Posted on 10/22/2004 1:58:20 PM PDT by winodog
The Associated Press (AP) will be the sole source of raw vote totals for the major news broadcasters on Election Night. However, AP spokesmen Jack Stokes and John Jones refused to explain to this journalist how the AP will receive that information. They refused to confirm or deny that the AP will receive direct feed from voting machines and central vote tabulating computers across the country. But, circumstantial evidence suggests that is exactly what will happen.
And what can be downloaded can also be uploaded. Computer experts say that signals can travel both to and from computerized voting machines through wireless technology, modems, and even simple electricity. Computer scientists have long warned that computer voting is an invitation to vote fraud and system failure. An examination of Diebold election software by several computer scientists, including Dr. Avi Rubin and his staff, proved that secret backdoors can be built into computer programs that allow votes to be easily manipulated without detection.
ES&S, the nation's largest voting machine company that will reportedly count 50% of all votes, describe on their webpage how "accessible" their results are, "At ES&S, we know election administrators and the public want fast and accurate election results. That is why we have developed several election management system software solutions to make the reporting process easier, more reliable, and more accessible." Diebold, the second largest voting machine company, advertises a similar service. Both ES&S and Diebold have close ties to the Republican Party.
But, can't the AP be trusted? Isn't it an objective non-partisan news organization? Some say no. The AP is batting for a Bush presidency.
In Online Journal, Stephen Crockett and Al Lawrence, the hosts of Democratic Talk Radio, wrote, "...the Associated Press ran a story that was widely published in newspapers and on the Internet, headlined "Bush Leads Kerry In Electoral Votes," that could have been written by the Bush campaign. The assignment of states to candidates, the headline and the conclusions were all simply wrong. The Associated Press should print a retraction and work to see that it is widely published."
And on WBAY TV in Green Bay, Wisconsin ran an AP article reporting that Bush has won the election, weeks before the election is to take place. The AP reported, "At this hour, President Bush has won re-election as president by a 47 percent to 43 percent margin in the popular vote nationwide. Ralph Nader has 1 percent of the vote nationwide. That's with 51 percent of the precincts reporting." According to reports, the AP is now saying the article was a "test article," a never-heard-before journalistic practice.
Who is the AP? The Associated Press was founded in 1848. It is a not-for-profit news cooperative, some would say ‘monopoly’, that rakes in about $500 million dollars a year. The AP is owned by its 1,500 U.S. daily newspaper members. Their board of directors is elected by voting ‘bonds’. However, it is not clear who controls the bonds. AP spokespeople would not give out information on who sits on their board, however AP leadership appears quite conservative.
Burl Osborne, chairman of the AP board of directors, is also publisher emeritus of the conservative The Dallas Morning News, a newspaper that endorsed George W. Bush in the last election. Kathleen Carroll, senior vice president and executive editor of AP, was a reporter at The Dallas Morning News before joining AP. Carroll is also on the Associated Press Managing Editors (APME)’s 7-member executive committee. The APME "works in partnership with AP to improve the wire service's performance," according to their website. APME vice president, Deanna Sands, is managing editor of the ultra conservative Omaha World Herald newspaper, whose parent company owns the largest voting machine company in the nation, Election Systems and Software (ES&S).
Many Americans believe that polling organizations and the broadcasters will raise the red flag on any election shenanigans. But others have their doubts.
The Collier brothers, authors of the book, VoteScam: The Stealing of America, wrote about vote fraud and the role the news media and polls played. In 1970, Channel 7 in Miami projected with 100% accuracy (a virtual impossibility) the final vote totals on election day. When asked where they got their exit poll data, both Channel 3 & Channel 7 claimed that the League of Women Voters sent it in from the precincts. But, the League's local president tearfully denied it, say, "I don't want to get caught up in this thing." The broadcasters then told the Colliers that a private contractor used the data from a single voting machine to project the winners, but the contractor said he got the data from a University of Miami professor, who in turn denied this. In the end, the news broadcasters appeared to have got the polling numbers out of thin air.
One thing is clear. The air will be thick with distrust and doubt on Election Night 2004.
Actually, there are cryptographic protocols that handle this rather well. You can have secret ballots where the eligibility of the voter is verified, the vote can be verified (i.e., it's auditable), and each individual vote is verifiable. Bruce Schneier wrote about it in Applied Cryptography. The problem is that any system that satisfies all three requirements, (verification, auditability, secrecy), is pretty darn complex. I cannot imagine having enough trust in the government that they could pull off such a complex thing successfully without having at least one of the thre requirements be violated.
Dumbest article of the week ping!
haha I will have to find something good to make up for it then.
That wouldn't stop the media from conducting exit polls, which would leak regardless. The only solution - as close as we can get to a complete solution, anyway - is to establish a nationwide unified voting time, where all polls open and close at the same time, reagardless of time zones.
I don't know about the rest of the article, but ES&S certainly warrants scrutiny--I remember researching them and some related companies during the 2000 election and there's an interesting story there. . .
In the video that originally went with that book just prior to the 2000 election (after which Collier jumped on the anti-Bush bandwagon), an interesting point was made that although Jeb Bush was governor of Florida, the government positions involved in the vote monitoring process had been appointed by Democrats. The 2000 edition of their book also has some interesting information on Janet Reno's Florida period and its relation to Senator Bob Graham and to Katharine Graham's use of "Washington Post"/CBS affiliates to rig elections in Florida.
Bwahahahahahahahahahahaha
What a joke.
Yes, they definitely can - particularly when they have also been put in charge of "exit polling" so you can be sure the exit totals will match the actual results they are feeding the news anchors.
Wouldn't want some inconvenient discrepancies to pop up.
I can't believe they've been given all this power.
My favorite lines:
"Computer experts say that signals can travel both to and from computerized voting machines through wireless technology, modems, and even simple electricity."
but this is the howler:
"The AP is batting for a Bush presidency."
demonRAT rule #1) Accuse the other side of what you yourself are guilty of ...
Yeah, that part's kinda funny :)
Isn't AP owned by the Reverand Moon?
Ever since 2000, that's how things have been in Montana. If you don't have a photo ID, you don't vote.
If Gore hadn't been a sore loser, and Voter News Service hadn't jumped the gun on Florida, we wouldn't be reading articles like this.
I don't trust it either. But then, I don't trust early voting, absentee balloting, election judges, or those who are supposed to ensure that the votes cast are legitimate. In other words, I have no faith whatsoever in the process anymore.
Tehy lost credibility with this one .... one word, FIREWALLS!
It's kind of amusing, almost, to see our politicians simultaneously push for a National Photo ID Card, but deny any identification requirement to VOTE. I can't even rent a movie from Blockbuster without showing proof of ID.
Most articles don't refer to us as citizens - just "voters". What's happening is LEGAL citizens are being DISENFRANCHISED with vote dilution, and possibly invalid election. Time for this nonsense to go away in 2004. If any candidate wins fair and square in an open and honest election, it's OK with me. Might not like it, but there's always 2008.
Could the associated press rig the election?
Only on days that end in "y".
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