Palast: Florida Computers Snatch Thousands of Votes from Kerry

[Rebellious Republican]

CONGRATULATIONS, MR. PRESIDENT!
FLORIDA'S COMPUTERS HAVE ALREADY COUNTED THOUSANDS OF VOTES FOR GEORGE W. BUSH

Before one vote was cast in early voting this week in Florida, the new touch-screen computer voting machines of Florida started out with a several-thousand vote lead for George W. Bush. That is, the mechanics of the new digital democracy boxes "spoil" votes at a predictably high rate in African-American precincts, effectively voiding enough votes cast for John Kerry to in a tight race, keep the White House safe from the will of the voters. <snip

http://www2.whoseflorida.com/newswire/display/1427

[ciaobox]

1. What? Is there proof of this?

There is still time to reverse these votes. What can we do to make it happen?

[Blaze Diem]

2. So what kind of handicap did they give to stupid liar Bush....

Is it any wonder that there need to be lawyers and poll watchers by the thousands this year..

What a corrupt bunch..this is so effed up!

[PDittie]

3. We have to win without Florida

That's what I've always thought.

[Raster]

4. jeb bush, have you no shame?

Liars and cheats, that's the bush family in a nutshell. Liars and cheats. In their world, it's O.K. to be a liar and a cheat, as long as you win.

Where is the outrage from the rest of this country? This is plantation mentality updated for the 21st century. How can these bastards live with themselves? Rhetorical question. I guess the real question is for the bush family: are all of you sociopaths?

[teryang]

5. The fix is in!

http://www2.whoseflorida.com/newswire/display/1427

<snip><Although the computer rigs cost eight times as much as paper with scanners, they result in many more spoiled votes. In this year's presidential primary in Florida, the computers had a spoilage rate of more than 1 percent, as compared to one-tenth of a percent for the double-checked paper ballots.

Apparently some Bush boosters were not keen on a fix so inexpensive and effective. In particular, Sandra Mortham - a founder of Women for Jeb Bush, the Governor's re-election operation - successfully lobbied on behalf of the Florida Association of Counties to stop the state the legislature from blocking the purchase of touch-screen voting systems. Mortham, coincidentally, was also a paid lobbyist for Election Systems & Strategies, a computer voting-machine manufacturer. Fifteen of Florida's sixty-seven counties chose the pricey computers, twelve of them ordered from ES&S which, in turn, paid Mortham's County Association a percentage on sales. <snip>

<Even when computers work, they don't work well for African-Americans. A July 2001 Congressional study found that computers spoiled votes in minority districts at three times the rate of votes lost in white districts.<snip>

[Danmel]

6. Theft of votes in Florida

My daughter is 13 and is learning about Reconstruction and the Civil Rights movement in her honors Social Studies class. She had to read "Plessy v. Ferguson" and "Brown vs. Board". So we were watching the news and reading the paper and talking about all the attempts to suppress minority voting and she said "Boy, I thought we had gotten past all this already, what is going on?"

It makes me so sad and so angry to have to tell her that we really haven't gotten past it and this regime wnats to take us back to 1963, before the Voting Rights Act, before the Civil Rights act, when women and gays and blacks and Jews knew their places and kept their mouths shut.

We MUST take our country back. This is just not acceptable.

[DuaneBidoux]

7. This is why Florida up Ohio down in polls worries me

We need a REAL victory in Ohio to offset what may already be a stolen one in Florida.