndicated columnist. He is the author of "Jaded Tasks: Big Oil, Black Ops & Brass Plates."

This is from the December 8, 2004 program of Countdown with Keith Olbermann.

Report On Conyers Hearing On Voting Irregularities In Ohio (9 MB)
Mirror

According to the CSPAN Website, the congressional hearing with Rep Conyers will be broadcast on CSPAN.

Many thanks to those of you who emailed and called CSPAN to help make this possible. (I forgot to remind you yesterday, but I guess you guys had it under control :-)

My cable company, Comcast, seems to think it's more important to give me another home shopping channel than broadcast my country's government to me (oh yes, they'll be hearing from me), so I can't tape it. So that means it's up to one of you to hack the stream or grab it with your pvr or camera or vhs player for me to be able to store it in my archive.

At least we can all watch it online on CSPAN. I would much rather have a copy that I can study and analyze in the future.

Talk soon,

lisa

2004 VOTE
Review of Ohio Balloting
Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Cmte., hosts a forum on the election in Ohio and possible irregularities in the vote itself and the subsequent counting of ballots. Many other Congressmen and interest group representatives take part in this event.

This just in from the Democratic Party.

They are still beating around the Shrub a bit. Because, of course, if Kerry won Ohio, it would overturn the election.

Democratic News
---------------
Dear Lisa,

Your response to Washington Governor candidate Christine Gregoire's plea for help
has been overwhelming. Thanks to your generosity, the recount in Washington will now
go forward. With only 42 votes separating Gregoire and her Republican opponent,
today we can ensure that every ballot is accurately counted. This could not have
happened without you.

Your incredible grassroots support is vital to our continued fight to ensure a full
and legitimate count of every single vote in this election and future elections. In
addition to our strong commitment to the recount in Washington State, the Democratic
Party has empowered the Ohio Democratic Party to represent us as our official
observer during the recount. We will make sure that every vote in Ohio is counted.

But we aren't stopping there. After consulting with our Voting Rights Institute
staff, Voting Protection Coordinators, Ohio legal team, Party activists, supporters,
elected officials, and others, and after reviewing available information, the
Democratic National Committee has decided to conduct a thorough investigation of key
election issues arising from the conduct of the 2004 general election in Ohio.

This investigative study will address the legitimate questions and concerns that
have been raised in Ohio and will develop factual information that will be
critically important in crafting further key election reforms. This project seeks to
answer such questions as:

* Why did so many people have to wait in line in certain Ohio precincts and not
others?

* Why weren't there enough machines in some counties and not others?

* Why were so many Ohioans forced to cast provisional ballots?

We will find answers to help implement and advocate reforms in the future.

Let me be clear. We do not expect either the recount in Ohio or our investigation to
overturn the results of this election. But both are vital to protecting every
American's voting rights in future elections. And the Democratic Party will never
waver when it comes to upholding this sacred trust.

Thank you again for your incredible support.

Sincerely,
Terry McAuliffe
Chairman

Many of you have requested a podcast of my blog. I didn't understand what a podcast was, at first, so I couldn't tell you yes or no about it. But now I get it, and it sounds like something that would be easy to produce that would be a lot of fun ad kind of be perfectly suited for my content.

This is great timing too because I was already going to put up some MP3s of my old radio shows when I was on Free Radio Berkeley in 1995. Now I can slice up the shows into my podcasts.

I never thought about it before (an mp3 version of my blog), but now I can't wait.

Sure, you've heard all this information before. But it is pretty incredible. The foxes are guarding the hen houses big time.
from the google cache of http://www.retrovsmetro.org/blog/.

Diebold
Diebold ranks third behind ES&S and Sequoia. Diebold manufactures an array of machines including ATM machines, ticket machines, and the like, and notably, only its voting machines fail to provide an auditable paper trail. CEO Wally O'Dell, a Bush Pioneer who has visited Bush at the Crawford Ranch, promised to deliver Ohio for Bush in 2004, and indeed he did. O'Dell sponsored a $600,000 fundraiser in his home for Dick Cheney (and attended by Cheney) in July 2003. Director WR "Tim" Timken is also a Bush Pioneer, and has donated over a million dollars to the Republican party since 1991.

Diebold is arguably the most political of the voting machine companies; its directors and corporate officers are staunch GOP contributors, including Louis Bockius III, Donald Gant and Eric Roorda. Since 2000, the company has donated $170,000 to the Republican National State Elections Committee. All of the $240,000 donated by Diebold's directors and chief officers to political campaigns since 1998 has gone to GOP candidates or the party.

SIAC
Admiral Bill Owens, a top Republican Party donor, military aide to Dick Cheney and former Defense Secretary, is a former CEO of SIAC. On the board: Robert Gates, former CIA director, George H.W. Bush's Deputy National Security Advisor and head of the George Bush School of Business. Owens and Gates are now on the Board of VoteHere, another voting machine company with strong ties to the defense industry.

Populex
Populex is responsible for Illinois' e-voting system. Frank Carlucci, former CIA Director, is on its Advisory Board. Carlucci is a business partner of G H W Bush, and head of the Carlyle Group.

Accenture
Spun off from Arthur Anderson in the wake of that nasty Enron scandal, Accenture reportedly has the exclusive government contract to provide electronic voting for the military. Accenture got into the voting biz when it acquired Election.com, a company funded by Saudi money. Accenture's biggest business partner is Halliburton.

This just in from t r u t h o u t
(See the entire article under "More" below, including a letter to Kenneth Blackwell from Rep. John Conyers, Jr., Rep. Melvin Watt, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, and Rep. Tammy Baldwin.

Democratic Representative John Conyers, Jr. of Michigan, ranking Minority member of the House Judiciary Committee, will hold a hearing on Wednesday 08 December 2004 to investigate allegations of vote fraud and irregularities in Ohio during the 2004 Presidential election. The hearing is slated to begin at 10:00 a.m. EST in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington DC...

Any who wish to see this hearing receive wide attention should contact their Senators and Representatives and ask that they attend. Furthermore, any who wish to see this hearing receive wide attention should contact the television network C-SPAN and ask them to broadcast the event in its entirety. C-SPAN accepts suggestions for events to be broadcast at events@c-span.org. The network can also be contacted via telephone at (202) 737-3220.

I just sent the following letter:

Hi guys,

Democratic Representative John Conyers, Jr. of Michigan, ranking Minority member of the House Judiciary Committee, will hold a hearing on Wednesday 08 December 2004 to investigate allegations of vote fraud and irregularities in Ohio during the 2004 Presidential election. The hearing is slated to begin at 10:00 a.m. EST in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington DC.

I hope you will be broadcasting this event in its entirety.

Thanks,

Lisa Rein

Starting Monday morning, when their offices open, I'll be calling every day to say the same thing the letter does. Hope you do the same. (I'll post a reminder here, no worries :-)

Thanks!

lisa

Here is the full text of the entire article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/120404W.shtml

Editor’s Note | Any who wish to see this hearing receive wide attention should contact their Senators and Representatives and ask that they attend. Furthermore, any who wish to see this hearing receive wide attention should contact the television network C-SPAN and ask them to broadcast the event in its entirety. C-SPAN accepts suggestions for events to be broadcast at events@c-span.org. The network can also be contacted via telephone at (202) 737-3220. - wrp

Also see below:
Letter from House Committee on the Judiciary to Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell •

Conyers to Hold Hearings on Ohio Vote Fraud
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Report

Friday 03 December 2004

Democratic Representative John Conyers, Jr. of Michigan, ranking Minority member of the House Judiciary Committee, will hold a hearing on Wednesday 08 December 2004 to investigate allegations of vote fraud and irregularities in Ohio during the 2004 Presidential election. The hearing is slated to begin at 10:00 a.m. EST in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington DC.

Democratic Representatives Melvin Watt and Robert Scott will also be centrally involved with the hearing. Rev. Jesse Jackson will be in attendance, along with Ralph Neas (President, People for the American Way), Jon Greenbaum (Director, Voting Rights Project, Lawyers Committee For Civil Rights Under Law), Ellie Smeal (Executive Director, The Feminist Majority), Bob Fitrakis ( The Free Press), Cliff Arnebeck (Arnebeck Associates), John Bonifaz (General Counsel, National Voting Institute), Steve Rosenfeld (Producer, Air America Radio), and Shawnta Walcott (Communications Director, Zogby International). Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell has been invited to attend.

The term ‘hearing’ is technically not accurate in this matter, as Conyers and his fellow Representatives will be holding this forum without the blessing of the Republican Majority leader of the Judiciary Committee. Staffers from the Minority office at the Judiciary Committee describe the event as a ‘Members Briefing.’ That having been said, this event will be a hearing by every meaningful definition of the word. Expert testimony will be offered, and a good deal of data on potential fraud previously unreported to the public will be discussed and examined at length.

The hearing came together thanks to a confluence of events, and through the work of like-minded individuals who are deeply concerned about the allegations of vote fraud in the Ohio Presidential election. Tim Carpenter and Kevin Spidel, along with other members of Progressive Democrats of America, went to Washington DC to speak with the Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee about the need for an investigation into these allegations. They found Rep. Conyers, his fellow Judiciary Democrats, and their staffers already working on assembling such an investigation.

The core of what Conyers and his fellow Minority members will be discussing at this hearing can be found in the letter below, which was sent by the Minority office to Ohio Secretary of State Blackwell on 02 December. In the letter, Conyers, along with Reps. Watt, Nadler and Baldwin, outline a broad and detailed series of questions and concerns about the manner in which the Ohio election took place.

I will be traveling to Washington DC to begin t r u t h o u t coverage of this event on Tuesday night, and we will keep you posted on further developments as they arise.

William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and international bestseller of two books - 'War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You To Know' and 'The Greatest Sedition Is Silence.'

Go to Original

One Hundred Eighth Congress
Congress of the United States
House of Representatives
Committee on the Judiciary
2138 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington DC 20515-6216
(202) 225-3951

December 2, 2004

The Honorable J. Kenneth Blackwell
Ohio Secretary of State
180 East Broad Street, 16th Floor
Columbus, OH 43215

Dear Secretary Blackwell:

We write to request your assistance with our ongoing investigation of election irregularities in the 2004 Presidential election. As you may be aware, the Government Accountability Office has agreed to undertake a systematic and comprehensive review of election irregularities throughout the nation. As a separate matter, we have requested that the House Judiciary Committee Democratic staff undertake a thorough review of each and every specific allegation of election irregularities received by our offices.

Collectively, we are concerned that these complaints constitute a troubled portrait of a one-two punch that may well have altered and suppressed votes, particularly minority and Democratic votes. First, it appears there were substantial irregularities in vote tallies. It is unclear whether these apparent errors were the result of machine malfunctions or fraud.

Second, it appears that a series of actions of government and non-government officials may have worked to frustrate minority voters. Consistent and widespread reports indicate a lack of voting machines in urban, minority and Democratic areas, and a surplus of such machines in Republican, white and rural areas. As a result, minority voters were discouraged from voting by lines that were in excess of eight hours long. Many of these voters were also apparently victims of a campaign of deception, where flyers and calls would direct them to the wrong polling place. Once at that polling place, after waiting for hours in line, many of these voters were provided provisional ballots after learning they were at the wrong location. These ballots were not counted in many jurisdictions because of a directive issued by some election officials, such as yourself.

We are sure you agree with us that regardless of the outcome of the election, it is imperative that we examine any and all factors that may have led to voting irregularities and any failure of votes to be properly counted. Toward that end, we ask you to respond to the following allegations:

I. Counting Irregularities

A. Warren County Lockdown – On election night, Warren County locked down its administration building and barred reporters from observing the counting. When that decision was questioned, County officials claimed they were responding to a terrorist threat that ranked a “10" on a scale of 1 to 10, and that this information was received from an FBI agent. Despite repeated requests, County officials have declined to name that agent, however, and the FBI has stated that they had no information about a terror threat in Warren County. Your office has stated that it does not know of any other county that took these drastic measures.

In addition to these contradictions, Warren County officials have given conflicting accounts of when the decision was made to lock down the building. While the County Commissioner has stated that the decision to lockdown the building was made during an October 28 closed-door meeting, emailed memos – dated October 25 and 26 – indicate that preparations for the lockdown were already underway.

This lockdown must be viewed in the context of the aberrational results in Warren County. In the 2000 Presidential election, the Democratic Presidential candidate, Al Gore, stopped running television commercials and pulled resources out of Ohio weeks before the election. He won 28% of the vote in Warren County. In 2004, the Democratic Presidential candidate, John Kerry, fiercely contested Ohio and independent groups put considerable resources into getting out the Democratic vote. Moreover, unlike in 2000, independent candidate Ralph Nader was not on the Ohio ballot in 2004. Yet, the tallies reflect John Kerry receiving exactly the same percentage in Warren County as Gore received, 28%.

We hope you agree that transparent election procedures are vital to public confidence in electoral results. Moreover, such aberrant procedures only create suspicion and doubt that the counting of votes was manipulated. As part of your decision to certify the election, we hope you have investigated these concerns and found them without merit. To assist us in reaching a similar conclusion, we ask the following:

1. Have you, in fact, conducted an investigation of the lockdown? What procedures have you or would you recommend be put into place to avoid a recurrence of this situation?

2. Have you ascertained whether County officials were advised of terrorist activity by an FBI agent and, if so, the identity of that agent?

3. If County officials were not advised of terrorist activity by an FBI agent, have you inquired as to why they misrepresented this fact? If the lockdown was not as a response to a terrorist threat, why did it take place? Did any manipulation of vote tallies occur?

B. Perry County Election Counting Discrepancies – The House Judiciary Committee Democratic staff has received information indicating discrepancies in vote tabulations in Perry County. For example, the sign-in book for the Reading S precinct indicates that approximately 360 voters cast ballots in that precinct. In the same precinct, the sign-in book indicates that there were 33 absentee votes cast. In sum, this would appear to mean that fewer than 400 total votes were cast in that precinct. Yet, the precinct’s official tallies indicate that 489 votes were cast. In addition, some voters’ names have two ballot stub numbers listed next to their entries creating the appearance that voters were allowed to cast more than one ballot.

In another precinct, W Lexington G AB, 350 voters are registered according to the County’s initial tallies. Yet, 434 voters cast ballots. As the tallies indicate, this would be an impossible 124% voter turnout. The breakdown on election night was initially reported to be 174 votes for Bush, and 246 votes for Kerry. We are advised that the Perry County Board of Elections has since issued a correction claiming that, due to a computer error, some votes were counted twice. We are advised that the new tallies state that only 224 people voted, and the tally is 90 votes for Bush and 127 votes for Kerry. This would make it appear that virtually every ballot was counted twice, which seems improbable.

In Monroe Township, Precinct AAV, we are advised that 266 voters signed in to vote on election day, yet the Perry County Board of Elections is reporting that 393 votes were cast in that precinct, a difference of 133 votes.

4. Why does it appear that there are more votes than voters in the Reading S precinct of Perry County?

5. What is the explanation for the fluctuating results in the W Lexington AB precinct?

6. Why does it appear that there are more votes than voters in the Monroe Township precinct AAV?

C. Perry County Registration Peculiarities

In Perry County, there appears to be an extraordinarily high level voter registration, 91%; yet a substantial number of these voters have never voted and have no signature on file. Of the voters that are registered in Perry County an extraordinarily large number of voters are listed as having registered in 1977, a year in which there were no federal elections. Of these an exceptional number are listed as having registered on the exact same day: in total, 3,100 voters apparently registered in Perry County on November 8, 1977.

7. Please explain why there is such a high percentage of voters in this County who have never voted and do not have signatures on file. Also, please help us understand why such a high number of voters in this County are shown as having registered on the same day in 1977.

D. Unusual Results in Butler County

In Butler County, a Democratic Candidate for State Supreme Court, C. Ellen Connally received 59,532 votes. In contrast, the Kerry-Edwards ticket received only 54,185 votes, 5,000 less than the State Supreme Court candidate. Additionally, the victorious Republican candidate for State Supreme Court received approximately 40,000 less votes than the Bush-Cheney ticket. Further, Connally received 10,000 or more votes in excess of Kerry’s total number of votes in five counties, and 5,000 more votes in excess of Kerry’s total in ten others.

It must also be noted that Republican judicial candidates were reportedly “awash in cash,” with more than $1.4 million and were also supported by independent expenditures by the Ohio Chamber of Commerce.

While you may have found an explanation for these bizarre results, it appears to be wildly implausible that 5,000 voters waited in line to cast a vote for an underfunded Democratic Supreme Court candidate and then declined to cast a vote for the most well-funded Democratic Presidential campaign in history. We would appreciate an answer to the following:

8. Have you examined how an underfunded Democratic State Supreme Court candidate could receive so many more votes in Butler County than the Kerry-Edwards ticket? If so, could you provide us with the results of your examination? Is there any precedent in Ohio for a downballot candidate receiving on a percentage or absolute basis so many more votes than the Presidential candidate of the same party in this or any other presidential election? Please let us know if any other County in Ohio registered such a disparity on a percentage or absolute basis.

E. Unusual Results in Cuyahoga County

Precincts in Cleveland have reported an incredibly high number of votes for third party candidates who have historically received only a handful of votes from these urban areas. For example, precinct 4F in the 4th Ward cast 290 votes for Kerry, 21 for Bush, and 215 for Constitution Party candidate Michael Peroutka. In 2000, the same precinct cast less than 8 votes for all third party candidates combined.

This pattern is found in at least 10 precincts through throughout Cleveland in 2004, awarding hundreds of unlikely votes to the third party candidate. Notably, these precincts share more than a strong Democratic history: the use of a punch card ballot. In light of these highly unlikely results, we would like to know the following:

9. Have you investigated whether the punch card system used in Cuyahoga County led to voters accidentally voting for third party candidates instead of the Democratic candidate they intended? If so, what were the results? Has a third party candidate ever received such a high percentage of votes in these precincts.

10. Have you found similar problems in other counties? Have you found similar problems with other voting methods?

F. Spoiled Ballots

According to post election canvassing, many ballots were cast without any valid selection for president. For example, two precincts in Montgomery County had an undervote rate of over 25% each – accounting for nearly 6,000 voters who stood in line to vote, but purportedly declined to vote for president. This is in stark contrast to the 2% of undervoting county-wide. Disturbingly, predominantly Democratic precincts had 75% more undervotes than those that were predominantly Republican. It is inconceivable to us that such a large number of people supposedly did not have a preference for president in such a controversial and highly contested election.

Considering that an estimated 93,000 ballots were spoiled across Ohio, we would like to know the following:

11. How many of those spoiled ballots were of the punch card or optical scan format and could therefore be examined in a recount?

12. Of those votes that have a paper trail, how many votes for president were undercounted, or showed no preference for president? How many were overcounted, or selected more than one candidate for president? How many other ballots had an indeterminate preference?

13. Of the total 93,000 spoiled ballots, how many were from predominantly Democratic precincts? How many were from minority-majority precincts?

14. Are you taking steps to ensure that there will be a paper trail for all votes before the 2006 elections so that spoiled ballots can be individually re-examined?

G. Franklin County Overvote – On election day, a computerized voting machine in ward 1B in the Gahanna precinct of Franklin County recorded a total of 4,258 votes for President Bush and 260 votes for Democratic challenger, John Kerry. However, there are only 800 registered voters in that Gahanna precinct, and only 638 people cast votes at the New Life Church polling site. It was since discovered that a computer glitch resulted in the recording of 3,893 extra votes for President George W. Bush.

Fortunately, this glitch was caught and the numbers were adjusted to show President Bush’s true vote count at 365 votes to Senator Kerry’s 260 votes. However, many questions remain as to whether this kind of malfunction happened in other areas of Ohio. To help us clarify this issue, we request that you answer the following:

15. How was it discovered that this computer glitch occurred?

16. What procedures were employed to alert other counties upon the discovery of the malfunction?

17. Can you be absolutely certain that this particular malfunction did not occur in other counties in Ohio during the 2004 Presidential election? How?

18. What is being done to ensure that this type of malfunction does not happen again in the future?

H. Miami County Vote Discrepancy – In Miami County, with 100% of the precincts reporting on Wednesday, November 3, 2004, President Bush had received 20,807 votes, or 65.80% of the vote, and Senator Kerry had received 10,724 votes, or 33.92% of the vote. Miami reported 31,620 voters. Inexplicably, nearly 19,000 new ballots were added after all precincts reported, boosting President Bush’s vote count to 33,039, or 65.77%, while Senator Kerry’s vote percentage stayed exactly the same to three one-hundredths of a percentage point at 33.92%.

Roger Kearney of Rhombus Technologies, Ltd., the reporting company responsible for vote results of Miami County, has stated that the problem was not with his reporting and that the additional 19,000 votes came before 100% of the precincts were in. However, this does not explain how the vote count could change for President Bush, but not for Senator Kerry, after 19,000 new votes were added to the roster. To help us better understand this anomaly, we request that you answer the following:

19. What is your explanation as to the statistical anomaly that showed virtually identical ratios after the final 20-40% of the vote came in? In your judgment, how could the vote count in this County have changed for President Bush, but not for Senator Kerry, after 19,000 new votes were added to the roster?

20. Are you aware of any pending investigations into this matter?

I. Mahoning County Machine Problems – In Mahoning County, numerous voters reported that when they attempted to vote for John Kerry, the vote showed up as a vote for George Bush. This was reported by numerous voters and continued despite numerous attempts to correct their vote.

21. Please let us know if you have conducted any investigation or inquiry of machine voting problems in the state, including the above described problems in Mahoning County, and the results of this investigation or inquiry.

II. Procedural Irregularities

A. Machine Shortages

Throughout predominately Democratic areas in Ohio on election day, there were reports of long lines caused by inadequate numbers of voting machines. Evidence introduced in public hearings indicates that 68 machines in Franklin County were never deployed for voters, despite long lines for voters at that county, with some voters waiting from two to seven hours to cast their vote. The Franklin County Board of Elections reported that 68 voting machines were never placed on election day, and Franklin County BOE Director Matt Damschroder admitted on November 19, 2004 that 77 machines malfunctioned on Election Day. It has come to our attention that a county purchasing official who was on the line with Ward Moving and Storage Company, documented only 2,741 voting machines delivered through the November 2 election day. However, Franklin County’s records reveal that they had 2,866 “machines available” on election day. This would mean that amid the two to seven hour waits in the inner city of Columbus, at least 125 machines remained unused on Election Day.

Franklin County’s machine allocation report clearly states the number of machines that were placed “By Close of Polls.” However, questions remain as to where these machines were placed and who had access to them throughout the day. Therefore, what matters is not how many voting machines were operating at the end of the day, but rather how many were there to service the people during the morning and noon rush hours.

An analysis revealed a pattern of providing fewer machines to the Democratic city of Columbus, and more machines to the primarily Republican suburbs. At seven out of eight polling places, observers counted only three voting machines per location. According to the presiding judge at one polling site located at the Columbus Model Neighborhood facility at 1393 E. Broad St., there had been five machines during the 2004 primary. Moreover, at Douglas Elementary School, there had been four machines during the spring primary. In one Ohio voting precinct serving students from Kenyon College, some voters were required to wait more than eight hours to vote. There were reportedly only two voting machines at that precinct. The House Judiciary Committee staff has received first hand information confirming these reports.

Additionally, it appears that in a number of locations, polling places were moved from large locations, such as gyms, where voters could comfortably wait inside to vote to smaller locations where voters were required to wait in the rain. We would appreciate answers to the following:

22. How much funding did Ohio receive from the federal government for voting machines?

23. What criteria were used to distribute those new machines?

24. Were counties given estimates or assurances as to how many new voting machines they would receive? How does this number compare to how many machines were actually received?

25. What procedures were in place to ensure that the voting machines were properly allocated throughout Franklin and other counties? What changes would you recommend be made to insure there is a more equitable allocation of machines in the future?

B. Invalidated Provisional Ballots

As you know, just weeks before the 2004 Presidential election, you issued a directive to county election officials saying they are allowed to count provisional ballots only from voters who go to the correct precinct for their home address. At the same time, it has been reported that fraudulent flyers were being circulated on official-looking letterhead telling voters the wrong place to vote, phone calls were placed incorrectly informing voters that their polling place had changed, “door-hangers” telling African-American voters to go to the wrong precinct, and election workers sent voters to the wrong precinct. In other areas, precinct workers refused to give any voter a provisional ballot. And in at least one precinct, election judges told voters that they may validly cast their ballot in any precinct, leading to any number of disqualified provisional ballots.

In Hamilton County, officials have carried this problematic and controversial directive to a ludicrous extreme: they are refusing to count provisional ballots cast at the correct polling place if they were cast at the wrong table in that polling place. It seems that some polling places contained multiple precincts which were located at different tables. Now, 400 such voters in Hamilton county alone will be disenfranchised as a result of your directive.

26. Have you directed Hamilton County and all other counties not to disqualify provisional ballots cast at the correct polling place simply because they were cast at the wrong precinct table?

27. While many election workers received your directive that voters may cast ballots only in their own precincts, some did not. How did you inform your workers, and the public, that their vote would not be counted if cast in the wrong precinct? How many votes were lost due to election workers telling voters they may vote at any precinct, in direct violation of your ruling?

28. Your directive was exploited by those who intentionally misled voters about their correct polling place, and multiplied the number of provisional ballots found invalid. What steps have you or other officials in Ohio taken to investigate these criminal acts? Has anyone been referred for prosecution? If so, what is the status of their cases?

29. How many provisional ballots were filed in the presidential election in Ohio? How many were ultimately found to be valid and counted? What were the various reasons that these ballots were not counted, and how many ballots fall into each of these categories? Please break down the foregoing by County if possible.

C. Directive to Reject Voter Registration Forms Not Printed on White, Uncoated Paper of Not Less Than 80 lb Text Weight

On September 7, you issued a directive to county boards of elections commanding such boards to reject voter registration forms not “printed on white, uncoated paper of not less than 80 lb. text weight.” Instead, the county boards were to follow a confusing procedure where the voter registration form would be treated as an application for a form and a new blank form would be sent to the voter. While you reversed this directive, you did not do so until September 28. In the interim, a number of counties followed this directive and rejected otherwise valid voter registration forms. There appears to be some further confusion about the revision of this order which resulted in some counties being advised of the change by the news media.

30. How did you notify county boards of elections of your initial September 7 directive?

31. How did you notify county boards of elections of your September 28 decision to revise that directive?

32. Have you conducted an investigation to determine how many registration forms were rejected as a result of your September 7 directive? If so, how many?

33. Have you conducted an investigation to determine how many voters who had their otherwise valid forms rejected as a result of your September 7 directive subsequently failed to re-register? If so, how many?

34. Have you conducted an investigation to determine how many of those voters showed up who had their otherwise valid forms rejected to vote on election day and were turned away? If so, how many?

We await your prompt reply. To the extent any questions relate to information not available to you, please pass on such questions to the appropriate election board or other official. Please respond to 2142 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515 by December 10. If you need more time to investigate and respond to some of these inquiries, we would welcome a partial response by that date and a complete response within a reasonable period of time thereafter. If you have any questions about this inquiry, please contact Perry Apelbaum or Ted Kalo of the House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff at (202) 225-6504.

Sincerely,

Rep. John Conyers, Jr.
Rep. Melvin Watt
Rep. Jerrold Nadler
Rep. Tammy Baldwin

This is from the November 30, 2004 program of "Countdown with Keith Olbermann."

It's available in one big 18 MB file and two smaller files.

Report On Ohio Election and Interview with Jesse Jackson

This is the second of a series of programs covering the Jesse Jackson vs. Kenneth Blackwell developments. Kenneth Blackwell's interview available here.

This transcript is word for word and unabridged.

11-30-04 - Transcript

It is four weeks to the day since the general election here turned George W. Bush to the White House for a second term. Tomorrow will be four weeks since John Kerry conceded. Tomorrow could also be, although the odds may be approximated at a billion to one, the day an Ohio Supreme Court Justice could change all that.

As he concluded his trip through Ohio, Jesse Jackson said its Supreme Court should consider setting aside the outcome there. Tomorrow, a political advocacy group plans to make a similar request directly to that Supreme Court. The Boston-based Alliance For Democracy is planning to file a "Contest of Election" tomorrow. The request requires a single Ohio Supreme Court Justice to either let the election stand, declare another winner, or throw the whole thing out.

The loser of any such decision can appeal to the full court, which, in Ohio, consists of five Republicans and two Democrats.

The appeal and recount process in Ohio was going along without too many people noticing until Reverend Jesse Jackson arrived in Colombus on Sunday. He called for a Federal Investigation of the vote count. He used the word "fraud." Today, he wrote that the election was "marred by intolerable and often partisan irregularities and discrepancies." And last night he was blasted, on this program, by Ohio's Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, who insulted him on eight separate occasions although I only asked Secretary Blackwell about Reverend Jackson once.

Reverend Jackson joins us now from Philadelphia.

Olbermann: Good evening sir. Thank you for your time.

Jackson: How are you?

Olbermann: Well, I'm interested in your answers to a series of questions on this subject. There had literally been no official response to the possibility of a recount from any major Republican organization until you went to Ohio. And then yesterday there's a press release calling you a professional publicity hound, and Secretary Blackwell on this show calling you a professional provocateur for hire. And you "ran around the block and tried to get in front of a parade that was already on the march." What exactly did you do in Ohio that stirred all this up?

Jackson: Well, this is November the 30th, and the election in Ohio has not been certified yet. Why has it not been certified? We know that even before the election started, Mr. Blackwell sought to nullify 30,000 votes, saying that they were on the wrong weight of paper. We know that last spring, people could vote in the state, a provisional vote, in their county. He changed that process to voting by precinct. In the middle of the..the balloting places changed and, at the time, it led to much confusion. So you have 155,000 provisional ballots that are in confusion. You have 92,000 votes that are yet to be counted. You have an interesting case in Warren, Ohio, (sp?) where they actually used Homeland Security to lock the press out and to lock independent observers out.

Another thing that also I found striking, was that Ellen Connally, an african-american running for Supreme Court in Cayahoga County, where Cleveland is, carried 120,000 more votes than she had down around Hamilton county and Claremont county (sp?) in the other part of Ohio, she had 190,000 more votes than Kerry in 15 counties.

And you had electronic machines where there are questions about their authenticity. We need a thorough, federal investigation, and then, if the information warrants it, we should then have a recount. And those who ran this election should be recused from managing their own investigation.

Olbermann: The Republicans did make seemingly one unanswerable point on this, and you and others may be critical of the Ohio count, but as the Baltimore Sun quoted John Kerry's chief election lawyer in Ohio as saying "Our eyes have been wide open, and, to this date, we have found no evidence of confirmed election fraud." If there has been fraud, where are the Democrats in response to it?

Jackson: Well, I'm amazed frankly at the silence, really, of Senator Kerry and the Democratic Party. They promised that we would stay in the fight until every vote was counted. They appear not to have been acting aggressively, demanding that real questions be answered. For example, electronic machines. In this case, we have private machines where there is no audit trail. We deserve an open, fair process. Why would we allow them to shift the rules in provisional balloting from county to precinct. The reality is that in Cayahoga county Cleveland and Cincinatti, they've eliminated almost a third of the voters on technicalities. Like 50,000 voters. The 130,000 vote margin of Mr. Bush over Mr. Kerry -- we need to know, through forensic computer analysts, in fact, was there tampering. We need to know. And right now, we do not know.

Olbermann: You said that last Friday night you spoke to John Kerry, and you quoted him as telling you that he was in favor of the investigations of the Ohio vote. Where is he? Why did he concede when he did? And why does the Democratic Party appear to be trying to fly under the radar in terms of Ohio?

Jackson: He conceded in my judgement much, much to quickly, because he conceded before a count was in. And now he says he has some lawyers on the ground, but his lawyers ought to be challenging. Were it not for the Green party and the Libertarians, we would not even have standing in the court of finding out what happened. You look how they have 155,000 provisional ballots uncounted. Look at 92,000 ballots unprocessed. Look at what happened in Warren, Ohio. You look at the electronic voting process where there may have been tampering. We do not know. These numbers are beginning to move real fast. Again, I repeat, when I begin to think about Ellen Connally, and the gap where Kerry got 120,000 more votes than she got in Cayahoga county, then in 15 other counties, she got 190,000 votes less. To me, that's very suggestive. It deserves a thorough investigation.

Olbermann: There are degrees of what could have caused that and the other irregularities that you refer to. On one end of the spectrum, as Secretary Blackwell put it last night, "It's a free and fair election" without significant problems. In the middle, a lot of human and technical mistakes, but they are mostly errors of omission, not errors of comission. At the other end, would be out and out electoral fraud. Where do you stand on that spectrum? Which one of those things do you think happened?

Jackson: It's interesting that Mr. Blackwell is the co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign, yet he is the chief person in charge of the process. Now, it seems to me to be unfair for the man who owns the team to also be the chief umpire at game seven of the world series. That somehow that taints the process.
But this matter has not been approached. This Mr. Blackwell in Ohio. Katherine Harris in Florida -- those who run the process should not in fact be an advocate for one party or the other. Which raises another question: We really do need a constitutionally federally protected right to vote. We should in fact have federal supervision over federal elections. We do not have, although people think we have, the constitutional federally protected right to vote. We deserve to move beyond just states rights on national elections.

Olbermann: Well let me see if I can pin you down now on just that part of the question. Do you think there was fraud in Ohio?

Jackson: Well I think so. But we will only know if there is a thorough investigation. There are some huge number gaps here. Why is it that 28 days after the election it has not yet been certified? That's a long time to wait.

Olbermann: Reverend Jesse Jackson, Founder and President of the Rainbow Push Coalition, twice candidate for the Democratic nomination for President. Thanks for your time tonight sir. We appreciate it.

Jackson: Thank you sir.

This is from the November 29, 2004 program of "Countdown with Keith Olbermann."

It's available in one big 23 MB file and two smaller files.

Report On Ohio Election and Interview with Kenneth Blackwell
(Mirror)

This is the first of a series of programs covering the Jesse Jackson vs. Kenneth Blackwell developments. Jesse's interview w/Olbermann the following just went up too.

This transcript is word for word and unabridged.

11-29-04 - Transcript

The Ohio recount now has cousins out west. The Green and Libertarian parties today filed for recounts in Nevada and New Mexico. The complaints are based largely on the absence of paper trails for electronic voting in each state.

Back at the ranch, the word "fraud" has been used on the record by a former democratic presidential candidate about the voting four weeks ago, tomorrow, in Ohio. In turn, the man who used the word was described by local republican leaders as a "professional publicity hound."

Reverend Jesse Jackson spoke this morning in Cincinatti. He had addressed a rally in Columbus yesterday, saying voting irregularities disenfranchised many of Ohio's citizens. He also told reporters "The playing field is uneven. The rules are not public. The goals are not clear."

Cut to live footage of Jesse Jackson:

"We want everybody to vote. And for their vote to count. We can live with winning and losing. We cannot live with fraud and stealing...

Most Americans must know the election in Ohio has not been certified. This is the 28th of November. Twenty-six days later, the election has not been certified because there are patterns of irregularities that are impeding the process."

Back to Olbermann:

While Jackson reiterated the Democratic party line that a different outcome is, at best, an unlikely result of a recount, Jackson had earlier told reporters that he spoke with Senator John Kerry on Friday, and that Kerry "supports the investigation. His lawyers are observing it closely." But the Baltimore Sun quoted Kerry's chief Ohio attorney, Daniel Hoffheimer, as saying "Our eyes are wide open and, to this date, we have found no evidence of confirmed fraud."

Asked why, if Ohio had problems meriting the recount, Senator Kerry had conceded on November 3rd, Jackson was quoted by the Cincinatti Enquirer as saying "Kerry was inclined to believe what he was told. And he was told the election was over. But now we are unearthing information that did not surface at first. I suppose the more information Kerry gets, the more you will hear from him."

Republicans today responded with a news release headlined "Democrats struggle to jusify unneccessary recount." Noting it will cost Ohio tax payers 1 1/2 million dollars and quoting state GOP chairman Bob Bennett as saying "Jackson has a stellar reputation for ignoring the facts and distorting the truth."

The focus of criticism for the Ohio count and legal actions about it, and a recount, is the state's top election official, its Secretary of State, Kenneth Blackwell, who joins us now from Cincinatti.

Olbermann: Secretary Blackwell, thank you for your time tonight.

Blackwell: Thanks for having me Keith.

Olbermann: When the Green and Libertarian parties filed for the recount, I didn't hear anybody in Ohio's government jumping up and down and applauding, but I also didn't hear anybody accusing them of being profession publicity hounds or of ignoring facts. Why the harsh reaction towards the Reverend Jackson?

Blackwell: Keith, I think what happened is that Jesse Jackson ran around the block and tried to get out in front of a parade that was already on the march. We had indicated that Ohio law allows for a recount once the vote has been certified. So the recount is already a determination. You know, so, for him to get out and run around the block and get out in front of the parade probably gives credibility to the charge that, you know, he is a provocateur for hire.

Olbermann: One of his suggestions, and that of some of your critics, has been that there is an attempt to make the window for a recount in Ohio so narrow as to make a recount meaningless. How do respond to that criticism sir?

Blackwell: We are, in fact, abiding by the law, which basically says that once there's a certification, you have five days to ask for a recount. I would anticipate that they will ask for a recount, the two minor party candidates, and they will get it. The fact of the matter is that they are entitled to request a recount. We're entitled to give them a recount. Even though the cost to the taxpayers far exceeds the $120,000 dollars that it will cost the two candidates to ask for one to this count. These are two gentlemen that between them got less than..just a tad more than a quarter of one percent of the vote. They know, the courts know, the people know that they have no way of changing the results as it affects them. They have the standing, not Jesse Jackson, and because Senator Kerry has conceded and has not asked for a recount, he has no standing. I would anticipate that the Electoral College will be held on the 13th of December, and our 20 electorate votes will go to the certified winner.

Olbermann: Then again, as your law gives you the right to certify under the conditions that you mentioned, your laws also say how much a candidate is charged per precinct. It's not like these are the prices being set by candidates.

Blackwell: Oh absolutely. And that's what I said. They are entitled to it under the law. I think the legislature will probably have some work to do. This was a rule that was established in 1956, and the price of ten dollars per precinct was established, you know, back then. They are going to have to make a determination as to whether or not they want to keep at 1956 dollars, or if they really want to have the recount charge reflect the real cost of doing business in the 21st century.

Look Keith, here's the deal. I just heard Jesse Jackson complain about the unfairness and the unevenness of the field. Ohio has a delicately balanced, bi-partisan that counts votes at the local level. I have nothing to do with counting the votes. They're done by the 88 county Boards of Elections. And let me give you a point here to show the duplicity of Jesse Jackson's criticism.

In Franklin county, where Colombus is located, the head of the Board of Elections is an african-american Democrat. Not just any democrat, but the head of the Franklin County Democratic Party. He is overseeing. You know what he said last week? He told Jesse Jackson to stop it. He said "what makes Jesse Jackson think that he would sit quietly and watch the african-american vote be suppressed? Or watch democrat votes be suppressed?

You know, Jesse Jackson is just trying to stir up a hornet's nest. And what I've told people today is that Elvis is dead, and I'm not gonna fret over Jesse Jackson's misinformation and confusion.

Olbermann: As it plays into the recount though sir, are you saying that your office does not anticipate taking any steps to try to prevent a recount in Ohio?

Blackwell: No. We haven't! We've told the two officials..candidates that once we certify on December 6th, they have five days to certify. I mean, to ask for a recount. Once they ask for a recount, we will provide them with a recount. And that's what I've said from the very first indication that they were interested in a recount. Once it was established that they were statewide candidates with standing, our law says that they can ask for a recount. We will regard this as yet another audit of the voting process. The reason it takes us from November the second to December the sixth to certify is because we have a very tedious, very comprehensive process where we audit by precinct, across the state, every vote that was cast to make sure that every vote that was legally cast is counted.

Look, Keith. We have 45,000 square miles of geography in Ohio. 88 counties, and on election day dealing and leading 50,000 poll workers and election officials. They did a great job, and what we are planning to do, in February, in March, is to take a look at how we can improve our system. They reality is that we have 70% of our voters use a punch card system that I tried to change and that bipartisan resistance in the legislature stopped. And so we had the punch card system. We have a system that allows us to manage a free and fair election, free of fraud, free of intimidation, and that's what we delivered on election day, and we're very very proud of it. And we have the most scrutinized election system in the United States, and we have met every test. Every test we have made. And I'm very proud of the 50,000 poll workers and election officials who delivered a free and fair election.

Olbermann: As part of that scrutiny. one of the criticisms regarding the campaign and the election in Ohio that was directed at you personally, that as the state's top election official, it is a conflict of interest, or, minimally, it has the appearance of a conflict of interest for you to have also been the honorary co-chairman of the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign. As Reverend Jackson put it, you may or may not agree with his presence there, but the phrase is certainly interesting: "Mr. Blackwell cannot be both the owner of the team and the umpire." Could those two jobs not be mixed?

Blackwell: Let me tell you. I just told you Keith. We have a bi-partisan system in Ohio where the Hallinan county chairman of the Board of Elections, Tim Berk (Berg?) is also the Democratic chairman of the Democratic Party in that county. The same for Dayton. The Democratic Chairman is the chairman for the Board of Elections in Montgomery county. So I've just given you three counties where Democrat chairmen who were pushing for John Kerry are the chairpersons of the Boards of Elections over our 88 counties. We have a checks and balances system that allows for a bipartisan review, a very transparent system, and Jesse Jackson, let me just tell you, he would like to be the co-Secretary of State for the state of Ohio, but Jesse Jackson has not had the courage or the credibility to run and get elected to "Dog Catcher."

Olbermann: Last question sir. Can you refute or confirm one of the Internet's favorite stories that no one seems to have gotten an answer, that you had a meeting with President Bush on the day of the election in Ohio?

Blackwell: That's just hogwash. Absolutely zero. Not true. And it's the sort of mythology that grows out of, you know, a lot of people with a lot of time on their hands and the imaginations of Jonathan Swift. But it goes with the territory. Like I said, we had 45,000 square miles of geography, 88 counties, board of elections, 50,000 folks that ran a great election on election day. We had a record turnout of voters in Ohio. We had record registration, and I think the facts speak for themselves. Thank you for having me and giving me the opportunity to speak to the truth of the matter.

Olbermann: Kenneth Blackwell. Secretary of State in Ohio. Our thanks for your time tonight sir.

Blackwell: Thank you sir.

You
heard it here first folks -- on the night of the Election. Something fishy is definitely going on in Ohio. Let's hope it's not too late to rectify the situation.

Something's fishy in Ohio
By Jesse Jackson for the Chicago Sun-Times.

Ohio is this election year's Florida. The vote in Ohio decided the presidential race, but it was marred by intolerable, and often partisan, irregularities and discrepancies. U.S. citizens have as much reason as those in Kiev to be concerned that the fix was in. Consider:

In Ohio, a court just ruled there can't be a recount yet, because the vote is not yet counted. It's three weeks after the election, and Ohio still hasn't counted the votes and certified the election. Some 93,000 overvotes and undervotes are not counted; 155,000 provisional ballots are only now being counted. Absentee ballots cast in the two days prior to the election haven't been counted.

Ohio determines the election, but the state has not yet counted the vote. That outrage is made intolerable by the fact that the secretary of state in charge of this operation, Ken Blackwell, holds - like Katherine Harris of Florida's fiasco in 2000 - a dual role: secretary of state with control over voting procedures and co-chair of George Bush's Ohio campaign. Blackwell should recuse himself so that a thorough investigation, count and recount of Ohio's vote can be made.

Blackwell reversed rules on provisional ballots in place in the spring primaries. These allowed voters to cast provisional ballots anywhere in their county, even if they were in the wrong precinct, reflecting the chief rationale for provisional ballots: to ensure that those who went to the wrong place by mistake could have their votes counted. The result of this decision - why does this not surprise? - was to disqualify disproportionately ballots cast in heavily Democratic Cuyahoga County.

Blackwell also permitted the use of electronic machines that provided no paper record. The maker of many of these machines, the head of Diebold Co., promised to deliver Ohio for Bush. In one precinct in Franklin County, an electric voting system gave Bush 3,893 extra votes out of a total of 638 votes cast.

Blackwell also presided over a voting system that resulted in quick, short lines in the dominantly Republican suburbs, and four-hour and longer waiting lines in the inner cities. Wealthy precincts received ample numbers of voting machines and numerous voting places. Democratic precincts received inadequate numbers of machines in too few polling places that were often hard to locate; this caused daylong waits for the very working people who could least afford the time.

In Ohio, as in Florida and Pennsylvania, there was a stark disconnect between the exit polls and the tabulated results, with the former favoring John Kerry and the latter George Bush. The chance of this occurring in these three states, according to Professor Steven Freeman of the University of Pennsylvania, is about 250 million to 1.

In one of dozens of examples, Ellen Connally, an African-American Supreme Court candidate running an underfunded race at the bottom of the ticket, received over 257,000 more votes than Kerry in 37 counties. She ran better than Kerry in the areas of the state where she wasn't known and didn't campaign than she did where she was known and did campaign.

There should be a federal investigation of the vote count in Ohio, with the partisan secretary of state removing himself from the scene.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.suntimes.com/output/jesse/cst-edt-jesse30.html

Something's Fishy in Ohio
By Jesse Jackson
The Chicago Sun-Times

Tuesday 30 November 2004

In the Ukraine, citizens are in the streets protesting what they charge is a fixed election. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell expresses this nation's concern about apparent voting irregularities. The media give the dispute around-the-clock coverage. But in the United States, massive and systemic voter irregularities go unreported and unnoticed.

Ohio is this election year's Florida. The vote in Ohio decided the presidential race, but it was marred by intolerable, and often partisan, irregularities and discrepancies. U.S. citizens have as much reason as those in Kiev to be concerned that the fix was in. Consider:

In Ohio, a court just ruled there can't be a recount yet, because the vote is not yet counted. It's three weeks after the election, and Ohio still hasn't counted the votes and certified the election. Some 93,000 overvotes and undervotes are not counted; 155,000 provisional ballots are only now being counted. Absentee ballots cast in the two days prior to the election haven't been counted.

Ohio determines the election, but the state has not yet counted the vote. That outrage is made intolerable by the fact that the secretary of state in charge of this operation, Ken Blackwell, holds - like Katherine Harris of Florida's fiasco in 2000 - a dual role: secretary of state with control over voting procedures and co-chair of George Bush's Ohio campaign. Blackwell should recuse himself so that a thorough investigation, count and recount of Ohio's vote can be made.

Blackwell reversed rules on provisional ballots in place in the spring primaries. These allowed voters to cast provisional ballots anywhere in their county, even if they were in the wrong precinct, reflecting the chief rationale for provisional ballots: to ensure that those who went to the wrong place by mistake could have their votes counted. The result of this decision - why does this not surprise? - was to disqualify disproportionately ballots cast in heavily Democratic Cuyahoga County.

Blackwell also permitted the use of electronic machines that provided no paper record. The maker of many of these machines, the head of Diebold Co., promised to deliver Ohio for Bush. In one precinct in Franklin County, an electric voting system gave Bush 3,893 extra votes out of a total of 638 votes cast.

Blackwell also presided over a voting system that resulted in quick, short lines in the dominantly Republican suburbs, and four-hour and longer waiting lines in the inner cities. Wealthy precincts received ample numbers of voting machines and numerous voting places. Democratic precincts received inadequate numbers of machines in too few polling places that were often hard to locate; this caused daylong waits for the very working people who could least afford the time.

In Ohio, as in Florida and Pennsylvania, there was a stark disconnect between the exit polls and the tabulated results, with the former favoring John Kerry and the latter George Bush. The chance of this occurring in these three states, according to Professor Steven Freeman of the University of Pennsylvania, is about 250 million to 1.

In one of dozens of examples, Ellen Connally, an African-American Supreme Court candidate running an underfunded race at the bottom of the ticket, received over 257,000 more votes than Kerry in 37 counties. She ran better than Kerry in the areas of the state where she wasn't known and didn't campaign than she did where she was known and did campaign.

There should be a federal investigation of the vote count in Ohio, with the partisan secretary of state removing himself from the scene.

In Cleveland, as in Kiev, Ukraine, citizens have the right to know that the election is run fairly and every vote counted honestly. Citizens have the right to nonpartisan election officials. Citizens have the right to voting machines that keep a paper record and allow for an independent audit and recount.

This country needs no more Floridas and Ohios. This shouldn't be a partisan issue. We call for a constitutional amendment to guarantee the right to vote for all U.S. citizens and to empower Congress to establish federal standards and nonpartisan administration of elections. Harris and Blackwell are insults to the people they represent, and stains upon the president whose election they sought to ensure. Democracy should not be for export only.

Red Cross Finds Detainee Abuse in Guantánamo
By Neil A Lewis for the NY Times.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has charged in confidential reports to the United States government that the American military has intentionally used psychological and sometimes physical coercion "tantamount to torture" on prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The finding that the handling of prisoners detained and interrogated at Guantánamo amounted to torture came after a visit by a Red Cross inspection team that spent most of last June in Guantánamo.

The team of humanitarian workers, which included experienced medical personnel, also asserted that some doctors and other medical workers at Guantánamo were participating in planning for interrogations, in what the report called "a flagrant violation of medical ethics."...

It was the first time that the Red Cross, which has been conducting visits to Guantánamo since January 2002, asserted in such strong terms that the treatment of detainees, both physical and psychological, amounted to torture. The report said that another confidential report in January 2003, which has never been disclosed, raised questions of whether "psychological torture" was taking place...

The report of the June visit said investigators had found a system devised to break the will of the prisoners at Guantánamo, who now number about 550, and make them wholly dependent on their interrogators through "humiliating acts, solitary confinement, temperature extremes, use of forced positions." Investigators said that the methods used were increasingly "more refined and repressive" than learned about on previous visits.

"The construction of such a system, whose stated purpose is the production of intelligence, cannot be considered other than an intentional system of cruel, unusual and degrading treatment and a form of torture," the report said. It said that in addition to the exposure to loud and persistent noise and music and to prolonged cold, detainees were subjected to "some beatings." The report did not say how many of the detainees were subjected to such treatment...

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/30/politics/30gitmo.html

Red Cross Finds Detainee Abuse in Guantánamo
By NEIL A. LEWIS

Published: November 30, 2004

ASHINGTON, Nov. 29 - The International Committee of the Red Cross has charged in confidential reports to the United States government that the American military has intentionally used psychological and sometimes physical coercion "tantamount to torture" on prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The finding that the handling of prisoners detained and interrogated at Guantánamo amounted to torture came after a visit by a Red Cross inspection team that spent most of last June in Guantánamo.

The team of humanitarian workers, which included experienced medical personnel, also asserted that some doctors and other medical workers at Guantánamo were participating in planning for interrogations, in what the report called "a flagrant violation of medical ethics."

Doctors and medical personnel conveyed information about prisoners' mental health and vulnerabilities to interrogators, the report said, sometimes directly, but usually through a group called the Behavioral Science Consultation Team, or B.S.C.T. The team, known informally as Biscuit, is composed of psychologists and psychological workers who advise the interrogators, the report said.

The United States government, which received the report in July, sharply rejected its charges, administration and military officials said.

The report was distributed to lawyers at the White House, Pentagon and State Department and to the commander of the detention facility at Guantánamo, Gen. Jay W. Hood. The New York Times recently obtained a memorandum, based on the report, that quotes from it in detail and lists its major findings.

It was the first time that the Red Cross, which has been conducting visits to Guantánamo since January 2002, asserted in such strong terms that the treatment of detainees, both physical and psychological, amounted to torture. The report said that another confidential report in January 2003, which has never been disclosed, raised questions of whether "psychological torture" was taking place.

The Red Cross said publicly 13 months ago that the system of keeping detainees indefinitely without allowing them to know their fates was unacceptable and would lead to mental health problems.

The report of the June visit said investigators had found a system devised to break the will of the prisoners at Guantánamo, who now number about 550, and make them wholly dependent on their interrogators through "humiliating acts, solitary confinement, temperature extremes, use of forced positions." Investigators said that the methods used were increasingly "more refined and repressive" than learned about on previous visits.

"The construction of such a system, whose stated purpose is the production of intelligence, cannot be considered other than an intentional system of cruel, unusual and degrading treatment and a form of torture," the report said. It said that in addition to the exposure to loud and persistent noise and music and to prolonged cold, detainees were subjected to "some beatings." The report did not say how many of the detainees were subjected to such treatment.

Asked about the accusations in the report, a Pentagon spokesman provided a statement saying, "The United States operates a safe, humane and professional detention operation at Guantánamo that is providing valuable information in the war on terrorism."

It continued that personnel assigned to Guantánamo "go through extensive professional and sensitivity training to ensure they understand the procedures for protecting the rights and dignity of detainees."

The conclusions by the inspection team, especially the findings involving alleged complicity in mistreatment by medical professionals, have provoked a stormy debate within the Red Cross committee. Some officials have argued that it should make its concerns public or at least aggressively confront the Bush administration.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, which is based in Geneva and is separate from the American Red Cross, was founded in 1863 as an independent, neutral organization intended to provide humanitarian protection and assistance for victims of war.

Angel Franco/The New York Times
A cell and a meeting room at Camp Echo at Guantánamo, where lawyers can meet with detainees.

Its officials are able to visit prisoners at Guantánamo under the kind of arrangement the committee has made with governments for decades. In exchange for exclusive access to the prison camp and meetings with detainees, the committee has agreed to keep its findings confidential. The findings are shared only with the government that is detaining people.

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Beatricé Mégevand-Roggo, a senior Red Cross official, said in an interview that she could not say anything about information relayed to the United States government because "we do not comment in any way on the substance of the reports we submit to the authorities."

Ms. Mégevand-Roggo, the committee's delegate-general for Europe and the Americas, acknowledged that the issue of confidentiality was a chronic and vexing one for the organization. "Many people do not understand why we have these bilateral agreements about confidentiality," she said. "People are led to believe that we are a fig leaf or worse, that we are complicit with the detaining authorities."

She added, "It's a daily dilemma for us to put in the balance the positive effects our visits have for detainees against the confidentiality."

Antonella Notari, a veteran Red Cross official and spokeswoman, said that the organization frequently complained to the Pentagon and other arms of the American government when government officials cite the Red Cross visits to suggest that there is no abuse at Guantánamo. Most statements from the Pentagon in response to queries about mistreatment at Guantánamo do, in fact, include mention of the visits.

In a recent interview with reporters, General Hood, the commander of the detention and interrogation facility at Guantánamo, also cited the committee's visits in response to questions about treatment of detainees. "We take everything the Red Cross gives us and study it very carefully to look for ways to do our job better," he said in his Guantánamo headquarters, adding that he agrees "with some things and not others."

"I'm satisfied that the detainees here have not been abused, they've not been mistreated, they've not been tortured in any way," he said.

Scott Horton, a New York lawyer, who is familiar with some of the Red Cross's views, said the issue of medical ethics at Guantánamo had produced "a tremendous controversy in the committee." He said that some Red Cross officials believed it was important to maintain confidentiality while others believed the United States government was misrepresenting the inspections and using them to counter criticisms.

Mr. Horton, who heads the human rights committee of the Bar Association of the City of New York, said the Red Cross committee was considering whether to bring more senior officials to Washington and whether to make public its criticisms.

The report from the June visit said the Red Cross team found a far greater incidence of mental illness produced by stress than did American medical authorities, much of it caused by prolonged solitary confinement. It said the medical files of detainees were "literally open" to interrogators.

The report said the Biscuit team met regularly with the medical staff to discuss the medical situations of detainees. At other times, interrogators sometimes went directly to members of the medical staff to learn about detainees' conditions, it said.

The report said that such "apparent integration of access to medical care within the system of coercion" meant that inmates were not cooperating with doctors. Inmates learn from their interrogators that they have knowledge of their medical histories and the result is that the prisoners no longer trust the doctors.

Asked for a response, the Pentagon issued a statement saying, "The allegation that detainee medical files were used to harm detainees is false." The statement said that the detainees were "enemy combatants who were fighting against U.S. and coalition forces."

"It's important to understand that when enemy combatants were first detained on the battlefield, they did not have any medical records in their possession," the statement continued. "The detainees had a wide range of pre-existing health issues including battlefield injuries."

Angel Franco/The New York Times
A detainee who cooperates with interrogators and follows rules is given white clothing to wear.

The Pentagon also said the medical care given detainees was first-rate. Although the Red Cross criticized the lack of confidentiality, it agreed in the report that the medical care was of high quality.

Leonard S. Rubenstein, the executive director of Physicians for Human Rights, was asked to comment on the account of the Red Cross report, and said, "The use of medical personnel to facilitate abusive interrogations places them in an untenable position and violates international ethical standards."

Mr. Rubenstein added, "We need to know more about these practices, including whether health professionals engaged in calibrating levels of pain inflicted on detainees."

The issue of whether torture at Guantánamo was condoned or encouraged has been a problem before for the Bush administration.

In February 2002, President Bush ordered that the prisoners at Guantánamo be treated "humanely and, to the extent appropriate with military necessity, in a manner consistent with" the Geneva Conventions. That statement masked a roiling legal discussion within the administration as government lawyers wrote a series of memorandums, many of which seemed to justify harsh and coercive treatment.

A month after Mr. Bush's public statement, a team of administration lawyers accepted a view first advocated by the Justice Department that the president had wide powers in authorizing coercive treatment of detainees. The legal team in a memorandum concluded that Mr. Bush was not bound by either the international Convention Against Torture or a federal antitorture statute because he had the authority to protect the nation from terrorism.

That document provides tightly constructed definitions of torture. For example, if an interrogator "knows that severe pain will result from his actions, if causing such harm is not his objective, he lacks the requisite specific intent even though the defendant did not act in good faith," it said. "Instead, a defendant is guilty of torture only if he acts with the express purpose of inflicting severe pain or suffering on a person within his control."

When some administration memorandums about coercive treatment or torture were disclosed, the White House said they were only advisory.

Last month, military guards, intelligence agents and others described in interviews with The Times a range of procedures that they said were highly abusive occurring over a long period, as well as rewards for prisoners who cooperated with interrogators. The people who worked at Camp Delta, the main prison facility, said that one regular procedure was making uncooperative prisoners strip to their underwear, having them sit in a chair while shackled hand and foot to a bolt in the floor, and forcing them to endure strobe lights and loud rock and rap music played through two close loudspeakers, while the air-conditioning was turned up to maximum levels.

Some accounts of techniques at Guantánamo have been easy to dismiss because they seemed so implausible. The most striking of the accusations, which have come mainly from a group of detainees released to their native Britain, has been that the military used prostitutes who made coarse comments and come-ons to taunt some prisoners who are Muslims.

But the Red Cross report hints strongly at an explanation of some of those accusations by stating that there were frequent complaints by prisoners in 2003 that some of the female interrogators baited their subjects with sexual overtures.

Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who commanded the detention and intelligence operation at Guantánamo until April, when he took over prison operations in Iraq, said in an interview early this year about general interrogation procedures that the female interrogators had proved to be among the most effective. General Miller's observation matches common wisdom among experienced intelligence officers that women may be effective as interrogators when seen by their subjects as mothers or sisters. Sexual taunting does not, however, comport with what is often referred to as the "mother-sister syndrome."

But the Red Cross report said that complaints about the practice of sexual taunting stopped in the last year. Guantánamo officials have acknowledged that they have improved their techniques and that some earlier methods they tried proved to be ineffective, raising the possibility that the sexual taunting was an experiment that was abandoned.

Ohio in the 2004 election is just like Florida in 2000. The Secretary of State, Ken Blackwell, was co-chairman of the Bush Campaign in 2004. (Just like Katherine Harris chaired the Bush campaign while she was Secretary of State of Florida in 2000.)

How is this allowed to take place? How can this be legal?

We must be the laughing stock of the world right now.

I feel like I'm living in a bad made-for-tv movie. One where -- "they could never get away with that in real life."

And yet, here it is.

Nearly a Month Later, Ohio Fight Goes On
By John McCarthy for the Associated Press.

Ohio essentially decided the outcome of the presidential race, with Kerry giving up after unofficial results showed Bush with a 136,000-vote lead in the state.

Since then, there have been demands for a recount and complaints about uncounted punch-card votes, disqualified provisional ballots and a ballot-machine error that gave hundreds of extra votes to Bush.

Jackson said too many questions have been raised to let the vote stand without closer examination.

"We can live with winning and losing. We cannot live with fraud and stealing," Jackson said Sunday at Mount Hermon Baptist Church.

An attorney for a political advocacy group on Wednesday plans to file a "contest of election." The request requires a single Supreme Court justice to either let the election stand, declare another winner or throw the whole thing out. The loser can appeal to the full seven-member court, which is dominated by Republicans 5-2...

Other critics have seized on an error in an electronic voting system that gave Bush 3,893 extra votes in a suburban Columbus precinct where only 638 people voted. The extra votes are part of the current unofficial tally, but they will not be included in the official count that will be certified by the secretary of state.

Some groups also have complained about thousands of punch-card ballots that were not counted because officials in the 68 counties that use them could not determine a vote for president. Votes for other offices on the cards were counted.

Jackson said Blackwell, who along with other statewide GOP leaders was a co-chairman of Bush's re-election campaign in Ohio, should step down from overseeing the election process.

"You can't be chairman of the Bush campaign and then be the chief umpire in the seventh game of the World Series (news - web sites)," Jackson said.

Here is the full text of the entire article in case the link goes bad:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20041129/ap_on_el_pr/ohio_vote

Nearly a Month Later, Ohio Fight Goes On

Mon Nov 29, 6:18 PM ET

By JOHN McCARTHY, Associated Press Writer

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Nearly a month after John Kerry (news - web sites) conceded Ohio to President Bush (news - web sites), complaints and challenges about the balloting are mounting as activists including the Rev. Jesse Jackson (news - web sites) demand closer scrutiny to ensure the votes are being counted on the up-and-up.

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Jackson has been holding rallies in Ohio in recent days to draw attention to the vote, and another critic plans to ask the state Supreme Court this week to decide the validity of the election.

Ohio essentially decided the outcome of the presidential race, with Kerry giving up after unofficial results showed Bush with a 136,000-vote lead in the state.

Since then, there have been demands for a recount and complaints about uncounted punch-card votes, disqualified provisional ballots and a ballot-machine error that gave hundreds of extra votes to Bush.

Jackson said too many questions have been raised to let the vote stand without closer examination.

"We can live with winning and losing. We cannot live with fraud and stealing," Jackson said Sunday at Mount Hermon Baptist Church.

An attorney for a political advocacy group on Wednesday plans to file a "contest of election." The request requires a single Supreme Court justice to either let the election stand, declare another winner or throw the whole thing out. The loser can appeal to the full seven-member court, which is dominated by Republicans 5-2.

Jackson said he agreed with the court filing planned by lawyer Cliff Arnebeck, who has represented the Boston-based Alliance for Democracy in other cases.

"The integrity of our election process is on trial," Jackson said Monday in Cincinnati.

Elections officials concede some mistakes were made but no more than most elections.

"There are no signs of widespread irregularities," said Carlo LoParo, a spokesman for Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell.

Blackwell, a Republican, has until Dec. 6 to certify the vote. The Green and Libertarian parties are raising money to pay for a recount that would be held once the results are certified.

Other critics have seized on an error in an electronic voting system that gave Bush 3,893 extra votes in a suburban Columbus precinct where only 638 people voted. The extra votes are part of the current unofficial tally, but they will not be included in the official count that will be certified by the secretary of state.

Some groups also have complained about thousands of punch-card ballots that were not counted because officials in the 68 counties that use them could not determine a vote for president. Votes for other offices on the cards were counted.

Jackson said Blackwell, who along with other statewide GOP leaders was a co-chairman of Bush's re-election campaign in Ohio, should step down from overseeing the election process.

"You can't be chairman of the Bush campaign and then be the chief umpire in the seventh game of the World Series (news - web sites)," Jackson said.

Blackwell's office responded by saying the state has a "bipartisan and transparent system that provides valuable checks and balances."

"The problem seems to be that Rev. Jackson's candidate didn't win," said Carlo LoParo, a Blackwell spokesman.