Mark Robinowitz: Another Stolen Election

A Song For The Occasion: "Vote Fraud In O-Hi-O"
to the tune of "Four Dead in Ohio"
by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young

Lost ballots and Diebold's counting
We're finally on our own
This winter I hear Bush laughing
Vote Fraud in Ohio

Gotta get real ballots
Paperless taking us down
Should have been done long ago
Keep blacks from voting and
TV won't make a sound
Kerry won, but he said no.

Vote Fraud in Ohio
Vote Fraud in Ohio
Vote Fraud in Florida

On Election Day, I asked to see Lane County's new ballot scanning machines, made by Sequoia corporation (of England). While watching the ballots being fed into the machines, a Democratic Party poll watcher told me the exit polls did not match the election results in the "swing states" using paperless ballot machines.

There is now ample evidence to confirm this discrepancy -- and that Senator Kerry won the 2004 Presidential election in both the popular vote and Electoral College. Exit polls in Ohio, Florida, Iowa, New Mexico and Nevada predicted a Kerry win, yet Bush was declared the winner. In several other states, the point spread was significantly different between the polls and the results, helping ensure that Bush was given the popular vote. (The 2000 election fraud was embarrassing for Bush, and claiming that millions more voted for him than for Kerry, despite a stronger Democratic voter registration drive, provides a veneer of legitimacy for what is about to happen.)

The Democratic Party let this theft happen. There was ample warning from computer experts, investigative journalists and leaked documents that showed how paperless voting is an invitation to vote fraud. The head of the Diebold corporation, the most famous "touch screen" manufacturer, had pledged to ensure that the state of Ohio would go for Bush -- and paperless machines were used in some of their counties.

In 2002, the Georgia Governor and Senate races were predicted to favor the incumbent Democrats, yet the touch screen ballot machines determined that they lost (the first election in that state with this technology). Bev Harris, author of "Black Box Voting," found numerous problems that strongly suggest these outcomes were rigged. Despite this evidence, on October 25, National Public Radio ran a story on touch screen machines quoting a Georgia elections official who claimed there were no problems in their initial use.

In the last Congressional session, a few brave leaders introduced a bill to require paper trails for all voting systems, but it was ignored by the Democratic leadership. Why did the Democratic Party allow the Republicans to install insecure computer ballots in key states -- the Republicans wouldn't allow the Democrats to do this.

There have been numerous stories of voters using touch screen machines who pushed Kerry but the machine tallied Bush. Some of these voters were able to get the machine to acknowledge their choice, others were not. There is no way to verify that the final totals reflect the voters' choices (no recounts are possible). Diebold makes automated teller machines (ATMs) for banks -- if their ATMs confused withdrawals for deposits, no bank would dare purchase their products. How can Diebold accurately count our financial transactions, yet is unable to accurately count votes for Democrats?

Your vote may have been ignored, but your dollars are counted. If everyone votes with their money to support media institutions that investigate scandals, not those that parrot propaganda, democracy could have a chance.

Many states had voter intimidation problems, some subtle, others blatant. Some of these tactics are intentional incompetence, such as absentee ballots mailed out too late to be received. In some Democratic strongholds in Ohio, potential voters had to wait all day in the rain to be able to vote, yet nearby Republican districts had short lines since they had enough voting machines. Republicans tried to disenfranchise African American voters in Kansas City through fake change of address cards sent to the Elections department. A precinct in Ohio was caught having more votes for Bush than voters. Similar "more votes than voters" problems were also found in other states. A gambling referendum "passed" in a Florida county when a bunch of votes magically appeared at the last minute. A friend in Boulder, Colorado told me about a church in a Democratic area that pretended to be a polling station the day before the Election -- voters who believed their claims of "early voting" were not counted.

These manipulations, coupled with the fact that Kerry ran such a lousy campaign that many Bush-haters agonized about voting for him, ensured that the results could be fixed in advance. If Kerry's campaign had been better, it would have been harder to change the results.

The Democratic Party has thousands of lawyers and $45 million in funds to challenge vote fraud, and Senator Edwards wanted to contest the outcome. Kerry rushed to concede before all the votes were counted and the flood of complaints of vote fraud and disenfranchisement were noticed. Perhaps a future historian will uncover why Kerry surrendered. Was he threatened with a "Wellstone plane crash"? Bribed? Or was the election a farce to create an illusion of democracy, since Kerry and Bush are both members of the occult Order of Skull and Bones, and Kerry, Bush and Cheney are distant cousins?

Most industrial democracies use paper ballots, counted by hand. This might not appeal to those with a naive fetish for technology, but it is the most accurate vote counting method, and the hardest to tamper with. (Optical scanning of paper ballots can also be rigged, since the software is a proprietary trade secret not subject to public scrutiny.)

A deeper problem was the Democrats' "Bush Light" strategy -- trying to replace Bush without discussing the deeper scandals. Many Democrats proclaimed that "Bush Lied" about Iraq, but few said why the US seized Iraq, even though the whole world knows it was about oil. Two thirds of the Earth's remaining oil supply is in the Persian Gulf area, and it would be nice to have public discussion of whether we will use it for renewable energy systems and relocalizing production, or to have World War IV to control what is left.

The vote fraud story risks becoming like the evidence of US government complicity in 9/11 -- explained in detail on the internet, yet totally ignored by the media. However, the evidence is being assembled even faster than documentation of the 9/11 scandal, and is becoming the greatest Constitutional crisis in our country's history. The Congressional Government Accounting Office has been asked to investigate. Some media voices are daring to question the outcome -- such as actress Susan Sarandon on Bill Maher's HBO show last Friday. Protests are happening all over the country, and the documentation of fraud is piling up all over the web.

Cheating in the Electoral College should be grounds for expulsion. Under the Constitution, questions of legitimacy of a State's Electors can be debated by Congress when they ratify the outcome. The film "Fahrenheit 9/11" shows the effort by the Congressional Black Caucus to have a debate on January 6, 2001, when Bush was confirmed as President despite the fraud in Florida. It takes a Senator and a Representative to allow this debate, but no Senator dared to support the right of all citizens to vote.

A few web resources:

http://www.blackboxvoting.org - investigation of touch screen voting
http://www.freepress.org - Ohio publication documenting the fraud
http://www.fromthewilderness.com - Cheney's complicity in 9/11
http://www.gregpalast.com - Veteran journalist proves "Kerry Won"
http://www.legitgov.org - Citizens for Legitimate Government
http://www.oilempire.us - stolen elections, 9/11, fascism, World War IV, media, Peak Oil
http://www.stolenelection2004.com - lots of articles
http://www.votescam.com - it is not a new problem

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