In August, 2003, Wally O’Dell, wrote an interesting letter. As CBS News reported:
… letter from Diebold's
(ex-)CEO, Wally Odell, who was moonlighting as a Republican fundraiser. In his invitation to a benefit for Bush last August, he wrote,
"I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president."
Link: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/main632436.shtmlThe title of that CBS News report was "E-Voting: Is The Fix In?" and it was published two months before we all learned the answer in the wee hours of November 3, 2004.
Gov. Dean, you and the DNC must stop avoiding this issue. You need to embrace the work of Congressman John Conyers and the GAO and be unrelenting in bringing the truth to every American citizen about the status of the election systems in the United States of America.
Gov. Dean, you and the DNC must demand that in every election, from school boards to the President of the United States of America, each voter has an unambiguous record of how they voted and that their vote was counted not in secret, not by proprietary software, but in an open and robustly verifiable manner.
In 2000, in 2002, in 2004 and, in Ohio in 2005 (and elsewhere) the words of Patrick Henry, spoken on March 3, 1775, are relevant and applicable – "Besides, sir, we have no election." Today, our "chains" are fashioned from software, enabled by stealth network access, and readily administered by a few powerful neoconsters. That is the legacy of disenfranchisement already wrought by Diebold, Sequoia, Triad and ES&S on our Republic.
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman write today in
"The End of Democracy in Ohio?":
<clip>
… electronic machines will also be exempted from recounts by random sampling, even in close, disputed elections like those of 2000 and 2004. In 2004, scores of Ohio voters reported, under oath, that they had
pressed John Kerry's name on touchscreen machines, only to see George W. Bush's name light up. A board of elections technician in Mahoning County (Youngstown) has admitted that at least 18 machines there suffered such problems. Sworn testimony in Columbus indicates that votes for Kerry faded off the screen on touchscreen machines there. Other charges of mis-programming, re-programming, recalibrating, mishandling and manipulation of electronic voting software, hardware and memory cards have since arisen throughout Ohio 2004.
For the 2005 election,
some 41 additional Ohio counties (of 88) were switched to Diebold touchscreen machines. Despite polls showing overwhelming voter approval, two electoral reform issues went down improbable defeat.
<clip>On the Sunday before the Tuesday 2005 election, the Dispatch predicted Issue Two would pass by a vote of 59% to 33%, with about 8% undecided. But Tuesday's official vote count showed Issue Two failing with just 36.5% in favor and 63.5% opposed. For that to have happened, the Dispatch had to have been wrong on Issue Two's support by more than 20 points. Nearly half those who said they would support Issue Two would have had to vote against it, along with all the undecideds.
The numbers on Issue Three are equally startling. The Dispatch showed it winning with 61%, to just 25% opposed and some 14% undecided. Instead just 33% of the votes were counted in its favor, with 67% opposed, an almost inconceivable weekend turnaround.
No other numbers were comparable on November 8, 2005, or elsewhere in the recent history of Dispatch polling. The startling outcome has thus raised even more suspicion and doubt about the use of electronic voting and tabulating machines in Ohio, which account for virtually 100% of the state's vote count.
The federal General Accountability Office (GAO) has recently issued a major report confirming that tampering with and manipulating such machines can be easily done by a very small number of people. Charges are widespread that this is precisely what gave George W. Bush Ohio's electoral votes, and thus the presidency, in 2004, not to mention the suspicious referenda outcomes in 2005.
Link: http://www.alternet.org/rights/29292 Gov. Dean, if HB3 is made law in Ohio, the ability to challenge the results of elections conducted using closed, proprietary, networked software will be severely, if not totally, hampered. Stalin would be proud of these folk, for as he knew, all that matters is who counts the votes. With HB3 what the voter does becomes irrelevant because those controlling the software will control the outcome of any election.
An even deeper question, given all that we do know, is why you, the DNC, Senator Kerry, and many others refused to face reality. Mark Crispin Miller and Bob Cesca had a recent discussion of exactly that question. I urge you to read all of it, and I’ll end the letter with the following excerpt:
BC: Why is the rigging of the 2004 election seen as a "fringe" issue? If it was acceptable to question the veracity of the Swift Boat group or Dan Rather, then why can't the veracity of Diebold, ES&S, Triad, and the rest of the chief suspects be equally questioned by the mainstream press?
If it's perfectly reasonable to believe that card-counters have successfully defrauded casinos, and that internet criminals can steal your credit card number *and* your identity -- why are accusations of election theft seen as so loony?MCM: I'd take your argument still further. By now we've generally conceded -- that is, the mainstream media concedes -- that Bush/Cheney lied us into a disastrous war, or else deceived themselves and all the rest of us to get us there. And we concede that Bush & Co. conspired to out a CIA agent who was working to prevent another terrorist attack on US soil. And we concede that this regime responded to Katrina, then to Rita, with (at best) depraved indifference, even though they knew exactly what was coming. And we concede that, prior to 9/11, they had lots of solid evidence of an impending terrorist attack right here at home, and yet did nothing to prevent it. (And, moreover, we concede that they've done nothing to improve security on our railways, on our highways, on our borders, in our ports or even in the air.)
And rational observers also will agree that Bush & Co. swept into Haiti and threw out that nation's first democratically elected government; that Bush & Co.'s Iraq is no democracy, since Jay Bremer drafted all its laws, its government was not elected, and Iraqis have no writ of habeas corpus and no freedom of the press; that Bush bends over for the oligarchy running China (he says he likes the way they treat their journalists); and that his regime whole-heartedly supports the tyrannies all over Central Asia and the Arab world (Iran and Syria excepted). Bush and his men have praised the leaders of "New Europe" for defying their electorates, and have assailed the leaders of "Old Europe" for trying to do what their electorates prefer.
Meanwhile, here at home, the Bush regime has thrown out habeas corpus, junked the Bill of Rights (we now have special "First Amendment zones" for dissidents), used public revenues to subsidize right-wing religious proselytizers (while giving nothing to religious groups that don't back the regime), handed the entire economy to its own corporate cronies, and veiled the workings of the federal government behind an iron curtain of illegal secrecy.
We grant they've done all this-and yet it seems outrageous to suggest that they committed rampant fraud in the election? After they used Bush v. Gore, and other means, to steal the race four years before? That's a loony argument. Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/a-conversation-with-mark-_b_12134.html It is, in_deed, a "loony argument" and most of our fellow citizens would perceive it as such – if they are enabled to have all the facts that Congressman Conyers, the GAO, Mark Crispin Miller, Paul Lehto, Bob Fitrakis, Harvey Wasserman, and countless others have already assembled.
Gov. Dean, it is mandatory for the sake of the Republic that you and the DNC ensure that every American citizen not only gets the facts but that they are provided the mechanisms to ensure that they can vote and that they can verify that their vote was tallied precisely as they intend.
No technological barrier exists to provide verified access and participation in the franchise. No more important use of public revenue exists than to provide verified access and participation in the franchise.
Why have a DNC if you and all those running for office in 2006 have no way of ever knowing what happened to each citizen’s vote and if you know that mechanisms were created specifically to deny citizen’s an ability to participate in the franchise.
In_deed, sir, in 2000, 2002, 2004 and 2005, we have had NO ELECTION. Will it be any different in 2006? Your leadership could contribute significantly to the answer.
Thank you,
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