|
Home
Electronic
Ballots - Major Media Report Major Problems
from
Frederick Burks, November 6, 2004
Dear
friends,
Below
are links to a powerful documentary and several revealing articles
reported by major news media exposing serious problems with
electronic voting machines. This is followed by excerpts from an excellent
article which explains core problems within the elections
system.
Washington
Post - "In
one North Carolina county, more than 4,500 votes were lost because officials
misjudged the amount of data that could be stored electronically by a
computer."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29190-2004Nov5.html
New
York Times -
An article titled "Computer Voting Is Open to Easy Fraud,"
presents the troubling results of a detailed study by Johns Hopkins University.
"We found some stunning, stunning flaws." "The
systems....could be tricked by anyone with $100 worth of computer equipment."
"Ballots could be altered by anyone with access to a machine, so
that a voter might think he is casting a ballot for one candidate while
the vote is recorded for an opponent."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/24/technology/24VOTE.html
Associated
Press/ABC - "Voters nationwide reported some 1,100 problems
with electronic voting machines on Tuesday, including trouble choosing
their intended candidates."
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=220927
Miami
Herald -
An article titled "Defective Software Lost Votes" states, "Attorneys
scrutinizing the close vote on Amendment Four noticed that vote totals
changed in an unexpected way after 13,000 final ballots were counted.
Election officials quickly determined the problem was caused by the Unity
Software." "The glitch was discovered two years ago,
and should have been corrected by software manufacturer ES&S."
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/10099198.htm
CNN
- "An error with an electronic voting system gave President Bush
3,893 extra votes in suburban Columbus."
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/05/voting.problems.ap/index.html
USA
Today - "Nearly
one in three voters, including about half of those in Florida, were expected
to cast ballots using ATM-style voting machines that computer scientists
have criticized for their potential for software glitches, hacking and
malfunctioning." "Most of the machines, including
all of Florida's, lack paper records that could be used to verify the
electronic results in a recount". "Over 20
percent of the machines tested by observers around the country failed
to record votes properly."
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2004-11-03-evote-trouble_x.htm
These
are only a few of the many problems that we know about. How many more
votes were changed or disappeared that we don't know about? We will never
know. For more powerful information on this, the excellent documentary
Votergate takes us on a fact-finding mission across the US revealing
stunning evidence of defects and outright fraud in electronic voting. Engaging
interviews with whistleblowers and courageous Americans, including
members of Congress and top elections officials, reveal critical information
which the mass media has given very little coverage. Don't
miss this powerful 30-minute documentary available free at http://www.votergate.tv
The
Problem Goes Deeper. Below are excerpts from a riveting article which goes to the very
core of the problem. The author's father and uncle uncovered serious
elections fraud years ago and suffered severely for trying to reveal
the truth. In 1992, they published the book Votescam which exposed major
elections fraud, only to have it effectively banned. They
both died young in the 1990s. Please pass on this powerful information
which is so vital to the future of democracy. Invite all of your friends
and colleagues to forward this message, and to join together
in calling for election reform.
For
the full original article, see http://www.truthout.com/docs_03/102503C.shtml
A
Brief History of Computerized Election Fraud in America (Excerpts)
By Victoria Collier
Squadrons
of shiny new touch screen Trojan horses are being rolled into precincts
across America. Not, as we are told, to make voting easier or more accurate.
The real reason America is being flooded with billions of dollars worth
of paperless computerized voting machines is so that
no one will be able to prove vote fraud. These machines are not just
unverifiable, they are secretly programmed. Their software is
not open to scrutiny by election officials or computer experts. They are also
equipped with modems accessible by computer, telephone, and satellite.
We the People are responsible for taking back the control
of our democratic process. No one else will do it for us. We cannot afford
to be naive, or uneducated at this time in history. In order to fully
understand the extent of the corruption we are dealing with, and to avoid
making dangerous mistakes based on ignorance, we must understand the history,
and the power structure, behind vote fraud in America.
I grew up with two men who spent twenty-five years investigating
vote fraud in America: James and Kenneth Collier, my father and uncle. Their
book, Votescam: The Stealing of America
was published in 1992 and immediately banned by the major book chains,
which listed the book as "out of print" and actively worked
to prevent its sale. Votescam chronicles the Collier brother's
groundbreaking investigation into America's multi-billion dollar election
rigging industry, and the corporate government and media officials who
control it. [First five chapters available free
online]
The Votescam investigation began in 1970, in -- surprise!
-- Dade County, Florida, where Ken ran for Congress (with Jim as his campaign
manager). Ken was rigged out of the election through a vote scam,
which the Colliers later discovered was used throughout the country for
decades. It went like this: The local newscaster would announce during
the broadcast of election returns that the election "computer has
broken down." Instead of giving official returns from the county
courthouse, the networks would be running vote "projections"
for the rest of the night.
Jim and Ken, who had garnered 30 percent of the vote, noticed
that when the vote totals came back on the screen after the announcement,
they had mysteriously lost 15 percentage points. They didn't get another
vote for the rest of the night. When they examined the "official"
election results from for the September primary, October run-off
and November final election in Dade County, the record listed a total
of 141,000 votes cast for the governors race in each election. The
exact same number of total votes were cast for three elections with a
different number of candidates running each time. The same identical
figures were listed for the Senate race in the primary, run-off and
final election. This, of course, is a statistical impossibility.
When they compared the "official" vote results with
a print-out of the vote "projections" broadcast by the TV networks
on the final election night, they found that channel 4 had "projected"
with near perfect accuracy the results of 40 races with 250 candidates
only 4 minutes after the polls closed. Channel 7 came
even closer; at 9:31 pm, they "projected" the final vote total
for a race at 96,499 votes. When the Colliers checked the "official"
number . . . it was also 96,499.
The networks then made the astonishing claim that the
results from a single voting machine somewhere in Dade County were run
through a computer program in order to get these vote projections. Elton
Davis was the computer programmer responsible for the magic formula that
could convert one machine's vote results into near perfect projected vote
totals for 40 races and 250 candidates. When Jim and Ken confronted Davis
in his office at the University of Miami, he responded: "You'll never
prove it, now get out."
Finally the networks claimed that members of the League of
Women Voters were out in the field on election night, calling in vote
totals to channels 4 and 7. When the Colliers confronted the head
of the League, Joyce Deiffenderfer, she admitted that there were no LWV
members out in the field that night. She broke down crying, saying "I
don't want to get caught up in this thing.
When the TV networks claimed that the courthouse computer
had broken down, and they would no longer be reporting actual vote totals,
they were lying. They had never been reporting actual vote totals. The
final shoe dropped months later when an official press release appeared
from Dade data processing chief, Leonard White, which stated emphatically:
The county computer at the courthouse was never down, and it was
never slow.
This was the beginning. The Collier brothers had
slammed their boat into the tip of a giant iceberg. As they continued
to investigate, they were horrified to discover vote fraud collusion among
key individuals in every branch and on every level of the American political
system. Those who were not benefiting from the fraud were too afraid to
fight it. Their search for justice led to dead-ends. Their lives were
threatened. They were vilified as conspiracy theorists by the mainstream
press . . . and yet they persevered.
The next quarter century was spent compiling a wealth
of FBI documented evidence proving that
elections in the United States have come under the tight control of a
handful of powerful and corrupt people. Jim and Ken
both died young during the 90's, as heroes to many thousands who heard
them speak on the radio and at political meetings across the country.
They helped to guide individuals and groups working for clean elections
in their communities. The Collier's last hope was that Votescam
would be used as evidence in a serious Congressional investigation into
election fraud.
Many people still in power have yet to be held accountable for
their role in aiding and abetting vote fraud. I'll give you two important
examples. Famous Miami lawyer Ellis Rubin brought the original
Votescam evidence to the Florida assistant State Attorney at the
time, Janet Reno. The evidence included the shaved wheels of
lever voting machines, forged canvass sheets, and pre-printed vote tally
sheets. Reno refused to prosecute, claiming falsely that the statue
of limitations had run out on the crime. Years later, Rubin would
tell my father that behind closed doors Reno had stated that she could
not prosecute. Why? Because she would bring down many of the most powerful
people in the state.
Another notable Votescam criminal can now be found sitting
on the bench of the highest court in the nation. Supreme Court
Justice Antonin Scalia, while still a Federal Appeals Judge, single handedly
destroyed what would have been an historic lawsuit filed against
Justice Department lawyer Craig Donsanto, who had refused to prosecute
the extensive vote fraud evidence brought to him by the Colliers. The
evidence included videotape of the League of Women voters tampering with
ballots in a close door vote "counting" session. The women were
illegally punching holes in already cast ballots.
I'd like to offer a brief list of important lessons learned
from twenty-five years of fighting vote fraud in the trenches.
- Secret vote counting is illegal.
Counting faster is not a justification for counting secretly.
- Lever machines were the first
to appear, and they were riggable in a number of ways. One could rig
the lever machine itself, or the electronic scanning machines that
counted the ballots. (See the Votescam
video for footage of ballot rigging).
- Computerized voting machines
are the easiest to rig. Their software is not open to public scrutiny,
or the scrutiny of Election Supervisors. There are nearly
infinite ways to program the machines to count votes fraudulently.
Since they are accessible by modem, they can be controlled from a
remote, centralized location.
- Voting machine companies operate
with no federal oversight, certification process, standards or restrictions. Just
two companies -- Election Systems and Software (ES&S) and Diebold
Voting Systems -- now control about 80% of the vote count in
the U.S.
- Both the Democratic and Republican
parties have been complicit in vote rigging for decades, to their
mutual benefit. Vote rigging is NOT a partisan issue.
- The corporate major media networks
play a vital role in perpetrating and covering up vote fraud.
- Election Day media polls are
untrustworthy at best.
The
gravest error of judgment these days comes from those vote reformers who
honestly believe that the answer to the butterfly ballot and hanging chad
problems in the 2000 election is to embrace the ballot-less computerized
voting machine. With the ballot-less computer, there is no way to
recount, no way to prove any discrepancy, inaccuracy or fraud. Just
the fact that companies like ES&S and Diebold would even make
a ballot-less machine should be cause for a Congressional investigation.
(There are also many other reasons to investigate them. For a detailed
examination of these sinister corporations, check out http://www.blackboxvoting.com )
A most grave error of judgment also comes
from those who think that returning to a hand-counted paper ballot system
is somehow impossible. An MIT/Cal Tech study done in 2001
shows that manually counted paper ballots are the most accurate system
out of the 5 systems used in the last 4 presidential elections. They are
totally verifiable, and first-world nations across the globe still use
them, including Canada which counted their last presidential election
in four hours.
The bottom line is that a computerized vote count is a
secret vote count, and that's illegal. Technology cannot
supercede the constitutional and mandatory provisions of election
law, which require open and verifiable elections. There is no way to do
a public vote count with computers. The count must be done by hand,
in public, video-taped, aired live on television, and the results posted
on the precinct wall -- just like they used to be. Ballots should
be counted on the same day as the voting takes place, making it much more
difficult to alter ballots. Hand counted paper ballots and eternal
vigilance are the only hope left for us.
A
long time writer and political activist, Victoria Collier continues to
educate the public on the subject of vote fraud in place of her father
and uncle. She is the editor of http://www.votescam.com Victoria is available for interviews
and can be reached at 1-866-280-9090 and at editor@votescam.com
For
reliable, verifiable information on other major cover-ups which directly
affect our democracy, see www.WantToKnow.info The
WantToKnow.info team is a group of dedicated researchers from around the
world who are deeply committed to revealing information being hidden
from the public, and to designing ways that we can work together
to build a brighter future for
us, for our children, and for our world. To join our mailing list
(one email every two days on average), send an email to wecare@wanttoknow.info Together, we can
and will make a difference. Thanks for caring and have a good day.
With very best wishes,
Fred Burks for the WantToKnow.info
team
P.S. Please help to spread this important news by forwarding this email
to your friends and colleagues.
Explore these empowering
websites coordinated by Fred:
http://www.WantToKnow.info -
Revealing major cover-ups & working together for a better world
http://www.momentoflove.org - Every person in the world has a
heart
http://www.gcforall.org - Building a Global Community for All
http://www.weboflove.org - Strengthening the Web of Love that interconnects
us all
Together, we are creating a new paradigm of love and cooperation on Earth |
|