Power Line and the WA election that never ends

Power Line

The number of King County ballots counted in the final tally was 899,199 — 3,539 more than the number of participating voters reported in the county's list.

LP News Online: January 2005: Instant runoff voting bill in U.S. House

LP News Online: January 2005: Instant runoff voting bill in U.S. House: "The Libertarian Party Platform -- in its Election Laws section -- proposes 'electoral systems that are more representative of the electorate at the federal, state and local levels,' specifically calling for the use of 'proportional voting systems with multi-member districts for legislative elections and instant runoff voting for single-winner elections' as a transitional step toward better election law."

Wired News: Site Bars Black Box Voting Head

Did we ever get coverage like this when we were kicked off the Democratic Developer's list?

Wired News: Site Bars Black Box Voting Head: "Site Bars Black Box Voting Head

By Joanna Glasner

Democratic Underground, a political discussion site that has been a popular forum for debate on the reliability of computerized voting machines, has barred one of its most prominent and outspoken contributors on the topic from further posting.

In a written statement, site administrators said Friday that they barred Bev Harris, founder of Black Box Voting, because her postings on the site 'have made positive discussion of verified voting increasingly difficult.'"

I've not put the entire article on this blog. Go check it out yourself.

Were American's votes were deliberately miscounted?

If this was done, it means, quite literally, that we are no longer living in a democracy.

When I read the list a few days ago, some of the allegations just seemed too preposterous to believe.

"Jeff Dean, senior programmer on Diebold's central compiler code served jail time for planting back doors in his client's accounting software and using a 'high degree of sophistication' to evade detection over a period of 2 years."

I tracked down the author of the list, who graciously responded with a list of references for each allegation. I checked out this Jeff Dean thing in particular. It didn't take long to get to this:

According to the findings of fact in case no. 89-1-04034-1 (Washington State): "...Defendant's thefts occurred over a 2 1/2 year period of time, there were multiple incidents, more than the standard range can account for, the actual monetary loss was substantially greater than typical for the offense, the crimes and their cover-up involved a high degree of sophistication and planning in the use and alteration of records in the computerized accounting system that defendant maintained for the victim, and the defendant used his position of trust and fiduciary responsibility as a computer systems and accounting consultant for the victim to facilitate the commission of the offenses."

Another one of the references led to a detailed account of the double database technique pioneered by Mr. Dean to enable electronically tabulated votes to give a false total while still presenting accurate details in case of spot audits.

In combination with the constellation of undisputed circumstantial evidence and open conflicts of interest, these last details are just too damning to ignore.

A cloud over the validity of the American electoral process is not acceptable.

Please call for:

1) a full investigation of election irregularities
2) measures to ensure that ballots cannot easily be miscounted, and can be recounted

More headscratching

Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator in a surprise upset, with votes counted by ES&S machines.
http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004/03/03_200.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/031004Fitrakis/031004fitrakis.html

Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee.
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=26
http://www.hillnews.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx
http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/000896.php

Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential candidates.
http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_28/b3689130.htm
http://theindependent.com/stories/052700/new_hagel27.html

Kenneth Blackwell co-chaired George Bush's Ohio election campaign. As Ohio Secretary of State, he left no stone unturned to surpress the democratic vote.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/113004Y.shtml#1
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/894
http://67.15.90.110/article.pl?sid=04/10/29/1414219

Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm
http://www.itworld.com/Tech/2987/041020evotestates/pfindex.html

Diebold also makes ATMs, checkout scanners, and ticket machines, all of which log each transaction and can generate a paper trail.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm
http://www.diebold.com/solutions/default.htm

Exit polls are usually excellent predictors of election results. Reputable analyses could not find and explanation of the discrepancy between exit polls and results of the 2004 presidential election.
http://ucdata.berkeley.edu/
http://www.buzzflash.com/alerts/04/11/Unexplained_exit_poll_discrep_v00l.pdf

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/23/international/europe/23ukraine.html?
ex=1102245800&ei=1&en=3a3c24b7e64fe49

A Diebold subsidiary employed 5 convicted felons as senior managers and developers. These people helped write the central compiler computer code that counted 50% of the votes in 30 states.
http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,61640,00.html
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/10/301469.shtml

Jeff Dean, senior programmer on Diebold's central compiler code, was convicted of 23 counts of felony theft in the first degree.
http://www.chuckherrin.com/HackthevoteFAQ.htm#how
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf

Jeff Dean was served jail time for planting back doors in his client's accounting software and using a "high degree of sophistication" to evade detection over a period of 2 years.
http://www.chuckherrin.com/HackthevoteFAQ.htm#how
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf

None of the international election observers were allowed in the polls in Ohio.
http://www.globalexchange.org/update/press/2638.html
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/10/26/loc_elexoh.html

California banned the use of Diebold machines because the security was so bad. Despite Diebold's claims that the audit logs could not be hacked, a chimpanzee was able to do it!

(See the movie here with the chimp .)
http://wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,63298,00.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4874190

All -- not some -- but all the voting machine errors detected and reported in Florida went in favor of Bush or Republican candidates.
http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65757,00.html
http://www.yuricareport.com/ElectionAftermath04/
ThreeResearchStudiesBushIsOut.htm
http://www.rise4news.net/extravotes.html
http://www.ilcaonline.org/modules.php?
op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=950
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0411/S00227.htm

Serious voting anomalies in Florida -- again always favoring Bush -- have been mathematically demonstrated and experts are recommending further investigation.
http://www.yuricareport.com/ElectionAftermath04/
ThreeResearchStudiesBushIsOut.htm
http://www.computerworld.com/governmenttopics/government/policy/story/
0,10801,97614,00.html
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/tens_of_thousands.html
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1106-30.htm
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/110904.htmlhttp://uscountvotes.org/

Without regulation

There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm

http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html


The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/private_company.html

http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html

The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/main632436.shtml
http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1647886

Amazing Facts About Voting in the USA

Did you know these facts?

Eighty of all votes in America are counted by only two companies:
Diebold and ES&S.
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diebold
http://www.essvote.com/HTML/about/about.html

Christmas Party at 7:30 pm, Wednesday, Dec. 15

ENTER the POLLIES

The American Association of Political Consultants (AAPC) has made the Call for Entries for the 2005 Pollie Awards, the deadline is Wednesday, December 22, 2004. The 2005 Pollies will recognize the best in political communications from the 2004 election cycle. The Pollies recognize a variety of mediums, and includes 27 categories that fall under the Internet. A few examples of the categories that are recognized are: candidate websites, organization websites, web video, web animation, best use of email/viral marketing, online advertisements, and best use of humor. The annual AAPC Pollie Awards & Conference is scheduled at the conclusion of Inauguration Week from January 21-23, 2005 and will be held at the Park Hyatt, Washington, D.C.