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Showing posts with label Vote Fraud. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vote Fraud. Show all posts
08 November 2012
“Insider Info” from the Final Presidential Debate… “Must” Watch…
It was a night of political nuance and intelligent discussion...for Triumph to poop on! More CONAN @ http://teamcoco.com/video
25 May 2010
Scientists hack into India's EVMs, expose flaws
India’s electronic voting machines (EVMs) with chips made in Japan and the US were designed to stop fraud and accelerate the voting process, but computer scientists say these paperless machines are vulnerable to fraud.
Professor J Alex Halderman of the University of Michigan and his computer science students say they were able to hack into the EVMs to manipulate results.
Halderman, who led the seven-month research project, with a security researcher from the Netherlands and Hyderabad’s NetIndia, said a home-made device allowed them to change results on anEVM by sending it wireless messages from a mobile phone.
“Almost every component of this system could be attacked to manipulate election results,” said Halderman. “This proves, once again, that the paperless class of voting systems has intrinsic security problems. It is hard to envision systems like this being used responsibly in elections.”
A video on the Internet by the researchers shows two kinds of attacks. One attack involves replacing a small part of theEVM with a look-alike component that can be silently instructed to steal a percentage of votes in favour of a candidate. The instructions can be sent from a mobile phone.
“Our lookalike display board intercepts the vote totals that the machine is trying to display and replaces them with dishonest totals — basically whatever the bad guy wants to show up at the end of the election,” Halderman told reporters.
Another attack uses a pocket-sized microprocessor to change the votes stored in theEVMs between the election and the public counting session, which in India can be weeks later.
India uses roughly 1.4 millionEVMs in 829,000 polling stations in a general election and they are of the direct recording electronic (DRE) variety. TheEVMs record votes to the machine’s internal memory and provide no paper records for any recount. The researchers said that with DRE machines too much “absolute trust” is placed in the hardware and software of theEVMs.
Rop Gonggrijp, a security researcher from the Netherlands, who participated in the study, slammed the paperless electronic voting system. “The research shows the longstanding scientific consensus holds true — DRE voting machines are fundamentally vulnerable.
The machines have been abandoned in Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany, Florida and many other places. India should follow suit,” he said. The researchers have offered to share their findings with India’s Election Commission.
08 April 2010
The ‘Ugly’ Truth – A General Election or the Election of a General and What Democracy Truly Is!
'The general election – why are you electing a new general - a general over what you might ask? It is very simple. Maybe you are electing a new general over the legion(s). The truth is you are not electing anyone and it has all been sorted out in advance, because it would never be allowed to be down to just CHANCE!!'
24 January 2010
The Best Democracy Money Can Buy
'The American corporate businesses can now freely spend their money to prop-up political candidates as the US Supreme Court overrules a ban on campaign financing by corporations. The nine justices of the top court ruled on Thursday by a 5-4 vote to abolish a two-decade ruling urging the companies to only use specially earmarked funds from a political action committee for political purposes, AFP reported.'
05 September 2009
05 July 2009
EVMs can be easily tweaked: Expert
5 Jul 2009, 0404 hrs IST, TNN |
| NEW DELHI: In a move that could have a far-reaching impact on how future elections are conducted in the country, the Election Commission of India (ECI) is veering round to the view that Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) can be tampered with. Omesh Saigal, a 1964 batch IAS officer and alumnus of IIT Delhi, who is considered an expert on EVMs, gave a convincing presentation to the top EC officials on Friday morning. According to the sources, Saigal demonstrated with his software that by keying in a certain code number, one could ensure that every fifth vote cast in a particular polling booth goes in favour of a particular candidate or party. |
04 July 2009
Understanding Democracy
What is Democracy? ----- to top
The word "democracy" has been a fashionable political slogan during much of the 20th Century: as in "Our Democracy" or "People's Democracy" or "Social Democracy", etc. And we still hear it being used in different contexts. President Bush sees promotion of democracy as the main aim of the American Foreign Policy. But what does the word "democracy" mean?
The literal meaning of the word "democracy" is "power of the people". In practice it usually means a method of decision making by a majority vote, and specifically of appointing a government by elections. Thus, if Jack and Jill are two prospective candidates for the Presidency, and 10 people take part in the elections, then, if 4 people vote for Jack and 6 for Jill, Jill will be elected President.
Democracy as an Anti-Theory ----- to top
The idea of democracy was advanced as an anti-theory to "autocracy" and "aristocracy", which respectively mean "power of a single ruler" or "power of a superior group". And like all anti-theories it accepts the basic assumptions of the theories it seeks to oppose. In this case, it is the idea of "power" of government being a privilege of the ruler, which the ruler exercises for his own benefit, usually at the expense of and to the detriment to those ruled by him. Thus in an autocracy an all powerful king rules his kingdom for his own pleasure, and in an aristocracy a privileged group rules over the lower classes, again for the benefits of the ruling group. In a democracy it is the will of the majority of the people that is supreme, but above whose will? Above the will of various minorities.
This is the theory. We shall proceed to examine how this theory works in practice, as a method of electing a government and of decision making.
Democracy as a Method of Appointing a Government ----- to top
Since all the people cannot in any meaningful sense govern a country, in practice a "democratic government" means a government where the person or group of people at the top of the government are elected by some form of a voting system. Such "representative" government is usually elected for a limited period, typically, 5 years, after which another election is held.
At the elections, people have opportunity to select a candidate from a small pre-selected group. The candidates usually represent "political" parties, which, in their turn, represent a group of population united by a common set of prejudices1 or vested interests2. If one of the parties gets the majority of votes, it forms the government of the country and will be able to enact laws and govern the country in the interests of the group which it represents, usually at the expense of the other groups.
While such method makes it possible to replace the government at regular intervals, it does not guarantee that the elected government will be composed of honest and competent individuals capable of performing satisfactorily the task of government. As a result, such democratic governments stagger from scandal to scandal, until they become so unpopular that they are replaced by candidates from an opposing party, who continue to behave in the same way.
The only substantive (and important) advantage of appointment of government officials by elections, over hereditary governments, or the ones usurped by violent means, is that it allows for "bloodless" changes of government.
Democracy as a way of appointing a government is an instance of democracy as a method of decision making.
Democracy as a Method of Decision Making ----- to top
Democracy as a method of decision making is deciding an issue by a majority vote. Thus, if among a group of 10 people 6 people vote that the next time they will meet on Tuesday and 4 people vote for meeting on Wednesday, it will be decided that the meeting will be held on Tuesday.
If the difference between Tuesday and Wednesday in the above example was merely that of convenience, then the above method is a perfectly sensible and practically workable way of decision making. But, if, unlike the above example, the issues to be decided by vote involve issues of fact, issues of right and wrong, issues which can affect freedom and property of others, as is often happens in issues confronting governments, can such issues be successfully decided by vote?
What Can and What Cannot be Done Democratically ----- to top
It is impossible to reliably arrive at a correct decision by a majority vote on issues of fact, because facts exist independently of anybody's will, desire or opinion. The only way to establish facts is by investigation.
Often, however, people confuse facts with frivolous speculations and deliberately false assertions. Such assertions are accepted on trust. Assertions by a greater number of people are given greater credibility. This often leads to wrong decisions. Many miscarriages of justice are due to trials by jury, where decisions on matters of fact are decided by vote.
It is impossible to reliably arrive at a correct decision by a majority vote on issues of justice or morality (right and wrong), because justice or morality do not depend on anybody's will, desire or opinion.
Issues of justice and morality can be only decided by objective and impartial application to a case of basic principles of Natural Justice and Natural Morality. Thus, if nine people decide to take over the house of one person who is against such decision, then such decision would be unjust, because it would violate the property rights of that single person, but it would be democratic, because it will be implementation of the will of the majority.
Attempts to resolve matters of truth and justice by vote usually lead to unjust decisions, which in their turn lead to conflicts, wars and terrorism. The history of the 20th century has plenty of evidence of the truth of that statement.
Can Democratic Governance be Imposed? ----- to top
The reason that in some European countries and the USA people have greater freedom and live more prosperous lives than in other parts of the world is not because of the electoral system, but because of the tradition of respect for law above government and a measure of respect for private property. All this was inherited from previous centuries and a mere electoral system would not have achieved that. Also much of the European wealth was created as a result of colonial exploitation of Asian and African countries.
Attempts to "implant democracy" in countries without a tradition of rule of law above government, without a wide-spread ownership of private property, and without the culture of business ethics does not lead to instant emergence of free and prosperous nations. The common result of attempts to establish "multi-party democracies" is corrupt governments staggering from one 'crisis' to another only to be replaced by a military ruler. This was the pattern of "democratic governance" in much of Asia, Africa and South America in the second half of the 20th century.
Can one expect better results in the 21st century?
Making Government Work ----- to top
All "ocracies", be they "democracy", "autocracy", or "aristocracy", have one common assumption about government power. It is the assumption that government power is a privilege to be exercised for the benefit of those in power. But government power means licence to commit acts of interference with freedom and property of others which, if committed by those without such licence would have been crimes or civil wrongs. And the only reason that government powers can be justified is for the purpose of performance of the duties of government. Use of government powers for any other purpose is abuse of government powers.
Not only "ocratic" governments abuse their powers, they also fail in performance of their duties. And without a clear definition of the duties of government and effective means of control over the exercise of these powers and performance of these duties, there is no way to ensure that governments achieve the purpose for which they exist.
"Government by the People" is a meaningless demagogical slogan. "The People" as a single entity capable of performing duties of government does not exist. It is not the American people who govern America, it is the President of the USA and a group of government officials who do that. The same is true of any other country. It is always a small group of people who govern any country - never "The People" as a whole.
But the issue is not "who governs a country", but "how the duties of government are performed". Only strict definition of the duties and powers of government and provision of effective means of monitoring and controlling the performance of the government duties can ensure that the powers of government are not abused and the duties of government are performed.
Notes: ----- to top
1) In Europe and America the political rivalry was mostly driven by 'class' prejudices, although racial and nationalistic prejudices have been used by politicians from time to time.
Back to text
2) Vested interests are groups of people who obtain or hope to obtain some advantage from election of a political party to government. Examples of such groups are trade unions or some large businesses who have influence on some political parties. If a party associated with such vested interest groups comes to power, the vested interest groups expect such government to pass laws which would put them in a privileged position.
Back to text
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18 May 2009
Winning elections made easy
Satinath Choudhary
Producing doctored EVMs is child’s play: Computer chips that control the EVMs can be easily programmed to do all kinds of improper manipulations. For example, after a certain number of people (perhaps hundreds) have voted, the rest of the votes may be channeled to a chosen candidate. This is just one among many mischievous tricks possible.
This kind of wrongdoing cannot be detected by the polling agents of candidates. It will take hundreds of votes, for which the presiding officers or polling officers are not likely to have the time or patience to monitor. Control-units keep track of votes by recognising them only by their serial number on the list of candidates on the poll-units on which people vote. So any tampering of the control-unit chip has to be done only after the serial number of various candidates in the list of candidates appearing on poll-units have been assigned.
Normally returning officers declare the serial number assignments after the last day of withdrawal of nominations, which happens about two weeks before polling. ROM chips with mischievous codes can be readied within hours after the candidates’ serial numbers are known. During the two weeks before polling, the malicious ROM chips, or the motherboard, or possibly the whole control-unit, whatever appears easier, may be caused to replace the original ones. Would it be wise to assume that officials in charge of the EVMs, and/or those guarding the machines, are incorruptible? I would leave it as question for readers to ponder over. Luckily, this kind of possibility of a fraud before voting can be easily remedied. Instead of declaring the serial number of candidates two weeks in advance of polling, the serial numbers may be decided at each polling booth by random draws by the presiding officers in the presence of the polling agents of various parties just an hour or so before the poll opening. Thereafter their names may be affixed on the poll-units in appropriate order in the presence of the poll-agents. All that will need to be done by the POs is, paste them on the poll-units in proper order by the time the poll opens. This entails different serial orders for candidates in different booths.But that only improves fairness towards the candidates, distributing the chance to be at the top or bottom of the list more evenly.
Increasing the sense of responsibility of the presiding and polling officers at polling booths, could also be considered, by officially declaring all of them to have equal powers, with instructions to try to make decisions with unanimous consent, as far as possible.
(The writer is president, Better Democracy Forum, The Bronx, New York. He is a retired professor of computer science)
17 May 2009
Vote Fraud in America
Vote Fraud In America
by James J. Condit Jr.
(first published in 1992, Updated in July 2003)
Sidebar on page one in original pamphlet:
You're running in your first election for City Council in a crowded field of 26 candidates. Nine will be elected. The No. 1 local anchorman comes on TV at about 9:15 PM and announces that you're going to do very well for a first time candidate, then flashes on the screen that you're running 12th; only three places from victory. Such a finish would give hope to all who were daring to "fight city hall."
Earlier in the evening, a liberal-leftist home-town university professor who was analyzing early returns for another local TV station had projected that your arch-rival, and his ally the sweetheart of the anti-God portion of the establishment was headed towards defeat.
But HO-L-L-L-D EVERYTHING ! ! !
At approximately 9:45 PM, the same anchorman announces that there has been a computer breakdown. 45 minutes later when the computers come back up, a massive switch has occurred. You and 7 other feisty challengers have fallen to the very bottom of the heap. The establishment sweetheart has jumped into a winning position against all odds. Despite unprecedented public dissatisfaction, the same old faces are elected once again. Many conclude that "you just can't fight city hall." Things have worked out just great for all those entrenched politicians who seemed to be the object of such public dissatisfaction right up to election day. The next morning, you scan the papers in vain for any mention of the computer breakdown: no record for posterity.
The above scenario is my story, but it was happening in dozens of places all across the nation. It was 1979 and a new day had quietly dawned in America - UNVERIFIABLE, RIGGABLE computerized vote tabulation. (end of sidebar)
Ballots for Bullets
When I was small I remember my Dad saying how in other countries they would shoot each other to decide the transfer of power. In our country it was done by the ballot at election time.
Millions of American soldiers have fought and bled and died to protect your right to free and fair elections; to protect your right to an orderly, peaceful transfer of power when the people so will.
How Your Parents' Votes Were Counted
Once upon a time, Americans voted by Paper Ballot. At the end of the day after the polls had closed, neighborhood people, Democrats and Republicans, worked together to count the votes in the precinct (polling place) BEFORE the votes left that precinct. The count was then posted at the precinct polling place for all to see. This is the only way to insure a verifiable election. Variations of method are possible, but the elements of physical ballots which are counted and posted at the precinct before the ballots leave each precinct are essential to insure a fair and honest count.
To rig an election with the above safeguards built in, one would have to bribe many hundreds of neighborhood people, including key Democrats and Republicans in each precinct you hoped to rig. Finally, the group of people bribed at each precinct would only have access to a tiny fraction of the vote.
The Greatest Coverup Begins
About 1974 a sinister development was in full swing all over the United States. In many areas, especially high populations regions, the votes were no longer being counted in the precincts by neighborhood people. The switch was on to computer vote counting systems. Typical was Cincinnati, Ohio where votes were bundled up immediately after the polls closed and sent to a mysterious central computer room to be counted by secret computer codes. To add insult to injury, the votes were counted away from the watchful eye of the entire electorate and the press.
Despite the brutal cover up that has been conducted for going on three decades by the news media and the major parties to prevent you from hearing about this issue, some major media news items have appeared. In a rare but superb news story on the eve of the 1988 Presidential election, Dan Rather (CBS Evening News) engaged in this exchange with computer expert Howard J. Strauss of Princeton University:
Rather: "Realistically, could the fix be put on in a national election?"
Strauss: "Get me a job with the company that writes the software for this program. (ed: Strauss was referring to the most common computer program in use) Then I'd have access to one third of the votes. Is that enough to fix a general election?"
"A House Without Doors"
In an earlier clip during this CBS interview, Howard J. Strauss dropped this bombshell: "When it comes to computerized elections, there are no safeguards. It's not a door without locks, it's a house without doors."
The most succinct introductory summary to this mind-blowing subject is found in the ground breaking book Votescam: The Stealing of America by James & Kenneth Collier. The following is quoted with permission granted by the late James Collier in 1991:
The chapter begins by quoting the first words spoken by President-elect, George Bush in his Nov. 8, 1988 victory speech in Houston, Texas. Bush said: "We can now speak the most majestic words a democracy can offer: "The people have spoken . . . "
The Colliers comment in the following brilliantly written passage:
It was not "the People" of the United States who did 'the speaking' on that election day, although most of them believed it was, and still believe it. In fact, the People did not speak at all. The voices most of us really heard that day were the voices of computers strong, loud, authoritative, unquestioned in their electronic finality . . .
The computers that spoke in November 1988 held in their inner workings small boxes that contained secret codes that only the sellers of the computers could read. The programs, or "source codes," were regarded as "trade secrets." The sellers of the vote-counting software zealously guarded their programs from the public, from election officials, from everyone on the dubious grounds that competitors could steal their ideas if the source codes were open to inspection . . .
You may ask: What "ideas" does it require to count something as simple as ballots? Can the "ideas" be much more complex than, let's say, a supermarket computerized cash register or an automatic bank teller machine?
The computer voting machines do not have to do anything complicated at all; they simply must be able to register votes for the correct candidate or party or proposal, tabulate them, count them up, and deliver arithmetically correct additions . . .
People with no formal training, even children, used to do it all the time. So why can't the public know what those secret source codes instruct the computers to do?
It only makes common sense that every gear, every mechanism, every nook and cranny of every part of the voting process ought to be in the sunlight, wide open to public view. How else can the public be reasonably assured that they are participating in an unrigged election where their vote actually means something? Yet one of the most mysterious, low-profile, covert, shadowy, questionable mechanisms of American democracy is the American vote count . . .
Computers in voting machines are effectively immune from checking and rechecking. If they are fixed, you cannot know it, and you cannot be sure at all of an honest tally.
If you understand the above quoted paragraphs, you understand the problem.
Crash, Cover-up, Lawsuit, Fix
Among the many struggles which have taken place all over the USA in the last few decades over this issue, I can speak about only one from first hand experience: Cincinnati, Ohio (part of which is covered on page 242-247 in the Collier book, Votescam) Fortunately, the Cincinnati case illustrates as well as any other instance how the establishment media and both major parties coalesce to thwart any attempt to get rid of their precious, riggable computer vote counting systems.
"How Elections Are Stolen" in American Opinion magazine (written in 1977 by Dr. Susan L.M. Huck, who later served as an aid to Congressman Lawrence P. McDonald, who disappeared during Korean flight 007) alerted me to the dangers of computerized vote counting systems. A great American patriot, the late Jim Stefanopoulus, (a man who proved to be uniquely providential in my life on several occasions) handed me the Huck article shortly after it was published. If Mr. Stefanopoulus had not handed me this article, I don't think I would have recognized the significance of the computer crash we witnessed on election night in 1979, i.e., that it was not an isolated incident, but a part of a nationwide pattern of computer crashes on election nights, invariably resulting in the "re-election" of incumbents.
When we actually witnessed our very own computer crash in 1979 (described near the beginning of this article) during which everything worked out perfectly for the "in-crowd" -- I knew something big and bad was up. When the Cincinnati newspapers failed to mention the computer crash the next morning and the accompanying candidate position shake up -- this was our first taste of the media blackout that dozens of other concerned citizens were experiencing all over the nation.
After due research and preparation, we filed suit against our local Board of Elections in 1981, and after 4 years of public service litigation conducted by my father, James J. Condit Sr., our side won a decisive victory. Judge Richard Niehaus ruled: "There is no adequate and proper safeguard against the computers being programmed to distort the election results." What the Judge's ruling means, Mommies and Daddies and Boys and Girls, is that thousands of your votes can be switched in the blink of an eye and no one would ever be the wiser!
Judge Niehaus also issued a court order allowing us and our chosen experts "to observe all phases of the election process" on election night 1985 with a view that we bring evidence back to his court so that the situation could be properly remedied.
Shortly before this court ruling, my mother-in-law, Kay Kleiner, a tireless crusader for our country since the 1950s, had providentially alerted me to a series called "Votescam" by the Collier brothers being carried in the Washington DC-based weekly newspaper, The Spotlight. Thanks to this tip, I was able to ask the Colliers to serve as two of our court-approved experts in 1985. As reported in their book, the Colliers had already video-filmed women punching votes out of voters' ballots at the Board of Elections on election night 1982 in Miami, Florida.
And to my surprise (but not to theirs), the Colliers also caught women on camera plucking votes out of punchcard ballots in Cincinnati, this time using household tweezers.
Disappointingly, Judge Niehaus (in his tennis shoes) was summoned down to the Board of Elections at about 7:30 PM on that 1985 election night by the heads of both the Republican and Democratic Parties. The Judge, in a highly unusual move, modified his court order on the spot insisting that observing "all phases of the election process" did not include videotaping!
The audio portion of the confrontation between Ken Collier on the one hand, and the Judge and both local Party heads on the other, is captured on a video camera which was pointed at the floor during the tense exchange. The Colliers were told to quit videotaping under threat of arrest.
The next morning we appeared on the Jan Mickelson Show on WCKY Talk Radio. Mickelson, who is one of the top Talk Show Hosts in the country (now for many years on WHO in Des Moines, Iowa), was skeptical when Ken Collier asserted that we had video-film of women pulling votes out of ballots with common household tweezers. He shot a quick glance my way as if he were having second thoughts about having let us on the air at all. But then our credibility shot sky-high when no one from the Board of Elections was willing to come on the air against us.
Back to election night: While the Colliers' videotaping efforts were causing such consternation to the Election officials, our other court-approved expert, Mr. Robert Strunk, was moving quietly through the system with my Father.
Mr. Strunk, a highly respected computer analyst who once headed the Xavier University computer department, issued a magnificent report to the Court detailing why the computer vote counting system was NOT verifiable. Mr. Strunk said that to believe the published results under this computer system was "an act of faith."
Please observe that the conclusions of Mr. Strauss and Mr. Strunk, as well as the conclusions of dozens of other honest computer experts, agree completely on the unverifiability of these computer vote counting systems. As far as we know, there is not one computer expert in the nation who has gone on record in an attempt to refute these scholarly individuals.
Despite his previous fine decisions, Judge Niehaus, perhaps feeling the heat from the local power structure, excused himself from taking any action to remedy the riggable computer system by announcing that he was a "pacifist" judge whatever that means. In order to try and effect a remedy, we appealed, and two years later in 1987 our deplorable Court of Appeals dismissed the six year-old case stating absurdly that the county judge did not have any jurisdiction over the county computer vote counting system. (!!!) (And believe it or not, Hamilton County, Ohio, which houses Cincinnati, is STILL using the exact same easily rigged punch card system today in 2003.)
Whistle-blowers Emerge
In the meantime, something momentous happened. Two whistle-blowers had come forth from Cincinnati Bell. One of them eventually testified in convincing detail during court proceedings connected with our lawsuit that he had been involved in causing a computer crash while helping to alter the local 1979 election by wiretapping into our computer vote counting system. (The reader will recall that this was the very year we had been stunned by the candidate shake-up which occurred seemingly during the computer shutdown.). The key whistle-blower had already watched for several years as a Congressman, the FBI, and all the press stonewalled his evidence.
On election eve 1986, Cincinnatus Political Action Committee, our local political vehicle, had issued a press release asking the media how they could ignore Judge Niehaus's finding and continue to report local elections as business as usual when the same riggable computer system was still counting the votes. Only Channel 12 responded and took a brief statement from your writer, but the spot they aired right after Monday Night Football caught the attention of the key whistle-blower, and he contacted us the next day, election day '86.
After another year of being stonewalled, we convinced the frustrated whistle-blowers that the only way to break through the media censorship was to utilize a little known law which forces TV and radio stations to accept a candidate's political ads provided no obscenity is involved.
Days before our TV ad featuring the whistle-blowers was to air, Judge Niehaus again played a key role when he ruled favorably on my Father's request to allow the key whistle-blower to enter his sworn testimony about wiretapping the computer on election nights as well as causing that crash in 1979 into our suit against the Board of Elections, which had not yet been thrown out by the Court of Appeals. Together the TV ad and the sworn testimony combined to spark the only two significant local major media reports that have ever appeared. Anchor Nick Clooney and reporter Mary Krutko of Channel 12 aired an excellent, in-depth local TV segment, and twenty minutes later during the same newscast our TV ad featuring the whistle-blowers ran.
The next morning (Oct. 30, 1987), reporter Randy Ludlow wrote an outstanding article in the Cincinnati Post. But these two reports alerted the Media Moguls that word was getting out to the public -- and the media curtain of censorship was slammed down over all local establishment media, i.e., the Cincinnati Enquirer, the Cincinnati Post, Channel 5 (NBC), Channel 9 (CBS at that time), Channel 12 (ABC at that time).
WLW Radio Talk Show Host Mike McConnell gave wiretappers Gates and Drais, as well as myself, a forum, and WLW night talk show host Bill Cunningham interviewed Gates and Drais.
After several meetings with Gates, Drais, and myself -- a now defunct neighborhood paper, The Mount Washington Press, embarked on a series of articles about the controversy, primarily spearheaded by reporter Gregory Flannery. Flannery is now at the downtown "alternative press" paper City Beat, where reporter Maria Rogers wrote an in depth article on the votefraud issue in the November 2002 issue.
Eventually a cornucopia of establishment press coverage did ensue but it focused on all the other aspects of the wiretap story, while maintaining the brutal cover-up of the computerized vote fraud issue. All the rest of the coverage was devoted to relative trivia such as which millionaires and organizations had been allegedly phone tapped, speculation as to why, etc. etc. etc.
By time the smoke had cleared in the wiretapping story, 5 policemen had resigned in disgrace and Cincinnati Bell admitted one of its trucks had been used in wiretapping activities. The Wall Street Journal had mentioned the story. Local Cincinnati newspapers, TV, and radio stations combined to carry over 400 reports. Even the national CBS program 60 Minutes aired a segment on the Cincinnati wiretapping story, but again suppressing the computerized votefraud apsect of the story. In a 1989 court proceeding between wiretapper Leonard Gates Cincinnati Bell, the chief computer man at the local Board of Elections admitted under oath that if someone had the relevant codes he would have a 100% chance to alter the election results.
So, omitted from all major local and national media press coverage up to November, 1988 -- with the two already noted exceptions, was any intelligible reporting on the computerized votefraud aspect of the story. (Several of the highly explosive radio shows featuring the Colliers, the whistle-blowers, and myself are preserved on audiotape. Our TV commercial featuring the whistle-blowers and the local Channel 12 spot is preserved on videotape as is an hour interview which I conducted with one of the whistle-blowers early on just in case we had not been able to break through the media curtain.)
New Yorker Magazine, Dan Rather, and the U.S. Department of Commerce
Even though 99% of the investigative reporting on votescam has been done by private citizens and non-establishment investigators (for instance, while the "respectable" New York Times has done only 3 stories on the subject, the "persona non grata" Spotlight weekly was carrying over 300 stories), there have been enough establishment sponsored stories to demonstrate that the major news media has what some call "guilty knowledge."
On the eve of the Bush-Dukakis election, Ronnie Dugger broke the almost total silence in the major media on votescam when his article "The Dangers of Computerized Voting" appeared as a cover story in the Nov. 7, 1988 issue of New Yorker magazine (This dynamite article is available in most libraries).
Dugger, who visited me for a week in Cincinnati during the wiretapping uproar, exerted his journalistic skills to present this issue in an undeniably credible manner. He documented the activities of many and varied citizens, candidates, and experts generally unknown to each other who have been working on the votescam issue in virtually every region of the country from the early 70's to the present day.
Within days of the appearance of the Dugger cover story in The New Yorker magazine, CBS Evening News with Dan Rather carried the only report on the computerized votefraud issue to date to appear on a major national TV network, featuring computer expert Dr. Howard J. Strauss. We have also preserved this excellent 5 minute report on videotape.
In August of 1988, the U.S. Bureau of Commerce published a comprehensive study under the auspices of the National Bureau of Standards by Roy G. Saltman, Special Publication 500-158 entitled "Accuracy, Integrity, and Security in Computerized Vote-Tallying." (There is also rumored to be a second volume of the Saltman study, but we have never seen it.)
This is probably the most comprehensive compilation of all the lawsuits and other aspects which surround the issue of computerized voting published thus far. This government study supports Dugger's article, as well as supplies mountains of evidence documenting the problems with computer vote-counting systems.
The fact that Saltman failed to pick up our Cincinnati case -- which featured both the most decisive judicial ruling and the only whistle-blower to come forth to date on the computerized votefraud issue -- demonstrates the difficulty faced by even a well-funded government agency in compiling a comprehensive list of all the local and sporadic efforts that have been conducted to expose the dangers of computerized vote tabulating.
Even -- as this updated version is written -- after the 2000 Presidential election fiasco -- the thus-far successful suppression of the computerized votescam issue from widespread public notice, debate and understanding -- is a chilling demonstration of major media censorship in America.
Why Does the Board Of Elections Exist?
The Boards of Election exist for one reason: to guarantee that the results published on election night are in fact what the people voted that day, i.e., the will of the people; to insure in a way that can be verified that what the people voted in the thousands of neighborhood polling places is what shows up as the final results. It doesn't matter how many pieces of literature are distributed, or how many TV campaign commercials run, or how much shouting goes on, or how many debates are televised -- if the votes are not counted accurately.
If the computer programs which "count" our votes are poised to switch key votes in the blink of an eye, the rest just doesn't matter. As computer whiz Howard J. Strauss said at the end of that lonely 1988 CBS Evening News report: "Should we make it voluntary that we have safe elections or should we demand safe elections?"
The new computerized vote-counting systems are constructed so that nothing can verified or proven. No one except the faceless expert who writes the vote-tabulating program has any idea of what is in it. And not even that programmer can be positive that some other clever computer expert has not devised a way to tamper with his program on election night.
It is not my job, or your job, to prove that votefraud has occurred in any given election. It is the job of the Board of Elections to prove to US, the public, that sufficient safeguards are in place to prevent votefraud, as far as is humanly possible.
The only way to insure this all important "verifiability" is for neighborhood people to count paper ballots in full public view BEFORE the votes leave the neighborhood precinct, and then post the results immediately at that polling place for all to see. Impossible? India (the world's largest democracy), Great Britain, and Canada -- have used the paper ballot method all along -- and still use it today.
I charge that we have thousands of people holding public offices that were never elected to those offices by the people, but were put in by computerized votefraud. I charge that millions of taxpayers are paying taxes that were never passed by the people, but were made to look like they passed by computerized votefraud. You, dear reader, cannot prove my charges wrong -- and neither can anyone else in the United States of America. That is an absolutely intolerable state of affairs.
The Board of Election officials at the local, state, and national levels, together with the "mainstream" news media, are maintaining, both explicitly and implicitly, that the election night results are verifiable and above reproach. That is. THIS PRETENSE IS AN OBJECTIVE FRAUD.
It is a fraud which involves an essential cornerstone of freedom in our country: our right to vote, which, the Supreme Court has ruled, includes the right that our vote be counted accurately. Without these rights regarding the vote, the "consent of the governed" becomes a meaningless phrase.
Whether that fraud is limited to the objective deception that computerized vote counts are safe and verifiable -- or whether it extends to include the silent rigging of thousands of U.S. elections by silent, computerized votefraud over the last 30 years, 1973 to 2003, (as I believe to be the case) -- either way -- this pamphlet is aptly titled, "The Greatest Cover-Up of All: VoteFraud in America."
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