Election Tampering

 

This is what I have found out.  Greg Palast, an award winning journalist (follow the links) who may be best known for his investigations into Florida’s 2000 election results is saying that there is significant evidence of tampering in among other places, Ohio, and he believes that Kerry actually won that state.

 

The first indicator of this is that the exit polls suggest a clear Kerry victory.  Exit polls have historically been accurate in the US, and that is because they aren’t guess work, they reflect what people say they actually did.  Even in 2000, when based on exit polls ABC called Florida for Gore, they were right!  Studies have since conclusively shown that a full recount in that state would have given it to Gore.  That full recount, opposed by Katherine Harris and the Republican Party was ordered by the Florida Supreme Court, but in an unprecedented intrusion by the US Supreme Court was stopped.  That was the mechanism by which the Supreme Court gave the presidency to Bush.

 

In searching the internet exit polls, however, I found some other interesting info.  In Venezuela, where the election on whether to recall Chaves was monitored by the Carter Center, the exit polls were also showing that Chaves lost.  The Carter Center called those exit polls insignificant, because they can “often be biased.”  Whereas that may be true there, in the US, they have always been accurate.  But there was another reason the Carter Center certified that election: they had electronic voting machines that printed out a card with your choice after you voted, which the voters then dropped into a box.  The boxes were sampled and found to be consistent with the results on the machines.  There are critics that say more of the paper trail should have been verified, but at least they had a paper trail.

 

Why don't we have that paper trail?  Because the makers of our machines, Republican supporters, and the Republicans that run the states that bought and used those machines didn’t want a paper trail.  What else didn’t they want? 

 

Exit polling. 

 

The commissioner of voting in Ohio, a Republican, fought in the courts to ban exit polling.  His lame reasoning was that if the results were published early, it could affect turnout and the election.  The courts allowed exit polling, and it does what the Republicans were actually afraid of.  It calls into question the vote count. 

 

But the electronic machines are not the only problem.  In Ohio's poorer (and blacker) communities the punch card ballots that were at the center of the controversy in Florida in 2000 are still used.  These ballots and the machines that count them invariably produce a percentage of what they call “spoiled ballots”.  These are ballots with hanging chads, or such, which cannot be counted by the machines.  The issue over recounting these in the Florida election was really an issue over counting them in the first place.  These are ballots that can be visually inspected and clearly determined to be for one candidate or another.  Neither in Florida, nor in Ohio in 2004 were they counted at all.

 

And because they tend to be in poor, black communities, these “spoiled” votes, it is reasonably estimated, would go 90% to the democratic candidate.

 

There were also apparently issues in New Mexico where significant numbers of ballots were cast in Native American communities with no choice for President (??), and a precinct in a democratic county in Ohio that registered 25 million negative votes. 

 

And that’s not even getting into the voter suppression techniques used before election day, discarded voter registration applications, flyers that incorrectly intimidated voters with threats (if they had parking tickets, if they – or any member of their family – was convicted of a felony), calls to misinform new voters about where their polling station was,etc…

 

At this point, the electronic results cannot be verified either way, but that should not be used as an argument to accept them.  Any election results that cannot be verified should not be relied upon to determinate who should be put in office.  Bush can’t verify the results any more than Kerry can.  Well, except for the evidence of tampering in our favor.

 

Illegitimate then, illegitimate now, George W. Bush is the worst president never to have been elected.

 

Rise up people.  Write letters.  Ask the mainstream media why they won’t report on this.  Write Republican delegates for Bush and ask them to recognize this travesty of democracy by changing their vote (then we can say the electoral college system worked after all).  Write your congressmen/women and ask them for a full investigation, to bring to light the truth.  Write Kerry and Edwards and ask them, despite conceding, to devote their efforts to the truth.

 

As long as they are stealing elections, we will never regain the power to fix this problem.  The fight is now.  This has to come out.

I never considered myself apathetic.  I voted the first time I had the opportunity, and I’ve always been interested in the issues of politics.  When I was young and considering how I wanted to live my life, I considered public service, either in non-profit or government, but I also felt like that would be sacrificing other things.  In other words, I thought I would have to give up the very “pursuit of happiness” that I would be, essentially, fighting for (for the benefit of other people).  That, I didn’t realize it at the time, was apathy. 

 

But I never realized how bad it could get.  And now I see that a career as an accountant could not have been a greater waste of time.  What point is there to life, if you do not do something, within your abilities to make the world better?  Yes, accountants are necessary.  But maybe the world would be in a better place if I had been contributing to it for the past 15 years. 

 

And I, of part Jewish heritage, was brought up to believe that we should speak and act against injustice, so that something like the Holocaust could never happen again.  I was taught not to be silent. 

 

When I first moved to Georgia from New York, about 12, 13 years ago, people asked me why I would want to live in the South.  I joked that if you wanted to make change, you needed to go where the disease was.

 

But was I an anti-body?  I watched in the time I’ve been here while a blue state, that I always thought was red, actually turned red.

 

And I am extremely disappointed in my country today. 

 

A co-worker, who I specifically thought better not come over to me and gloat today came over just as I got in.  I entertained fears that this person would come over to gloat, and that I would not be able to hold my tongue.  I saw myself asking her if she thought this was a football game, challenging her as a Christian, and accusing her of being complicit in evil, too unwilling to do the work to find out the facts, stupid.  And I’m not even an employee.  These people are my clients (although they’re not all republican).   That’s one way to make a career change (I may have to go home). 

 

So she comes over – towing a dangerous line. 

 

“Have you conceded yet?”

 

“Me?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“No, I haven't conceded.”

 

A little polite chit chat about the likelihood that this will drag on ensued, followed by a veiled agreement that we both had been hoping the results were more decisive (but in opposite directions).

 

No, I haven’t conceded.  Although I’m depressed, cause it doesn’t look good.  But I want to know if there are issues with the credibility of the touch screen machines.  I want to know to what extent voter intimidation played a part.  I’m willing to concede a loss, once I am assured that it was fair, but expecting, as I was, foul play, and for good reason, I am not willing to concede.

 

In the meantime, I accept that this will probably turn into another four years for Bush, fair or not, and so I have to figure out how I will fight in the war, that I see crossing into our borders.  The war against religious extremists, Muslims and Christians (Jews too).  And also, I think, it is a war against cowards, and a war against fear.  You create what you fear.  Ironically, those who fear terrorism the most have chosen the worst person for the job.

 

I don’t know what to do.

 

One thing I promise is that I won’t be silent.

My pick for quote of the day:

"I am not homophobic.  I'm not a hater of any person. But homosexuality is an abomination to God.”

- Pastor Chris Davis to his congregation of Second Baptist Church in LaGrange, Georgia, in urging them to vote for Bush and the constitutional amendment to ban same sex marriage.

No, he’s not a hater of any person.  I can see right through to his loving spirit.  Just like Jesus.

Prophetic words of Wisdom, once again, from Jesus (via the Gospels of Thomas).

(Remember in the second debate, Bush said he never owned a timber company, but it turned out he did – according to factcheck.org)

26 Jesus said, "You see the sliver in your friend's eye, but you don't see the timber in your own eye. When you take the timber out of your own eye, then you will see well enough to remove the sliver from your friend's eye."

34 Jesus said, "If a blind person leads a blind person, both of them will fall into a hole."

(Isn’t that what has happened?)

 

And like Emerson said (hey look I like Emerson and Jesus), remember, that “to lift me, you must be on higher ground.”

 

Vote your conscience.  Vote for right (not the right).  Search your heart for what God would want tomorrow.

 

Remember not to fall prey to the Sin of Pride by extolling, like the popular bumper stickers say, The Power of Pride.

Thank you, Cheney!

For referring me to such a wonderful site that disputes so many of your assertions!

(actually, in the debate, he referred us all to "factcheck.com" but meant "factcheck.org."  Capitalizing on this error, the domain, factcheck.com, was quickly snatched up by liberal billionaire, George Soros, and redirected to his own site.  Oops).

But on factcheck.org:

http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docid=155

Bush did not send troops with enough Body armor even before the 87 billion appropriations bill that Kerry voted against (which he voted against for different reasons).

http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docid=177

Kerry does not have a record of voting against the military.

http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docID=269

Kerry not the flip flopper Bush says he is.


Factcheck.org appears to be very objective.  If you go to their main page, you will find that they disclose mistatements from Kerry and Edwards as well.  You can judge for yourself which factual mistatements or exagerrations seem most material (does it change the conclusion), which ones are most egregious, or which seem intentionally misleading (I believe the above fall into the latter category).

Ways the republicans work against democracy. (and this is just in their own country)

 

1.   Trying to keep black people from voting. 

a. Purging the polls of felons without regard to whether the lists of felons are even accurate (Florida voters were purged in advance of the 2000 election and those purged included significant numbers of non-felons).  Many of the felons, even, are merely convicted of marijuana or other drug charges, but more importantly are often black, and black people don’t tend to vote republican.

 

b. Suppressing the vote in Detroit: A Republican lawmaker, John Pappageorg,was quoted as saying the GOP would fare poorly in this year's elections if it failed to "suppress the Detroit vote." He later acknowledged using "a bad choice of words" saying he just meant that they should try to get them to not vote.

 

2.  Voting machines:  The electronic voting machines have no paper trail, no way to double check the results, and based on examinations by independent organizations, are highly susceptible to hacking and manipulation.  I heard one analyst say that it is “as if” they were designed to make it easy to change the results (e.g. no security at all).  The CEO of the maker of the machines that are going to be used in Ohio, a significant battleground state, is a big Republican supporter and was quoted as saying "I will do everything within my power to make sure George Bush is re-elected.”  Voting machines are also going to be used in Florida, where the President’s brother presides, and where the 2000 election was stolen.  Jimmy Carter, who has made it his post-presidential career to, among other things, monitor elections in other countries, has expressed concern over the coming election in Florida, stating that even UN election inspectors may not be enough.

 

3. Manipulating the media.  Media organizations under the constant scrutiny of the    republican anti-defamation society (the Bush spin machine) is scared to run stories that criticize.  For example, CBS is now saying that they are sitting on a story, because they believe that to run it this close to an election would be inappropriate.  Despite Dan Rather’s recent mishap, which appears to help the Republicans more than hurt, the president of parent company, Viacom, is a Republican supporter.  What right do they have to sit on information that might help people make an informed decision?  If sitting on a story isn’t taking sides, why would reporting the story be?  We have a right to know.

 

4.  Manipulating the polls.  Polls have been highly criticized of late, and one wonders where they get their methodology.  A recent gallop poll used an estimate of democratic turnout that was lower than the estimate of Republican turnout (in %s). This means they actually didn’t count democrats disproportionately compared to Republicans.  This is not based on historical data.  In recent years turnout has been greater among democrats than republicans, not less.  The great danger of this is not so much that people are swayed by polls, but that if there is manipulation of the voting machines, inaccurate polls cannot serve as a check against corruption.  A discrepancy unidentified goes unanswered.  Compound this by the fact that major media companies no longer do exit polling, which is an accurate way of checking results for reasonableness, especially important since the new machines offer no paper trail.  They don’t do exit polling because they have been made to believe that they botched them in Florida in 2000 by calling Florida for Gore, but if you actually consider who people thought they were voting for, but for being confused by the ballot, they called it right.  It detected an aberration then, and it could and should be used to detect an aberration now.
 

5.  Making it harder for students to register and to vote.  Students to a lesser degree than Blacks, also don’t vote republican.  FOX news, (the comedian D.L. Hugley said, “Fox is so far right that when I have it on, my house leans to the right”), visited a voter registration drive in AZ and threatened the students right there, and later on the air, saying they were aiding people to commit felonies by registering “out of state” students in AZ.  Research revealed that this is not AZ’s position.  In AZ, only if a student intends to return home after college, should he or she vote by absentee, but in fact they do not question a person’s statement of intent, and they allow students to register to vote in AZ.  Fox continued to intimidate by airing the story.  The more difficult it is for college students to organize and to register and to vote, the less will vote, in the state they live in or any other.
 

6.  Throwing out new voter registration applications:  Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell has told county boards of elections to follow an antiquated provision in Ohio election law requiring voter registration cards be printed on thick, 80-pound stock paper.   This is in response to the fact that there has been a substantial increase in voter registration in Democratic areas as compared to Republican in this important swing state.

 

This despite this provision of law, which states:

Sec. 1971. - Voting rights
(2) No person acting under color of law shall -
(B) deny the right of any individual to vote in any election because of an error or omission on any record or paper relating to any application, registration, or other act requisite to voting, if such error or omission is not material in determining whether such individual is qualified under State law to vote in such election.

 

If you’re for democracy, you should vote democrat. 

She’s dead to me.

 

I finally got a new (old) car, but I was going to drive the old one today due to inclement weather.  The new (old) car, is lighter and smaller, but most importantly needs new tires.  So I’m backing Bertha out and I hear swish, swish.  I look in the back seat and see a couple inches of standing water.  I knew there was a leak somewhere, cause the car was damp and smelly, but I didn’t understand, until now, why the back leg of my pants got wet every time I drove it. 

 

The American Cancer society can have her.  They can send her to car heaven, donate her organs, whatever they want, and all I have to say about her, her eulogy of sorts, is, “she tried hard.”  So goodbye Bertha.  You’re dead to me. 

 

I actually feel bad saying that, as if I’m being unduly mean to my car (and that’s a bad thing?)  Because, actually, I bear her no ill will.  But when it’s time, you have to put a car to sleep.

I wanted something in my stomach, so I drank my oatmeal.

 

See, there weren't any instant packets in the store in the “regular” bland variety that I use for basic sustenance in the early morning hours at work.  Y’know, something to eat with my vitamins.  So I bought a big tub of 1 minute oatmeal and decided to try that.  Estimating the amount and pouring in the hot water from the coffee maker like I always do for my instant oatmeal, I made myself a cup.  And waited.  And waited.  It never really thickened up.  So I drank it.

John Rocco believes in the Ten Commandments

 

Apparently the stone monument of the Ten Commandments that was ordered removed from an Alabama courthouse as a violation of the constitutional provision that keeps church and state separate, is on tour.  Here are some of the things you hear if you go see the Ten Commandments on tour.

 

“The ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) is still the enemy.”

 

“That is what our country is based on, is God and the Bible.  Why we want to take God out I don’t know.”

But this is my favorite.  Referring to a protestor, John Rocco, 73 years old, said, “I’m glad I didn’t bring my gun.  I’d probably be in jail right now.  I believe in the Ten Commandments, and I don’t appreciate what people like him are doing to my country.”

 

John Rocco believes in the Ten Commandments.  Though, apparently, he doesn't know what they are.

 

(quotes are as reported in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

 

Haiku for day two II

Day two on the bus
She still wants to go to school
Not like her sister