The
Neocons have determined that elections can be manipulated easily with the new
touch screen voting systems and when accompanied by a media pounding of lies,
the public will accept the rigged election results as fact. |
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The 2004
Election Has Already Been Rigged
Posted September 2, 2003 thepeoplesvoice.org
By Schuyler Ebbets
The pollsters have been forced to admit that the majority of Americans
are against the re-election of George W. Bush. Two wars, thousands of dead human
beings, and ten million lost jobs later, and people are beginning to realize that something
has gone terribly wrong. In spite of this gradual awakening most registered voters
continue to depend on
TV for their news and they are kept woefully in the dark about issues like election reform and touch
screen voting. The media has gone to great lengths to foster an illusion of
legitimacy and normalcy surrounding the electoral process. People have been
intentionally lead to believe that their vote counts and Bush could actually be booted out of office on November
2nd. There is no way that Bush can lose, it just can’t happen, the 2004 election has already been rigged. In
reality the corporations and the military industrial complex have bought
themselves a government that will serve their interests and they will never allow a
presidential
election to jeopardize their investment again.
On February 23, 2001 Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris suggested that
Florida rent rather than buy touch screen voting machines in time for the 2002
midterm election. She said, "I think it would be wrong-headed and
precipitous to purchase any equipment now. If you buy now, you're buying
antiquated technology". According to her twisted logic the purchase of
defective voting equipment was a bad idea but it was
acceptable to use the faulty voting systems in the election.
Prior to Florida's outrageous
September 10, 2002 primary election, poll data
showed heavy support for Janet Reno in Broward County, but election results from one
Broward precinct alone revealed an impossible 0% turnout among more than 800
registered voters. Reno requested a
recount of eighty precincts containing 31,375
registered Democrats because they reported only 1,952 votes. Her request was
immediately turned down by the State Elections Board. According to an AP analysis, if those precincts matched the average
county turnout, they should have produced 10,260 votes, more than five times the
number recorded by the Election
Systems & Software (ES&S),
iVotronic touch-screen voting machines.
Almost two months later on election night, November
5th,
2002, tens of thousands of Floridians again experienced difficulties using the
iVotronic machines. Voters
called in to Neil Rogers AM radio talk show the day after the election and
complained of “broken” voting machines, and machines that voted multiple times for
Bush when McBride was selected.
Electronic voting expert, Rebecca Mercuri told American Free Press, “Numerous
severe voting system problems occurred throughout Florida electronic voting on
November 5th, but none of the major news networks are covering these
problems,” On November 6th, David Host, spokesman for the Florida Secretary
of State, declared the elections, "an unqualified success", and the Associated
Press reported, “The closely watched contest for governor in Florida was
decided without a hitch.” This propaganda might have been believed if
103,222 ballots in Broward County alone had not been “misplaced”.
According to investigative reporter Greg Palast, the now infamous Katherine Harris
used her position as
Florida’s Secretary of State during the 2000 election to unjustly purge over
90,000 predominantly black and Hispanic Democratic voters from the rolls. People
remembered how Harris had taken away their civil rights when she prevented them from
voting. On November 5th, 2002, most of the Democratic electorate of 3.7
million people turned out to vote.
Although registered Democrats outnumbered Republicans by 340,000, it was too late,
the new ES&S iVotronic machines had already
been installed in eleven key Florida
counties. On
November 5, 2002 Jeb Bush became governor of Florida again, and Katherine Harris
was given a seat in the House of Representatives with only 138,940 votes,
defeating Democratic opponent Jan Schneider's oddly low 114,618 votes.
This wasn’t the first
Republican victory involving “Election
Systems & Software”
(ES&S). Former right wing radio talk-show host and CEO of ES&S, Chuck
Hagel, decided
he would run for the U.S. Senate in Nebraska
with his own ES&S machines counting the votes. Hagel
failed to mention that he had been both CEO and Chairman of ES&S on his
disclosure documents, or that he was an owner in the company that
installed, programmed, and operated the voting machines used by most of the
citizens of Nebraska. In
1996, Republican Hagel won the race in Democratic Nebraska for the U.S. Senate easily
carrying both the primary and general elections. According to Bev Harris of
blackboxvoting.com, Hagel scored lopsided victories in almost every demographic
group, including Black communities that had never voted for a Republican. With
the widest margin of victory in state history Hagel became the first Republican
in 24 years to win a Senate seat in Nebraska. On November 5, 2002 Hagel ran against Democrat Charlie Matulka and was
re-elected to his second term in the United States Senate by an unreal 83% of
the vote. Again, the votes were counted by computer-controlled voting machines
built programmed and installed by Hagel’s company Election
Systems & Software.
In Georgia, Republican Saxby Chambliss repeatedly questioned the patriotism of
Democratic incumbent and triple amputee war hero Max Cleland during his
campaign. Chambliss made the absurd claim that he was more patriotic than
Cleland even though Chambliss himself had avoided service in the Vietnam war with a "medical
deferment". A Poll taken by the Atlanta Journal Constitution published on
November 1st, just five days before the election, showed support for
Georgia Democratic Senator Max Cleland at 49%, clearly 5% ahead of Republican Saxby Chambliss at
44%. Many People in Georgia, particularly veterans, had been angered by the hypocritical
remarks made by Chambliss and turned out in record numbers to vote
for Cleland. When the 'Diebold' Electronic Voting tally was made public it
stunned and confused the Georgia voters. Saxby Chambliss had won with 53% of the vote compared to Max Cleland’s 46%. It
represented a 9% pro-Republican swing that seemed to materialize out of thin cyberspace. The victories of Chambliss and
Hagel, along with the tragic
October 25, 2002 plane crash that killed Democratic Senator Paul Wellstone,
virtually guaranteed Republican control of the Senate.
The Neocon election rigging juggernaut lurches forward unstoppable in the guise
of so-called election reform.
Three Republican dominated corporations now
control over 80% of the vote count in the United States: Sequoia Voting Systems
Inc; Electronic Systems & Software Inc. (ES&S);
and Diebold" Inc.
As this transition has taken place, a pattern of election upsets
which overwhelmingly favor Republican candidates is emerging. These are only
test runs in preparation for the 2004 presidential selection. The Neocons have
determined that elections can be manipulated easily with the new touch screen
voting systems and when accompanied by a media pounding of lies the public will
accept the rigged election results as fact. The greatest advantage of the new
touch screen voting scam is the removal of a paper trail and the blockage of
access to the inner workings of the software.
When a voter
touches the screen to select a candidate there is no confirmation that the
machine has actually registered the correct selection. In the old punch-card and
fill-in-the-circle paper systems, voters could see their choice marked on the
ballot. In the event of any confusion or question, a record of the vote existed
and a recount was possible. Since the new electronic systems leave no paper
trail there can be no recount and the results must be accepted as fact.
Attempts to examine the code used by the machines in Florida were blocked in the
courts by the GOP citing, "proprietary/trade secrecy" protections under
a law, which made it impossible for the DNC to ascertain how the machines
tabulated votes.
It would be admirable if the American people could resist the next rigged
presidential election as they did the scam of 2000. Of course the ‘Supreme Court five’ would uphold the "proprietary/trade secrecy"
protections and the bogus election results would be ruled as
legitimate. The coming election fraud has been so well planned that it probably
won’t make it into the courts. With the help of the media, the Neocons will
deliver the deathblow to democracy at the touch screen voting terminals.
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This Newsletter article is © copyright 2003 by
Schuyler Ebbets (sebbets@comcast.net)
Permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media so
long as this credit is attached.
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