...all I have to say.
Posted on 01/30/2006 8:17:56 AM PST by Toddsterpatriot
As coincidence would have it, Mark Crispin Miller's new book, "Fooled Again" (Basic Books), documenting the Republican theft of the 2004 presidential election, arrived in the same mail delivery with the Jan. 12 edition of the Defuniak Springs Herald, the locally owned weekly newspaper in a Florida panhandle county seat.
The Florida panhandle is thoroughgoing Republican. Even Democrats run as Republicans. Nevertheless, the newspaper's editor, Ron Kelley, believes that American political life is measured by something larger than party affiliation. In his editorial, "The Shepherds and the Sheep," Kelley reports that two Florida counties have banned any further use of Diebold voting machines after witnessing a professional demonstration that the machines, contrary to Diebold's claim, are easily hacked to record votes differently from the way in which they are cast by voters.
The pre-election statement by Diebold's CEO that he would work to deliver the election to Bush was apparently no idle boast. In five states where the new "foolproof" electronic voting machines were used, the vote tallies differed substantially from the exit polls. Such a disparity is unusual. The chances of exit polls in five states being wrong are no more than one in a million. (OMG, what a stupid thing to say!!)
Miller describes considerably more election fraud than voting machines programmed to count a proportion of Kerry votes as Bush votes. Voters were disenfranchised in a number of ways. Miller reports incidences of intimidation of, and reduced voting opportunities for, poorer voters who tend to vote Democrat.
Some of Miller's evidence is circumstantial. However, he documents widespread Republican dirty tricks and foul play. The media's indifference to a stolen election burns Miller as much as the stolen election itself.
Miller is not alone in his concerns. The nonpartisan U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), in response to a congressional request, investigated a number of complaints regarding the electronic voting machines.
Here are some of the problems noted in the GAO's September 2005 report:
Some voting machines did not encrypt cast ballots or system audit logs, and it was possible to alter both without being detected.
It was possible to alter the machines so that a ballot cast for one candidate would be recorded for another.
Vendors installed uncertified versions of voting system software at the local level.
Access was easily compromised and did not require a widespread conspiracy. A small handful of people is sufficient to steal an election. Curiously, the media have shown no interest in the GAO report. In my opinion, a free press has proven to be inconsistent with the recently permitted highly concentrated corporate ownership of the U.S. media.
The electronic voting machines leave virtually no paper trail, and their use involves private, potentially partisan corporations tabulating the votes with proprietary software that is not transparent.
A number of counties in various states have decided to return to paper ballots that can be verified and recounted. But now that Republicans have learned that they can use the electronic machines to control election outcomes, the disenfranchisement of Democrats is likely to be a permanent feature of American "democracy."
Other reports claim that the undersampling by pollsters of Democratic voters creates a percentage bias that exaggerates the number of Republican voters by as much as 5 percent, thus providing cover for vote fraud. If hard-to-reach Democratic voters, such as the working poor, are less likely to answer telephones, polls can create the illusion that there are more Republican voters than in fact exist.
If the electronic voting machines are then rigged to shift 5 percent or 6 percent of the vote to the Republican candidate, the result is not at odds with the expected result and can be used as "evidence" to counter the divergence between exit polls and vote tally.
The outcome of the 2004 presidential election has always struck me as strange. Although Kerry was a poor candidate and evaded the issue most on the public's mind, by November 2004 a majority of Americans were aware that Bush had led the country into a gratuitous war on the basis either of incompetence or deception.
By November 2004, it was completely clear that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction and that Bush had rushed to war. People were concerned by the changing rationales that Bush was offering for going to war. Moreover, the needless war was going badly, and the results bore no relationship to the rosy scenario painted at the time of the invasion. It seems contrary to American common sense for voters to have re-elected a president who had failed in such a dramatic way.
Miller directs our attention to Bush's high-handed treatment of dissenters. If electronic voting machines programmed by private Republican firms remain in our future, dissent will become pointless unless it boils over into revolution. Power-mad Republicans need to consider the result when democracy loses its legitimacy and only the rich have anything to lose.
COPYRIGHT 2006 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
"... because I did not vote for Bush and do not know anyone who did."
What about "stay out da bushes"?
You are correct. The Dems demanded state-of-the-art electronic voting machines after the Florida debacle. The were especially concerned that Minority voting districts get them first.
You forgot that stop for lunch and gas in Barberton. We saw you put $.50 in the Beacon-Journal machine and grab 3 papers too!
Last week I passed Diebold's office on Valley View in Buena Park, Ca.
And 10 miles per hour over the speed limit I might add.
Could there be a connection?
None established yet. But we're following you everywhere go. Be careful.
I've been working the polls on election day in my Ward for over ten years and have never even heard of anyone being asked or have noticed the presence of a pollster.
The Palestinians are bums. They think that the Pyramids are a pile of rocks that have yet to be thrown.
How do you get a Palestinian kid to throw a rock?
Point a TV camera at him.
This is GREAT - Will Pitt is BACK!!!
Gotta love those DU moonbats - they keep me amused.
...all I have to say.
LOL!!!!
By the way NSA , that was 4 papers and 12 miles over the speed limit. Geez, get it right!
An evil doppelganger has taken over PCR's brain. I used to agree with about every word he wrote but in the past couple of years he's really gone off the rails. Total Loony Toones.
It seems to me these machines are safer than people trying to look at dimpled chads.
And I'd remind the author of this book it is Republicans who are in favor of Voter ID cards and the democrats who are opposed. There is a reason for that, and it has to do with the fraud the Rats try to perpetuate in every election.
GET OVER IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
They weren't wrong, they were just reported before they were properly adjusted to reflect the disparities in the sample demographics vs. the demographics of the people who actually voted.
OK. WHo's got the "Oh No, Not this S##t Again" picture.
I meant whether you have beaten the guy up, who handed out these sheets. ´t wasn´t meant serious. :-)
It’s tough to write when all they give you is crayons.
OK,I understand now.No,I didn't beat the guy up.If you beat up everyone in New York who expressed stupid ideas,you'd never have time to do anything else! ;-)
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