And on November 5th, The Real Struggle Begins

I know right now most of us are focused like a laser beam on the election, working the GOTV, canvassing, doing what we can to flip wavering republicans and family members into our column in order to bring profound change to this nation and elect Barack Obama as the 44th President with a significant democratic majority in Congress.

In all likelyhood - with a fairly stable 190 Electoral Vote Advantage according to electoral-vote.com, a 96.2% Win percentage via Nate Silver at 538.com, and absolutely no viable path to victory for McCain even if you give him each and every close toss-up state including both Florida AND Ohio via CNN 's Interactive Electoral Map - Barack Obama will be the next President.

They're even starting to openly cry at the Whitehouse., so you know things are looking good for our side.

I'm not dancing on the five yard line here, I'm just saying we need to start thinking about what happens when Democrats are finally on the hook for everything!

Before I get into the best case scenario, let's first look at worst - which of course would be that somehow, someway, McCain manages to pull an upset against all logical odds.

What the fuck would we do then?

Before packing our bags for Brazil and/or Fiji, I'm thinking we hit LAWSUIT City. Right now the only way for this scenario to play out is through ongoing voter suppression, caging, but most importantly massive election fraud and vote tally recalibration at the machine level, either in stand-alone voting machines or more likely - at the tabulators.

There's nothing can do after the fact for people who've been blocked from voting, but for votes that have been flipped - the party is only just starting on Nov 5th.

We may learn quite a bit about this tomorrow at the Deposition for Mike Connell, a virulent anti-abortion partisan who was instrumental in setting up the Ohio Tabulator systems which may very well have stolen the 2004 election from John Kerry.

Interview with Stephan Spoonamore, a cybersecurity export (and Republican) who has closely examined the activities of Connell and his rabid pro-life associates.


Statements from Spoonamore's Deposition in the ongoing Ohio Election Case.

In the case of Ohio 2004, the only purpose I can conceive for sending all county vote tabulations to a GOP managed Man-in-the-Middle site in Chattanooga BEFORE sending the results onward to the Sec. of State, would be to hack the vote at the MIM.

IN REGARD TO THE DIEBOLD SYSTEMS, Formerly Global, DESI and now called Premier.

In my opinion, there is NO POSSIBLE WAY to make a secure touch screen voting system. None. Secure systems are predicated on establishing securely the identity of every user of the system. Voting is predicated on being anonymous. It is impossible to have a system that does both.

It is possible to design relatively secure optical scan machines, but even these can be hacked in even the best of cases. In the case of optical scan you have the ability to recount manually the paper ballot itself, and the ability to spot check the machines for errors against a sample of hand recounting.

Do not kid yourselves, the vote can be hacked: the vote WILL. BE. HACKED!

On November 5th, we need to be ready for this. Ready for strange and curious election results which seemingly have no basis in reality or fact. This year, I believe these attacks are almost certain to come - and with McCain trailing so far in so many states the attempt will either completely fail because not enough states will be involved in the tabulation flip or it will succeed and be blaringly obvious to everyone!

We can't let the media talk us into some B.S. "Bradley Effect" mindfuck. "Oh yeah, it was all the closet racists who lost it for Obama..." Like HELL, sure America has racists and even good people who just aren't yet comfortable with the idea of a Black President - but not enough to flip 7 or 8 States! We're gonna need boots on the ground, voters, poll workers and observers in key polling districts (minority and heavily democratic in red/purple zones) with Election Protection on SPEED DIAL in states that McCain HAS TO WIN such as Missouri, Florida, Georgia, Colorado, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Pennsylvania.

1-886-OUR-VOTE.

Burn that number into the back of your eyelids people.

If you can get involved in Video The Vote, to help document the election process before, during and after.

In 2004, only Senator Barbara Boxer stood up and dared to challenge the election results. Her Number is 202-224-3553. Lock that into your Cell RIGHT NOW! Also make sure you have both your own Senators and Congresspersons number at the touch of finger.

We're going to need to lobby the FRAK out of Congress to challenge the results in the Senate, then have them subpeona Spoonamore and Connell to testify with expert opinions on what did or didn't happen on November 4th. If necessary Congress may have to fix this by rejecting the results. It could get very messy, but we have to stay the course.

Our way of life depends on it.

And we still have to prepared for all this to fail and for the eventuality of a (shiver) President John McCain and Vice President (gak) Sarah Palin. (You Betcha. Also) Madre de Dios!

If that horror does happen - we have to remember that we still have a Democratic Congress with very likely either 58 or 59 Democratic Senators. It's going to be rough road, but we've been on it for sometime so we know all the curves. We know the house will pass some great legislation only to have it buried by Senate Republicans - and Lieberman. We know that McCain will probably follow in many of Bush's footsteps with Iraq, deepen the chasm with Iran, continue to ignore bin Laden and al Qaeda, continue to play Daddy Warbucks with his corporate cronies as we slip-slide our way into a deeper depression, and fully open the spigot that is spewing American jobs into China, Taiwan and India like a Firehose. Still, McCain might actually get a couple things right if the Wild winds of Crazy Horse Maverick-ness happen to blow the right way. I'm not sure what those will be - No one is, NOT EVEN McCAIN - but we need to be ready to help make sure there more of those moments, rather than less.

It's gonna suck donkey balls, but we need to realize that this massive Amazing organization the Obama has built doesn't need to wither away. WE CAN STILL MAKE A DIFFERENCE, but continuing to organize, by lobbying and petitioning Congress, targeting those few swing Republican Votes in the Senate to help break their blockade, to rally reluctant Democrats to stand firm and hold the line instead of wimping out - like usual...

And on the other hand if Obama Wins -

All the ABOVE STILL APPLIES.

We're still gonna have massive election fraud to deal with and cleanup. HAVA needs serious reform. Rove needs Jail, badly. The entire federal government is now filled with ideologues in permanent positions who will continue to press forward the Bushie agenda and undermine President Obama. There are thousands of ridiculous signing statements to undo. We've got to close Gitmo, repeal the Military Commission Act, get our troops safely out of Iraq while ensuring the ongoing stabiilty of that nation, finally get serious with Afghanistan and Pakistan, close off access to lose nukes, get our financial and economic house back in order, balance the budget, save Medicade and Medicare, permanently ban pre-existing conditions, get the FUCK OFF OF FOREIGN OIL and start building a 21st Green Collar industry, fight Climate Change, prosecute a big steaming pile of ex-Bushies for violating the Hatch Act, for War Crimes, Domestic/Political Espionage, Malfeasance and Negligence and general Shit-headerry.

We've got a lot of work to do - a whole heaping ton of heavy-lifting - win, lose or (shudder) draw - November 5th isn't the day we rest...

It's the day we finally GET TO WORK!

Vyan

It's the Voter Suppression, Stupid

During her opening statement of her congressional testimony Monica Goodling let slip a little nugget that might go unnoticed but shouldn't.

Tim Griffin was allegedly involved in Voter Caging during the 2004 Elections.

During her questioning Rep Linda Sanchez, who was unfamiliar with the term asked - "What is Voter Caging?"

Monica answered...

It has to do with direct mailing...

As a matter of fact, it has to do with far, far more than just sending out a few postcards.

From Wikipedia.

Caging is a term of art in the direct mail industry. After a mailing is sent, caging is when information is processed that can be learned from the returns. A caging list is the compiled information that is transferred to the organization that hired the direct mail firm, in order for them to update their mailing lists and databases.

Ok, so what?

This what.

Caging has also been used as a form of voter suppression. A political party challenges the validity of a voter's registration; for the voter's ballot to be counted, the voter must prove that their registration is valid.

Voters targeted by caging are often the most vulnerable: those who are unfamiliar with their rights under the law, and those who cannot spare the time, effort, and expense of proving that their registration is valid. Ultimately, caging works by dissuading a voter from casting a ballot, or by ensuring that they cast a provisional ballot, which is less likely to be counted.

With one type of caging, a political party sends registered mail to addresses of registered voters. If the mail is returned as undeliverable - because, for example, the voter refuses to sign for it, the voter isn't present for delivery, or the voter is homeless - the party uses that fact to challenge the registration, arguing that because the voter could not be reached at the address, the registration is fraudulent. It is this use of direct mail caging techniques to target voters which probably resulted in the application of the name to the political tactic.

And why does this matter? Because it's a direct violation of the Federal Voting Rights Act.

On the day of the election, when the voter arrives at the poll and requests a ballot, an operative of the party challenges the validity of their registration.

While the challenge process is prescribed by law, the use of broad, partisan challenges is controversial. For example, in the United States Presidential Election of 2004, the Republican Party employed this process to challenge the validity of tens of thousands of voter registrations in contested states like Florida, Nevada, Ohio, and Wisconsin.

Hey don't those particular states sound familiar. What could it be.. hmm what - oh yeah, I know.

Fired U.S. Attorney Daniel Bogden - Nevada.
Fired U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic - Wisconsin.

Temporarily included on the Firing List - U.S. Attorney Gregory Miller - Florida.

As noted by Josh Marshall, U.S. Attorney's were fired from seven out of Nine "Battleground States" as identified by Karl Rove's Office, which as it turns out happened to employ Tim Griffin following the 2004 Election.

And by the way - let me repeat - Caging is Illegal.

The Republican Party argued that the challenges were necessary to combat widespread voter fraud. The Democratic Party countered that the challenges were tantamount to voter suppression, and further argued that the Republican Party had targeted voter registrations on the basis of the race of the voter, in violation of federal law.

It's one thing to simply send out mail and request that a voter who have not cast a vote in the last two Presidential elections verify that their registration is still valid. This is one method of helping ensure for example that the old Chicago tactic of having dead people vote, can be avoided. It's another to specifically target Democrats without doing to same thing to Republicans and then subsequently removed them from the rolls so that their votes won't be counted.

Here's more from Greg Palast at Truthout on how this strategy was used against African-American Servicemen serving in Iraq.

Here's how the scheme worked: The RNC mailed these voters letters in envelopes marked, "Do not forward", to be returned to the sender. These letters were mailed to servicemen and women, some stationed overseas, to their US home addresses. The letters then returned to the Bush-Cheney campaign as "undeliverable."

The lists of soldiers of "undeliverable" letters were transmitted from state headquarters, in this case Florida, to the RNC in Washington. The party could then challenge the voters' registration and thereby prevent their absentee ballot being counted.

Over one million provisional ballots cast in the 2004 race were never counted; over half a million absentee ballots were also rejected. The extraordinary rise in the number of rejected ballots was the result of the widespread multi-state voter challenge campaign by the Republican Party. The operation, of which the purge of Black soldiers was a small part, was the first mass challenge to voting America had seen in two decades.

How exactly was Tim Griffin involved in all this?

Well, it seems he only ran the entire operation.

Voting rights attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called for prison time for the new US Attorney for Arkansas, Timothy Griffin and investigation of Griffin’s former boss, Karl Rove, chief political advisor to President Bush.

“Timothy Griffin,” said Kennedy,”who is the new US attorney in Arkansas, was actually the mastermind behind the voter fraud efforts by the Bush Administration to disenfranchise over a million voters through ‘caging’ techniques - which are illegal.”

Ok, here's something really interesting in the Palast article - you want to know how Monica (who used to be Tim's assistant at the RNC in 2000) knew about the Caging allegations against Griffin? Griffin sent her quotes from Palast's Book and bragged that "U.S. Media hasn't picked the story up".

Palast first reported on the caging list operation for BBC Television’s premier current affairs show, Newsnight, in 2004. In a February 7, 2007 email obtained by subpoena from Rove’s office, Griffin boasted that, “No [US] national media picked up” the BBC story. Griffin attached an excerpt of Armed Madhouse.

Griffin sent his remarks to Monica Goodling, Senior Counsel to Attorney General Gonzales, who has since resigned and invoked the Fifth Amendment rather than answer Congressional questions.

Well, she's answering questions now. But one question we don't have to ask her - thanks again to Josh Marshall - is why she's so chummy with Tim Griffin? Well, you see - she used to work for Griffin doing opposition research for the RNC.

Under questioning by my own representative Maxine Waters, Goodling revealed that she did in fact use her "oppo research skills" to help torpedo and/or delay prospective appointees and career DOJ officials who she thought were "too Liberal".

But it was under questioning by Rep. Bobby Scott that the ramifications of this were made crystal clear when she was asked "Did you break the law [when you used a political litmus test within DOJ hiring]"

Goodling: that’s not a conclusion for me to make. But I do know I crossed the line.

Scott: Which Line?

Goodling: I crossed the line of the civil service rules.

Scott: Rules? Laws! You crossed the line on civil service laws, is that right?

Goodling: I didn't mean to... I don’t believe I intended to commit a crime

Yeah, well you did babycakes.

The Justice Department is investigating whether its former White House liaison used political affiliation in deciding who to hire as entry-level prosecutors in U.S. attorneys' offices around the country, The Associated Press has learned.

Doing so is a violation of federal law.

Isn't it beyond galling that someone who worked as an assistant to Alberto Gonzales, a person who was charged with overseeing the hiring of not just the political appointees, but the career employees also - doesn't know the Fracking LAW!.

Just like her comments about Tim Griffin and caging.

Goodling: I don't believe he intended to do anything wrong...

It was illegal as all hell, but gee - it wasn't wrong.

Maybe, just maybe - the fact that Griffin was known to be involved in an effort to violate Federal Voting Laws was why the Attorney General specifically avoided Senate Confirmation for his appointment to Arkansas?

I'm just saying...

Vyan

Also posted yesterday following the hearings, Chairman John Conyers posted his own summary of Goodling's testimony and found at least five more trouble spots for the Bush Administration. According to Conyers Goodling revealed that:

- Paul McNulty lied to the Senate regarding the role of Sen. Pete Dominici and the firing of David Iglesias. (Perjury)

- Alberto Gonzales attempted to "coach" her as a Witness. (Witness Tampering)

- The White House was intimately involved in the firings and signed off on all of them. (Possible Obstruction of Justice)

- Goodling admited to violating the laws regarding political discrimination in the DOJ.

- Todd Graves was the Ninth Attorney fired.

Conyers also pointed at that so far no one in Justice seems to know exactly who decided to put anyone on the list. Goodling doesn't know. Sampson doesn't know (although he should since he made the list). McNulty doesn't know and Gonzales doesn't know, therefore the process of elimination indicates that someone outside of Justice was directing things, most likely from the White House.

Vyan

WaPo: Voter Fraud Complaints by GOP Drove DOJ Dismissals

As we've long suspected, and has been reported by Keith Olbermann and Democracy Now, the Washington Post has fully now joined the increasingly loud refrain that the 8 (or was it 9, 10 or 12?) purged U.S. Attorneys were dismissed because they didn't persue Karl Rove's pet project of disenfranchising Democratic voters vigorously enough.

Nearly half the U.S. attorneys slated for removal by the administration last year were targets of Republican complaints that they were lax on voter fraud, including efforts by presidential adviser Karl Rove to encourage more prosecutions of election- law violations, according to new documents and interviews.

Of the 12 U.S. attorneys known to have been dismissed or considered for removal last year, five were identified by Rove or other administration officials as working in districts that were trouble spots for voter fraud -- Kansas City, Mo.; Milwaukee; New Mexico; Nevada; and Washington state. Four of the five prosecutors in those districts were dismissed.

More...

It has been clear for months that the administration's eagerness to launch voter-fraud prosecutions played a role in some of the firings, but recent testimony, documents and interviews show the issue was more central than previously known. The new details include the names of additional prosecutors who were targeted and other districts that were of concern, as well as previously unknown information about the White House's role.

The Justice Department demanded that one U.S. attorney, Todd P. Graves of Kansas City, resign in January 2006, several months after he refused to sign off on a Justice lawsuit involving the state's voter rolls, Graves said last week. U.S. Attorney Steven M. Biskupic of Milwaukee also was targeted last fall after complaints from Rove that he was not doing enough about voter fraud. But he was spared because Justice officials feared that removing him might cause political problems on Capitol Hill, according to interviews of Justice aides conducted by congressional staff members.

Just like the now infamous PowerPoint Presentation at the GSA (and 20 other agencies), Rove sent similar type of charts and graphs of voting pattens to Gonzales for investigation.

Last October, just weeks before the midterm elections, Rove's office sent a 26-page packet to Gonzales's office containing precinct-level voting data about Milwaukee. A Justice aide told congressional investigators that he quickly put the package aside, concerned that taking action would violate strict rules against investigations shortly before elections, according to statements disclosed this week.

That aide, senior counselor Matthew Friedrich, turned over notes to Congress that detailed a telephone conversation about voter fraud with another Justice official, Benton Campbell, chief of staff for the Criminal Division. Friedrich had asked Campbell for his assessment of Rove's complaints about problems in New Mexico, Milwaukee and Philadelphia, according to a congressional aide familiar with Friedrich's remarks.

The key question however is this... was there really that much voter fraud, or was it possible that all the GOP needed was a little suppresion to get a lot of key districts to flip their way?

Rick Hasen, a professor at Loyola Law School who runs an election law blog, said that "there's no question that Karl Rove and other political operatives" urged Justice officials to apply pressure on U.S. attorneys to pursue voter-fraud allegations in parts of the country that were critical to the GOP.

Hasen said it remains unclear, however, "whether they believed there was a lot of fraud and U.S. attorneys would ferret it out, or whether they believed there wasn't a lot of fraud but the allegations would serve political purposes."

Personally I suspect it's the later, particularly since at least one judge has already thrown out a similar DOJ voter fraud case as being totally without merit. From my favorite News Site - Thinkprogress.

In 2005, the Justice Department sued Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan (D) for not keeping the state’s voting records up-to-date. On Friday, U.S. District Judge Nanette Laughrey sharply criticized the Justice Department’s weak case and ruled in favor of Carnahan:

Laughrey said it was difficult to gauge the scope of the problem "because the United States has not presented the actual voter registration lists and shown who should have been included or excluded and why."

"It is also telling that the United States has not shown that any Missouri resident was denied his or her right to vote as a result of deficiencies alleged by the United States," Laughrey wrote. "Nor has the United States shown that any voter fraud has occurred."

The case was led by the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri, Bradley Schlozman, who earlier served in the Justice Department’s civil rights division. In 2005, he reversed the career staff’s recommendations to challenge a Georgia photo-ID law that a federal judge later likened to a "modern-day poll tax."

The prosecution of Carnahan was prompted by his failure to implement the kind of purging of the voter rolls in minority districts that we saw in Ohio in 2004. An act which may have affected over 300,000 likely Democratic Voters and essentially ensured that George W. Bush would retain the Whitehouse. Since it worked so well then, why not do it again in 2006, eh?

Too bad not everyone wanted to "play ball". Oh and just for the record, Bradley Schlozman, in case you missed the connection is the USA who replaced Todd Graves. Obviously Brad did "Play Ball".

... in March 2006, Graves was replaced by a new US attorney — one who had no prosecutorial experience and bypassed Senate confirmation. Bradley Schlozman moved aggressively where Graves had not, announcing felony indictments of four workers for a liberal activist group on voter registration fraud charges less than a week before the 2006 election.

Republicans, who had been pushing for restrictive new voting laws, applauded. But critics said Schlozman violated a department policy to wait until after an election to bring voter fraud indictments if the case could affect the outcome, either by becoming a campaign issue or by scaring legitimate voters into staying home.

And just to bring the point home and show that the link between these five particularly "hot spots" targeted by Rove had more to do with politics than crime...

According to Lorraine Minnite, a political scientist at Barnard College who co-wrote a recent study of federal prosecution of election fraud, the states in which U.S. attorneys were dismissed, or put on a tentative firing list, include five of nearly a dozen states that Rove and other Republicans last year identified as election battlegrounds.

Methinks this is starting to look like an "Open and Shut Case" of fraud alright, but not by any voters.

Vyan

The Goal of Gonzo-Gate: Tamping down the Black Vote

From Democracy Now.

Another scandal is brewing inside Alberto Gonzales's Justice Department. Former Justice Department attorneys have publicly accused the Bush administration of politicizing the department's Civil Rights Division which was formed 50 years ago to protect the voting rights of African-Americans. According to a recent report by the McClatchy newspapers, the Bush administration has pursued an aggressive legal effort to restrict voter turnout in key battleground states in ways that favor Republican political candidates.

And since black and minority voters tend to favor Democrats by over 10 to 1 - they have become the perfect targets to help Republicans over the hump in marginal races.

We've all of course become quite familiar with Karl Rove's Infamous Power-Point Presentation. Reports from L.A. Times today indicate the the GSA isn't the only place it made an appearance.

The Los Angeles Times has learned that similar presentations were made by other White House staff members, including Rove, to other Cabinet agencies. During such presentations, employees said they got a not-so-subtle message about helping endangered Republicans.

Presentations such as this, which are clearly intended to draft government employees into becoming partisan operatives are clear violations of the Hatch Act. But what happens when these types of tactics are employed by the very people whose job is to protect the integrity of the vote?

People such as Bob Bennet disgraced former head of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections where he had helped improperly purge over a hundred thousand voters from the Ohio roles.

Leading up to the 2004 vote, Bennett oversaw the quiet purge of some 168,000 registered voters from the Cuyahoga rolls, including 24.93% of the entire city of Cleveland, which voted 83% for Kerry. In one inner city majority African American ward, 51% of the voters were purged. Centered on precincts that voted more than 80% for John Kerry, this purge may well have meant a net loss to the Democrats of tens of thousands of votes in an election that was officially decided statewide by less than 119,000.

And Bennet was far from alone.

Parallel purges were conducted by Republican-controlled boards of election in Hamilton County (Cincinnati) where some 105,000 voters were purged from the rolls, and in Lucas County (Toledo), where some 28,000 were purged in an unprecedented move in late August 2004. These remain the only three counties in the state known to have conducted massive registration purges prior to the 2004 election. The three mass urban purges decimated the rolls in heavily Democratic areas. Since then, another 170,000 voters have been purged from the rolls in Franklin County, primarily in the heavily Democratic Columbus precincts. Many rural Republican counties, like Miami, practice a “no-purge” policy.

In case you've lost count that over 300,000 voters, mostly democratic, purged from the roles and denied their right to vote - in a race that was decided by a difference of 119,000!

A race that kept George W. Bush in the White House.

So has the DOJ been investigating this? Not so much, they've been busy firing their own and chasing their tails on alleged "voter fraud" cases.

Rich: At least two U.S. attorneys were fired after failing to bring voter fraud cases. Last year the Boston Globe reported the Bush administration is filling the permanent ranks of the Civil Rights Division with lawyers who have strong conservative credentials but little experience in civil rights. This has led to the Civil Rights Division focusing more on cases alleging reverse discrimination against whites and religious discrimination against Christians.

Now I personally feel that legitimate calls to look at so-called "Reverse Discrimination" do need to occur, as well as religious discrimination - but the facts are and have long been that black people are far more likely to be on the receiving end of negative discrimination than any other group.

From the latest FBI Hate Crimes Statistics (which are reported by local law enforcement and compiled by the FBI independent of the Civil Rights Division).

In 2005 there were 828 recorded incidents of Anti-White Discrimination contrasted with 2,630 incidents of Anti-Black Discrimination for a 3 to 1 ratio. But then when you look at things in a per capita basis taking into account that Black people are only 12% (or 1/8th) of the overall population the likelihood of any individual black person being discriminated against versus a white person rises to 25 to 1.

Similarly the vast majority of cases of religious discrimination recorded were Anti-Jewish (848), compared to Anti-Catholic (58), Anti-Protestant (57) and even Anti-Muslim (128). Incidents of anti-Male-Homosexual bias (621) far outstrip incidents against all other religions (93).

Hate crimes motivated by religious bias accounted for 1,314 offenses reported by law enforcement. A breakdown of the bias motivation of religious-bias offenses showed:

* 68.5 percent were anti-Jewish.
* 11.1 percent were anti-Islamic.
* 7.8 percent were anti-other (unspecified) religion.
* 4.6 percent were anti-Catholic.
* 4.4 percent were anti-Protestant.
* 3.2 percent were anti-multiple religions, (i.e., groups of individuals of varying religions).
* 0.4 percent were anti-Atheism/Agnosticism.

Contrary to popular belief most hate crimes are not acts of violence or aggression, rather they are acts intended to intimidate.

Of the 8,380 hate crime offenses in 2005:

* 30.3 percent were intimidation.
* 30.2 percent were destruction/damage/vandalism.
* 18.7 percent were simple assault.
* 12.7 percent were aggravated assault.
* The remaining 8.2 percent of hate crimes were comprised of additional crimes against persons, property, and society.

It seems to me that the priorities of the Civil Rights Division should be clear - yet the Bush Administration doesn't see it that way according to for CRD head Joseph Rich.

JOSEPH RICH: Well, I was at the Department of Justice in the Civil Rights Division right out of law school in ’68 and worked twenty-four of the thirty-six years I was there under Republican administrations, starting with Ramsey Clark, John Mitchell, through Ed Meese, Janet Reno and finally this administration with Alberto Gonzales and John Ashcroft.

This administration is the first administration that I felt had politicized the department to the extent that it has. And I had been the head of the Voting Section for the last six years that I was there, from 1999 to 2005, and I think the Voting Section has always been a section that is of political interest, but never had been politicized to the extent that it was in this administration.

So exactly what was it they did?

...there was two major things that concerned me the most. The first was, in the voting area, some of the major decisions made were contrary to recommendations from the career people, such as myself, and in my judgment were made for partisan political reasons. These were redistricting decisions in places like Mississippi and Texas. There was a voter ID law in Georgia that was decided just after I left the department in 2005.

Redistricting so that democratic voters have left influence in Violation of the Voting Rights Act? Check. Implementing onerous ID requirements which echo the use of the "Poll Tax" and "Literacy Tests" which was used for decades to keep blacks from voting? Check. What else?

JOSEPH RICH: Well, another thing that happened in this administration right from the outset was a great priority on voter fraud. It continued to increase through 2004 and then, I think, particularly after I left in 2006. The priority on voter fraud -- voter fraud is done by the Criminal Division. The Civil Rights Division works on voter intimidation based on race during elections. And the increase in emphasis on voter fraud became more and more apparent, to the point that last year Bradley Schlozman, who had been one of the ones responsible for politicizing the Civil Rights Division -- he had been there from 2003 to 2006. He was one of the first -- I think the first -- interim US attorney appointed under the PATRIOT Act, that gave the Attorney General the authority to appoint people without confirmation indefinitely. He was appointed in Missouri, a battleground state in 2006.

Five days before the election last fall in Missouri, he brought five voter fraud cases against members of -- or I think employees of ACORN for alleged voter fraud. This was contrary to longstanding department policy not to bring or even investigate voter fraud cases shortly before an election because of the sensitivity to having any impact on elections. The longstanding policy was one in which, if there was evidence of voter fraud, the investigation would take place, unless there was a real emergency, after the election.

The fact that that happened in Missouri, the fact that the United States attorneys in New Mexico and Washington, who were following the priority of investigating vigorously voter fraud and yet were removed because they did not indict, is extremely disturbing, because they were doing their job, but in their professional judgment they did not have evidence to bring the cases, and that appears to have been a major factor in their removal.

So if Rich is correct, and I strongly suspect that he is, this set of firings has sent a clear signal thruout the remain USA's. I shudder to think exactly what kind of pre-emptive prosecutions can we expect prior to the 2008 Congressional and Presidential Elections which just might create a hostile atmosphere to various democratic get-out-the-vote operations which might be critical in battleground states and close elections?

Vyan

Ohio Election Audit Find Massive Descrepancies

Ohio Vote Audit for 2004 election finds massive discrepancies:

CLEVELAND — Computer vote-memory card totals failed to match electronic voting machine ballot tallies in more than one quarter of the samples checked from the November election in the state’s most populous county, an independent audit showed Thursday.
In the 37 sample precincts where results didn’t match, there may have been corrupted memory cards, missing or torn reports, faulty printers or other problems, according to the independent audit commissioned by the Cuyahoga County elections board.

These are exactly the kinds of memory cards which were highlighted by the HBO Documentary, Hacking Democracy earlier this year. But where the differences in totals enough to change the outcome of the 2004 elections?

Because the checks involved unofficial counts, the audit committee wasn’t in a position to say whether vote totals might have been affected, member Ron Olsen said.

So although there may have been massive problems, exactly who those problems may or may not have benefited remains unclear - so far. Clearly these results should warrant further investigation and explaination particularly in the wake of the scandal upon scandal which has plagued Cuyahoga County.

Ohio's Bob "Ballots for Bush" Bennett, an essential player in putting George W. Bush back in the White House in 2004, is no long chair of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections. His milestone resignation leaves a legacy of scandal, recrimination, massive voter purges, felony convictions and a pivotal role in a stolen presidential election.

Bennett has quit in a signature cloud of graceless accusations and cheap shots at Jennifer Brunner, Ohio's newly elected Secretary of State, who asked him to resign along with the rest of the Cleveland election authority. His forced departure marks the biggest landmark yet in the unraveling theft of the presidential elections in Ohio 2004.

Bennett remains chair of the Ohio Republican Party. In 2004 he was apparently asked by White House consigliere Karl Rove to stay on at the Cuyahoga BOE to help guarantee Bush's second term. Cleveland is Ohio's biggest and most Democratic urban center. A massive sweep there by John Kerry was widely expected to have given him the White House. It was Bennett's job to mute that margin, and apparently that's exactly what he did.

Leading up to the 2004 vote, Bennett oversaw the quiet purge of some 168,000 registered voters from the Cuyahoga rolls, including 24.93% of the entire city of Cleveland, which voted 83% for Kerry. In one inner city majority African American ward, 51% of the voters were purged. Centered on precincts that voted more than 80% for John Kerry, this purge may well have meant a net loss to the Democrats of tens of thousands of votes in an election that was officially decided statewide by less than 119,000.

Vyan

Steven Heller: Diebold can not be Trusted

As reported by BradBlog, Diebold Whistleblower Steven Heller has reached a plea deal with LA District Attorney Steve Cooley - and has decided to speak out.

In my view, Diebold has shown they cannot be trusted to run elections in America. We must not allow a private corporation to run our elections for us in secret, using secret machines and secret software. The only thing secret about our elections should be the secret ballot.

I urge all Americans to insist Congress enact Federal legislation requiring that all voting machines must have a voter verifiable paper ballot, be run on open source software code, be subject to inspection by independent computer experts, and that each election have a random sample ballot recount. Only then will we have a chance of restoring true integrity to American elections.

Last February I wrote a highly recommended and contentious Diary on the Heller case, based on a Huffingtonpost article which discussed actions to be taken in his defense.

. Don't prosecute Stephen Heller. He's a whistleblower, not a criminal, and he should not be prosecuted.

. Diebold is the criminal here. Stephen Heller is alleged to have exposed Diebold's criminal activity, and that makes him a whistleblower. He should not be prosecuted.

. Diebold's election malfeasance strikes at the very heart of our democratic republic. Without clean elections, we don't have democracy anymore. Those who expose such crimes are whistleblowers and should not be prosecuted.

. America has a long history of whistleblowers exposing criminal activity, and prosecuting them is wrong; it puts a chilling effect on others who might see criminal activity and want to expose it.

I have no idea weather the Huffingtonpost or Dkos had any impact on the eventual decision make by the LADA, but I have to consider outcome to be a victory for Whistleblowers and Democracy.

Heller pled guilty yesterday in an agreement with Los Angeles prosecutors, after his arrest earlier this year on felony charges related to his release of attorney-client privileged documents he obtained while working as a temporary word-processor at Diebold's law firm, Jones Day.

The agreement, which required him to sign an apology, pay $10,000 in restitution, and not discuss the documents he released, may also allow Heller's felony conviction to be reduced to a misdemeanor charge after one year of "good behavior."

As well, in exchange for Heller's signed apology and commitment not to discuss the documents themselves (which are already publicly available since he released them originally to both the media and Election Integrity activists), Jones Day signed an agreement that they would not sue him in civil court in the matter.

Still, it's quite interesting that Heller was ever in this position since California has a Whistleblower Law...

... which prevents employers from exacting retribution against an employee who "has reasonable cause to believe that the information [being released] discloses a violation of state or federal
statute."

That law was used to protect Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org who received the Jones-Day documents from Heller and provided them to then Secretary of State Kevin Shelley and the CA Attorney General. These events led to the Decertification of Diebold in California as was documented in the recent HBO Film "Hacking Democracy".

Apparently because of his opposition to the Voting company Shelley soon found himself defrocked and replaced by a Republican who quickly recertified Diebold.

Generally speaking Whistleblowers have been taking it in the shorts lately.

Government whistle-blowers are facing increased retaliation for speaking out. "In the four years before the terrorist attacks, whistle-blowers filed an average of 690 reprisal complaints...annually. Since the attacks, an average of 835 complaints have been filed each year, a 21% increase.”

Even with this crackdown - the words seems to be getting out - Lou Dobbs dared to take a few moments away from bashing immigrants to notice.

“Electronic voting machines are placing our democracy at risk.” This dire warning on the eve of the election came not from MoveOn.org or Air America, but CNN anchor and lifelong Republican Lou Dobbs.

Dobbs was hardly alone in sounding the alarm, as in Maryland both gubernatorial candidates urged voters to use absentee ballots rather than rely on the state’s Diebold voting machines, and nationwide, 66 percent of registered voters believed it to be likely that hackers would tamper with the vote count. While it is encouraging that last week’s election does not appear to have been marred by major allegations of electoral theft, the alarm is still ringing and must be addressed prior to 2008.
In the past six years, the use of electronic voting machines has tripled and is now used by nearly 40 percent of registered voters.

Democrats have been generally mum, considering how well they did two weeks ago, but there is still very strong evidence that the FL-13 race was hacked and stolen.

The group of nearly 18,000 voters that registered no choice in Sarasota's disputed congressional election solidly backed Democratic candidates in all five of Florida's statewide races, an Orlando Sentinel analysis of ballot data shows.

Among these voters, even the weakest Democrat -- agriculture-commissioner candidate Eric Copeland -- outpaced a much-better-known Republican incumbent by 551 votes.

The trend, which continues up the ticket to the race for governor and U.S. Senate, suggests that if votes were truly cast and lost -- as Democrat Christine Jennings maintains -- they were votes that likely cost her the congressional election.

Republican Vern Buchanan's 369-vote victory was certified by state officials Monday. His camp says that, although people may have skipped the race -- intentionally or not -- there is no evidence that votes went missing.

But the results of the Sentinel analysis, two experts said, warrant additional investigation.

"Wow," University of Virginia political analyst Larry Sabato said. "That's very suggestive -- I'd even say strongly suggestive -- that if there had been votes recorded, she [Jennings] would have won that House seat."

The fact that Democrats did so well this year is no excuse to sweep these issues under the rug. Fortunately, the issue hasn't been completely ignored by some newly empowered Dems. Pat Leahy has called for Laura Ingraham's Phone Jamming Suggestions to be investigated, and Harry Reid is beginning to ,talk tough.

"The Senate Democratic leadership team plans a long, laborious slog for the Senate next year even as party leaders continue to formalize their legislative agenda for the 110th Congress — an agenda that already includes a couple of surprises.

"At a breakfast with reporters Tuesday, incoming Majority Leader Harry Reid [D-NV] warned that the “do-nothing” Congress, as his party has labeled recent Republican rule in the chamber, will soon be over....

"Principally, Reid said that would mean passing a bill to create criminal penalties for election fraud, including offenses such as voter misinformation campaigns carried out by robo-calls and misleading flyers.

"Noting that such tactics were used in both the Missouri and Maryland Senate races, Schumer said, “I think the person or people who authorized that should go to jail for 10 years.” Currently, civil fines usually are the most serious penalty assessed for such ploys. Schumer added that a separate unit should be created within the Justice Department to deal with cases of election fraud."

Even if these reforms are enacted we still should consider the job incomplete, we've all seen how well a partisan agenda can completely neuter the DOJ's existing Civil Rights Division which under the Voting Rights Act already has jurisdiction on these matters.

It's a step in the right direction, but we still need to ask - No, Demand - more and better safeguards for our vote. Our Democracy depends on it.

Vyan

Election Night After Action Report

My Interview with Video The Vote on Election Eve.

On this YouTube Video as a Pollworker I describe the two new voting machines which were used during the 2006 Midterm Elections in Los Angeles Country, which had been sitting in my living room for over a week prior to November 7th.

On tape I discuss the various security concerns and safeguards which have been put in place to protect the vote and these machines from possible tampering.

On election night our Precinct ran smoothly. We had approximately 280 Voters come through, 20 of those had to use provisional ballots because they were not listed on our voter roster. (Most had come to the wrong polling location - as the County gradually shifts the precincts around in preparation for full electronic voting at "Neighborhood Voting Centers" (NVCs).

Overall turnout (number of signatures in roster vs total registerd voters in the precinct) was about 23%. 18 ballots were cast with Overvotes (Two or more choices selected for the same race) and were rejected by our Precinct Ballot Reader. (Which is a failure rate of about 7%) In all but two of those cases the voter cast a new ballot and it was accepted, the others simply let the ballot go through as it was with the mistakes intact. In previous years a ballot with an overvote would have been entirely rejected and not counted, but this year for the first time only the race which includes the overvote will be ignored.

Two voters entered blank ballots and had those ballots rejected. They successfully revoted.

This means that voter "turnout" should have increased by between 5-10% across the entire county due to the use of these machines, simply because ballots that would have been rejected would now be counted and included in the final tally.

On the tape I mention that voters essentially had "Three Strikes and your out" - meaning they had three chances to successfully vote. This became a bit of a discussion with the people at Election Protection, but the bottom line was that I was correct - technically. California State Law only allows a voter to have two correction ballots (three total). We didn't have anyone go to the third ballot - but we did have one person who had significant errors twice in a row. He walked out in disgust and we entered his ballot with the "Override" so that his remaining errors would be ignored. This could also have been done if he'd tried to use a third ballot and still had received errors.

My own mother, who was the Precinct Inspector, made an overvote mistake on her ballot which the machine caught. In as many cases as we could we would manually verify the overvote reported by the machine and show this to the voter so that they could understand what the mistake had been and how to correct it. Usually people with weaker eyesight had simply punched one hole above or below where they intended and created an overvote.

Overall for us, things went smoothly - we ran into no significant problems. As it turned out though - we were lucky.

Some of the other poll workers interviewed by Video the Vote from West Hollywood (a Very Heavily Democratic District I think - since the Polls were at the Gay and Lesbian Center!) were going through a veritable nightmare with these machines at their NVC which included three precincts in one location. I actually talked to this pollworker myself on election day and the situations was that one of the inspectors and all their materials were sent to another location, so every voter who arrived for that precinct had to be put on provisional ballots (which ended up being around 200) because they had no Roster to verify if those people were legal voters or not.

They didn't have any ballots for that precinct - so they had to use the sample ballots that were only supposed to used for demostration purposes. (But are still a valid backup).

They had two voting machines - but one of them failed totally, while the second was having a wiring problem and would short out and restart. As a result they were only using one machine for three precincts and some of the ballots were generating a message "Ballot Error" when entered.

As these Precinct Ballot Reader machines are started and initialized, a special card has to be put into the machine. I examined this card and found that it was very much like an old school IBM Punch Card (I mean real... old school - like from the 70's. Admittedly my computer experience actually does go back that far - I was pratically a blastocyst with an Atari). The punch holes on the ballots matched this card exactly, and the ballots themselves included a unique Serial Number which matched the Serial Number for the Precinct.

From a programming and systems design background it seems to me that each machine was probably pre-programmed with the ballot for every portion of L.A.County, including any local initiatives which would only be valid in certain cities. On election day the reader would read the setup card, and use it to identify which precinct it was currently located in, then call up the approprate ballot template to check for overvotes. From what I could tell this was the only way things could have been functioning, or else they would have had to preload only one precinct per machine and then make sure they gave the right machine to the correct inspector. (Em, I don't think so...)

This of course made me suspect that the West Hollywood "Ballot Error" was the result of trying to place two precincts ballots through the same reader. I haven't yet been able to confirm this yet, but I strongly suspect this was the case.

I don't know if the fact that our district is almost equally split between Democrats and Republicans is part of why things went fine without a glitch while a heavily Democratic District went through veritable hell. Was it simply human error or more? Hard to say at this point. But as more and more Election After Action Reports come through, we might eventually be able to see a pattern emerge or not.

One thing we can't afford to do - is not pay attention.

Vyan

Security Note: On the Video I discuss the security tabs which is used to cover an RS-232 ethernet port on the Ballot Reader. When I got a better look I discovered that those tabs were reenforced and individually numbered. Also I stated that the machine had no memory card - but during the election I discovered a second security tab which was placed over a locked door on the lower left side of the machine, below the touchscreen (I tried to get a picture of it above). Exactly what is behind that door, I don't know - but it clearly means that there might have been more externally adjustable elements than I had previously seen.

Protecting the Vote - Once Precinct at a Time

Although the daunting prospect of electronic voting as well as organized voter suppression looms on the eve of the 2006 election, there are still a great many things that we individuals can do to protect the vote.

If you haven't already - Take Tomorrow Off From Work and plan to spend all day at the Polls.

As a citizen it is your right to be able to watch your Democracy and progress. the only way that the vote can be tampered with or stolen is when no one is looking.

Go to the Polls and keep Watch on our Democracy, but most importantly - you must document what you see!

Depending on the rules in your state, some of the details may vary slightly - but in general there is no reason why you can not go to your local voting place and simply watch.

Here are some simple rules of thumb and suggestions.

Bring a Lunch.

Bring a Camera (preferably video).

Bring a Phone.

Bring a Notepad.

Bring a portable radio with earphones so you can hear the local and nation news without disturbing others.

Do NOT discuss preferences on the ballots measure or specific races while within 40-100 ft (depending on the state) of the polling place. That is Electioneering and is prohibited by law. Make note and document anyone else you see violating this law.

Poll workers should be courteous and helpful. They should not object to your watching as long as you don't interfere with their work or the voters.

Make a note of excessive delays or lines, note the precinct and average wait times.

As the day progresses Read and Review the Street Index, which should be updated each hour by poll workers to indicate which persons in the precinct have already voted and posted near the entrance. This can used for last-minute GOTV as the index should include the name, address, phone number and party affiliation of each registered voter. If you have a phone (tip #2 above) you can call any voter and remind them of the election and ask them if they plan to vote today, but you can not suggest to them how they should vote while in the polling place. Some people might be put-off by a cold-calling of this type (even if they aren't already getting robo-bombed) - so use your best judgement and always be courteous.

Pay attention to voter ID challenges. (I'm a poll-worker in California so I can speak to their laws primarily, and in California you do not need ID to vote as long as your are listed in the Roster as an "Active" Voter - one who has voted at least once during the past two Presidential election cycles. If you have not, you should be listed as an "Inactive" voter and you still don't need ID, only to verify your name and address - then recite a voter oath. New Voters who've recently registered must show ID - or proof of address - if they can't they can still vote provisionally.

Pay attention to how and when voters are shunted toward provisional ballots. Voters Should Not Be Harrassed The rules may vary from state to state, but generally provisional ballots should only be issued for people who are a) New without ID or b) Voting outside their normal precinct. Provisional voters should be given a receipt which tells them that they can call a number or check a website 30 days after the election to verify that their vote was or wasn't counted.

Each voter should sign the roster individually. If someone comes to the poll and finds that someone else has already signed their slot on the roster - that's not a good sign. Document it.


Document any reports of "Vote Flipping" with Electronic Vote Machines.

Document, if you can, the details of votes which have been rejected by Ballot Readers. (Units made by ES&S have been distributed to all 5000 precincts in LA.) For this election the readers will not be counting the votes, only checking them for errors - votes missing or overvotes - and generating a report. The voter should have the option to override the error report if they don't care about those particular races , or redo their ballot to fix any problems. The Ballot Readers I've seen Do not have Memory Cards, but they do have an Ethernet Cable Port which should be covered by a piece of security tape. If you can, ensure sure that this tape has not been tampered with in order to hide unauthorized access to the machine's internals.

New Audio Booths are now available which function like an automatic phone system and allows people who may be visually impaired, unable to read or not speak english to vote. These Audio Booths are controlled by through the Ballot Reader device and will print their own ballots once the voter has completed making their selections. Unfortunately these devices have a limit of only 25 ballots - one of which is automatically printed when the device is booted - so only 24 persons per precinct will be able to use this device.

If you see questionable activity and don't have a camera of your own you can contact 1-866-OUR-VOTE which is national hotline associated with Video the Vote.org who may be able to send a voluanteer camera crew out depending on your location.

If you do have a Camera you can upload your video and observations to forums like this one, Youtube or Oped News.com

There's no real excuse for sitting on your hands and not taking part in your democracy. Voting itself is least you can do.

Other suggestions welcome...

Vyan

HBO: Hacking Democracy's Epitaph

Last night I watched the HBO Documentary "Hacking Democracy" and found it fascinating, if somewhat well worn territory (for myself and Dkossers).

The film follows Bev Harris of Black Box Voting as she originally began to take up the cause of Verified Voting in 2001 and continues through the decertification of Diebold by California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley and verification by Leon Country Election Supervisor Ion Sancho that the results of electronic tabulators can be untracably altered via their memory cards.

But there's more to this story. Much more...

A Review of Hacking Democracy from the New York Times.

TV Review | 'Hacking Democracy'
In the Land of `Every Vote Counts,' Uncertainty on Whether It's Counted Correctly
By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN

(snip)
Hacking Democracy" follows Ms. Harris and her band of unmerry women (and male hackers and hangers-on) as they trudge to polling places, corporate headquarters and court hearings looking for answers. An "irregularity" -- that's computerese for blank existential terror -- that shows up in Volusia County, Fla., in November 2000 energizes their cause: in that county, Mr. Gore seems to have received "-16,022" votes. A deficit. Negative votes. It doesn't take a scientist from Stanford to explain that is just, um, bad.

A second memory card, which vanished into thin air (naturally), may have been loaded into the computer that counted the votes. That's fraud of the highest order. Susan Bernecker, a Republican candidate for City Council in Jefferson Parish, La., in the mid-1990s, went to test the voting machines years ago. Twice, in a demo, she pressed her own name to see how it would register; twice the name of her opponent was registered in the memory of the machine. They test 15 more machines and find the same results.

Rigged voting in Louisiana? Say it ain't so. But it's not shocked-shocked you feel watching this; it's genuine shock. As the drama proceeds, adducing more evidence for the unreliability of the voting machines than can possibly be explored here, you might also feel flattened. Computers count around 80 percent of votes in America. The marketing director for Diebold, Mark Radke, who defends both the company and its chief executive (a major Republican fund-raiser who once promised in a letter to "deliver the electoral votes of Ohio" to President Bush), talks in maddening doublespeak and wears the arched-eyebrow expression of a silent-movie fiend. His Nixon-era nondenial denials turn the stomach.

Bev Harris herself has been rather controversial in these waters -- but there's little denying the public service that she has performed by being involved in this film.

In the film we see Bev and her friends dumpster diving in Georgia and Florida for election materials and managing to discover signed copies of tabulator printouts which by law are supposed to be kept for years following an election.

Harris shows Howard Dean - how to hack an election using MS Access. (Which is not exactly a "high-end" software app)

The HBO film ends with the work of Harri Husti as he manages to duplicate the Volusi County negative vote phenomenon simply by updating the memory card used on a tabulator machine in a demonstration for Ion Sancho of Leon County Fl. - it is apparently this demonstration which eventually led to Sancho to kick Diebold out of the county. Let me point out that this machine is used to count PAPER Ballots and that the results of Hursti's test show that such modifications could be done without detection and could affect all votes throughout not just a single precinct, but an entire county or congressional district depending on how many ballots are sent through the infected machine.

Voting Absentee is No Protection as all ballots are eventually put through the same tabulator machines. If the machine has been tampered with, every vote will be affected.

Unfortunately the real ending for the film isn't nearly as positive as what was shown by HBO.

After kicking out Diebold Sancho ran in to problems with other voting equipment companies who complained "they couldn't trust him".

Now all state-approved companies refuse to sell him the machines he's ordered until he promises to run no further checks on them. And he's had to return the $1/2 million dollar grant he wanted to use to order voting machines for the disabled.

But wait, it gets worse...

After decertifying Diebold for California, Secretary of State Kevin Shelley resigned amid scandal and was replaced by Republican Bruce McPherson (as appointed by Governer Schwarzenegger) who quickly proceeded to recertify Diebold.

Diebold Machines are in use Now, thruout California for Early/Absentee voting.

As was recently shown by Computer Scientists from Princeton, these machines remain highly vulnerable to tampering - all you need is some code and a mini-bar key to access the machine. Even the dim-bulbs on Faux News were shocked when they were shown how to hack an election in 90 seconds.

Husti has also found security holes and "back-doors" in other Diebold machines, holes which the state of Maryland had been aware of for nearly two years.

All it would take is One person to change the outcome of an election according to the Washington Post.

A malicious individual with access to a voting machine could rig the software without being detected. Worse yet, if the attacker rigged the machine used to compute the totals for some precinct, he or she could alter the results of that precinct. The only fix the RABA authors suggested was to warn people that manipulating an election is against the law.

...

Diebold spokesman David Bear admitted to the New York Times that the back door was inserted intentionally so that election officials would be able to update their systems easily. Bear justified Diebold's actions by saying, "For there to be a problem here, you're basically assuming a premise where you have some evil and nefarious election officials who would sneak in and introduce a piece of software... I don't believe these evil elections people exist."

We shouldn't have to trust the veracity of a Diebold spokesmans belief on this issue. But unfortunately, their assurances are pretty much all we have - that and the likelyhood that all of our election workers are honest and honorable.

On a personal note I'm not entirely cynical on this issue, as I happen to be an election worker myself, and have been for the last several years including the 2004 Presidential contest. This month I went through training on the latest ballot reader devices which will be used at all 5026 precincts in Los Angeles County. My mother is an Election Inspector - which means that last Sunday she picked up all of the polling place materials and has been storing them in her living room - including the ballot reader. Now I happen to have a computer software and security background, including 12 years working for a defense contrator and several more as a consultant with the State of california.

IMO There are all kinds of mischief possibilities here. (I noticed during our training that access to the Admin Functions of the reader were not password protected. This may be changed on election day - I would hope!). But to date - simply because of my own personal honor - I haven't touched anything and I won't - But I could if I wanted to.

So could the other inspectors and additional 10,000+ polls workers in this one county. Can we truly expect that everyone will show the same restraint? I would hope so, but unfortunately I think not.

On the positive side, the 5000+ ballot readers which are currently sitting in various living rooms and garages across L.A. County are not being used to count the votes, only to verify that the voter hasn't made any mistakes which might invalidate their vote. They do have the capability to count votes, but that feature has been turned off - for now.

The situation is dire, but it is NOT hopeless. This is no time to hang our heads in frustration and despair. It's time to ACT.

From my years of experience at the polls my suggestion to anyone who feels this is a serious issue is - if you haven't already - take Tuesday off and spend it at your local polling place to WATCH. Citizens have a right to be view their Democracy in progress. Bring a Camera, a note pad and a cell phone.

• Document anyone trying to influence or sway voters (Electioneering within 100 feet of Poll), it's a crime.


• Document any challenges to a voters status, unreasonable requests for ID or their being required to vote provisionally without just cause.


• Federal Law Requires that Poll Workers Update the Street Index every hour to indicate who has already voted. This index (in California) includes that Name, Address, Phone Number and PARTY AFFILIATION of each registered voter. USE YOUR PHONE and get our people to the Polls.

There isn't much we can do about malicious code which may or may not be in play this upcoming Tuesday (Robert F Kennedy Jr has a pending lawsuit against Diebold which should eventually help in the future) but we can do something about the human element right now!.

By acting individually we can avoid the types of "phone bank jamming" tricks that Republicans have used in the past. They can't stop all of us. Don't wait for the campaigns and the politicians to protect your Democracy for you - Take it personally. Get involved and make sure everyones vote counts. We can't afford not too.

Vyan

Impending E-Voting Debacle finally noticed by MSM

The Washington Post today posted a major article on November's looming E-Voting Calamity (Courtesy of ThereIsNoSpoon)

An overhaul in how states and localities record votes and administer elections since the Florida recount battle six years ago has created conditions that could trigger a repeat -- this time on a national scale -- of last week's Election Day debacle in the Maryland suburbs, election experts said.

In the Nov. 7 election, more than 80 percent of voters will use electronic voting machines, and a third of all precincts this year are using the technology for the first time. The changes are part of a national wave, prompted by the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002 and numerous revisions of state laws, that led to the replacement of outdated voting machines with computer-based electronic machines, along with centralized databases of registered voters and other steps to refine the administration of elections.

This story is finally starting to get some traction, now that the problems in Maryland's primary have been so well documented. The ripples of the Princeton Diebold video seem to be spreading and have already reached the shores of Faux News.

But in Maryland last Tuesday, a combination of human blunders and technological glitches caused long lines and delays in vote-counting. The problems, which followed ones earlier this year in Ohio, Illinois and several other states, have contributed to doubts among some experts about whether the new systems are reliable and whether election officials are adequately prepared to use them.

Ok, Now they're starting to have doubts? We've already had the Conyers Report(pdf) as well as RFK's stunning article in Rolling Stone. Which was followed up Fitrakis and Herbert. Rampant problems in the Billbray/Busby contest in San Diego. As well as various Whistleblowers, William Singer, Ion Sancho, and Steven Heller.

The fact that Maryland had these problems, shows the strength of the e-voting lobby, since Maryland House had voted to kick Diebold out and switched back to paper-ballots in March of this year.

Diebold, the electronic voting machine maker, suffered another sharp setback recently, when Maryland's House of Delegates voted 137-to-0 to drop its machines and switch to paper ballots. The vote came in the same week that Texas held elections marred by electronic voting troubles. Maryland's State Senate should join the House in voting to discontinue the use of the Diebold machines, and other states should follow Maryland's lead.

Maryland was one of the first states to embrace Diebold. But Maryland voters and elected officials have grown increasingly disenchanted as evidence has mounted that the machines cannot be trusted. In 2004, security experts from RABA Technologies told the state legislature that they had been able to hack into the machines in a way that would make it possible to steal an election. Senator Barbara Mikulski, a Democrat, informed the State Board of Elections in 2004 that voters had complained to her that machines had mysteriously omitted the Senate race.

Unfortuately this intiative by the Maryland House ultimately failed. Back to the Wapo.

In a polarized political climate, in which elections are routinely marked by litigation and allegations of incompetent administration or outright tampering, some worry that voting problems could cast a Florida-style shadow over this fall's midterm elections.

"We could see that control of Congress is going to be decided by races in recount situations that might not be determined for several weeks," said Paul S. DeGregorio, chairman of the federal Election Assistance Commission, although he added that he does not expect problems of this magnitude.

"It's hard to put a factor on how ill-prepared we are," said former Ohio governor Richard F. Celeste, a Democrat who recently co-chaired a study of new machines with Republican Richard L. Thornburgh, former governor of Pennsylvania, for the National Research Council. They advised local election officials to prepare backup plans for November.

"What we know is, these technologies require significant testing and debugging to make them work," added Celeste, now president of Colorado College. "Our concern -- particularly as we look to the November election, when there is a lot of pressure on -- is that election officials consider what kinds of fallbacks they can put in place."

It seems that this issue is suddenly, almost oddly, beginning to reach critical mass -- but the question remains, can the problems be corrected and/or alternatives put in place in time to ensure a fair and accurate election this November. And if not, and either the Republicans retain control of the House, or the Democrats take over either House of Congress - as they care currently projected to do - will anyone be able to trust the results? How can you have an effective Democracy if you can't trust the vote?

Answer: You Can't!

Vyan

Electronic Voting Demo on Fox News

Stop George from Dailykos, who posted the previous Princeton Video of a Diebold voting machine being hacked, has just posted another video of the very same Princeton people demonstrating how that very same machine can be fooled on Fox and Friends - and even they got it.

When you watch the video you will discover that, although not a lot of time is spent discussing this serious issue -- Professor Felten clearly shows the right-wingers that they have a lot to be concerned about. The bubble-head hosts even gasped and seemed to understand the seriousness of this demonstration.

And so, I think we have almost achieved a pivotal point in this whole saga of e-voting in America. RFK jr. et al's massive lawsuit against the e-voting companies (which they say will curl your toes) is expected to be front-page news within the next couple of weeks. And now, this issue is starting to gain wide political exposure on such programs as Lou Dobbs and Fox News. Yes, friends -- I have a feeling this story is going to go critical mass.

Watch and share, even with all your wingnut friends.

Vyan

The Video that Shook Democracy

From the Democratic Underground Front Page.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, this chilling video is worth million. This week, some professors at Princeton University released a study that everyone should be talking about. As part of the study, there is a short video where they demonstrate how easy it is to alter election results in an undetectable way.

We encourage everyone to take 9 minutes to watch this video, and then share it with everyone you know. Show it to your local election officials, particularly if you use touchscreen voting machines. Just sharing this video is a powerful way to raise awareness. Help spread the word!



Video: http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting/video...

We are also asking everyone to contact CNN's Lou Dobbs, the only mainstream journalist who has been discussing the electronic voting machines, and ask him to show this video on his 6pm news broadcast. You can contact Lou Dobbs here.
There's lots more happening, including some big lawsuits which could throw a monkey wrench into the entire electronic voting machine industry. Stay tuned, we'll be in touch. Don't forget to check our website for updated info.

Best Regards,
the Election Justice Center
on the Solar Bus.

Vyan

Pre-empt the Swiftboating of RFK Jr.

As Bradblog reported yesterday, , environmental Attorney, author and weekend Air America Host, Robert Kennedy Jr's Rolling Stone article is now up And I'm sure we should get good and ready for rapid and feral Swiftboating that Kennedy and his article on how the 2004 Election was stolen is sure to receive.

It's not like we haven't been down this road before.

Before Kennedy's article there was John Conyers Report on "What went Wrong in Ohio", as well as Mark Crispin Miller's book "Fooled Again".

So far the answer from the right and media has been a big yawn! With luck, the reaction to Kennedy's article just might be a big roar of indignation - and if so, we need to be ready.

The first thing we can do is get informed. Well armed is well prepared. Read Kennedy's article NOW! Then read it again. It's possible to do searches within the text of "Fooled Again" on the Amazon.com site, if you don't already have a copy.

Although many people fault John Kerry for failing to respond to the his own swiftboating (although he did), we have to recognize that this attack came from a third party, not a normal member of the campaign. Just as we've seen the swiftboat treatment for Rep John Murtha on Haditha, against Ray McGovern for daring to challenge Donald Rumsfeld with his own words, and the attempts against Al Gore's new movie "An Inconvenient Truth" by using junk pseudo-science against him, and just look at the spittle spewing response on C-Span (video) attorney Cliff Arnebeck received when he originally sued over the Ohio results in December of 04, if all goes well and this latest article isn't simply blown off as tin-foil hattery - we can expect Kennedy to get the exact same treatment. In this case, we're the interested third party, and we need to have our counter-response on the deck.

Key points from the article:

After carefully examining the evidence, I've become convinced that the president's party mounted a massive, coordinated campaign to subvert the will of the people in 2004. Across the country, Republican election officials and party stalwarts employed a wide range of illegal and unethical tactics to fix the election. A review of the available data reveals that in Ohio alone, at least 357,000 voters, the overwhelming majority of them Democratic, were prevented from casting ballots or did not have their votes counted in 2004(12) -- more than enough to shift the results of an election decided by 118,601 votes.(13) (See Ohio's Missing Votes) In what may be the single most astounding fact from the election, one in every four Ohio citizens who registered to vote in 2004 showed up at the polls only to discover that they were not listed on the rolls, thanks to GOP efforts to stem the unprecedented flood of Democrats eager to cast ballots.(14) And that doesn?t even take into account the troubling evidence of outright fraud, which indicates that upwards of 80,000 votes for Kerry were counted instead for Bush. That alone is a swing of more than 160,000 votes -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.(15)

Then there is the issue of the exit polls.

On the evening of the vote, reporters at each of the major networks were briefed by pollsters at 7:54 p.m. Kerry, they were informed, had an insurmountable lead and would win by a rout: at least 309 electoral votes to Bush's 174, with fifty-five too close to call.(28) In London, Prime Minister Tony Blair went to bed contemplating his relationship with President-elect Kerry.(29)

As the last polling stations closed on the West Coast, exit polls showed Kerry ahead in ten of eleven battleground states -- including commanding leads in Ohio and Florida -- and winning by a million and a half votes nationally. The exit polls even showed Kerry breathing down Bush's neck in supposed GOP strongholds Virginia and North Carolina.(30) Against these numbers, the statistical likelihood of Bush winning was less than one in 450,000.(31) ''Either the exit polls, by and large, are completely wrong,'' a Fox News analyst declared, ''or George Bush loses.''(32)

But as the evening progressed, official tallies began to show implausible disparities -- as much as 9.5 percent -- with the exit polls. In ten of the eleven battleground states, the tallied margins departed from what the polls had predicted. In every case, the shift favored Bush. Based on exit polls, CNN had predicted Kerry defeating Bush in Ohio by a margin of 4.2 percentage points. Instead, election results showed Bush winning the state by 2.5 percent. Bush also tallied 6.5 percent more than the polls had predicted in Pennsylvania, and 4.9 percent more in Florida.(33)

According to Steven F. Freeman, a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania who specializes in research methodology, the odds against all three of those shifts occurring in concert are one in 660,000. ''As much as we can say in sound science that something is impossible,'' he says, ''it is impossible that the discrepancies between predicted and actual vote count in the three critical battleground states of the 2004 election could have been due to chance or random error.'' (See The Tale of the Exit Polls)

The key question of course are - "How did this happen?" and even more importantly "How can we prevent it from happening again?"

To determine that we have to look at what actually did occur. The core issues.

Kenneth Blackwell

John Conyers states...

''Blackwell made Katherine Harris look like a cupcake,'' Conyers told me. ''He saw his role as limiting the participation of Democratic voters. We had hearings in Columbus for two days. We could have stayed two weeks, the level of fury was so high. Thousands of people wanted to testify. Nothing like this had ever happened to them before.''

When ROLLING STONE confronted Blackwell about his overtly partisan attempts to subvert the election, he dismissed any such claim as ''silly on its face.'' Ohio, he insisted in a telephone interview, set a ''gold standard'' for electoral fairness. In fact, his campaign to subvert the will of the voters had begun long before Election Day. Instead of welcoming the avalanche of citizen involvement sparked by the campaign, Blackwell permitted election officials in Cleveland, Cincinnati and Toledo to conduct a massive purge of their voter rolls, summarily expunging the names of more than 300,000 voters who had failed to cast ballots in the previous two national elections.(55) In Cleveland, which went five-to-one for Kerry, nearly one in four voters were wiped from the rolls between 2000 and 2004.(56)

The Strike Force ("Knock 'em off the Rolls")

To stem the tide of new registrations, the Republican National Committee and the Ohio Republican Party attempted to knock tens of thousands of predominantly minority and urban voters off the rolls through illegal mailings known in electioneering jargon as ''caging.'' During the Eighties, after the GOP used such mailings to disenfranchise nearly 76,000 black voters in New Jersey and Louisiana, it was forced to sign two separate court orders agreeing to abstain from caging.(63) But during the summer of 2004, the GOP targeted minority voters in Ohio by zip code, sending registered letters to more than 200,000 newly registered voters(64) in sixty-five counties.(65) On October 22nd, a mere eleven days before the election, Ohio Republican Party Chairman Bob Bennett -- who also chairs the board of elections in Cuyahoga County -- sought to invalidate the registrations of 35,427 voters who had refused to sign for the letters or whose mail came back as undeliverable.(66) Almost half of the challenged voters were from Democratic strongholds in and around Cleveland.(67)

Barriers to Registration ("Keep 'em off the rolls")

To further monkey-wrench the process he was bound by law to safeguard, Blackwell cited an arcane elections regulation to make it harder to register new voters. In a now-infamous decree, Blackwell announced on September 7th -- less than a month before the filing deadline -- that election officials would process registration forms only if they were printed on eighty-pound unwaxed white paper stock, similar to a typical postcard. Justifying his decision to ROLLING STONE, Blackwell portrayed it as an attempt to protect voters: ''The postal service had recommended to us that we establish a heavy enough paper-weight standard that we not disenfranchise voters by having their registration form damaged by postal equipment.'' Yet Blackwell's order also applied to registrations delivered in person to election offices. He further specified that any valid registration cards printed on lesser paper stock that miraculously survived the shredding gauntlet at the post office were not to be processed; instead, they were to be treated as applications for a registration form, requiring election boards to send out a brand-new card.(90)

In one of his most effective maneuvers, Blackwell prevented thousands of voters from receiving provisional ballots on Election Day. The fail-safe ballots were mandated in 2002, when Congress passed a package of reforms called the Help America Vote Act. This would prevent a repeat of the most egregious injustice in the 2000 election, when officials in Florida barred thousands of lawfully registered minority voters from the polls because their names didn't appear on flawed precinct rolls. Under the law, would-be voters whose registration is questioned at the polls must be allowed to cast provisional ballots that can be counted after the election if the voter's registration proves valid.(114)

The Wrong Pew ("Even if they still show up to vote, don't let it count")

''Provisional ballots were supposed to be this great movement forward,'' says Tova Andrea Wang, an elections expert who served with ex-presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford on the commission that laid the groundwork for the Help America Vote Act. ''But then different states erected barriers, and this new right became totally eviscerated.''

The Long Lines ("Wait 'em out")

When Election Day dawned on November 2nd, tens of thousands of Ohio voters who had managed to overcome all the obstacles to registration erected by Blackwell discovered that it didn't matter whether they were properly listed on the voting rolls -- because long lines at their precincts prevented them from ever making it to the ballot box. Would-be voters in Dayton and Cincinnati routinely faced waits as long as three hours. Those in inner-city precincts in Columbus, Cleveland and Toledo -- which were voting for Kerry by margins of ninety percent or more -- often waited up to seven hours. At Kenyon College, students were forced to stand in line for eleven hours before being allowed to vote, with the last voters casting their ballots after three in the morning.(132)

The long lines were not only foreseeable -- they were actually created by GOP efforts. Republicans in the state legislature, citing new electronic voting machines that were supposed to speed voting, authorized local election boards to reduce the number of precincts across Ohio. In most cases, the new machines never materialized -- but that didn't stop officials in twenty of the state's eighty-eight counties, all of them favorable to Democrats, from slashing the number of precincts by at least twenty percent.(136)

Faulty Machines ("Change the Vote")

Voters who managed to make it past the array of hurdles erected by Republican officials found themselves confronted by voting machines that didn't work. Only 800,000 out of the 5.6 million votes in Ohio were cast on electronic voting machines, but they were plagued with errors.(164) In heavily Democratic areas around Youngstown, where nearly 100 voters reported entering ''Kerry'' on the touch screen and watching ''Bush'' light up, at least twenty machines had to be recalibrated in the middle of the voting process for chronically flipping Kerry votes to Bush.(165) (Similar ''vote hopping'' from Kerry to Bush was reported by voters and election officials in other states.)(166) Elsewhere, voters complained in sworn affidavits that they touched Kerry's name on the screen and it lit up, but that the light had gone out by the time they finished their ballot; the Kerry vote faded away.(167) In the state's most notorious incident, an electronic machine at a fundamentalist church in the town of Gahanna recorded a total of 4,258 votes for Bush and 260 votes for Kerry.(168) In that precinct, however, there were only 800 registered voters, of whom 638 showed up.(169) (The error, which was later blamed on a glitchy memory card, was corrected before the certified vote count.)

Rural Counties (Stuffing the Box)

Despite the well-documented effort that prevented hundreds of thousands of voters in urban and minority precincts from casting ballots, the worst theft in Ohio may have quietly taken place in rural counties. An examination of election data suggests widespread fraud -- and even good old-fashioned stuffing of ballot boxes -- in twelve sparsely populated counties scattered across southern and western Ohio: Auglaize, Brown, Butler, Clermont, Darke, Highland, Mercer, Miami, Putnam, Shelby, Van Wert and Warren. (See The Twelve Suspect Counties) One key indicator of fraud is to look at counties where the presidential vote departs radically from other races on the ballot. By this measure, John Kerry's numbers were suspiciously low in each of the twelve counties -- and George Bush's were unusually high.

How might this fraud have been carried out? One way to steal votes is to tamper with individual ballots -- and there is evidence that Republicans did just that. In Clermont County, where optical scanners were used to tabulate votes, sworn affidavits by election observers given to the House Judiciary Committee describe ballots on which marks for Kerry were covered up with white stickers, while marks for Bush were filled in to replace them. Rep. Conyers, in a letter to the FBI, described the testimony as ''strong evidence of vote tampering if not outright fraud.'' (184) In Miami County, where Connally outpaced Kerry, one precinct registered a turnout of 98.55 percent (185) -- meaning that all but ten eligible voters went to the polls on Election Day. An investigation by the Columbus Free Press, however, collected affidavits from twenty-five people who swear they didn't vote. (186)

In addition to altering individual ballots, evidence suggests that Republicans tampered with the software used to tabulate votes. In Auglaize County, where Kerry lost not only to Connally but to two other defeated Democratic judicial candidates, voters cast their ballots on touch-screen machines. (187) Two weeks before the election, an employee of ES&S, the company that manufactures the machines, was observed by a local election official making an unauthorized log-in to the central computer used to compile election results. (188) In Miami County, after 100 percent of precincts had already reported their official results, an additional 18,615 votes were inexplicably added to the final tally. The last-minute alteration awarded 12,000 of the votes to Bush, boosting his margin of victory in the county by nearly 6,000. (189)

The Phony Terrorism Alert

The most transparently crooked incident took place in Warren County. In the leadup to the election, Blackwell had illegally sought to keep reporters and election observers at least 100 feet away from the polls. (190) The Sixth Circuit, ruling that the decree represented an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment, noted ominously that ''democracies die behind closed doors.'' But the decision didn't stop officials in Warren County from devising a way to count the vote in secret. Immediately after the polls closed on Election Day, GOP officials -- citing the FBI -- declared that the county was facing a terrorist threat that ranked ten on a scale of one to ten. The county administration building was hastily locked down, allowing election officials to tabulate the results without any reporters present.

Last Step: Rigging the Recount

After Kerry conceded the election, his campaign helped the Libertarian and Green parties pay for a recount of all eighty-eight counties in Ohio. Under state law, county boards of election were required to randomly select three percent of their precincts and recount the ballots both by hand and by machine. If the two totals reconciled exactly, a costly hand recount of the remaining votes could be avoided; machines could be used to tally the rest.

But election officials in Ohio worked outside the law to avoid hand recounts. According to charges brought by a special prosecutor in April, election officials in Cleveland fraudulently and secretly pre-counted precincts by hand to identify ones that would match the machine count. They then used these pre-screened precincts to select the ''random'' sample of three percent used for the recount.

From the list of issues a series of talking points can be constructed, to push back against those who would argue that all of this is "tin-foil hattery" and sour grapes on the part of democrats.

If not to illegally skew the vote what was the justification for...

• The Exit Polls being so far wrong, even beyond a statistical impossibility?
  
• The purge of inactive voters centered on Democratic Strongholds?
  
• The use of illegal registered letters to "Cage" Democratic Voters?
  
• Blackwell's requiring 80 lbs stock for registration cards, and then supply non-80 lbs stock to voters?
  
• Some (Democratic) voters having to wait up to 7 hours (in the rain)?
  
• There being no safeguards to protect the electronic tabulators from tampering?
  
• The mysterious "Level Ten" Terror alert during the counting?
  
• why "Pre-counting" was premitted?

The key to all of this is tying the actions and events specifically to the actions of authorized Republicans such as Blackwell and the RNC. We're certain to hear claims that there was no deliberate malice involved, that there were Democratic election offices involved in many of these decisions - but none of that changes the fact that in each and every case - a problem generated more votes for Bush and less for Kerry in a critical "Battleground State".

I have to admit, that when things originally went down I was skeptical that a deliberate theft of the election had taken place. The amount of the vote discrepancy seemed to large, too massive. It couldn't be possible that nearly 3 Million votes national wide could have been shifted from Kerry to Bush, could it? But the fact is such as shift isn't really neccesary. All they needed was a few hundred here, and a few hundred there in key or close districts and states.

In order to protect what's left of our Democracy, and particularly the integrity of future elections (such as 2006) we need to be ready to challenge these and similar tactics before it's too late. We have to act Now, and the first thing to do is prepare LTE's asking why every newspaper in the country isn't running this story.

It doesn't matter if they agree with Kennedy, we just need them to address the issue -- keep the noise machine spinning - let them try and argue against the facts and science. They ignored Conyers. They ignored Miller. We can't afford to let them ignore Kennedy, whose planned a massive media sweep to support his article, including an appearance on Stephen COlbert on Monday. We need to TIVO that appearance, make sure Crooks & Liars have it. LInk it like crazy. If Kennedy goes on Olbermann, we need to bang on it. If he goes on (heaven help us) either O'Leily or Hannity - we need to be on top of it.

It's our Democracy - and our duty to protect it.

Just remember your Ghandi :"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you - then you win."

Vyan

[Update: Robert appeared on Tucker Carlson's show tonight and did a good job holding his own. Tucker threw up several straw men and Robert batted them back like a seasoned tennis pro...

• If this was such a massive conspiracy, why has no one come forward yet? (IMO Because they'd be admitting to a felony, duh! - Robert didn't even bother responding to this one)
• Bush ultimately won by over 3 million votes and Robert doesn't make the case that so many were stolen (Robert responded that only 160,000 were needed to flip Ohio and give the entire election to Bush.)
• Tucker doesn't think it's a "crackpot" article (Thanks, loads - just saying the word puts the suggestion in the listeners mind anyway, IMO. Robert pointed out that this has already been the subject of Congressional hearings and an investigation by Rep. John Conyers. The evidence is conclusive.)
• Tucker stated that "surely the Press would have covered it" and congress would have done something? (This he said less than 30 secs after Robert had just said that Congressman Conyers did do something, and that there are several ongoing prosecutions taking place in Ohio)
• Tucker made the accusation that one specific example in the article concern voting machines in Nevada doesn't "make the case" that it was specifically an effort by Republicans to steal the vote (Robert pointed out that he was only using the voting issue in other states as a comparison point for how specifically partisan the Ohio situation was)

Overall, he did a great job and didn't let Tucker bloviate over him without getting into a shouting match. Tucker was't convinced, but Robert didn't let him sow seeds of doubt - which was clearly his goal, to make the issue seem "murky and unclear" like that "Global Warming Thingy" we just need to keep studying... and studying... maybe someday we'll figure it all out, but right now we now we just don't know. Yeah, right Tucker -- how're those Brooklyn Bridge sales coming along?