Sludge Report #177 – Bigger Than Watergate II

Wednesday, 13 June 2007, 5:43 pm
Column: C.D. Sludge

In this edition: Quotes about Michael Collin's "The Urban Legend" Watergates, Watersheds & Manchurian Candidates – The Urban Legend In A Nutshell - So How Is It That This News Was Not On CNN? - The Urban Legend In Context: Inside The Mind Of An Election Thief – How Was Election 2004 Stolen? – The Next Manchurian Candidate?

IMPORTANT NOTE: Publication of this story marks another watershed in American political history. It is offered freely for publication in full or part on any and all internet forums, blogs and noticeboards. All other media are also encouraged to utilise material. Readers are encouraged to forward this to friends and acquaintances in the United States and elsewhere.

Quotes about Michael Collin's "The Urban Legend"

"Michael Collins has added substantially to what we know about the chilling reality of E2004, numbers that don't add up to a legitimate election no matter how they are sliced. His "Election 2004: The Urban Legend" is a blockbuster, an analytical romp through the oddest numbers that were never brought to light, never questioned. And boy is there ever something wrong with this picture.

Many will demur that when it comes to election theft, looking backward is a waste of time. The results aren't going to change. Get over it. But those of us who hope to live to see electoral democracy restored to the United States know that looking back is as important as it is unpleasant. Indeed it is terrifying--and it is critical.

If we were to ask a person to give up their 10 favorite foods because one day they might have a heart attack, we could count on low compliance. But let them have a heart attack and it's suddenly a very different story. So it is with election theft: American democracy has had a heart attack, a silent heart attack, and it needs to make substantial changes in its way of conducting elections and counting votes if it is to survive. Half-baked, easy changes have of course been proposed. But the changes that are really necessary are more demanding: they demand, among other things, more public participation in our democracy, and vigilance over this critical aspect of it, than we are accustomed to.

It is clear to us as advocates that the necessary changes just won't happen if the heart attack remains silent and the public remains unaware. "Election 2004: The Urban Legend" is an EKG that tells us just how dreadfully serious the illness is and just how precarious our situation. I suspect that anyone who takes the time to read it (and goes on to further explore the stunning and ugly forensics of recent computerized American elections) will change their diet from that day forward and put themselves enthusiastically at their democracy's service.

--Jonathan Simon (Co-founder Election Defense Alliance; author "Landslide Denied")"

"Of all the UnAnswered Questions of this decade, the one that will not go away is 'Has George W. Bush ever won a Presidential election?' After many years of fearless reporting on U.S. voter fraud, Scoop has scooped again. Based on Michael Collins' in depth analysis of voting results and exit pools, Scoop has made a compelling case in 'Election 2004: The Urban Legend' that the legitimacy of the current Administration is in question."

-- Catherine Austin Fitts ( Solari.com)

CLICK HERE TO READ:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0706/S00165.htm
Michael Collins: The Urban Legend".

Watergates, Watersheds & Manchurian Candidates

Nearly four long years ago this column "Sludge Report #154 - Bigger Than Watergate" (archive version in original July, 2003 livery) heralded a watershed in the history of US Democracy in the form of a remarkable piece of online citizen research published on Scoop.co.nz – Bev Harris's seminal article " Inside A U.S. Election Vote Counting Program".

Today Scoop publishes a paper on the same subject of possibly equal consequence – "Michael Collins: The Urban Legend".

Accompanying the 2003 article Scoop announced the public distribution of the source code to the Diebold voting systems – source code to both the county central tabulator program and the touch-screen DRE machines which record the votes onto memory cards and which cannot be recounted.

In doing so we helped start an avalanche of research into the innards of the United States election machinery. And what was found was devastating.

Inquiry into U.S. Voting machines reached its nadir in the demonstration by Finnish "Hacker" Hari Hursti that it is possible to rig an election (in an undetectable fashion) on an optical scan voting machine by doing nothing more than compromising the plug in memory card. (See… " Scoop Links: Hacking Democracy Doco On HBO Tonight " to view video.)

The claim here back in July 2003 that the news of the gaping hole in US democractic integrity is "Bigger than Watergate" was justified then on the same ground that it is justified today.

If the parlous state of US Democracy is allowed to stand then American democracy - and the freedom and bravery that accompany it - is all over bar the counting.

There is considerable irony in the fact that it appears Karl Rove's enthusiasm to use the U.S. Department of Justice in general – and the appointment process of United States Attorneys in particular - to pervert democracy through vote suppression, identity cards, caging lists, malicious push phone campaigns, disenfranchisement and scam voter-fraud prosecutions (code for minority and poor vote suppression). This is why election fraud is day by day rising up the "most-likely-reason-Karl-Rove-will-leave-the-White-House- in-handcuffs" leaderboard.

But the corruption of US Democracy as a whole is a bigger news story even than news of the imminent demise of Karl Rove.

From afar – Scoop.co.nz is published in New Zealand – it is sometimes possible to believe that America has already come to accept that they are no longer a democratic nation.

Isn't it a matter of curiosity as to why Manchurian Candidate & shadow Government plots and sub-plots (e.g., 24, Prison Break, CSI (crime scene investigator), Heroes, Standoff ) have become quite so popular forUS television drama series?

Perhaps the answer is altogether too simple. They are credible.

So why not just say it - George W. Bush 43 is already a "Manchurian Candidate". He does not represent the people – he represents oil companies and the American Taliban. And I suspect most of America already knows this, if not rationally then definitely subliminally.

What we decided to publish today is arguably proof that this is so.

The election results of 2004 lack all credibility, and as a result George Bush's presidency lacks all legitimacy.

A year ago Robert F. Kennedy Junior had a compelling shot at claiming election 2004 was illegitimate on the basis that the election was stolen in Ohio (See… Rolling Stone: "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?").

His critics responded well Bush won the popular vote soundly you "sore loserman!"

Today we show you that in all probability Bush did not win the popular vote either.

However you dear reader are entitled to come to this conclusion yourself - after duly considering the facts as we know them to be - and so I urge you now to read in detail Michael Collins' watershed scoop report published today.

CLICK HERE TO READ:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0706/S00165.htm
Michael Collins: The Urban Legend".

The Urban Legend In A Nutshell

Over the past few months America has been exposed to a seemingly never-ending cascade of evidence concerning Bush's Brain Karl Rove's efforts to suppress minority and working class vote.

On election night 2004 TV screens across the world bore testimony to the results of his meddling.

The huge queues to vote in some minority and inner city precincts saw people waiting 10 hours or more to vote – Ohio was particularly bad - but it happened in many key urban areas. It was accompanied throughout the country by race based voter suppression and voter disenfranchisement. In Florida nearly 700,000 ex felons are barred from voting, in Virginia 200,000; simply for having a felony on their record.

The Urban Legend uncovered by Michael Collins and detailed in his report is simply this.

According to the official election night results and the official exit polls (the most extensive ever conducted in the history of elections) it was these queuing voters from the core of America's largest cities who elected George W. Bush.

An extract from Michael Collins report:

" The Bush campaign focused its efforts heavily, almost exclusively, on the rural areas and suburbs in order to counter the anticipated big city Democratic margins. But then the miracle occurred just when it was needed. White ghosts never seen before emerged from parking lots, alleys and perhaps even graveyards in big cities across the country to give George W. Bush a stunning victory in the presidential election of 2004. It had to be this way, otherwise the vote count was wrong and who would tolerate such a notion, despite the clear signs on the ground and in the National Exit Poll? But the convenient and wide spread Red versus Blue story of election eve was maintained through inertia. For those with nagging questions, that story was replaced by the Urban Legend of 2004: Bush won the 2004 Presidential election in big cities."

So please ask yourself:

If Karl Rove Bush and the USAs were so busy disenfranchising urban minorities as fast as they could, how can the above "official story of Election 2004" be remotely possible?

CLICK HERE TO READ:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0706/S00165.htm
Michael Collins: The Urban Legend".

So How Is It That This News Was Not On CNN

A dumb question? Probably.

On the night of the election this column was one of many to call foul on the basis of the huge margin by which the National Election Poll (NEP) was wrong.

According to a November 2 early evening exit poll John Kerry was heading to win the popular vote by 1% and at least 1 million votes. But more importantly he was shown leading by a nose in Florida, and by a solid 4% in Ohio. (Because of the way the Electoral College system works this meant that Kerry had almost certainly won the election. If he won either state he would win.)

Yet by midnight he had soundly lost Florida. Ohio was lost by a narrower margin, but the popular vote showed a massive wave of new voters coming out to vote for Bush. His 3 million vote margin is convincing.

Also at around midnight on election night the exit polls disappeared and then a couple of hours later arrived back, fixed. (Note: As Michael Collins shows, even the official exit poll, the day after election final, contradicts itself and shows the massive election fraud.)

On Election night the Johns Kerry & Edwards pledged to wait till "all the votes were counted" before conceding, yet the following morning, largely motivated by the size of Bush's victory in the court-of-public-opinion important popular vote they conceded.

In the days following skeptics here in New Zealand and around the world wished we had taken a copy of the exit polls so we could point to what we had just witnessed with our lying eyes, those eyes which the news networks were now telling us had misled us somewhat grievously.

On November 11 we discovered Jonathan Simon had saved most of the data (See… "47 State Exit Poll Analysis Confirms Swing Anomaly") and a few days later November 17 we found the rest "Complete US Exit Poll Data Confirms Net Suspicions".

And then what happened?

Us election skeptics were ignored. Roundly. The story made the front page of the New York Times in terms of a disparaging reference to internet blogs. Many leading left leaning blogs boycotted the story.

Activists and researchers asked the NEP for the full data to do a proper study. They refused to provide any data at all till after George was inaugurated again on January 20th. Eventually some data was released and a phalanx of pointy heads were rolled out to accuse us of being foolish and mistaken.

Warren Mitofsky himself– NEP coordinator & inventor of the modern exit poll (now deceased) – delivered the coup de'grace to exit poll theorising announcing the answer to the mystery in the form of the same answer he gave to why the 2000 exit polls were wrong – and the same answer he gave in interviews the day after the election – the so called "reluctant bush responder" theory.

This theory states that Bush voters are statistically less likely than to be willing to own up to the fact that the voted for Bush. It is a fine theory which is unfortunately not supported by any of the evidence.

As of June 2007 the National Election Poll is still refusing to hand over its raw data for independent analysis falsely claiming that it contains private information.

It is the sincere hope of this columnist that the publication of "The Urban Legend" today will lead to a subpoena from congress to the NEP to provide their data in full for proper academic study.

And so why then is this news not on CNN?

One possible answer is that none are so blind as they who refuse to open their eyes.

As a media professional the only explanation I can seriously profer for the US mainstream media's collective see-no-evil approach to this subject is that they do not see what happened in 2004 because its implications are too huge.

If Bush is a fraudulently elected president – both in 2000 and 2004 – then everything that has happened since including the war, Guantanamo Bay, the Patriot Act, the 911 cover-up everything is illegitimate too.

If Bush is a fraudulently elected president then the United States really is governed by a group of shadowy bankers and invisible power brokers.

For folk who believe in democracy this is not a comfortable place to be.

The Urban Legend In Context: Inside The Mind Of An Election Thief

Four years ago this column noted:

Imagine then if it were possible to somehow subvert the voting process itself in such a way that you could steal elections without anybody knowing.

Imagine for example if you could:

• - secure control of the companies that make the voting machines and vote counting software;
• - centralise vote counting systems, and politicise their supervision;
• - legislate for the adoption of such systems throughout your domain, and provide large amounts of money for the purchase of these systems;
• - establish systems of vote counting that effectively prevent anybody on the ground in the election – at a booth or precinct level - from seeing what is happening at a micro-level;
• - get all the major media to sign up to a single exit-polling system that you also control – removing the risk of exit-polling showing up your shenanigans.

And imagine further that you;

• - install a backdoor, or numerous backdoors, in the vote counting systems you have built that enable you to manipulate the tabulation of results in real time as they are coming in.

For the sake of argument most of the above can be taken as read - in fact each of these statements is demonstrably true in relation to the vast majority of the currently deployed vote counting machinery in the United States.

Back to "Sludge Report #154 - Bigger Than Watergate (July 2003)":

"Such a system would enable you to intervene in precisely the minimum number of races necessary to ensure that you won a majority on election night. On the basis of polling you could pick your marginal seats and thus keep your tweaking to a bare minimum.

Such a system would enable you to minimise the risks of discovery of your activities.

Such a system would enable you to target and remove individual political opponents who were too successful, too popular or too inquisitive.

And most importantly of all, such a system would enable you to accomplish all the above without the public being in the least aware of what you were doing. When confronted with the awfulness of your governmental program they would be forced to concede that at least it is the result of a democratic process.

Now lets project the above theory onto what actually happened in 2004.

In practical terms votes in all elections are always counted in some kind of predictable order. There is a pattern to these things:

• Small precincts report quickly.
• East coast precincts report early. Pacific ones at least 2 hours later.
• Precincts with some kinds of machinery (say touch-screens) may report slower than those with other kinds of machinery (say optical scans).
• Statistically observed voting phenomena in turnout in areas counted on the east coast can give you a fairly clear idea of what overall turnout is likely to be.

And so everybody who watched the last election can know this information and can project the result on that basis - this is what all the boffins are doing in the background on election night playing with their computers. (Lets leave aside for a moment the fact that the base figures from last years election may already be corrupted.)

Then if you also have access to the exit polls, you have an extra layer of information arriving during the day on election day.

The exit polls tell you precinct by precinct how people have actually voted and why.

With exit poll data picking election results for big presidential style elections becomes child's play.

This is why in the recent French Presidential election the result was announced as soon as the polls closed. While this may seem somewhat disrespectful to the voters America is one of the few places where multimillion dollar scientific exit polls fail repeatedly and spectacularly to pick the result.

How Was Election 2004 Stolen?

Now imagine yourself as a would be election stealer on November 2nd 2004. You know by midday that turnout is up massively, and you have a fair idea from the answers to exit poll questions that this is bad for your candidate. Bush is getting hammered in the small towns and the rural base is not turning up to vote.

By 5pm EST (3pmPDT) you know that you are losing Florida and Ohio and that you are losing the popular vote by a small margin.

What do you do?

You expected this because this is precisely what your pre-election polling was telling you would happen. Your pre-election game plan is focused around winning the electoral college i.e. the swing states.

In each swing state there is a plan and a team in place to push the President's vote over the important margin required for victory. The Exit polls tells you how much vote needs to be stolen (discarded, shifted, padded) in each critical swing state to win narrowly - but convincingly enough to minimise the risk of an recount.

You remember what happened in 2000.

And your pre-election game plan also requires a victory in the popular vote.

In 2000 it was largely because he won the popular vote that Al Gore was able to hold out as long as he did over Florida. Therefore in 2004 Bush needed a significant majority in the popular vote as well to avoid a protracted inquiry in one of the swing states which could potentially go sour.

In order to do that Bush needed to pad the vote all over the country with millions of votes.

This is supported by more of the factual evidence found in the election outcomes. If you look to find the location of Bush's 11 million + new voters you find that they are predominantly on the East Coast and in the Mid-East.

In sheer numeric terms Bush gained far and away the most votes in Texas and Florida, 900k and 700k respectively. 60% of all Bushes new votes, 5.2 million votes, were gained in just 11 states…FL, TX. NY, OH, PA, GA, MI, NJ, TN, NC, IL. Add in another 8 states and you get to 82% of all bush's new votes or 7.1 million… the states are WI MN IND AL OK KY AZ LOU & MD. In percentage terms Florida and Georgia (both heavily Diebold equipment using states) were the standouts with 32% gains respectively.
- Dem Underground: "George Bush's 8 Million New Votes Found – STATISTICAL ANALYSIS

And so as the evening progressed on November 2 2004 it was possible to imagine that the vote stealers got to New Mexico and stopped having ensured that by then Bush comfortably had his margin.

However one can also imagine that winning the popular vote for Bush would not be an exact science.

Padding smaller precincts in Republican controlled areas is more likely to be noticed statistically. You cannot steal enough votes in Utah and Wyoming to even make a dent in the popular vote.

Also, importantly, smaller precincts in Republican controlled areas tend to report earlier and so are harder to steal from – to do so you need to steal in more places earlier.

And smaller precincts also show considerably less scope for padding. A 100 vote precinct may tolerate 10 padded votes. A 100,000 strong precinct might be able to see 10,000 votes added without setting off alarm bells.

In which case the thesis which emerges from Michael Collins' Urban Legend is simply this.

The 2004 election stealers stole the election in the cities because that was the only place they could steal it.

The Next Manchurian Candidate – The 2008 Primaries

Since 2003 and exposure of the flawed election machinery there have been two U.S. Federal elections, the presidential race in 2004, and the 2006 mid-term elections.

Concerns over the 2002 mid-term elections - particularly in Georgia - gave rise to the investigation that led to the 2003 discoveries.

We also know - thanks to Bev Harris and her team - "Diebold Memos Disclose Florida 2000 E-Voting Fraud" that there is prima facie evidence of tampering in the 2000 election.

This means the results in the last four U.S. Federal Elections are questionable. Consequently the composition of all branches of Government have to be in question.

Moreover election stealing need not necessarily be confined to Federal elections.

And following that vein of thought there is one other particularly valuable opportunity to intervene in the US election process and alter the course of history.

The Presidential primaries.

And there is one particular set of circumstances above all others which would make the primaries an even more important target for election fraudsters: namely, an election when one party has a virtual lock on victory.

And so as we approach the 2008 presidential election it is well worth looking at the primaries.

At first glance the Republicans are not even attempting to choose a credible challenger. Fred Thompson's believers hate Guiliani's mob with a truly impressive internal party ferocity. Meanwhile NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Senator Chuck Hagel (interestingly a senator with close ties to one of the largest voting machine companies) are discussing running as independents.

If they do so they will split the GOP vote three ways and it is almost inconceivable that the Democratic Challenger could lose.

And so we have to assume the election stealers –will be making their plans on that basis.

Hillary Clinton vs John Edwards and Barack Obama. Whoever wins that race becomes President.

Now pretend you are an election stealer? Who do you want to win? Why?

You will want someone who does not shut down your nice little vote stealing and power peddling operation for a start.

And so in coming months we will see the beginnings of the message massaging that accomplish all real political clashes.

So listen to what the candidates say about election reform. It may speak volumes.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Publication of this story marks another watershed in American political history. It is offered freely for publication in full or part on any and all internet forums, blogs and noticeboards. All other media are also encouraged to utilise material. Readers are encouraged to forward this to friends and acquaintances in the United States and elsewhere.

© Scoop Media

Alastair Thompson

Scoop Publisher

Alastair Thompson is the co-founder of Scoop. He is of Scottish and Irish extraction and from Wellington, New Zealand. Alastair has 24 years experience in the media, at the Dominion, National Business Review, North & South magazine, Straight Furrow newspaper and online since 1997. He is the winner of several journalism awards for business and investigative work.

Contact Alastair Thompson

• Linkedin
• Twitter - @althecat
• Facebook
• Email - alastair@scoop.co.nz