Vote Fraud Comes to America

It has come to a town near all of us and probably your town, but this scourge will be likely not be given the serious platform of discussion and investigation it so desperately deserves. Vote fraud, a.k.a. vote rigging or just plain cheating if you like.

When Americans go to the polls many still treasure their single vote as if it was the bull's-eye shot from Luke Skywalker that destroyed the infamous death star in the first Star Wars movie. Some will spend hours listening and reading what politicians say, these Americans coexist with other groups, some, like my grandmother who told me she voted for JFK in 1960 because he looked nicer than Nixon. Even lightly informed citizens are coming to grips with the true nature of politics and it may just be time for something to be done to return integrity to a voting system that has fallen into a anything but a representation of democracy.

Welcome to the 2008 primaries where we show the rest of the world how a legitimate election is done or undone as it should be told.

Within these pages what will be revealed is the tip of a large dark cloud that has settled over the American political machine. This cloud we often point at the violence around voting in third world countries and feel proud it couldn't happen here. As you will read many are in denial and simply fearful to speak up about it. That cloud denying you one of your basic rights as an American citizen is VOTE FRAUD. The rigging of political contests thru electronic methods has become almost routine in America, the how, some of the who and a bit of when are in this article. If you don't understand the why, perhaps remembering this might help, "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Reports of likely vote fraud have come in most recently in the 2008 New Hampshire caucuses . Alleged vote fraud directed to change the number of people who did vote for Dr. Ron Paul on the Republican ticket. On the Democratic side, with Obama ahead in the polls, Hillary pulls a huge upset win, how? Hopefully, we will provide a shed light in a few dark places here.

In a January 18th edition of the Nashua Telegraph, written by David Brooks serious allegations of vote fraud were raised by both sides, primarily focused on the electronic voting machine called the Diebold AccuVote TS. Brooks quoted a few of the all-knowing city officials who where happy to turn their brains into a no questioning mode.

"We get the memory cards. Then we physically mark the sample ballots here, before we do the test. Nobody has any way of knowing how we were going to mark them. I can't even fathom how anybody could somehow change them," said Diane Trippett, Merrimack town clerk.

"I'm not concerned at all," said Nashua City Clerk Paul Bergeron.

Brooks added in the article, "The issue flared up last week when, soon after the Jan. 8 primary, an online poster at www.checkthevotes.com analyzed results and found that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., did several percentage points better in communities that used AccuVote machines than in communities that counted ballots by hand.

That analysis was prompted by Clinton's surprising result in the Democratic primary, which she won even though all pre-election polls predicted she would lose badly.
"I am not saying any fraud occurred, I'm just saying that we don't know . . . because our votes are counted in secret by a private corporation and nobody can trust the system. We cannot believe the outcome," said Nancy Tobi, of Milford, who has been raising concerns about the machines for several years as part of a group called the New Hampshire Fair Elections Committee.

Nancy Tobi is not alone, there are thousands of others and organizations that feel the same way and have investigated the Diebold AccuVote TS. Recently, At Princeton University they did extensive experimentation and analysis on the Diebold. As responsible city officials Diane Merrimack and Paul Bergeron have seemingly done their best to turn a blind eye to this easy to obtain research (it took me all of 5 minutes to view the video and read the abstract on their paper). The website for this Princeton University group is listed in the sources for this article and the abstract on their paper follows:

Security Analysis of the Diebold AccuVote-TS Voting Machine
Ariel J. Feldman, J. Alex Halderman, and Edward W. Felten
See website for video and paper: http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting/
Abstract This paper presents a fully independent security study of a Diebold AccuVote-TS voting machine, including its hardware and software. We obtained the machine from a private party. Analysis of the machine, in light of real election procedures, shows that it is vulnerable to extremely serious attacks. For example, an attacker who gets physical access to a machine or its removable memory card for as little as one minute could install malicious code; malicious code on a machine could steal votes undetectably, modifying all records, logs, and counters to be consistent with the fraudulent vote count it creates. An attacker could also create malicious code that spreads automatically and silently from machine to machine during normal election activities - a voting-machine virus. We have constructed working demonstrations of these attacks in our lab. Mitigating these threats will require changes to the voting machine's hardware and software and the adoption of more rigorous election procedures.

In the brief website video from the aforementioned Princeton group, it also states once the software has done its fraudulent computations it basically self-destructs leaving no evidence of its tampering to be gathered. The paper that is emitted from the machine is than tallied with the memory card backing up that paper, which is of course fraudulent. It reminded me of the Inspector Clouseau scene in one of the Pink Panther movies, where he deduced the victim had been killed by an icicle. There are no fingerprints and the murder weapon no longer exists.

Would politicians dare stoop this low? Come on, this is rhetorical question. Politicians have been cheating in elections since before the Civil War. Even a skeptic would have to admit the temptation of using a system to scam the election for yourself that is in no way traceable to your campaign is just too good to be true. The advances in technology today allow software and computer engineers to create the package and than all they have to do is hire or pay somebody who is willing to get that memory card into the Diebold machine.

In spite of all the concerns, investigations and results, the Diebold AccuVote TS has spread to many other key states, which should make the Presidential election more of a matter of who controls the voting machines, memory cards and software vs. your vote.

No doubt there are people out there who are not in touch with this issue at all, so the following view of the modern history of this issue should help in bringing you up to speed. Fortunately, there are a few people in this country that have shouldered their responsibility well enough to provide you and me with an inside view of the dark minds of politics and how they reach out to intimidate or corrupt others.

Brief modern history of Vote Fraud in America
In the 19th and 20th Century there is ample evidence of vote rigging, influence peddling and stuffing of ballot boxes with the names of those resting in peace from nearby cemeteries. There is a popular story about how that aforementioned technique was used to win Lyndon Baines Johnson his first election in Texas. Fortunately two brothers Ken and James Collier spent 25 years coming up with much better than anecdotal proof of massive election rigging in the United States, their 1996 effort titled VOTESCAM should still be out there.

After the Nixon/JFK Presidential election in 1960 vote scamming via polling machines went into high gear. Adjacent to this movement was the creation of the News Election Services or NES which was to expedite voter tabulation so the networks could get you the new on who won. Networks even today propagate the myth of who gets you the best and fastest election coverage, even though they all get their main information from the same source.

In 1964 CBS direct involvement with NES created enough of a stir to validate the creation of the Voter News Service or VNS. You may know it better as exit polling, providing mystical analysis of a handful of voters, while standing around 300 feet away from the polling area. These forecast percentages are immediately sent to networks who than tell you who has won based on 1,2 or 3% of the vote?

Before the 1988 Presidential election that deposited George HW Bush into the White House, Dan Rather had a rather revealing interview with Howard J. Strauss a Princeton University computer sciences professor and part of a civilian watchdog group calling itself "Election Watch".

Rather: Realistically, could the fix be put on a national election?

Strauss: Get me a job with a company that writes the software for this program, then I'd have access to one-third of the votes, is that enough to fix a general election?
Strauss later commented, "When it comes to computerized elections, there are not safeguards. Its not a door without locks, it's a house without doors."

Its DEJAVU all over again
2008 is not the first time the New Hampshire caucus played a key role in reversing trends and giving candidates on the losing end an improved chance of getting their parties nomination. While it feels like Dejavu, it looks more like vote fraud.

To recount the scene, a former CIA head, George H. W. Bush had just taken a pounding in the Iowa caucus at the hands of Senator Robert Dole. At that time a simple show of hands decided the outcome, in New Hampshire a new tool would be used, a computerized voting machine called the Shouptronic. It sounded good, especially to the media who were sold on the idea they could get the election results out practically instantaneously!

The computer programs or source codes for these new machines, which tabulated the votes, were said to be a trade secret. Since it was a secret, election officials, concerned citizens were told to stay away, they were just protecting their secret right?
A brief recap, we have a politician with a past in a secretive organization, a machine with a secretive methods of operation sold by a man Ransom Shoup who had been twice convicted of vote fraud in Philadelphia. No problems with that yet? Just coincidental? Let's add a widely reported promise made by GHW Bush to his John Sununu, his campaign manager, who said, "deliver me New Hampshire and you'll get a job as the White House Chief of Staff. Sure sounds like a great plot for a movie, a lust for power, a motivated computer engineer with a great name of Sununu, a desperate move and now to the days right before the election

Immediately before the primary election in New Hampshire. According to the Gallup Polls of the day, George H. W. Bush was at least 8 full points behind Senator Dole. There were accusations of dirty politics that sprouted up around Bush, but most who have followed this story were not terribly surprised to find such behavior from one of the most popular directors the CIA ever had. The CIA even recently named a building after him; unfortunately I don't have the clearance to tell you what kind of election involvement or other activity they do there.

Remember how the polls now tout a 3.5 to 4 point margin of error? This primary was very heavily polled before the election and the election results were George HW Bush winning by a massive 9 points! That amounts to a 17-point swing in the final day or two of that election.

First, the Shouptronic and those that came after lack an adequate audit trail, after they've been programmed there is no way to independently check it. Second, in order to get those fast results the machines were linked by telephone to the outside, which with the right information would enable them to be programmed from the outside. Naturally, with now way to audit the machines it was a little like getting stabbed with an icicle, there is no trace of the weapon or the prints once it melts.

The Collier brothers found ample evidence of vote fraud in the machines themselves. In New Orleans in 1994 Susan Bernecker was running for a Jefferson Parish Council's spot.

A fitness instructor and political activist, she was described as a Doris Day with an attitude. Bernecker was up against a long time incumbent 70-year old Nick Giambelluca, whose nephew, Anthony was the election supervisor. Anthony may have disagreed with his uncle or someone about something as he was found dead with a bullet to his head three weeks before the election. Most of the media gave Bernecker a good chance of beating Giambelluca but according to the machines used, she only got 33% of the vote.

Three days later Bernecker and other candidates managed to get an invitation to inspect these state of the art machines. A New York company the Sequoia Pacific Voting Inc. was the company tabulating in Jefferson Parish. Bernecker had a friend along videotaping the meeting and while she innocently tested the machine by punching in her name on four of them, she found her name was correctly tabulated. The story on the next 16 machines was not the same, whenever she punched in her name, her opponents came up. These older style machines allowed for demonstration of the vote fraud and Bernecker took the video to the media. Local stations gave it one broadcast and would not do any follow up. There was limited mention of the incident in a few publications again with no follow-through and occasional debunking mannerisms, very similar to a UFO story. Further attempts to right the wrong in court were ignored by the local newspaper and later a judge prohibited testimony from qualified experts in the field and threw the case out. The FBI turned down her case because there were no federal candidates, even though machines then and now are used in federal elections.

From Devvy Kidd, political activist and author of a popular booklet, Bankrupting America, which sold over two million copies has been reporting on vote fraud and government corruption for over 20 years. Devvy stated in a recent New with Views article, "Iowa was a dismal affair with Dr. Paul allegedly coming in fifth place with 10%. As I wrote in my last column, in several counties in Iowa, Dr. Paul pulled in 35%, 14%, 15%, 21% and several with 12% of the vote. Devvy ran for a Congressional seat in 1996 and will gladly inform any media personnel interested on her firsthand knowledge of how the political race has very little to do with the truth.

Enter Jim Condit, a vote fraud activist for several decades highly praised by both Devvy and the Collier brothers. Condit found the New Hampshire GOP primary rife with fraud problems for Dr. Paul.

The name Diebold is well known in the banking security business and those who have known it have inferred a certain ruthlessness with how they have monopolized that market. The voter election machine field looks like it's getting a similar treatment. What Condit discovered is numerous voters who had cast their ballots for Paul and their votes never were displayed. Case in point, in the town of Sutton, New Hampshire when two family members voted for Paul, after the results were quickly in, there were 0 votes noted for Paul from Sutton on websites like politico.com

When Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org called into the county clerks office the following day, the ninth of January to find out the actual vote count for Paul it was 31. According to the report by Harris who talked to Jennifer Call the Town Clerk for Sutton who stated, "they were left off the tally sheet because of human error". While this is wonderfully fresh admission of fault other investigations by independent, concerned citizens reveal it was likely compounded all over New Hampshire. With the Diebold machines being so prevalent in this primary it was kind of odd that Harris reported 59 locations in which these machines were around four hours late or more in reporting results, after the polls had closed at 7PM EST. Most of these locations were Diebold locations and since a normal tabulation should have taken only about 30 minutes, red flags should have been hoisted when Counties like Brentwood, Chesterfield, Derry, Fremont, Greenfield, Hampton, Hollis, New Ipswich, Newton, Pelham, Temple and Winchester were all over three and half hours late with results. A few of them still not sending in the results until midnight. This would certainly provide plenty of time to redo the vote count, who was really watching the watchers?

Another oddity reported by Devvy, every Dem candidate had a result divisible by 5 and for Republicans, Huckabee 217, McCain 1217, Romney 1217, it just looked weird. So much for my statistical capabilities.

The Collier brothers ran into much the same thing while investigating massive vote fraud in Dade County, Florida. The oddity of the same numbers occurring over and over again as if whoever is behind it is thumbing their nose at anyone investigating saying you can't touch me, you can't touch me, or their logarithmic equations for vote fraud leave this palindromic clue behind. Who is to worry, they probably believe Americans are just too dumb to figure it out anyway.

The Dade County vote fraud investigation uncovered massive evidence including fraudulently filled out canvas sheets in at least four separate locations. It should be noted that the Collier brothers actually went to separate court houses and asked the clerk on duty if they could see the canvas sheets and since there is no law prohibiting such viewing by the public they would look at them. When the Collier brothers actually remove them from the courthouse, that amounts to a criminal infraction. Is it justified to help reveal massive widespread vote fraud to the public? You decide.

What they found was the same handwriting, done by the same writing instrument, over and over again where individual names and writing should be.

There was much more evidence even a moment when Mike Wallace and 60 Minutes gathered some of their documentation and might have got involved. As they 60 Minutes crew has done on other big stories like drug smuggling involving CIA assistance and top level government corruption, they slinked back to the comfortable ivory towers and buried the matter under file and forget.

The Dade County investigation would eventually be squelched by the Attorney General for the State of Florida at the time, Janet Reno. Her reward, a promotion to the Attorney General's position of the United States under the Clinton Administration.

In the early 1980's Ross Perot, a business billionaire with a lot of that thankful to government contracts, had received a lot of attention for his rescue of people from his company who were captured overseas. In the early 90's The Collier brothers interested in his support sent him a letter documenting their research and expressing their hopes of having him advance the prominence of the issue. They even included the 287-page manuscript for their upcoming book, Votescam.

While citing organization involvement, Election Officials payments and more, one area will undoubtedly surprise many as James Collier wrote:
In the past 22 years I have been on radio shows from Miami to San Francisco. People have called me (referrals) to come into their town and check out their election systems. In Cincinnati we video taped the League of Women Voters (LWV) using tweezers to alter the vote. That video was shown on Channel 9 there in 1985 and the Election Chief quit the next day.

In Miami 1982, we video taped the LMV using officially-issued pencils to poke holes (unsupervised) in the vote card. We were dragged out of the counting room and threatened with arrest for that action.

Miami attorney, Ellis Rubin, recently sent our manuscript to the US Attorney General and asked him to call for public investigation. But this Justice Department remains so corrupt that last week it announced its latest refusal to act.

The Collier brothers never got the response desired from Perot and the video tape? It was bought by Pat Robertson for $2,500.00 aired once in 1987. Possibly it is still available from the folks at the Liberty Lobby, having seen it this video it is ideal for the true skeptic who doesn't want to believe the LMV could be manipulated into doing something this terrible.

Even large newspapers avoid investigations into well organized vote fraud. The Collier Brothers reported they did try to enlist the help of many well known reporters from around the country and the only one who responded with any feedback was a David Rosenzweig from the L.A. Times. Rosenzweig sent the brothers a compilation of stories on computer vote fraud which had been researched in July 1989, but did not answer the obvious question, why didn't the LA Times do anything with them?

Tireless independent researchers, also known as conspiracy theorists
The old tired technique of labeling is often employed by the mainstream press whenever they feel they've invested enough time in creating a discrediting tool. As an uninformed member of the general public you are supposed to think, conspiracy theorist, obviously no credibility. When conspiracy theories gain momentum, the labeling begins and often the attempted debunking by mainstream venues. If such a researcher gets access to discuss their evidence, they often find they are given questions which do not showcase the best evidence and very often personal attacks are rendered.

Beware the debunkers who have already carved out what they support or believe in falsely label themselves as skeptics. Michael Shermer of the infamous Skeptical Inquirer is a prime example of a debunker who claims that skeptical territory. True skepticism is a good thing, we all need to be careful about incredible claims, but when someone has put in the time and research to bring forth an undesirable truth, playing ostrich won't get anything done.

Among those tireless researchers is the late Mae Brussel. Jonathan Vankin who in 1991 wrote a good synopsis of major conspiracies entitled, Conspiracies, Cover-ups & Crimes: Political manipulations and mind control in America, said "Mae was the best engaged mind of all theorists and she was brilliant as a researcher."

Mae's research pioneered much of the JFK assassination information currently out there and initially she drew her share of debunking, but she persisted.

Ken Collier's vote fraud investigation took him to Dallas, Texas where he did talk to Mae. Brussels told Ken that "the roots of vote fraud were to be found in Dallas. Mae stated the media had done a trade-off immediately after the shooting in Dallas. The television networks and the major press agreed to go along with the Warren Commission, stifling any impulses to investigate the truth about a front gunman, in return for control of the vote count.

Ken Collier at the time was stranded in Dallas due to lack of funding a frequent problem with those conspiracy theorists who are often said to be in it only for the money.
Since had the time he took a look at the area in Dallas known as the "Killing Zone". Mae had told him about the lack of any cordite smell on the 6th floor of the book depository. Cordite would be noticeable up to at least two hours after firing several shots if the Warren Commission conclusion was right. Brussels also mentioned a photo taken by Ike Altgen of the people outside of the Book Depository immediately after the shots were fired. The photo of the book depository on the first floor depicted Oswald in the viewing audience with that same look of awe shared by so many on that day. If Oswald was on the first floor when the shooting occurred, how could he have on the 6th? Furthermore, with the President of the US coming by your building wouldn't it be likely that you would have been allowed to leave your job for a few minutes and join your co-workers downstairs for that fleeting glimpse of power?

After rooting about a particular likely area Ken found what Mae had mentioned, the perfect location for the front gunman. Not the grassy knoll, not the book depository but very likely exactly where the kill shot came from that peeled by JFK's scalp in the Zapruder film. A cistern, three by three feet wide and five feet deep was located under a bunch of old boxes and beer cans where the bridge and the grassy knoll met. It would have offered a great upcoming view of JFK's vehicle and him. The escape route would also be underground, which exited right to the Dallas police Department. There was a claim that years later the son of a Dallas police officer said he pulled the trigger on JFK and that he had his diary to prove it. In his naivety, he gave the diary to the FBI and never saw it again.

Collier got an ABC news crew involved in actually taking video of the cistern and a copy was sold to the producer of Nova's 25th anniversary on the JFK shooting on PBS. The brothers were paid for the video and nothing was ever mentioned about it on the PBS special, only the standard story, Lee Harvey Oswald did it.

We have all been told voting carries responsibilities but when the people we vote for are not responsible what is the answer?

Possible Solutions
Some good suggestions have been offered to counter the computerized and untraceable tallies by machine.
From the Collier Brothers:
1)
Find out who the election supervisor is and how much he gets paid, they have found the to be well paid for their tolerance to election fraud.
2)
Take a video camera into the tabulation centers and find out if they are actually creating additional ballots there for the winning candidates. (The Collier brothers did this and found the League of Women Voters-LMV very much engaged in punching ballots at tabulating centers. Subsequent investigation of the LMV lead to a tearful confession by one official and very heavy handed retaliation by guards in other areas)
3)
While the media is a part of this whole fraud, continue to voice your protest and tell others what you've found

There are others trying to pass legislation like the HR 811, "The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2007". Some in North Carolina would try to sell this bill as one, which mandated using electronic voting machines. According to one critic, North Carolina State law did not mandate electronic voting machines. Instead, it banned paperless voting systems, such as had been in use in 40 counties in North Carolina, including Guilford County and in Carteret County (where one machine supposedly "ate" 4,400 votes in 2004).
The provisions of the bill:

Ø
A voter-verified paper ballot must be produced for every vote cast beginning with the November 2008 elections.

Ø
Paper-based voting systems (including thermal reel-to-reel systems and systems accessible to voters with disabilities that also used or produced a paper ballot) used in 2006 can be used until 2012; only systems that used no paper ballots at all must be replaced or upgraded by November 2008. Durable, scannable, accessible paper ballots must be used by 2012.

Ø
Upgrade requirements mean that, by 2012:

Ø
Where ballot marking devices are used, they must be able to deposit the ballots
automatically into a secure container for mobility access, and

Ø
Where direct recording electronic machines (DREs) are used, a mechanism must be provided that allows disabled voters to privately and independently verify the contents of the paper ballot printed by the DRE printer.

Ø
The paper ballot is the vote of record in all recounts and audits, as a check on electronic tallies.

Ø
In 2008, all voters are entitled to vote by paper ballot if the voting machine in their jurisdiction is broken, and in 2010 and after, for any reason.

Ø
Routine random audits must be conducted by hand count in 3% of the precincts in all Federal elections, and 5% or 10% in very close races (but races decided by 80% or more need not be audited).

Ø
Wireless devices, Internet connections, uncertified software and undisclosed software are banned in voting and tabulating machines.

Ø
$1 billion in funding is authorized for system replacement and upgrading in FY 2008, with additional upgrades authorized in FY 2009.

Ø
$100 million each fiscal year is authorized to fund the audits.

Ø
An arms-length relationship is established between test labs and voting machine vendors.

Ø
The bill is silent on re-authorizing the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) and does not address military and overseas balloting.

Conclusion
Americans are pushed to yet another threshold line to either act or stay sleeping. The apathy towards voting will no doubt continue as either consciously or unconsciously we all realize there is a foul beast consuming the remaining integrity of our vote. This destruction leads to more mistrust of government and the lackeys that call themselves the media.

There are even more serious implications if the exporting of these corrupted machines continues. If America is found to be exporting machines that will only allow leaders to be elected that are US of A compliant, regardless of their political ideology this will viewed as yet more interference in other nations affairs. Of course, that might help stave off the need to foment wars and sell arms to some third world countries, so a few lives might even be saved in the process.

The public has to decide if we really and truly need immediate election results, can we wait a day or two for honest and independently monitored tabulation to take place? Where will those honest people come from, especially when exposed to payoffs to look the other way, will they too be tempted?

Is our fate to be decided by humans manipulating machines? Do we still have what it takes to demand what is right?

The power is still with the people if only they still exercise it.