What are Republicans afraid of?

Right wing responses on election questions get more and more curious

by Bryan Zepp Jamieson

http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/Politics/vote1.htm

12/12/04

I spent an hour yesterday trying to chase down a report in my email that the recount process in Ohio had been arbitrarily and unilaterally stopped by the Republican state secretary of state, J. Kenneth Blackwell. The email claimed "On Friday December 10 two certified volunteers for the Ohio Recount team assigned to Greene County were in process recording voting information from minority precincts in Greene County, and were stopped mid-count by a surprise order from Secretary of State Blackwell’s office. The Director Board of Elections stated that ‘all voter records for the state of Ohio were ‘locked-down, and now they are not considered public records.’"

Since that’s the sort of story that can spark riots and even revolution, I thought it might be a sort of kindly idea to check around to see if there was anything to it before sending it out along my news feed. In fact, there is absolutely nothing to indicate that there was anything to the story. You might expect corporate outlets like CNN and the New York Times to bury the story, but all’s also quiet, not only at Truthout, Buzzflash and BlackBox Voting (both of them) but in the local Greene County media.

We don’t need phony and alarmist stories. Gawd knows there’s enough real material to work with.

The statewide Ohio recount starts Monday morning, and the gap between Putsch and Kerry, now down to 119,000 votes, is expected to further narrow. While everyone is downplaying the possibility that the recount could give the state – and thus the election – to Kerry, I do expect to see a result that confirms that the voting apparatus is a kludge and rife with error and susceptible to fraud and abuse. If, for example, the final recount shows that Putsch won Ohio with 30,000 votes, the top question on many minds will be "How many tweaked votes did the recount fail to uncover? How many people were successfully dissuaded from voting because of the long lines and preemptory challenges from Republican goons?"

That’s one reason why I haven’t discussed the voting irregularities in the past election much in these essays. There’s been a lot of heat, but not much light, and I didn’t see how contributing to just the heat would be helpful.

While there is ample reason to be deeply suspicious of the election of Putsch to a second term, the shenanigans in this election haven’t – so far – been as blatant and obvious as the treasonous antics of Kathleen Harris and Antonin Scalia were in 2000, when America fell to a fascist coup.

Which doesn’t mean that I haven’t been thinking about it, or that I don’t consider it the most important story of the year.

We already know that there was a lot of weird stuff in this election. In Ohio, a couple of dozen precincts came up with vote numbers that exceeded the number of actual registered voters – in one memorable instance, by over 1,000%. There were hundreds of discrepancies nation-wide, and while one expects errors, screw-ups, and yes, fraud and abuse, the striking thing about this set was that with only a couple of exceptions, all the irregularities that were found and corrected initially erred in favor of Putsch.

If they really were random errors and screw-ups, they should have broken about even in favor of both candidates. They haven’t. They aren’t. They break about 99 to one in favor of Republicans.

In Florida, much was made of the voting patterns there. And while Florida traditionally has a lot of Democrats who vote across party lines, nobody could prove that the receipt-less electronic touch machines gave an honest tabulation, or explain how the results on the optical scan machines, which did have a paper trail, showed an increase of some 600,000 votes in the districts covered despite only a 100,000 person increase in registered voters, and all of them broke for Putsch. Gosh, what a coincidence!

All this has had an effect on Republicans and other right wingers, of course. Many – unfortunately, most – of them simply shrug and think, well, if there WERE irregularities, at least they got the right guy elected. The very best of them look at their "mandate" and get a slightly queasy feeling in the pit of their stomachs.

But most, sincerely or not, simply reject any talk that the election results are questionable, waggle their little flags, and accuse anyone who questions the nature and extent of the voting irregularities of being unpatriotic, and unwilling to accept a fair and democratic election.

But they know. Somewhere deep inside, they know. That’s why there are so few Republicans willing to say publically that there needs to be a paper trail on ballots so the results can be verified in the event of close elections, or even tabulated in the event of machine failure. That’s why they resist efforts to keep partisan hacks like Kathleen Harris and J. Kenneth Blackwell out of the process. Most Faux viewers remain blissfully unaware of who Blackwell is, or of his efforts, extending back to last summer, to suborn the vote in any way he could.

The overpaid and overprivileged clowns who make up the right wing think tanks certainly know. They’ve already begun an unconsciously self-damning campaign against any and all who call for reforms and improvements in the election system.

By way of example, John Zogby attended a Congressional caucus on the election that was looking into fraud and other problems that beset the 2004 election. The purpose of the meeting was to call for a bi-partisan House committee to look into the things that had gone wrong with the election – and most certainly much had gone wrong with it.

Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia (one of the more intellectually bankrupt right wing propaganda pits calling itself a "think tank") sniffed that pollster John Zogby was hobnobbing with Democrats and other leftists (without mentioning that not one single Republican accepted the invitation to the non-partisan proceeding that Zogby attended) and accused Zogby of "crossing a line" in calling for congressional oversight into possible election irregularities. If you let a guy like Zogby say people have a right to a trustworthy election process, why you’ll end up with all sorts of trouble makers calling for a trustworthy election process!

Sabato, who has rather questionable mental acumen, declared that Zogby’s suggestion that Congress form a bipartisan panel was evidence that he was partisan. Yes, in the wonderful world of right wing Newthink, "bipartisan" now means "partisan."

CNS ran with Sabato’s public sniffs, and before you know it, every right wing hack on Faux and CNN, Rush Limbaugh, Mike the Wiener and all the rest were questioning Zogby’s professionalism and even his patriotism for daring to suggest that Congress take the time to reassure a doubtful public that their votes still actually mean something.

This was all delivered in the usual ponderous tone of hypocritical moral authority which is the right’s trademark, a symbol of its contempt for the American people, but in fact, it was the bluster of frightened little men who believe they have something they must desperately try to hide from the American people.

Consider: Republican congressmen, who hold majorities in both the House and Senate, were afraid to even turn up at a House hearing into election irregularities. How afraid can you get?

When was the last time a loyal American stood against honest elections?

NEXT: Reforming the process. A check list.

NOW: A list of twenty oddities about this election.

20 Amazing Facts About Voting in the USA

by Angry Girl

http://www.nightweed.com/angrygirl.html

Did you know....

1. 80% 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

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes.

http://www.essvote.com/HTML/about/about.html

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

9. 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

10. 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

11. Diebold is based in Ohio.

http://www.diebold.com/aboutus/ataglance/default.htm

12. Diebold employed 5 convicted felons as senior managers and developers to help 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

13. Jeff Dean, Diebold's Senior Vice-President and 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

14. Diebold Senior Vice-President Jeff Dean was convicted of planting back doors in his 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

15. 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

16. 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 http://blackboxvoting.org/baxter/baxterVPR.mov)

http://wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,63298,00.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4874190

17. 30% of all U.S. votes are carried out on unverifiable touch screen voting machines with no paper trail.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/main632436.shtml

18. 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

19. The governor of the state of Florida, Jeb Bush, is the President's brother.

http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/news/local/7628725.htm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10544-2004Oct29.html

20. 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.html

http://uscountvotes.org/