Check this out....

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
by Mike Whitney

If you believe that George Bush won last nights election "fair and
square" then forget about reading this article. If you know however
that tens of thousands of people who lined up for up to four hours at
a time in Ohio and Florida to have their vote counted, were not
standing there to endorse the aggression and suicidal policies of the
current administration then read on.

The unprecedented high turnout coupled with new registrations (that
were overwhelmingly in favor of John Kerry) suggest that there was
foul play at the voting booths. As a result, consumer investigator and
activist Bev Harris (founder of Black Box Voting) "is conducting the
largest Freedom of Information action in history. On election night,
Black Box Voting blanketed the US with the first in a series of public
records requests, to obtain internal computer logs and other documents
from 3,000 individual counties and townships."

If the Bush people are so confident in their victory let them "put up
or shut up."

The fact of the matter is (as every reasonable person who hasn't been
hoodwinked by the pageantry of election night fraud realizes) that the
election was stolen again in full view of the American public. The
Republican owned voting machines prevailed over exit poll projections
and the will of the American people.

If that's not the case, then let's investigate the computer logs.
According to Lynn Landis' article "Could the AP rig the Election":
"The Associated Press (AP) will be the sole source of raw vote totals
for the major news broadcasters on Election Night.. They refused to
confirm or deny that the AP will receive direct feed from voting
machines and central vote tabulating computers across the country.
But, circumstantial evidence suggests that is exactly what will happen.

And what can be downloaded can also be uploaded. Computer experts say
that signals can travel both to and from computerized voting machines
through wireless technology, modems, and even simple electricity."
Landis just confirms what is already known about "sketchy" electronic
voting and how it invites vote tampering. Her connection between
election machinery, vote totals and the AP, however, has not
previously been made. She goes on to explain that, "AP spokespeople
would not give out information on who sits on their board, however AP
leadership appears quite conservative."

Landis continues: "Burl Osborne, chairman of the AP board of
directors, is also publisher emeritus of the conservative The Dallas
Morning News, a newspaper that endorsed George W. Bush in the last
election. Kathleen Carroll, senior vice president and executive editor
of AP, was a reporter at The Dallas Morning News before joining AP.
Carroll is also on the Associated Press Managing Editors (APME)'s
7-member executive committee. The APME "works in partnership with AP
to improve the wire service's performance," according to their
website. APME vice president, Deanna Sands, is managing editor of the
ultra conservative Omaha World Herald newspaper, whose parent company
owns the largest voting machine company in the nation, Election
Systems and Software (ES&S)."

It's a cozy relationship considering that ES&S voting machines count
50% of all the votes in the country. The second largest company,
Diebold, is also tied to the Republican Party and promised (in a
comment by Wally Diebold that got widespread attention on the
internet) to "deliver the vote" in Ohio to President Bush.

Both Wally and ES&S apparently succeeded admirably in their task of
undermining the election.

Many readers are probably wondering what happened to the "Help America
Vote Act" that was passed by Congress to avoid the problems of Florida
2000? As Landis reports in an earlier article: "What Congress really
did was to throw $2.65 billion at the states, so that they could
lavish it on a handful of private companies that are controlled by
ultra-conservative Republicans, foreigners and felons." (Diebold, ES&S
and Sequoia were among the big winners)

None of the facts related to the presidential election add up. Voter
registration went up from 105 million to 120 million. In Ohio alone it
went up a whopping 17%. Whenever registration has surged like this in
the past, it has always favored the challenger and precipitated a
change in government.

Not so, this time, and Republican pollsters are eager to convince us
that the reason for this is a renewed interest among the American
public for "moral values". Is that it or are the results simply an
indication of massive (but well calculated) voter fraud?

The exit polling was equally skewed, showing a clear victory for
Kerry. Exit polling has traditionally been a reliable way of
determining the outcome of elections. Not so in Bush-world, where vote
totals are invariably higher for Bush in the contentious areas that
ultimately decide the election.

Give strategist Karl Rove his due; he knew what had to be done and did
it. The rest, of course, has been papered over by the pollsters, pimps
and pundits in American press corps.

Do we need to remind ourselves that representative government can only
be established by the power of the vote? It is the electoral process
that confers legitimacy on government. Without a popular mandate state
power can only be vindicated through force of arms.

Last night American democracy was skillfully subverted and replaced
with a mutant form of corporatism that operates independent of the
will of the people. It's impossible to know what the long term affects
of this will be, but it is a development that should greatly concern
us all.

http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/04/11/con04482.html
___

The Case For Fraud


November 3 2004
Counterbias.com
by Joseph Cannon





Ignore the rightist snickers. Ignore those who would straightjacket
permissible thought. We have a right to ask difficult questions.

And the question of the moment concerns exit polls and electronic voting.

Some have criticized my pessimistic attitude toward this election, but
I always heeded the warnings sounded by Bev Harris and others
regarding computerized voting. If Kerry did not win handily, he could
not win at all. A truly lopsided vote would have been impossible to
hide, because oversized gaps between polls and election night counts
would prove too suspicious.

Although the vote was tight, such gaps nevertheless exists. And
although they are not massive, the pattern gives us every right to
voice our suspicions.

Remember when networks used to trumpet the accuracy of exit polling?
Last night, I saw on-air talking heads (especially on CNN) loudly
deride these same exit polls as untrustworthy.

Perhaps the methodology has become sloppy. Perhaps respondents have
learned to enjoy fibbing to pollsters. Or perhaps something in our
current vote-tabulation system is fishier than an all-you-can-eat
sushi bar.

Before proceeding, recall the commonly-heard axiom that Democrats tend
to vote late, while Republicans tend to vote early. Many challenge
that belief. Still, keep the notion in mind.

Exit polls published yesterday afternoon (by Slate and a number of
blogs) gave this portrait of certain key results:

OHIO: Kerry 50, Bush 49. FLORIDA: Kerry 50, Bush 49. NEW MEXICO: Kerry
51, Bush 48.

At times, the poll data was even more favorable to Kerry in these
three key states. See, for example, this screen capture of CNN data in
Ohio. No exit poll showed a Bush lead in any of these states.

Here are grounds for suspicion. Electronic voting machines figured
heavily in the final tabulation of the results in Ohio, Florida, and
New Mexico. Moreover, in all three, paper audit trails do not exist.

These states therefore offered the best, safest opportunity for
manipulation of the final count.

Question 1: Even if we grant the potential inaccuracy of exit polls,
how likely is it that in all three cases the inaccuracy would show a
"non-existent" Democratic advantage? Why doesn't the discrepancy ever
work in the other direction?

Question 2: Why did problems afflict exit polling in three swing
states that have widespread computerized voting with no paper trails?

In other states, the exit polling matched the final results rather
well. In Nevada, Illinois, and New Hampshire, computer votes do have
paper trails -- and in those instances, the exit polls tracked the
final totals.

To recap: In three states with no paper trails, we have exit
poll/final tally disagreement. In three states with paper trails, we
have exit poll/final tally congruence.

Coincidence?

Let's return to the notion that Republicans vote earlier than
Democrats. Many dispute that bit of folk wisdom. Even so, is it likely
that the people waiting four, five or more hours in long lines, well
into the cold of the night, underwent this endurance test to demand
more of the same? Shouldn't the polls have showed Kerry's lead
expanding as the night went on, instead of evaporating?

Intriguingly, CNN's exit poll results underwent a mysterious revision
not explained by an increased number of respondents.

Black Box Voting plans to file the world's largest FOIA request to
uncover the internals of the compu-vote. Don't presume that such an
inquest will come up goose eggs:


Such a request filed in King County, Washington on Sept. 15, following
the primary election six weeks ago, uncovered an internal audit log
containing a three-hour deletion on election night; "trouble slips"
revealing suspicious modem activity; and profound problems with
security, including accidental disclosure of critically sensitive
remote access information to poll workers, office personnel, and even,
in a shocking blunder, to Black Box Voting activists.
Today's Boston Globe expands on some of the points I've made here:


Although some of John F. Kerry's leads in the state exit polls
narrowed during the course of the day yesterday, there was a
significant discrepancy between the actual vote total and the polling
numbers, particularly in two states believed to be keys to the outcome.

While the exit data had Kerry winning Florida and Ohio by a narrow
margin, the actual tabulated vote late last night had Bush carrying
Florida by about five points and winning Ohio by two. In addition, a
projected Kerry win of about five points in Wisconsin turned into a
very tight contest, and what was projected as a close race in North
Carolina turned into a double-digit win for Bush.
Again: Note the pattern. Why do the exit polls always go wrong in the
same way? Pundits who assail these polls never address this question.

Logic tells us that about half the exit polls would show "false
positives" for the Republican side. But in the past two presidential
elections, they have almost always (should I strike out the word
"almost"?) delivered "false positives" for Democrats only.

The simplest explanation: The Democratic "false positives" are not, in
fact, false. The computerized tally is false.

Remember: If malign parties have tampered with the electronic result,
then our first, best -- and perhaps only -- indication of fraud will
be a conflict between the exit poll data and the "official" results.

As for what to do about it: May I at least suggest a visit to
www.blackboxvoting.org?


Joseph Cannon is a writer and graphic designer in Los Angeles,
California. He runs the Cannonfire weblog.

http://www.counterbias.com/152.html



______

Voting without auditing. (Are we insane?)

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON Nov 3 2004 -- Did the voting machines trump exit
polls? There's a way to find out.

Black Box Voting (.ORG) is conducting the largest Freedom of
Information action in history. At 8:30 p.m. Election Night, Black Box
Voting blanketed the U.S. with the first in a series of public records
requests, to obtain internal computer logs and other documents from
3,000 individual counties and townships. Networks called the election
before anyone bothered to perform even the most rudimentary audit.

America: We have permission to say No to unaudited voting. It is our
right.

Among the first requests sent to counties (with all kinds of voting
systems -- optical scan, touch-screen, and punch card) is a formal
records request for internal audit logs, polling place results slips,
modem transmission logs, and computer trouble slips.

An earlier FOIA is more sensitive, and has not been disclosed here. We
will notify you as soon as we can go public with it.

Such a request filed in King County, Washington on Sept. 15, following
the primary election six weeks ago, uncovered an internal audit log
containing a three-hour deletion on election night; "trouble slips"
revealing suspicious modem activity; and profound problems with
security, including accidental disclosure of critically sensitive
remote access information to poll workers, office personnel, and even,
in a shocking blunder, to Black Box Voting activists.

Black Box Voting is a nonpartisan, nonprofit consumer protection group
for elections. You may view the first volley of public records
requests here: Freedom of Information requests here

Responses from public officials will be posted in the forum, is
organized by state and county, so that any news organization or
citizens group has access to the information. Black Box Voting will
assist in analysis, by providing expertise in evaluating the records.
Watch for the records online; Black Box Voting will be posting the
results as they come in. And by the way, these are not free. The more
donations we get, the more FOIAs we are empowered to do. Time's a'wasting.

We look forward to seeing you participate in this process. Join us in
evaluating the previously undisclosed inside information about how our
voting system works.

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/
_____

Central Tabulating Machines Connected to Modems



New Info proves that Central Tabulating Computers have modems
connected and are open to manipulation. ie- all this stuff about vote
challengers is just a diversion, because one person can change the
state total from their home computer. Take the day off of work to help
save our country.

Yeah sure conspiracy nuts- they can't steal it- wrong. We now have
evidence that certainly looks like altering a computerized voting
system during a real election, and it happened just six weeks ago.

Concerned citizens around the country need to get off their duffs and
do something to save our country. Namely go down to their polling
places and ask that the modems be disconnected. Take a zoom camera and
take pictures for evidence.

Bev Harris- THE authority on securing the vote

=============

MONDAY Nov 1 2004: New information indicates that hackers may be
targeting the central computers counting our votes tomorrow. All
county elections officials who use modems to transfer votes from
polling places to the central vote-counting server should disconnect
the modems now.

There is no down side to removing the modems. Simply drive the vote
cartridges from each polling place in to the central vote-counting
location by car, instead of transmitting by modem. "Turning off" the
modems may not be sufficient. Disconnect the central vote counting
server from all modems, INCLUDING PHONE LINES, not just Internet.

In a very large county, this will add at most one hour to the
vote-counting time, while offering significant protection from outside
intrusion.

It appears that such an attack may already have taken place, in a
primary election 6 weeks ago in King County, Washington -- a large
jurisdiction with over one million registered voters. Documents,
including internal audit logs for the central vote-counting computer,
along with modem "trouble slips" consistent with hacker activity, show
that the system may have been hacked on Sept. 14, 2004. Three hours is
now missing from the vote-counting computer's "audit log," an
automatically generated record, similar to the black box in an
airplane, which registers certain kinds of events.

COMPUTER FOLKS:

Here are the details about remote access vulnerability through the
modem connecting polling place voting machines with the central
vote-counting server in each county elections office. This applies
specifically to all Diebold systems (1,000 counties and townships),
and may also apply to other vendors. The prudent course of action is
to disconnect all modems, since the downside is small and the danger
is significant.

The central servers are installed on unpatched, open Windows computers
and use RAS (Remote Access Server) to connect to the voting machines
through telephone lines. Since RAS is not adequately protected, anyone
in the world, even terrorists, who can figure out the server's phone
number can change vote totals without being detected by observers.

The passwords in many locations are easily guessed, and the access
phone numbers can be learned through social engineering or war dialing.

ELECTION OFFICIALS:

The only way to protect tomorrow's election from this type of attack
is to disconnect the servers from the modems now. Under some
configurations, attacks by remote access are possible even if the
modem appears to be turned off. The modem lines should be physically
disconnected.

We obtained these documents through a public records request. The
video was taken at a press conference held by the King County
elections chief Friday Oct 29.

The audit log is a computer-generated automatic record similar to the
"black box" in an airplane, that automatically records access to the
Diebold GEMS central tabulator (unless, of course, you go into it in
the clandestine way we demonstrated on September 22 in Washington DC
at the National Press club.)

The central tabulator audit log is an FEC-required security feature.
The kinds of things it detects are the kinds of things you might see
if someone was tampering with the votes: Opening the vote file,
previewing and/or printing interim results, altering candidate
definitions (a method that can be used to flip votes).

Three hours is missing altogether from the Sept. 14 Washington State
primary held six weeks ago.

The audit log is 168 pages long and spans 120 days, and the 3 hours
just happen to be missing during the most critical three hours on
election night.

Election officials: Disconnect those modems NOW. If you don't: You
gotta be replaced.
Reporters: Some election officials will lie to you. Show your kids
what bravery looks like. Be courageous. Report the truth.
Citizens: Please help us by joining the Cleanup Crew. For now, e-mail
crew@blackboxvoting.org to join, since our signup form has been taken out.
Candidates: Make a statement. Do not concede on Election Night. Wait
until audits and records can be examined. Note that most voting
machine problems will be found between Nov. 3-12, during the canvass,
and a few weeks later, when public records requests are obtained.


More from Bev here, including a video they made of the chimp pushing
some buttons to start a script to steal the vote.

http://blackboxvoting.org/

===========

Anonymous:

It's not just about the Presidential race, but the Bush and the
neocons need to steal the House and Senate races too, or else they'll
be facing trial and Bush/Cheney impeachment. They know it- that's why
they're going to steal it- unless we stop them.

Call all of your friends and family tonight, get organized to hit as
many polling places as possible. Maybe you could each need to pick a
location and keep an eye on them all day... got an ipod and/or
boombox? Bring some inspirational music to make it a festive occasion

http://www.benfrank.net/nuke/Free_Peace_mp3s.html

(must get MOSH, MLK, Eddie Vedder)

Take the Day off Work

Go down to your local polling places (ie google "toledo polling
locations") and ask that the modems be disconnected. Bring a camera
and take pictures for evidence. The phone lines need to be unhooked,
anything less is unacceptable. We need to demand the the 'memory
cards' are driven to the central tabulator, and we need you to watch
them box the memory cards, seal the boxes, follow their car as they
drive it to the next location, where you can ensure the seals are
intact and the number of boxes is unchanged.

If we want to reclaim our country, it's going to be up to regular
people like you and me to demand a secure system tomorrow. Think about
it, if they steal this one, after four more years of Bush, will we
ever have an honest election again?




by : Bev Harris

http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=4116

___

movie at http://www.votergate.tv/
votergate.tv Documentary

The producers of this film have created a thirty minute documentary on
the vulnerabilities of electronic voting machines and are making this
film available as a free educational public service in time for the
presidential election. For more information, go to www.votergate.tv.

What This Film Achieves

This film is an investigative documentary uncovering the truth about
new computer voting systems, which allow a few powerful corporations
to record our votes in secret. But the film is not just a warning. It
strongly concludes that elections are harder to defraud when voters
turn out in
big numbers. This documentary is designed specifically to help viewers
navigate past the fear and spin already being thrown at this critical
issue.

The film educates viewers about the dangers now threatening the voting
system. The film surprises and entertains as characters, like
grandmother/investigator Bev Harris, expose the truth, take on the
gatekeepers and hold them to account. It educates citizens about how
to keenly observe and question the process on Election Day and
empowers viewers to hold their election officials accountable.

George Wendt, the actor famous for his role as the good friend Norm on
the hit comedy Cheers, is the narrator.

Bev Harris, is the Executive Director of Black Box Voting
www.BlackBoxVoting.org. According to Vanity Fair Magazine her
investigations are breaking newsthat would have made her career at The
New York Times or Washington Post.

Andy Stephenson, Associate Director, Black Box Voting, is uncovering
nationwide evidence of security risks in America's voting system .

The producers Simon Ardizzone, Russell Michaels and Robert
Carrillo-Cohen are independent filmmakers who decided to create this
30 minute film when they realized that most of the information on this
vital story was not reaching the public through the mainstream media.
They are producing the film in association with Sarah Teale/Teale
Productions and Earl Katz of Public Interest Pictures.

Target Audience

The documentary speaks directly to voters of all ages, and also to
people who have never considered voting before. This is the one issue
that can wake up the people, whether they're Democrats, Republicans,
Libertarians or Greens -- who believe democracy means that every vote
counts.

Production

We are continuing to shoot through the Presidential election and are
receiving contributions to fund the completion of the Post-Election
DVD / Feature
film.

ADDRESS

There are other web sites with Votergate in the title. Please be sure,
when referencing our film that you use the correct web address:
www.votergate.tv.

ABOUT TEALE PRODUCTIONS

Teale Productions (www.tealeproductions.com ) was formed in 1988 and
has since built a reputation as a cutting edge investigative
documentary production and entertainment producing company. Teale has
produced award winning original documentaries and television series
for HBO, AMC, PBS, Channel 4 (UK), and the BBC. Teale Productions is
in constant development with high quality documentaries and original
productions.

ABOUT PUBLIC INTEREST PICTURES

Public Interest Pictures (PIP)www.publicinterestpictures.org) is a
non-profit organization committed to creating documentaries that will
not only be seen
by the masses but will also move them. PIP explores progressive issues
currently threatened by governmental policies at odds with the public
interest.


http://www.archive.org/movies/movies-details-db.php?collection=election_2004&collectionid=VotergateTheMovie&from=thisJustIn/

_________

E-voting irregularities raise eyebrows, blood pressure
Concern over electronic voting technology was not assuaged Tuesday as
glitches, confusion and human error raised a welter of problems across
the country, even while e-vote watchdogs prepared to file suits
challenging the results derived from the controversial machines.

New rules, new voters and a tight presidential contest combined to
create "a recipe for problems," said Sean Greene, who was watching
Cleveland polls for the Election Reform Information Project, a
nonpartisan research group on election reform.

Nearly one in three voters, including about half of those in Florida,
were expected to cast ballots using ATM-style voting machines that
computer scientists have criticized for their potential for software
glitches, hacking and malfunctioning.

In South Carolina, problems were reported in a handful of precincts in
two counties using electronic machines. Officials said voters were
forced to switch to paper ballots while technicians got the iVotronic
touch screens from Electronic Systems & Software up and running within
about 90 minutes.

And in Volusia County, Fla., a memory card in an optical-scan voting
machine failed Monday at an early voting site and didn't count 13,000
ballots. Officials planned to feed the ballots, in which voters fill
in a bubble, and count them Tuesday.

Many of the problems with electronic voting - whether accidental or
intentional - may not be known until well after Tuesday, if at all.
Most of the ATM-style machines, including all of Florida's, lack paper
records that could be used to verify the electronic results in a recount.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's VerifiedVoting.org, which has
been monitoring the implementation of e-voting machines in the U.S.,
warned on Monday that over 20 percent of the machines tested by
observers around the country failed to record votes properly. The
organization recommended that voters choosing to use touchscreen
voting methods be sure to double-check the summary screen to confirm
that their votes had been properly registered.

BlackBoxVoting.org, the site organized by e-voting activist Bev
Harris, announced early Wednesday that it plans to conduct what the
site describes as the largest Freedom of Information Act request in
history, requesting internal computer logs and other documents from
3,000 individual counties and townships using electronic voting machines.

According to a release posted on the site, "Such a request filed in
King County, Washington on Sept. 15, following the primary election
six weeks ago, uncovered an internal audit log containing a three-hour
deletion on election night; 'trouble slips' revealing suspicious modem
activity; and profound problems with security, including accidental
disclosure of critically sensitive remote access information to poll
workers, office personnel, and even, in a shocking blunder, to Black
Box Voting activists."

We knew the electronic voting machines were vulnerable to tampering ahead of time. Many responsible organizations raised this issue, and a number of independent computer security firms verified the vulnerabilities. These independent evaluations also listed recommendations for how the vulnerabilities could be relatively easily fixed: among other things, by providing paper audit trails, by isolating the machines from outside communication lines (e.g., modems), and most critically by making the software that drives the machines available for public inspection by security experts. Some (but not all) of these recommendations were adopted in some of the states that use electronic voting machines, and in these states there is no evidence of a significant gap between exit polls and the actual results tabulated by the machines. In the states that did NOT adopt any of these recommendations (including Florida and Ohio), there are consistent gaps between the exit polls and the tabulated results, of about 5% -- FAR above the statistical margin of error -- and these gaps are ALL in favor of Republicans!

If that's not a smoking gun, then would someone tell me what is?

Yet, watch the Freedom of Information requests being denied, or filled only partially with sensitive information missing (probably on grounds of "national security.") Watch the demands that the software that counts our votes be disclosed, be denied again on the grounds that it is the propriety intellectual property of the voting machine manufacturers, who just happen to all be heavily partisan supporters of the Bush administration. Yes, you read that right: the software that counts the votes that OUR ENTIRE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS DEPENDS ON is the non-disclosed "private property" of the Republican-owned voting machine companies, and WILL NOT BE DISCLOSED TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

No bank or financial services company in the world would employ security code that is not published and available for inspection by independent security consultants. If the providers of that software refused to release the code, the corporations would refuse to purchase and use it, period. No exceptions. Yet the software that controls our voting - the most important data in the nation - is NOT subject to this protection. Who is kidding whom?

Folks, I have no way of knowing whether the legal challenges now being mounted against these machines and processes has any real chance of success ... I hope so, with all my heart. But I will say this: if the challenges are NOT successful, if the vulnerabilities are NOT successfully challenged and eliminated ... then free elections in this country are a thing of the past, as well as our democratic republic itself. Welcome to the dictatorship.

Of course, it's a "compassionate" dictatorship, so why worry?

Love,
Greg

Dear Dani,
I copied your post and Greg's and some of Connie's to bring with me to a local post-election 'unity' meeting this afternoon. It will be interesting to gauge reactions. I'll let you know.
Thanks everyone for all this info.
Love,

Dani, We know it is fraud but we also know that the Republicans will say it is sour grapes and that the Democrats are just "whining."

7 Counties in Ohio had the Diebold machines. The exit polls numbers and the votes in those counties showed a 5% difference in favor of Bush.

Kerry nor the DNC will do anything about this though because being a good man Kerry is more concerned about the division in this country than winning and does not want to add to that division by his or the Democratic actions. Edwards begged him not to concede so soon but resolved himself to Kerry's wishes.

We, however, could ask for an investigation if enough of us petitioned for that. As yet neither MoveOn.org or Common Cause, or The True Majority have brought up the issue.

But Kerry was leading all along in the exit polls and they were very careful about those exit polls this years because of what happened in 2000 where the exit polls and the actual votes didn't match either. Funny how the numbers just never seem to match up when Bush and Cheney are running for office no matter how hard the experts try to get them to match up. But then what they are always telling the American public does not match up to reality either. Go figure.

Love, Connie

I think this is an investigation that needs to be done. When the discrepancies between the exit polls and vote counts were first being noticed and commented on election night, some pundits were swiftly blaming the exit polls for being wrong, but I don't think that is at all clear.

I was fascinated by what was going on in Judy Woodruff's face as she dealt with the data in CNN's state projection/calculation room. She looked stricken, like she was going to cry. Like she knew there was something wrong -- not just inaccurate, but something terribly wrong going on. And all she could do was play out her role, but in a changed way. Where she prepared herself for that night to be the voice of reliably correct information, suddenly she found herself with that weird feeling of passing along something that was technically accurate but somehow felt not true. Of course, I can't speak for her, but that's what I read in her face.

Don't get me wrong, I also do think the Democrats missed in the heartland, and we may have really, truly, actually lost the election. But I also think the discrepancies with the exit polls are very suspicious and may very well indicate rigging in the electronic balloting.

Love,
Maria

I'm just happy that someone, anyone is investigating it. I got an email from the DNC today asking for suggestions and comments. When I sent it back to them I suggested that since so many Americans feel that this election was stolen just like the last one they need to investigate it.

I was up all night watching the election returns. It was going very well for Kerry all along. Very, very close and he was ahead. Then, in the wee hours of the morning, that suddenly took a drastic change. Like the woman at CNN at that time I had a sinking feeling this election was being stolen again and the Republicans were at it again. It just all changed so very drastically just when most folks had given up and gone to bed thinking it would take days to find out who won.

ABC chose not to even use the exit polls this year. Hmmmmmm that in itself is suspicious.

Love, Connie

It's Monday morning,
I just went to check at the website re the vote fraud--seems it is shut down!!!!!!!! I'll try again, maybe busy. But I saw that on 9/24/03 the site had been shut down. Looks like it has been again?
Love,

I tried unsuccessfully several time this morning, too. However, I just tried again at http://www.blackboxvoting.org/ and successfully reached the site.

There is a notice posted there that says:

Quote:

---

Please excuse our temporary reconstruction
This site went down recently when we posted sensitive information.

---

Ummm ... "sensitive information" doesn't make computer servers go down. Attacks by people who don't want that sensitive information to be communicated do.

Love,
Greg

Hi Greg,

I had just wanted to log on to that site and see if there was any further news, as the last time they said it would be coming out within the next 24 hours in the media.

Do you think this is curious: The Kerry official site basically shut down its blogs as of the time of the concession speech. But when you look at the list of areas on the site, 'Contribute' is lit up in red and everything else is blue. And if you click on 'Contribute' it is to contribute to the ongoing counting of the votes. ?????? !!!!
Also I heard that a few Democrats - House from NY MI and FL incl John Conyers were starting an election investigation.
Let's visualize and pray for justice to be done. Remember the Electoral College hasn't met yet. That's in December, right?
Love,

I just tried logging onto the blackbox site you gave, Greg and I kept getting a "this page cannot be displayed message." Normally I would think that the site was just getting a lot of hits at the same time but with the message you got Greg I have to think the government is intervening and shutting down the site.

That's wonderful news, Pisces. Maybe the Democrats listened to me. hee hee Not likely but I'm happy that Conyers and others are investigating this. Being the government that carries clout and they can easily get the information if the Bush administration does not intervene. But then if they do it is as much of an admission of guilt that we need to call for a new election without electronic Diebold machines or punch cards. Don't want any hanging chads either.

Keep us informed if the site gets back up. From all they know about computers according to the article they should be able to find someway of going around the government hackers and getting back online.

I am so happy over this news, Pisces. Thanks for making my day.

Love, Connie

This is not being reported by the mainline media at all but I found this article on the internet regarding the request for a voter fraud investigation by Democratic House members, John Conyers of Michigan, Jerrold Nadler of NY, and Robert Wexler of Fla. that Pisces mentioned in her post.

I'm wondering, could it be that the DNC is actually doing an investigation on the election results but saying it is not to question the outcome of the election. Just hoping maybe that something out of the ordinary comes up? The reason that I wonder that is because both the Democratic National Party and the House members are stressing that same thing. In other words, are they investigating the outcome of the election but saying they are not.

Nov 8, 2004

DNC Urges Secretaries of State to Outline Process for Counting Provisional Ballots

Washington, D.C. - Today, the Democratic National Committee called upon all 50 Secretaries of State to, "explicitly outline the standards and timelines that will be used to count the remaining votes for the 2004 election." In the letter to the Secretaries of State, Chairman Terry McAuliffe said, "After such a highly charged and competitive election, I want to make sure that every American can be confident that our electoral process worked and continues to be the model for the world. The best way to achieve these goals is to ensure that every vote cast has been accurately counted. This is in no way an effort to question the outcome of this election, but to ensure trust in the outcome of every election going forward.
He continued, "One of the most important things we have learned during this election is that if voters don't have faith in the infrastructure for casting and counting votes, they will not participate in the process. The critical issues confronting this nation require full participation by the electorate. I strongly believe that your efforts at transparency will go far to affirm the American people's belief in our Democracy."

http://finance.lycos.com/qc/news/story.aspx?symbols=WIRED:100&story=200411052232_WRD_65623_200411051732

House Dems Seek Election Inquiry


5 November 2004, 5:32pm ET
by Kim Zetter


Three congressmen sent a letter to the General Accounting Office on Friday requesting an investigation into irregularities with voting machines used in Tuesday's elections.

The congressmen, Democratic members of the House of Representatives from Florida, New York and Michigan, cited a number of incidents that came to light in the days after the election. One was a glitch in Ohio that caused a memory card reader made by Danaher Controls to give George W. Bush 3,893 more votes than he should have received. Another was a problem with memory cards in North Carolina that caused machines made by UniLect to lose 4,500 votes cast on e-voting machines. The votes were lost when the number of votes cast on the machines exceeded the capacity of the memory cards.

There were also problems with machines that counted absentee ballots in Florida. Software made by Election Systems & Software began subtracting votes when totals surpassed 32,000. Officials said the problem affected only certain countywide races on one of the last pages of the ballot. Elections officials knew about the problem two years ago, but the company failed to fix the software before the election this year.

Reports from voters in Florida and Ohio also indicated that some of them had problems voting for the candidate of their choice. When they tried to vote for John Kerry, they said, the machine either wouldn't register the vote at all or would indicate on the review page that the vote was cast for Bush instead.

In their letter, representatives John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, Jerrold Nadler of New York and Robert Wexler of Florida asked the GAO to "immediately undertake an investigation of the efficacy of voting machines and new technologies used in the 2004 election, how election officials responded to difficulties they encountered and what we can do in the future to improve our election systems and administration."

John Doty, spokesman for Nadler, said the congressmen emphasized that they were not seeking a nationwide recount and were not anticipating that an investigation would change the outcome of the election.

"But we do want to make sure that where there are problems they're fixed so that it won't affect other elections in the future," Doty said. "We want to make sure that people can be confident in the system."

Doty said, however, that if the GAO does find a lot more problems that haven't yet been reported, then people will at least know about them and be able to decide what to do about them.

"We're hopeful that the GAO does not find such terrible irregularities that it would demonstrate widespread problems," Doty said.

No one was available at the office of the GAO to respond to questions. But a GAO representative told Wired News in September that the agency was planning to produce a report on e-voting after the election anyway.



Love, Connie

Hey Everyone,

I came here today to check and see what you all were talking about in relation to the election, and got this post in an email from Dani via the Rainbow Light Circle (I figured she'd have it posted here too ).

I've been feeling like we've been tricked again, and this can't be for real ever since the results of the election came out on Wed, and today was the first I'd got any information to confirm what I've been feeling (on many levels)...

What I have read here gives me hope that the TRUTH will come out about what Bush and Company have done with this election, as I have no doubt that there has indeed been fraud with the voting machines and we've been duped again. I don't think We The People are going to put up with this *%$@ anymore!

Dani what also struck me is that other forward you sent about what the Indian Astrologers had said about it looking like Kerry according to the charts... that his Asc was highlited, and that Saturn going Retro in Cancer put shadows on Bush's chart. There was also that one Astrologer who had said that if Bush did win, it wouldn't last. Like I said... these things give me hope, and I too am going to hold the same intention that PD put up on this thread...

Lets Visualize and Pray for Justice to be done!

Steam! I say steam! We are picking up some steam.

This just in, by way of one of my California friends ...

MSNBC is paying attention. The Bloggerman speaks:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/

Maria

Thanks Maria. Bravo, Ken Olbermann!

Added to the excuses he offered for why the story has gained little momentum elsewhere on the media, is the fact that many Democratic supporters, as well as media observers, have been made to feel that any questioning of the results is "whining," and that any questioning will only damage their own credibility. We've even seen some of that sentiment here, and it's easy to understand.

This may help explain why Kerry so swiftly (and to some observers, inexplicably) conceded, despite the obvious large and legitimate questions unresolved.

Then again, if you really want to get paranoid, maybe Kerry was co-opted by the conspiracy. Maybe they threatened to cancel all the government contracts for ketchup if he raised a ruckus! Who knows? But it's heartening that at least one mass-media voice has the courage and tenacity to get the story out and stick with it. Let's hope the head of steam builds up fast.

This investigation is crucial for the future of democracy. Again, while unseating Bush and installing Kerry as the legitimate victor would be lovely, it's not the critical issue. The critical issue is to make the American people (and our representatives) realize that a voting system that does not leave us with objective evidence of the votes actually cast, that can be recounted and examined independently by the citizens who rely on the system to express our will, is completely unacceptable and cannot be tolerated. Without such a transparent system, democracy is literally dead.

Love,
Greg

Folks, I've just spent most of the morning on the blackboxvoting.org website, reading and downloading files and examining the astounding wealth of information they have collected to document both clear and willful voting fraud and an unbelievable amount of ineptness, careless errors, coverups and security breaches that establishes beyond any reasonable doubt that the electronic voting systems widely employed in key areas are dangerously flawed, tamperable and vulnerable in numerous ways to falsifying, losing or adding votes.

This organization, headed by Beverly Harris, has taken the position that deliberate fraud took place in the 2004 election through electronic voting machines, and have launched exhaustive FOI actions, discovery motions, and set the legal wheels in motion for challenging the election as well as making radical changes in the requirements for voting machines. I strongly urge everyone to support this effort in every way possible.

Among other things, the site contains the complete text of an exhaustively researched, indexed and footnoted book documenting the flaws, security holes, deliberate breaches and intentional coverups by the voting machine manufacturers and puiblic officials. I've only started reading it, but already I am stunned!

Because this website has been offline on and off recently (and may be under hostile attack), I took the liberty of downloading and mirroring the entire text of this book on our own servers. I STRONGLY URGE EVERYONE TO READ IT, IT WILL OPEN YOUR EYES!

Check it out on the http://www.blackboxvoting.org/ site first. If for any reason you cannot access it there, here is the complete text mirrored on our site:

Black Box Voting
Ballot Tampering in the 21st Century
by Bev Harris
Chapter 1: I will vote
Chapter 2: Can we trust these Machines?
Chapter 3: Why we need disclosure of owners
Chapter 4: A brief history of vote-rigging
Chapter 5: Cyber-Boss Tweed
Chapter 6: Who's beholden to whom?
Chapter 7: Why vote?
Chapter 8: Company Information
Chapter 9: First public look ever into a secret voting system
Chapter 10: Who's minding the store?
Chapter 11: "rob-georgia.zip" - noun or verb?
Chapter 12: Open source exam
Chapter 13: Security Breaches
Chapter 14: A modest proposal (solutions)
Chapter 15: Practical activism
Chapter 16: The men behind the curtain
Appendix A: More problems
Footnotes
Index

The book is also available in a paperback edition from Amazon.com, ISBN 1-890916-90-0.

Love,
Greg

Hello again,
I am feeling optimistic again. Glad you downloaded all that Greg. Great news everyone posted here.
During the summer I started watching MSNBC for the first time and I liked their coverage of the conventions and debates. I hope they stay on this post election day coverage.
I agree Greg that we need to insist there be a full investigation, not only to prevent any future vote fraud, but to scrutinize the legitimacy of this election. The electoral college may be playing a big role.
Still baffled by the hasty concession by JFK. Well, he's a lawyer... knows what he's doing ????
I noted at blackboxvoting (thanks to Bev Harris and these people who have done such important work for all of us) they were begging for contributions, as in 'We can't do it all alone--we need HELP!' I am sure once the word spreads there will be a HUGE grassroots support, so that this can't be ignored.
I'm going to add an email to Bloggerman, seems like the email support is lending energy.
Love,

Hmmmm ... looks like mirroring those files was a good idea, since their site seems to be down again, this time because bandwidth was exceeded. I'm going to write to Bev and offer for them to list our server as an alternate site to access them. I have tons of available bandwidth, and that could help take some of the load off their server.

Love,
Greg

Well, I just gave them a call to volunteer our bandwidth, and am waiting to hear back. It turns out they are located just down the road from me ( ) in Renton, Washington, so I volunteered my physical services, too, if there's anything I can do. I'll keep you posted!

Love,
Greg

OH WOW!!! Guys I am so excited about all you have posted here.

That would be great Greg to use CE as blackbox's alternate server. Makes us here more a part of the whole process of nailing Bush. Sorry but I can't help thinking of the poetic justice of all this if it turns out that Kerry actually won Ohio and becomes President through the Electoral College votes even if Bush should still turn out to have the popular vote. De ja vu! According to the bloggerman even if Kerry did concede the election it doesn't matter. The Electoral Votes is all that matters. Now is that poetic justice or not?

Another thing that crossed my mind is that if voter fraud is proven Bush may well be the first President in history to be impeached before he even had his inaugural ceremony for his second term in office.

Hopefully now that MSNBC has started the ball rolling national news wise more networks will pick up on it. Fingers crossed and praying hard for that.

Seems the universe is leading you , Greg I don't believe in coincidences what is meant to be will happen.

Good idea Pisces to email the bloggerman. He said he appreciates it and with all the support from viewers I'm sure he will keep following up on it all.

Pisces made my day yesterday and today Maria and Greg did! I will be so excited I won't be able to sleep tonight.

Love, Connie

Okay....I was all geared up to post this thing I found by Ruth Lopez, but in light of what I've just read about Olbermann at MSNBC and Greg's offer to BLACKBOX VOTING (much to my absolute delight)it seems not important now....but here it is anyway.....(otay?)

I'll just consider that someone has read what she {Ruth Lopez)had to say...and now something is going to be done about it...*sigh*

************************************************************

Quote:

---

Why are we taking this so complacently? I mean, seriously, what is it going to take? When will enough be enough? Are we waiting for someone to tell us what to do? Are we waiting for someone to do it for us? Or are we so afraid to lose what we have that we will trade what we should value most for it?

---

Why are we taking this so complacently? That's exactly what I've been wondering....*sigh*

Quote:

---

......face the truth. Whatever else we do, and as hard as it is, at least face this honestly. Acknowledge what we really know happened. Think, for God's sake. What have we become? We just had a second sham election and we did nothing about it except talk about next time.

---

The above quotes were taken from the following article...*sigh*

November 7, 2004

Nations do go crazy sometimes, and the progression of symptoms we've been exhibiting here in the Good Ol' USA has entered rubber room territory

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION

by Ruth Lopez

Yeah, I know the drill: I'm supposed to 'get over it'. Well, I will not pretend to act like this is fine. That the system worked. That we did what we could, that they won honestly, or, even if they didn't, that it's time to move on.

No, I am devastated and I weep for my country. But I am also as angry as I am heartsick.

I am devastated because this time Bush really was elected. Not by the vote count; oh no, voter fraud was rampant. What the Republicans did in Florida in 2000, they refined in Georgia in 2002, and they got down to a science this time around, especially in Ohio and, yes, Florida. This fraud wasn't so "in your face" all across the country that it cried out for us to rise up and do something about it, nope, it was just enough for that precious 50% + 1 of the vote. Enough to declare victory.

As for us rising up and doing something about it - 2004 proved what 2000 merely hinted at: we are not rising up. We are not going to. We are sad but we will do nothing except make vague threats about next time. Next time we'll get them. Next time.

That has sealed it. This is what has elected Bush. It is the complacent acceptance that has elected him. Everyone, from Kerry on down, has said, "Ok, time to move on". That is Bush's real mandate. We all just rolled over, and now we're lying in pathetic little blue puddles of our despair, trying to pull ourselves up by our metaphorical bootstraps by promising ourselves that we really will show 'em next time. Meanwhile, Bush can do whatever he wants. Who's going to stop him? Not us. We're going back to work, back to real life; paying bills, buying groceries, catching up on the latest update on whatever the murder trial du jour is, or whatever reality show is out there; debasing the human spirit for 'entertainment' and commercial revenues. We're busy, we're tired, we'll fight next time.

Within a few short hours of Kerry's concession speech, the left wing focus shifted to how we will win next time. Next time. This pathetic mewl of defiance completely falls within the definition of insanity: repeating the same behavior and expecting different results. We are like the poor weak little kid lying in the snow, bruised and bloodied and nose snotty and bleeding and who can't find his glasses. As soon as the bully who did it and his friends are around the corner, the kid issues a feeble cry, "I'm gonna get you next time! I'll really kick your butt then!" And then the hot tears really start. I understand the need for defiance, but why should we believe for a minute that in two years it will be different? That there will be no voter fraud, no cheating, no dirty tricks? That they won't use these next two years to get better at controlling elections than they are now? How insane is it to pat ourselves on the back and say, "Gosh, look, we came so close! Next time we'll do it; next time, yeah, next time"? Wake up, this was the time, and we took a licking and said thank you. There won't be a next time, not as long as we lie to ourselves.

While we're sitting around sniveling and dreaming of our revenge, the bully and his friends are going to get bigger and stronger. These people dream of world domination. The American electoral process is a minor impediment to them. Ignoring this reality is the road to insanity and failure.
It's a bitter pill to swallow, but I say at least be big enough to see this for what it is.

The next election will be less of an election than this election. Oh, we'll get little victories here and there, enough to make this Matrix-like reality significantly believable for the millions of us who would truly like to believe that our votes count and, if they didn't, we really would do whatever it takes, but, oh well, we came so close. Next time we'll do it. Next time.

There will be no next time on those terms. This country is now headed inexorably down a road that will take a generation or more to get off of, If we even can. If America as we know it even survives.

Nations do go crazy sometimes, and the progression of symptoms we've been exhibiting here in the Good Ol' USA has entered rubber room territory. We are a people in dangerous denial. Don't participate in it by accepting this insanity as your reality. Even as everyone around you buys into the comfort zone of 'next time', stay strong by never acknowledging it as your truth. Whatever else you do, for God's sake, at least see this for what it really was.

The extreme right-wing of the Republican party has not only sealed a majority rule in this election, they now have carte blanche for the next two years to further consolidate their hold on everything that truly fosters democratic participation: the media, the Supreme Court, voting machines, gerrymandered Republican districts that guarantee majority re-election indefinitely. You name it, their iron fist is now wrapped around it. Even the Internet.

Never forget: by rolling over as we all collectively just did, we have kept in office the man who granted himself the power to take any of us, declare us enemies of the state, strip us of our citizenship, torture us and jail us indefinitely, with no due process. Just because they've only done it so far to swarthy looking men who don't really look 'American' to Bush's supporters doesn't mean the rest of us are exempt. All the warm fuzziness of network anchor assurances do not change that.

We have given Bush two completely unobstructed years to enhance and consolidate those powers before facing the electorate again. By that time, the electoral process will be more akin to some bizarre national obsessive compulsive ritual than any kind of real participatory process: voting will become useless repetitive behavior compulsively acted out to relieve national anxiety with no reality based connection. We'll vote in record numbers again, the votes will be manipulated, and our TV pundits will console us with meaningless explanations. More insane behavior. But don't think about it now. The kids have soccer practice to get to. Gotta get gas. There's a new terrorist threat. We voted, what else are we supposed to do? We're busy.

Besides, things aren't really that bad here. Look at how we turned out the vote. We came so close. Next time we'll do it. Next time.

When the 2006 elections come around, and we're out there plugging away, we'll still come soooo close, just not quite close enough. We'll win a few, but we'll lose more. But there's always next time, right? We'll do it next time. Next time.

Americans used to be so smug about Soviet elections. What a joke they were. Not like us. Well, welcome to the new America. We'll all go vote on our shiny new privately owned electronic machines, machines that will be everywhere by the next national 'election', with votes that will be counted by privatized vote counters. Don't worry your little heads about paper trails or accountability. To question is to undermine confidence in our leadership. Good citizens don't do that. Go home and turn on your privately owned corporate media outlets who will soothingly tell you that everything is all right. A few malcontents may have to be put down, but the people will have spoken: the Great Leader can continue his Holy Mission. God loves us, we're Americans.

And the next election will be even less of an election than the previous election. And the election after that even less. But they will look great on TV.

Why are we taking this so complacently? I mean, seriously, what is it going to take? When will enough be enough? Are we waiting for someone to tell us what to do? Are we waiting for someone to do it for us? Or are we so afraid to lose what we have that we will trade what we should value most for it?

I think of the men who formed this nation. They were a tiny minority, but they didn't wait for someone to tell them it was time for a revolution. They thought; long, deep and hard, and then they acted. One of those men said, "Any man willing to trade liberty for security will have neither." I don't think most of us can even conceive of the true depth of that concept. These men, our founding fathers, weren't poor. They had a lot to lose. Some of them lost everything. Some of those signatures on your Declaration of Independence are names of men who started out their fight wealthy men of property and who died broken and penniless by the time it was over. But they believed that freedom was more important than their wealth and comfort. These weren't slaves fighting for their freedom, with nothing to lose but a life of slavery. These were men who led comfortable middle and upper class lives. Could that happen now? Who among us really has the stomach for that? We are so comfortable. We are shackled by our comfort and so terrified of losing it that we ignore the price we are paying with our humanity, and our sanity. Never mind. Turn on the TV, we'll fight next time. Next time.

The most important thing to be done right now, at the very least, is to face the truth. Whatever else we do, and as hard as it is, at least face this honestly. Acknowledge what we really know happened. Think, for God's sake. What have we become? We just had a second sham election and we did nothing about it except talk about next time. We're killing tens of thousands of people who are no threat to us. Our children are cannon fodder for the profits of the ultra wealthy. Too many of us think this is a good way to be because it is God's will. This really is who America is right now. Refusing to see that while dreaming about 'next time' borders on pathological behavior. Don't do it.
In Robert Heinlein's classic book "Stranger in a Strange Land", there was a character who was a 'Fair Witness'. A Fair Witness was trained to be a scientifically objective witness, so objective that their testimony in a court of law was automatically accepted as Truth, unaffected by any subjectivity, emotion, or bias. We need to be our own Fair Witnesses to this time in our country. Be rigorously honest with yourself about this.

In WW II Germany, the good German citizens of towns downwind of Auschwitz and Dachau swore that they never knew what was being done by their government. As hundreds and hundreds of thousands of bodies were incinerated not even a few miles upwind of them, they swore they never noticed the smell that was horribly obvious to the liberating soldiers. They didn't want to know and therefore they didn't. Perhaps they did it out of misguided nationalism, or fear for their very lives, but they did it. They were as insane as the Nazis. Ignoring the truth is the road to insanity and failure.

We have to be like the few in Germany who held on to the truth and their humanity through the darkest times. Like those who worked in the resistance. Who hid Jews at their own peril, because it was the right thing, the sane thing, to do. Who looked at the truth head on and survived with their sanity and their humanity bruised but intact. We have to be Fair Witnesses to the truth around us, never giving in to the easy and comfortable propaganda that let's us off the hook. That starts with a brutally honest look at what just happened.

When madness is all around, like a turbulent, relentless sea, the only thing worth hanging onto is a hard, unflinching grasp of the truth.

No matter what happens now, at least hang on to the truth.

Ruth Lopez
Florida
A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION

Love,
Rainbow

Rainbow I don't think this message is "not important" now at all. It's exactly what we need to hear now.

Yes, it's wonderful news that a few of us are calling a spade a spade, and working to bring the facts of this election fraud before the court of public opinion ... as well as whatever courts of law still exist that have not been pre-empted by imperial decree ... and that we can even count a member of the mass media or a member of Congress here and there among our number ... that's wonderful news, indeed.

But if we simply say, "well, thank goodness somebody's looking into this and trying to do something about it," then go back to sleep, such tiny resistance as there is will only serve the ends of those who stand poised with jackboots on our necks (kinder, gentler, compassionate jackboots, to be sure). "See?" they will say as the courts refuse to hear our cases and the 'independent' commissions investigate our charges and conclude that there's no cause for alarm, "the fact that you were allowed to protest at all just proves that we live in the freest of Nations. You couldn't have raised questions about the elections in Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia, could you? So shut up now, and let us get back to God's work of spreading democracy throughout the world. Shut up and pass the ammunition."

And that's not exaggeration for effect, it's a simple, literal description of what will happen ... what has already happened and will continue to happen at an ever-accelerating pace, until they no longer have the need to even appear to appease us with lip-service to principles of freedom and democracy ... unless we put a stop to it now.

How do we put a stop to it now? By opening our mouths and speaking the truth everywhere ... even where it's not "acceptable" to talk politics, even where it is politically incorrect, even where it causes hard feelings among our families and friends and neighbors, even where it threatens our jobs and standings in our communities.

Even, for some of us, where it means being hauled off to jail for protesting without a license or "endangering national security," or losing our jobs and being blackballed in our professions for "inappropriate conduct."

We are very much in the same position as our founding fathers over two hundred years ago, who gave us the blessings of freedom we have enjoyed with their willingness to risk everything, up to and including their "lives and fortunes," that we might grow up in a land where liberty was assured ... only now the tyrants we must oppose are not across the ocean but in our own back yard.

Think about this, folks ... this is not melodrama, this is reality. How we respond to it RIGHT NOW, will determine the possibility of freedom in our own future, and the future of our children and our children's children.

No kidding.

Love,
Greg

Yes, strike while the evidence is hot, or the moment will pass us by. We need a nation-wide Amber alert of sorts. This election was just snatched from us...again. They say when a child is abducted the chances for finding them deplete more everyday. The abducter gets more time to get further away and rid all evidence. This, I fear is what will happen if we don't act now.
Great article, Ginny. Keep passing it on wherever you can.

Greg, I had an idea. I'm the first one to admit that with all my Fire, I'm better at ideas than following through.
Curse of impulsiveness. But, I was thinking about how I'm sure that Bush's next step (one of many horrific ones) will be to send all of the poor folk of this country another $800 check,a "tax break" once again as a means of distraction to the fact that the rich of this country will be getting millions.
This way people are tricked into believing they are getting something as well.
I was amazed to discover how many people fell for that. I mean, did they look at their tax form in the Spring and realize the "give-away" was in a reality a "loan", for it was deducted there. (how stupid do they play us for? very stupid indeed...let that piss you off.)
I consider it nothing less than Blood Money at this point. A buy off....to keep us sheep-like and unquestioning. So many Americans are stretched to the limit...humiliatingly in need of that money. And that's where they want us!

It would really make a statement if a movement was started, which stated that we are not going to be bought off at any price any longer. What if we were to take the checks and instead of sending them back to the government in protest, they were collected instead and given to inner city schools and the poor? For, if our government won't take care of our forsaken, then we will!

Ha...I know, it's a crazy thought. Will it even happen? (remember....he's gonna spend the capital HE'S earned ) People are obsessed with money. Is the future of this country as important? Their integrity? Their honor? Their charity?
I know all of that is to me. I wonder how many out there feel the same.

Keep on with that Fire, Greg.
Together is our power.

You know.......we've got that scary map of the US showing all of the red and the little blue (which evidence might show us is a farce anyway.)...but if you were to look at a map of the entire World...look at our Earth in an expansive way, the colors would show us that we are not a minority in any way.

Lisa

Hello again folks,

Greg, that is so amazing how near you are. Very nice of you to offer your support. You/they have mine also if there is anything specific I can do.

Rainbow, interesting that Lopez quotes from Robert Heinlein's 'Stranger In a Strange Land,' a book Linda had VERY strong feelings about (in fact it involved her conflict with Goob) (Canto 14 p. 457 is one place it is mentioned). Another synchro!

Greg, wise words, and you are so right that we must talk starting in our immediate circles. The first reaction people have is, oh it's too late, and there can be no evidence... we need to remind them that there is no such thing as impossible.

So last night I tuned in to bloggerman's show on MSNBC. First, there was banter about all the emails, and the fact that he was the only media person responding... a non 'wimp.' He gave a few examples of oopsies with voting problems.

Then some musing about why no post election mass outcry, why no fight from the Dems.... ????? Guessing people were simply TIRED ... and so not putting the pieces together right away ...

As promised, he featured the Geo Wash U lawyer. He basically said the states ratify their electoral votes by Dec. 1 I think. Would it be each sec of state doing that? What about the Sec of State in Ohio - Republican -- But--it's POSSIBLE the electoral college CAN affect this outcome. It seems like NOW is the best time:

Keith also asked him hyphothetical scenarios of what would happen after January if it all didn't come to light right away, say it took two years...

Well there would only be impeachment available. Would need one senator and one rep to begin it.

He said, suppose we had a President A who was accused by Senator B of election fraud, and all the evidence was gathered, and everything was in place down to the DNA evidence...what then?

Answer: It would have to be PROVEN that Pres. A KNEW all about it, so looks like Sen. B would be out of luck.

[To that I say NONSENSE, time for some new precedent! In addition to time for some new president! President A should be responsible for the conduct of all his underlings.]

This sequence was followed up by a satire by Mo Rocca, a comedian I had seen on Larry King during the conventions. He was supposedly coming out with a new book about the first pets, seems Laura has just been given a Scottish terrier puppy they will name Miss Beasley. Rocca joked about Barney, the Bushes' other scottie, saying what a disappointment he has been because he's not moderate enough. He rambled on talking about other famous people who have owned scotties, until he said, "Of course, Eva Braun had a couple of scotties... " and I forget what else he said, but I couldn't believe I was hearing it on a news show !!!!!!

Well let's keep encouraging the bloggerman to ride on. At his website today it says this is not nutty, and NOW is the time to do something.

Love,

Lisa, As I told you, I think that's a great idea!

Here's a new one. Some of you may have heard about it but it seems things are so messed up regarding the voting in North Carolina that they are calling for a new election there. Here's the story from the Charlotte News:

Tally of provisional ballots continues today

Voter not registered? Toss it. Voter not dead? Count that one back in

RICHARD RUBIN AND CARRIE LEVINE

Staff Writers


http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/news/politics/10142064.htm


The Mecklenburg County Board of Elections counted trays of ballots into the darkness Tuesday night, trying to wrap up the official tally of last week's election.

The board spent the afternoon deciding which of more than 6,200 provisional ballots it would include in the final totals. In the end, it rejected 2,304, mostly because the voters were registered in another county or not registered at all.

That meant the three-member board -- two Democrats and one Republican -- still had to tabulate the 3,923 votes it was accepting, a process that required them to open each envelope and feed the punch-card ballots into an automatic counter. That didn't start until around 8:15, after a dinner break.

Many of the accepted ballots were cast by people who had not reported their new addresses to election officials. Others came from voters who went to the wrong precinct. Four were cast by people removed from the voter rolls because they were listed as dead; election staff members checked signatures to confirm their eligibility.

The provisional ballot count could affect the results of four tight races: an at-large election for Mecklenburg County commissioner, a Mecklenburg Superior Court judgeship and statewide races for agriculture commissioner and superintendent of public education.

Fueled by Hershey's Kisses and supported by already worn-out staff, the board members started at about 11:30 a.m. and seemed ready to continue until they finished. They flipped through thousands of envelopes, checking for proper signatures.

They worked in front of an often-talkative audience of lawyers, reporters, former county commissioners, current county commissioners and future county commissioners.

The board had no split votes, though the one Republican, Phil Summa, raised two objections. He argued against counting ballots that were not signed by a precinct official, but neither of his Democratic colleagues seconded his motion. Summa's second objection was to the concept of counting votes cast in the wrong precinct. But he acknowledged that state law required the board to count those votes.

Actually tallying ballots from the wrong precinct is time-consuming. Those voters punched a full ballot, but the only votes that will count will be in races that include their correct precinct. The board members were planning to create a new punch card for each of those voters, on just the part of the ballot containing the proper races.

At the beginning of Tuesday's board meeting, election officials gave a detailed explanation of vote-counting errors on election night. They explained how the results from some early-voting machines were counted two or three times, and how others were not counted at all.

As the meeting started, board Chair Georgia Lewis thanked the staff for its work.

"I commend them sincerely for giving every ounce of their strength to handle this unfortunate series of events with such patience and dedication," she said. "I feel sure that anyone in this office would have taken an old-fashioned licking rather than to have had this happen." -- HOWIE PAUL HARTNETT CONTRIBUTED.

It seems some more of the national news reporters are picking up on the story but they are dismissing it as internet conspiracy therories. However, it causing some to take notice and insist on an investigation because this shows them that due to all the problems with machines etc. voter confidence is low. I got an email from Common Cause today and while they don't seem the evidence points to fraud they did say it was being presented to Congress as proof that voter confidence is low due to all the problems in our voter systems.

Here are the stories: first the Boston Globe

Internet buzz on vote fraud is dismissed
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/11/10/internet_buzz_on_vote_fraud_is_dismissed/

By Rick Klein, Globe Staff | November 10, 2004

WASHINGTON -- As they ricochet around the country on the Internet, the details seem aligned to raise the eyebrows of suspicious Democrats.

President Bush recorded 4,258 votes to Senator John F. Kerry's 260 in one suburb of Columbus, Ohio -- where only 638 ballots were cast. Across Ohio, some 76,000 punch-card ballots did not register votes for president, and officials have only begun to comb through 155,428 provisional ballots.

In Holmes County, Florida, though nearly three-quarters of registered voters are Democrats, Bush wiped out Kerry, 6,410 to 1,810, in results that mirrored those in several other counties where optical-scan paper ballots were used. And in Florida's Broward County, after the first 32,000 absentee ballots were fed into the computer system, a software glitch caused additional ballots to be subtracted from vote totals, rather than added.

A week after Kerry conceded and Bush declared victory, those assertions and scores of others from New Mexico to North Carolina have kept alive fierce speculation that Bush's victory either wasn't real or wasn't as decisive as it seemed. With memories fresh from the 2000 irregularities, e-mails and Web postings accuse Republicans of stealing an election.

Much of the traffic is little more than Internet-fueled conspiracy theories, and none of the vote-counting problems and anomalies that have emerged are sufficiently widespread to have affected the election's ultimate result.

Kerry campaign officials and a range of election-law specialists agree that while machines made errors and long lines in Democratic precincts kept many voters away, there's no realistic chance that Kerry actually beat Bush.

''No one would be more interested than me in finding out that we really won, but that ain't the case," said Jack Corrigan, a veteran Kerry adviser who led the Democrats' team of 3,600 attorneys who fanned out across the country on Election Day to address voting irregularities.

''I get why people are frustrated, but they did not steal this election," Corrigan said. ''There were a few problems here and there in the election. But unlike 2000, there is no doubt that they actually got more votes than we did, and they got them in the states that mattered."

Still, with reports swirling on the Internet, six Democratic members of Congress have asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate. Leading academics have joined the fray as well, saying that the integrity and future of the nation's voting system demand a vetting of all claims.

''The kind of thing that has to happen is a full-scale investigation," said Troy Duster, a New York University professor who is president of the American Sociological Association. ''It sounds like a paranoid fantasy, but I think the data suggests that even if Bush won, he didn't win by the kind of margins that are out there. We have a crisis here of potential legitimacy with all the stuff going on on the Web, and the way to deal with this is to do the research."

Most of the focus has been on results in Ohio and Florida, since if either of those states had gone for Kerry instead of Bush, the Massachusetts senator would be president-elect. Early exit polls in both states indicated that Kerry was track to win, and in each state voting and counting irregularities in numerous places have been reported. ''Fraud took place in the 2004 election," declares the team at BlackBoxVoting.org, one popular website that is compiling reports of election problems.

''Kerry won. Here are the facts," reads the headline on a widely circulated article written by the author of a scathing book on the Bush family.

Another site suggests Kerry is refusing to contest the election because fellow members of the Yale secret society Skull and Bones forbade him to do so.

After one e-mailer erroneously suggested that Kerry's brother, Cameron, was compiling reports of voting problems, Cameron Kerry's e-mail inbox was inundated with hundreds of messages, received at the pace of several per minute through yesterday. He sent out a stock response saying ''we are not ignoring" the reports, asking that they be forwarded to the Democratic National Committee instead of his e-mail address at his Boston law firm.

Though Corrigan said all allegations will be investigated by the Democratic legal team, he added that it has become clear that 2004 was no repeat of 2000. That year, an abbreviated Florida recount resulted in a 537-vote margin of victory for Bush, and many Democrats believe a full and impartial recount would have handed the election to Democrat Al Gore.

This year, the race wasn't nearly as close in the states that hung in the balance. According to preliminary results from last week's election, Bush carried Florida by 380,000 votes, and Ohio by 136,000. Corrigan said Democrats won't push for hand recounts this year, because they wouldn't change the results, a point backed by election specialists.

''I think it's safe to say that on the votes that were cast in Ohio, Bush won," said Dan Tokaji, a law professor at Ohio State University who is working with the ACLU to challenge Ohio's use of punch-card ballots. ''If the margin had been 36,000 rather than 136,000, we would have seen another post-election meltdown."

The apparent computer glitch that awarded Bush an extra 3,893 votes in Gahanna, Ohio, was quickly caught and won't be in the final certified numbers. The 76,000 punch cards across the state where no vote for president was recorded include ballots cast by people who chose not to vote for the top office, as well as those who mistakenly chose more than one candidate. That group, of course, includes voters who intended to support Bush as well as those who meant to support Kerry.

As a percentage of the total, the number of ballots recording no vote for president was actually lower than it's been in recent elections in the state, Corrigan noted. Democrats are making sure provisional ballots are counted, but almost all of those votes would have to be for Kerry to swing the election, and many are expected to be ruled invalid.

In Florida, the Democratic-leaning counties that went for Bush are in the culturally conservative Panhandle, where the president beat Gore in 2000 and where he made particularly intense appeals this year. The software error that started subtracting votes rather than adding them affected only a few ballot measures, and was caught and corrected.

Richard Hasen, an election law specialist at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, noted that with the election overseen by 13,000 different local jurisdictions -- many of which were employing new technologies on Election Day -- scattered problems were inevitable.

''I would be surprised if there wouldn't be glitches like this," Hasen said.

As for the exit polls, they remain subject to sampling errors and limitations in data gathering. The polls sponsored by a consortium of media companies had margins of error of roughly 3 percent, and in closely contested states shown to be leaning toward Kerry, narrow Bush wins were actually within the expected range. Florida's margin was larger than expected, but poll takers reported problems getting close enough to voting places to collect adequate samples, and said they feared they were not getting Bush voters to be as forthcoming with their choice as Kerry voters.

Heather Gerken, a professor at Harvard Law School, said the fact that this year's election went smoothly compared to 2000 shouldn't blind policy makers to problems still inherent in the system. Many jurisdictions continue to use outdated equipment, states are behind in compiling reliable voter lists, and elections are still run by partisan officials, she said.

''I have not yet seen anything that convinces me that the election was stolen, but I certainly think that we should treat these allegations seriously and do them justice," she said. ''There's clearly problems with the elections system. It's crucial to the health of this country that we have an election system that we can trust."

Globe correspondent Alan Wirzbicki contributed to this report. Rick Klein can be reached at rklein@globe.com.

From ABC News:


WASHINGTON, Nov. 9, 2004 -- There were minor voting irregularities on Election Day - long lines, voting machine breakdowns, shortages of provisional ballots - but some people are now leveling charges of voter fraud.


Doug Chapin, a nonpartisan election analyst, finds the claims to be baseless. "There were no problems that would lead me to believe that there were stolen elections or widespread fraud," he said.


"There was no overwhelming reason to cast doubt on the outcome of this election," seconded Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, the campaign manager for Al Gore's 2000 campaign. "George Bush got more votes this time."
Nevertheless, many people have devised various theories, including stories of voters in largely Democratic counties in Florida whose votes were changed for Bush, phantom voters in Ohio and exit polls showing John Kerry in the lead that were truer than the final tally. Off the record, many Democratic strategists dismiss such allegations, but they also know such resentment can be channeled for political use in the future.


Those Florida Democrats Who Mysteriously Voted for Bush

Based at least in part on these conspiracy theories, three Democratic congressmen have written a letter to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

"We are requesting an investigation into all the allegations, of irregularities with respect to the electronic and other voting machines so that people can have confidence in the result of this election, and so that any weaknesses are changed before the next election," said Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y.

The congressmen's letter mentions the Web site ustogether.org, which questions why so many counties in Florida that have more registered Democrats than Republicans ended up voting for Bush. The Web site implies someone fixed the results.

In regard to Lafayette County, one of the counties in question, it is true that there are far more registered Democrats in that county than Republicans (3,570 to 570, respectively), and that the county elected Bush in this year's election, but the county elected Bush in the last election, too.



Four years before that, the Republican presidential candidate, Bob Dole, won in Lafayette County as well, as did the first President Bush four years before that.



Rep. Kendrick Meek, the co-chair of the Kerry campaign in Florida, says he knows why Bush was re-elected, and it has nothing to do with fraud.





"We did a good job, but the other side did a better job," he said.



Meek expresses serious concern that the conspiracy theories might create a sense of helplessness among voters and suppress future Democratic turnout.



The counties in question use Optiscan ballots (where voters indicate their choice by marking a circle with a No. 2 pencil), which was not the voting method people worried about before the election since, unlike electronic voting, the ballots leave a paper trail, and unlike punch card ballots, they can be counted and used easily.



"Before the election in many places you saw people questioning the process because they were concerned about the result," said Chapin. "And now there are people looking at the result and using that as a basis to question the process."




Ohio Conspiracy Theories


In the battleground state of Ohio, where conspiracy theories abound, a Web site for Cuyahoga County seemed to show more votes than voters in some precincts.



The county's Web site was confusing - it lumped several precincts' absentee ballots together and then counted them several times, for each precinct. But those were glitches in vote-reporting - not vote-counting. The "phantom" voters who mysteriously appeared and voted for Bush in the county -which voted overwhelmingly for Kerry - did not exist other than in the imagination of Democrats upset about Kerry's loss.



This afternoon, the Web site that first raised the questions about the Cuyahoga votes took it all back. "OK," wrote the Webmeister at "Americans 4 America," "finally had a chance to figure this out. I apologize for any anxiety that went along with these numbers. It seems that data is useless without knowing how counties arrived at the numbers and this was a particularly tricky process."



Exit Polls as Fact?



Finally, there is the controversy regarding the television networks' exit polls, which seemed early on to indicate a better day for Kerry than the one he actually had.



But as we now all know, the exit polls were off a bit. Regardless, exit polls are not hard data, they are as accurate as polling - which is sometimes on target, and sometimes not. "If I'm given exit polls and voting results, and I'm [asked] which do I rely on more, I rely on voting results," said Norman Ornstein, a political analyst at the American Enterprise Institute.


Clearly for many people, however, results are not enough. When Mark Twain remarked that a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can put on his shoes, it's astounding to think he was speaking decades before the invention of the Internet.



Clayton Sandell contributed to this report.

Ralph Nader in his speech today said there were irregularites that need to be investigated throughly and that he felt Kerry conceded the election too soon. He said the Democratic party needs to investigate and follow through on their promise to their supporters to see that all votes were counted. I can't for the life of me understand why the Democratic party is taking this stand that Bush won fair and square. Though according to what was at Olbermann's site Kerry's brother said the Democratic party was investigating it.

Nothing was mentioned in either the Globe story or ABC News about the lock down of the voting committee in Warren, Ohio. Olbermann said on his show tonight that though the officials said they got word from the FBI and the National Security people that there was a code 10 in Warren, Ohio and to lock down the vote tallying. Olbermann said when the FBI and Tom Ridge were contacted they said they gave no such orders so why the lies and who is lying? Another odd thing is that right after the election Tom Ridge resigned. It really ticks me off that because people are questioning the election ABC News and the Boston Globe are painting us as conspiracy theorists or crackpots just to dismiss us. We have a right to question without being labeled.

Ginny in your post she expressed my feelings exactly and I think many more Americans feel angry too. I just don't think the media is letting them know all these things.

I watched Keith Olbermann's Countdown show tonight and he talked to someone at Newsweek and they also said there needs to be an investigation and that Olbermann should keep the heat on. He thinks the media are just now coming back from vacation after a long campaign and election and the story will pick up more momentum in next few days and weeks.

Love, Connie

Thanks, Connie.

I hope that Olbermann is correct in his thought that the mass media has just been "on vacation" after a long campaign and election, and that the story will pick up more momentum in next few days and weeks. However, from the stories you've posted here "pooh-poohing" the idea of election fraud, and others I've seen, it would appear the mass media is still pursuing their "don't rock the boat" policy when it comes to challenging the administration ... and sadly this policy seems to be echoed by the Democratic leadership as well.

When you read between the lines, what all these stories that are debunking the idea of election fraud boil down to is, "Yes, there were definitely inaccurate results reported in some places (whether due to fraud and/or "errors and malfunctions"), and these inaccuracies favored the Republicans, but the discrepancies that have been identified aren't big enough to have changed the outcome, therefore we can be confident that the election was fair."

Wait a minute! That's not objective reporting, that's spin, pure and simple. In the first place, it only refers to the errors that have been accurately identified so far ... but if these inaccuracies are known to exist, after a lot of trouble tracking them down and validating them, then it is a virtual certainty that others exist as well ... many of which will probably never be uncovered due to the lack of a paper trail or any objective auditing system.

But far more important than this is the implied assertion that voter fraud or machine errors are not important unless they change the outcome of the election, which is absolutely erroneous! If we can't trust our voting system, that is a major problem for democracy, whether it changed the outcome of this election or not. Just because a burglar doesn't successfully make off with the loot, doesn't make him less guilty of the crime. Fraud is fraud and "error" (always on the side of the Republicans) is error, regardless of whether or not it changed the final outcome of the vote. For the defenders of our freedom to imply otherwise is irresponsible at best, if not downright treasonous!

For example, the results of the statistical analysis of New Mexico's voting have just been tabulated as of this morning, and they show outlandish results across the board. For example, in one county alone (Union County), 972 registered Republican voters somehow managed to cast 1,454 votes for Bush! At the same time, the 1,393 registered Democrats (who voted) mysteriously cast only 411 votes for Kerry! Folks, this is a seriously broken system, whether it would have changed the winner or not! This MUST be fixed, and the pundits trying to sweep it under the carpet are actively sabotaging democracy.

Love,
Greg

I'm So Excited!!!!! Had to come right here and tell you guys. I just checked my email and there was one from MoveOn.org and now they are on it!!!!

This is what I was hoping and praying for. We all know the things that MoveOn has acheived. Now I just know Common Cause and True Majority will be on it too. Read what they say and please sign the petition to get more Representives to back the other three. Everything that MoveOn does the media picks up on. Yippeeee! And I was really down and depressed about this all night and all day today thinking it isn't going anywhere and they are just dismissing us.


Dear MoveOn member,

Questions are swirling around whether the election was conducted honestly or not. We need to know -- was it or wasn't it?

If people were wrongly prevented from voting, or if legitimate votes were mis-counted or not counted at all, we need to know so the wrongdoers can be held accountable, and so we can prevent this from happening again.

Members of Congress are demanding an investigation to answer this question. The decision on whether or not there will be an investigation could come as soon as Monday. Join us in supporting the call for one now, at:

http://www.moveon.org/investigatethevote/

Then please invite your friends and colleagues to sign, as well. We need to show Congress that hundreds of thousands of Americans are serious about protecting the integrity of the vote.

We're all hearing the stories and wondering what's true and what isn't. But at least two cases of serious problems are accepted beyond doubt:

In Broward County, Florida, electronic voting machines counted backwards: as more people voted, the official vote count went down. [1]


In one Columbus, Ohio suburb, election officials have acknowledged that electronic voting machines credited Bush with winning 4,258 votes, even though only 638 people voted there. [2]


These are just cases where we know something went wrong. There were also lots of reports of people being denied ballots on Election Day. So far, these reports remain anecdotal, but they must be compiled and examined. And the Internet is abuzz with theories about why the official counts were so different from the exit polls.

Do you have a story? Were you prevented from voting? Tell us, at:

http://www.moveon.org/investigatethevote/

Six prominent members of Congress have called for an investigation. Representatives Conyers (D-MI), Holt (D-NJ), Nadler (D-NY), Scott (D-VA), Watt (D-NC) and Wexler (D-FL), have demanded that the U.S. General Accounting Office:

immediately undertake an investigation of the efficacy of voting machines and new technologies used in the 2004 election, how election officials responded to difficulties they encountered, and what we can do in the future to improve our election systems and administration. [3]
We've got to support their call by asking our own Representatives and Senators to join them.

If you have a personal story of disenfranchisement, tell us. These members of Congress have agreed to include our stories and comments in their call for an investigation. Please sign now -- we'll deliver our compiled statements to them on Friday.

Even if you don't have a personal story, your signature on our petition will still help build support for an investigation.

To keep our faith in democracy, we need to know the facts. Your signature, and your story if you have one, will help.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

--Carrie, Joan, Lee, Marika, Noah, Peter, Rosalyn, and Wes
The MoveOn.org Team
November 11th, 2004

Footnotes:

1. Broward Machines Count Backward, Palm Beach Post, November 5, 2004
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/politics/content/news/epaper/2004/11/05/a29a_BROWVOTE_1105.html

2. Glitch Gave Bush Extra Votes in Ohio, AP carried on CNN, November 5, 2004
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/05/voting.problems.ap/

3. Letters from members of Congress to David Walker, Comptroller General of the United States, demanding an investigation of the election: November 5th, 2004 & November 8th, 2004
http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/gaoinvestvote2004ltr11804.pdf
http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/gaoinvestvote2004ltr11804.pdf


Love, Connie

I just read your post after I calmed down, Greg

You are right. Pure spin by corporate owned news media. And we have a right to know how many mix ups and errors happened.

Pass this one on to MoveOn about New Mexico. They might not have heard about it yet. They also do not list the vote counting being shut down in Warren, Ohio and the conflicting stories between the election officials in Warren regarding the lock down and the FBI and Homeland Security denying they told them to do that. Someone is lying. Who? and Why? Why lie if everything was on the up and up?

Hopefully now with MoveOn involved we can get things happening in Congress and in the Democratic National Committee. Could be they were just being cautious, waiting to get the data before filing charges or doing anything. If they cried foul and there was none it would be bad for the Democratic Party in the next elections. Protecting the Party.

Love, Connie

Will do, Connie.

Actually, because of my database background, I'm getting involved in the detailed analysis of voting results that blackboxvoting.org is undertaking ... it's a massive task ... and am being updated on the results as all the various volunteers complete their tabulations. The one NM county I mentioned is only one out of dozens in that state alone that make no sense!

I, too, am feeling like we're gaining a little more traction ... but we're going to have to push hard every step of the way, because a LOT of folks want us to shut up and see this issue go away ... and the press, for the most part, isn't helping, they're deriding it as a non-issue if they mention it at all. But there are some exceptions, and hopefully they'll grow. Keep on trucking!

Love,
Greg

Cool Greg I finally got in the blackbox site early this morning and I saw where they asked for help from those with your computer knowledge. At the time I thought "this would be right up Greg's alley."

If approved by blackbox that puts you in a good position to keep MoveOn (and any of the other groups like Common Cause that might join in on this) informed of new developments.

This is just totally awesome and I have to think that God is behind it. Maybe he is getting tired of these people using Christianity for their own political agendas and doing the things they do in his name. I remember a part of Scripture where God warns, "Be careful what you do and say in my name."

Love, Connie

Something new to add from Bev Harris. I really like her. She's fiesty. Very happy that Ralph Nader joined up with us. The Democrats owe him a big time apology. Especially if it turns out that Kerry won Ohio. I am not up early. I have had about 2 hours sleep in the last two nights because all this is happening so fast from day to day that I am too excited to sleep. I can't shut down my mind. If you guys don't hear from me for two days it is because I crashed. I sent in my contribution already - what I could afford at this time but every little bit helps. It adds up if we all pass this around to everyone we know. It added up pretty good for Kerry's campaign.

Good News From Bev Harris

This is amazing and very hopeful! Bev Harris http://www.blackboxvoting.org and Ralph Nader had a press conference in DC today. They have teamed up with http://www.ballotintegrity.org/ and have set up a 527 special fund http://helpamericarecount.org/ to buy recounts. They worked with Bev Harris's lawyer who is an election specialist attorney. They have found a little used law that allows a recount if it's requested by five citizens who voted in that state and did not vote for the candidate who won. The state wants a down payment of ten dollars a precinct, so they need money fast!

Send to the fund http://helpamericarecount.org/ All the funds are for recounts and will be prioritized by the most suspicious counties first. It will be about $200,000 to recount Ohio, which is the first target because it has very provable anomolies that show massive fraud- Bev says, "Very strange and impossible math"; then Florida.

If you go to http://helpamericarecount.org/ or www.blackboxvoting.org and can't get there, it's because their website keeps getting shut down and they keep having to put it back up. They are going to have to switch to a specialist host; a company who specializes in protecting websites that are under attack constantly. So if you can't get there, keep trying.

Also, there is a woman who has, on her own, filed for a recount in Nevada, using the same law.

And, Ralph Nader is going to pay for a recount in New Hampshire to audit the Diebold machines there.

About the Help America Recount Fund from their website:
http://helpamericarecount.org/

Love, Connie

I'm back. Just went to read my email and noticed we made The New York Times today. We have a new name "Votergate." lol I had to laugh out loud while reading this article. We are "frustrating" election officials and I notice how quick everyone is coming out to deny it and dismiss it all as "hearsay." I got a real laugh out of this:

"It becomes a snowball of hearsay," said Matthew Damschroder, the director of elections in Columbus, Ohio, where an electronic voting machine malfunctioned in one precinct and allotted some 4,000 votes to President Bush, kicking off its own flurry of Web speculation. That particular problem was unusual and remains unexplained, but it was caught and corrected, Mr. Damschroder said."

He doesn't know about the recount coming his way yet. Would love to see his expression when he finds out.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/12/politics/12theory.html?pagewanted=1&th&oref=login

By TOM ZELLER Jr.

Published: November 12, 2004


The e-mail messages and Web postings had all the twitchy cloak-and-dagger thrust of a Hollywood blockbuster. "Evidence mounts that the vote may have been hacked," trumpeted a headline on the Web site CommonDreams.org. "Fraud took place in the 2004 election through electronic voting machines," declared BlackBoxVoting.org.

In the space of seven days, an online market of dark ideas surrounding last week's presidential election took root and multiplied.

But while the widely read universe of Web logs was often blamed for the swift propagation of faulty analyses, the blogosphere, as it has come to be known, spread the rumors so fast that experts were soon able to debunk them, rather than allowing them to linger and feed conspiracy theories. Within days of the first rumors of a stolen election, in fact, the most popular theories were being proved wrong - though many were still reluctant to let them go.

Much of the controversy, called Votergate 2004 by some, involved real voting anomalies in Florida and Ohio, the two states on which victory hinged. But ground zero in the online rumor mill, it seems, was Utah.

"I love the process of democracy, and I think it's more important than the outcome," said Kathy Dopp, an Internet enthusiast living near Salt Lake City. It was Ms. Dopp's analysis of the vote in Florida (she has a master's degree in mathematics) that set off a flurry of post-election theorizing by disheartened Democrats who were certain, given early surveys of voters leaving the polls that were leaked, showing Senator John Kerry winning handily, that something was amiss.

The day after the election, Ms. Dopp posted to her Web site, www.ustogether.org, a table comparing party registrations in each of Florida's 67 counties, the method of voting used and the number of votes cast for each presidential candidate. Ms. Dopp, along with other statisticians contributing to the site, suggested a "surprising pattern" in Florida's results showing inexplicable gains for President Bush in Democratic counties that used optical-scan voting systems.

The zeal and sophistication of Ms. Dopp's number crunching was hard to dismiss out of hand, and other Web users began creating their own bar charts and regression models in support of other theories. In a breathless cycle of hey-check-this-out, the theories - along with their visual aids - were distributed by e-mail messages containing links to popular Web sites and Web logs, or blogs, where other eager readers diligently passed them along.

Within one day, the number of visits to Ms. Dopp's site jumped from 50 to more than 500, according to site logs. On Nov. 4, that number tipped 17,000. Her findings were noted on popular left-leaning Web logs like DailyKos.com and FreePress.org. Last Friday, three Democratic members of Congress - John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, Jerrold Nadler of New York and Robert Wexler of Florida - sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office seeking an investigation of voting machines. A link to Ms. Dopp's site was included in the letter.

But rebuttals to the Florida fraud hypothesis were just as quick. Three political scientists, from Cornell, Harvard and Stanford, pointed out, in an e-mail message to a Web site that carried the news of Ms. Dopp's findings, that many of those Democratic counties in Florida have a long tradition of voting Republican in presidential elections. And while Ms. Dopp says that she and dozens of other researchers will continue to analyze the Florida vote, the suggestion of a link between certain types of voting machines and the vote split in Florida has, at least for now, little concrete support.

Still, as visitors to Ms. Dopp's site approached 70,000 early this week, other election anomalies were gaining traction on the Internet. The elections department in Cleveland, for instance, set off a round of Web log hysteria when it posted turnout figures on its site that seemed to show more votes being cast in some communities than there were registered voters. That turned out to be an error in how the votes were reported by the department, not in the counting.

And the early Election Day polls, conducted for a consortium of television networks and The Associated Press, which proved largely inaccurate in showing Mr. Kerry leading in Florida and Ohio, continued to be offered as evidence that the Bush team somehow cheated.

But while authorities acknowledge that there were real problems on Election Day, including troubles with some electronic machines and intolerably long lines in some places, few have suggested that any of these could have changed the outcome.

"There are real problems to be addressed," said Doug Chapin of Electionline.org, a clearinghouse of election reform information, "and I'd hate for them to get lost in second-guessing of the result."

It is that second-guessing, however, that has largely characterized the blog-to-e-mail-to-blog continuum. Some election officials have become frustrated by the rumor mill.

It becomes a snowball of hearsay," said Matthew Damschroder, the director of elections in Columbus, Ohio, where an electronic voting machine malfunctioned in one precinct and allotted some 4,000 votes to President Bush, kicking off its own flurry of Web speculation. That particular problem was unusual and remains unexplained, but it was caught and corrected, Mr. Damschroder said.

"Some from the traditional media have called for an explanation," he said, "but no one from these blogs has called and said, 'We want to know what really happened.' "

Whether that is the role of bloggers, Web posters and online pundits, however, is a matter of debate.

Clay Shirky, an adjunct professor in the interactive telecommunications program at New York University, suggests that the online fact-finding machine has come unmoored, and that some bloggers simply "can't imagine any universe in which a fair count of the votes would result in George Bush being re-elected president."

But some denizens of the Web see it differently.

Jake White, the owner of the Web log primordium.org, argues that he and other election-monitoring Web posters are not motivated solely by partisan politics. "While there are no doubt large segments of this movement that are being driven by that," he said in an e-mail message, "I prefer to think of it as discontent over the way the election was held."

Mr. White also quickly withdrew his own analysis of voting systems in Ohio when he realized the data he had used was inaccurate.

John Byrne, editor of an alternative news site, BlueLemur.com, says it is too easy to condemn blogs and freelance Web sites for being inaccurate. The more important point, he said, is that they offer an alternative to a mainstream news media that has become too timid. "Of course you can say blogs are wrong," he said. "Blogs are wrong all the time."

For its part, the Kerry campaign has been trying to tamp down the conspiracy theories and to tell supporters that their mission now is to ensure that every vote is counted, not that the election be overturned.

"We know this was an emotional election, and the losing side is very upset," said Daniel Hoffheimer, the lead lawyer for the Kerry campaign in Ohio. But, he said, "I have not seen anything to indicate intentional fraud or tampering."

A preliminary study produced by the Voting Technology Project, a cooperative effort between the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, came to a similar conclusion. Its study found "no particular patterns" relating to voting systems and the final results of the election.

"The 'facts' that are being circulated on the Internet," the study concluded, "appear to be selectively chosen to make the point."

Whether that will ever convince everyone is an open question.

"I'd give my right arm for Internet rumors of a stolen election to be true," said David Wade, a spokesman for the Kerry campaign, "but blogging it doesn't make it so. We can change the future; we can't rewrite the past."


Ford Fessenden and John Schwartz contributed reporting for this article.

We are not about to give up. The news has reached Kerry but he is being cautious about it. Understandable. Would be awesome if it turns out all us bloggers do "rewrite the past."

Love, Connie

Yes, it would appear we've made most of the major mass-media today, from the look of the Google listings!

Of course most of the stories, sadly even from the most liberal papers, are of the "poor deluded Kerry followers are grasping at straws" variety" - everybody wants to cover their own behinds - but even so, that's a big step up from the implication by silence that the issue doesn't even exist! And when the well-supported hard facts start coming out that are not refutable on the "people are just seeing what they want to see" theory, they will have to be reported.

And the hard facts are coming.

Yes, folks, please help the blackboxvoting efforts with your contributions, if you're able, and with your volunteer efforts, if you have the computer skills or other skills needed. I do truly believe this is the visible leading edge of a genuine movement for the people to take back political and information power from the "leaders" who think it is theirs to dole out to us as they see fit.

Love,
Greg

Hi again,

Signed moveon petition and contributed to Help recount fund.

Like you say Greg it DOES matter that votes are counted accurately. Besides the outcome, there is the margin, or "mandate" thing. And there absolutely has to be confidence in the voting system. I never thought there was a problem with it until 2000. Never thought there could be! They are trying to make it sound like rocket science to count votes, even in small counties!

Get some rest Connie!

Love,

This was on MSNBC's website for Nov. 11:
Ohio— The recount of 2004 (David Shuster)

This afternoon, I spoke with Blair Bobier, the attorney/spokesman for David Cobb, the Green Party's 2004 candidate for President. Bobier confirms that the press release floating on the net <http://www.gp.org/press/pr_11_11_04.html> is legitimate. The Green Party is combining forces with the Libertarian Party to seek a statewide election recount in Ohio.
Unlike Florida in 2000, Ohio's recount rules are straightforward and specific. Once the Ohio vote is certified, which I'm told could happen as early as next week, the Green/Libertarian group will have five days to file a formal application for statewide recount. In addition, the group must then deposit $10 for every precinct to be recounted.
Based on the number of precincts in Ohio, a statewide recount will cost the Green/Libertarian group about $110,000. However, the group expects to raise that money "rather easily" within the next few days.
Once the recount application has been filed, the recount itself must begin within 10 days. So, expect to see the formal recount kick-off in early December.
Again, the procedures in Ohio are quite clear: The recount must be conducted by teams having equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans; records must be available for visual inspection by witnesses; ballots must be handled only by members of the board; witnesses may observe the inspection the ballots; punch card ballots must be inspected for hanging chads ("if a chad is attached by three or four corners, a vote shall not be counted for that particular candidate.") and etc. The lengthy list of rules and procedures are available on the Ohio Secretary of State's Web site <http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/elections/index.html>.
Whether you agree with a recount or not... the rules are the rules. And even a candidate like David Cobb, who received a total of 24 votes in Ohio, is entitled to a recount. So, let us all hope the process in the Buckeye state will be orderly, calm, and litigation free.
Pre-recount, here is where the Ohio vote total stands:
President Bush (Republican Party) 2,796,147
John Kerry (Democratic Party) 2,659,664
Badnarik (Libertarian) 14,331
Peroutka (Constitutional) 11,614
My friend and colleague Keith Olbermann has been all over this story </id/6210240/>.
On Friday night, "Hardball with Chris Matthews" (7 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET) will be jumping into the fray. You won't want to miss that. Plus, this weekend here on Hardblogger, I'll be posting some amazing national election numbers and demographic trends that may shock you. I've run some of the numbers past a few MSNBC political analysts, and everybody is calling it "a big deal."
Questions/comments: DShuster@msnbc.com <mailto:DShuster@msnbc.com>

I wish I caught the Chris Matthews show tonight.

Love,

Thanks for the info, Pisces. It looks like that between the Libertarian Party and the Green Party and blackbox.org and Nader we are definitely going to get a recount in Ohio.

I got some rest, Pisces. I crashed on the couch at 7:30 last night and slept there all night. I woke up at 5:30 this morning so that was 10 hrs straight and much needed sleep.

I got the following from Ginny and I hope she doesn't mind me posting it. I was very excited about this because now it looks like that movement has made it from the internet to the streets and that's just terrific. When I read it all I could say was, "You Go Ohio!!" To me this, along with all that has happened on the internet, is a sign that people are waking up out of their complacentcy and breaking the code of silence that the Bush administration has placed on the American people for the past four years in their words and actions. They deliberately sat out to divide this country because they know, divided we lose our power. They said it was "unpatriotic" to dissent because they know that dissent is the voice of the people. Dissent is the most patriotic thing we can do which is why our founding fathers placed in the Constitution the article of freedom of speech and freedom to dissent. Our country was founded on dissent. It is the cornerstone and building block of democracy. Our right to dissent against government policy is what makes us a part of the process of governing. The voice of the people. Bush is so "sensitive" to criticism and so intolerant of other points of view that disagree with his that whenever he speaks he has what they call "dissent zones" which are miles away from him so he doesn't have to be subjected to criticism or dissent. Hardly a democracy. Well, it looks like the American people are breaking his code of silence and speaking out. We are letting them know that we have had enough. We can't let them divide us anymore or silence us anymore. I think that the movement began on the internet showed people what a group can bring about and now it is moving out into the streets.

I agree with Rockwell. I think if the Ohio recount and investigations show definite fraud Congress should declare the election invalid and hold a new nationwide election without electronic voting machines or any voting system that does not leave a paper trail. I also think that we should have the same type of ballot for all of the U.S. Also if fraud is proven in this election I think Bush should immediately be impeached along with Chaney and they all should be placed under arrest for voter fraud. Karl Rove and whoever participated in the fraud.

OUTRAGE IN OHIO: ANGRY RESIDENTS STORM STATE HOUSE!
MASSIVE VOTER SUPPRESSION & CORRUPTION DEMOCRACY FAILURE
By David Solnit

Hundreds of angry Ohio residents marched through the streets of Columbus, Ohio's Capital, this evening and stormed the Ohio State House, defying orders and arrest threats from Ohio State Troopers.

"O-H-I-O, Suppressed Democracy Has Got To Go!" they chanted. After troopers pushed and scuffled with people, nearly a hundred people took over the steps and entrance to the State's giant white column capital building and refused repeated orders to disperse or face arrest.

People prepared for arrests, ready to face jail, writing lawyers phone numbers on their arms, signing jail support lists and discussing NON-COOPERATION and ACTIVE RESISTANCE (linking arms, but not fighting back).

A freshly painted banner held on the steps read, "ONE VOTE DENIED = DEMOCRACY IN TROUBLE! 100'S OF 1000'S OF VOTES SURPRISED = DEMOCRACY FAILED".

An unprecedented massive grassroots voter registration and get out the vote effort and widespread opposition to Bush went up against the massive coordinated Republican effort to suppress, intimidate and possibly steal millions of votes.

In addition to the voter suppression and intimidation is the fact that Bush campaign co-chair Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell is in charge of the election and vote counting.

But much deeper questions about fundamental flaws in the system hang in the air.

Also by Rockwell:


By Teed Rockwell
Philosophy Department, Sonoma State University
11-12-4

Smoking Gun

You may have seen the associated press story about the precinct in Cuyahoga county that had less than 1,000 voters, and gave Bush almost 4,000 extra votes.

But that turns out to be only the tip of a very ugly iceberg. The evidence discovered by some remarkably careful sleuthing would convince any reasonable court to invalidate the entire Ohio election.

In last Tuesday's election, 29 precincts in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, reported votes cast IN EXCESS of the number of registered voters - at least 93,136 extra votes total. And the numbers are right there on the official Cuyahoga County Board of Elections website:

Bay Village - 13,710 registered voters / 18,663 ballots cast
Beachwood - 9,943 registered voters / 13,939 ballots cast
Bedford - 9,942 registered voters / 14,465 ballots cast
Bedford Heights - 8,142 registered voters / 13,512 ballots cast
Brooklyn - 8,016 registered voters / 12,303 ballots cast
Brooklyn Heights - 1,144 registered voters / 1,869 ballots cast
Chagrin Falls Village - 3,557 registered voters / 4,860 ballots cast
Cuyahoga Heights - 570 registered voters / 1,382 ballots cast
Fairview Park - 13,342 registered voters / 18,472 ballots cast
Highland Hills Village - 760 registered voters / 8,822 ballots cast
Independence - 5,735 registered voters / 6,226 ballots cast
Mayfield Village - 2,764 registered voters / 3,145 ballots cast
Middleburg Heights - 12,173 registered voters / 14,854 ballots cast
Moreland Hills Village - 2,990 registered voters / 4,616 ballots cast
North Olmstead - 25,794 registered voters / 25,887 ballots cast
Olmstead Falls - 6,538 registered voters / 7,328 ballots cast
Pepper Pike - 5,131 registered voters / 6,479 ballots cast
Rocky River - 16,600 registered voters / 20,070 ballots cast
Solon (WD6) - 2,292 registered voters / 4,300 ballots cast
South Euclid - 16,902 registered voters / 16,917 ballots cast
Strongsville (WD3) - 7,806 registered voters / 12,108 ballots cast
University Heights - 10,072 registered voters / 11,982 ballots cast
Valley View Village - 1,787 registered voters / 3,409 ballots cast
Warrensville Heights - 10,562 registered voters / 15,039 ballots cast
Woodmere Village - 558 registered voters / 8,854 ballots cast
Bedford (CSD) - 22,777 registered voters / 27,856 ballots cast
Independence (LSD) - 5,735 registered voters / 6,226 ballots cast
Orange (CSD) - 11,640 registered voters / 22,931 ballots cast
Warrensville (CSD) - 12,218 registered voters / 15,822 ballots cast

The Republicans are so BUSTED.
http://boe.cuyahogacounty.us
/BOE/results/currentresults1.htm#top

...is the official website of the Cuyahoga county election board, providing irrefutable evidence that the vote was off by at least 93,000. Kerry lost Ohio by approximately 130,000, so this is not an insignificant figure that can be ignored, particularly when there are numerous other indications of voter fraud in Ohio and elsewhere.

I think the only possible alternative is to invalidate the entire Ohio election, if not the entire national election. I'd say the game's up.

America, it looks pretty much like you've been had.

Sincerely,

Teed Rockwell
Philosophy Department
Sonoma State University

Love, Connie

Boy this sounds like GREAT NEWS guys (and gals ). I have renewed HOPE!

At least I don't have to fight politics with my family, we are all democrats who voted for Kerry...

Connie, I have a question. Do you think I should sign that petition since the race in KY wasn't a close one (I don't think at least)?

Yes, Kel, I think you should still sign the petition to send to your representatives. The more signatures the better for MoveOn.

Kerry won Michigan and there were very little problems here due to a lot of hard work preparing for the election by our governor and the Secretary of State. The more Reps that back the other 6 congressmen the more clout it carries. Besides I think we should get these congressmen off their duffs and instead of putting their political careers first, they should start putting democracy first.

Love, Connie

Connie.....I'm happy that you posted the OUTRAGE IN OHIO, thing....but now there's something new and it's not encouraging.....it's info about A MASS MEDIA LOCK DOWN ON VOTER FRAUD.....

See my thread

" OHMIGOSH! NOW THIS...."

Love,
Ginny

Dear Rainbow,
See reply to "lockdown" on other thread...

Also took this from the MSNBC news site in case you all didn't see/hear it:

"Unfinished" elections
Per Ohio state law, the actual counting of provisional ballots in the presidential election is scheduled to begin tomorrow, 11 days after the election, but because it's a weekend and because of the prolonged validation process, the start of counting remains TBD.

Kerry spokesperson David Wade made this statement yesterday as rumors mushroomed on the Internet about Bush allegedly stealing the election: "While the outcome of the election is not in doubt, no one cares more about voting irregularities than John Kerry and John Edwards. They remain committed to their pledge that every vote be counted, that's why they built an unprecedented 17,000 lawyer voter protection team to ensure that every American's rights are protected. Rest assured, every ballot will be counted, and we will continue the fight for election reform to restore America's full faith in the integrity of our democratic process."

What I get from this, Pisces, reading between the lines is that Kerry's spokeperson is telling us to hang tight they have lawyers looking into it.

Maybe that's just optimistic me. What are your thoughts, guys?

I know they keep denying there is any doubt about the outcome because I think they are just protecting the party in case the outcome is still in favor of Bush though I know they are not stupid and with all the evidence they have to have doubts. After the 2000 election it did hurt the party so this time they are being cautious.

This announcement is really just a way of assuring us I think that they are working on it too with 17,000 lawyers.

Love, Connie

Good article from The New York Times regarding the election results and what has been talked about on the internet. However,the thing that bothers me is that while everyone seems to want to just clean up the voting process for the future, and I'm all for that, what about the here and now? I mean all these things happened with the added votes, the electronic voting machines ( and Congress knew beforehand that was going to happen) and some election official in Warren, Ohio not allowing the vote count to be witnessed ( how are we to know those votes weren't changed in Bush's favor?) so are we just supposed to forget all that and just accept the outcome of this election?

This election was touted beforehand as the most important election in our lives - in history. And it was! The whole election was a farce as far as I'm concerned and yes, I want it fixed for 2008, but we are just supposed to ignore any of this happened and be stuck with these fascists for another four years? Look what they did the past four years to destroy democracy. One can only imagine what this country and our lives will be like in four more years of this insanity. This effects all our lives! Why is everyone insisting we just forget about it and move on as if nothing happened? I don't want to accept it unless I know for sure that Bush won! How do they like them apples? I think this whole country is in denial. I think that after the 2000 election when we got stuck with these morons for four years the American people deserve better than to just be told to shut up and move on to the next election. We deserve a whole new election here and now. It's our future. They screwed up. The voters didn't. Why should we have to pay the price the next four years for their mistakes and empty promises of making this election better than 2000 (when it only got worse) and their do nothingness beforehand? I'm real pissed about this wait until 2008 BS. Bush deliberately stalled setting up a committee to test those electronic voting machines giving them less than a year to do all that and correct things. If that isn't a red flag I don't know what is. So why should we be stuck with this criminal for four more years if he was so obviously plotting stealing this election way beforehand?

About Those Election Results

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/14/opinion/14sun1.html?th

Published: November 14, 2004


There have been a flood of reports, rumors and theories over the last 12 days about problems with the presidential election. The blogosphere, in particular, has been full of questions: Why did electronic voting machines in Ohio add nearly 4,000 phantom votes for President Bush, and why did machines in Florida mysteriously start to count backward? Why did the official vote totals for Ohio's largest county seem to suggest that there were more votes cast than registered voters? Why did election officials in yet another part of Ohio lock down the building where votes were being counted, turning away the press and public?

Defenders of the system have been quick to dismiss questions like these as the work of "conspiracy theorists," but that misses the point. Until our election system is improved - with better mechanics and greater transparency - we cannot expect voters to have full confidence in the announced results.

Electronic voting proved to be, as critics warned, a problem. There is no evidence of vote theft or errors on a large scale. But this country should have elections in which the public has no reason to worry whether every vote was counted properly, and we're still not there. In Franklin County, Ohio, one precinct reported nearly 4,000 votes for President Bush, although the precinct had fewer than 800 voters. In Broward County, Florida election officials noticed that when the absentee ballots were being tabulated, the vote totals began to go down instead of up. Voters in several states reported that when they selected John Kerry, it turned into a vote for President Bush.

These problems were all detected and fixed, but there is no way of knowing how many other machine malfunctions did not come to light, since most machines do not have a reliable way of double-checking for errors. When a precinct mistakenly adds nearly 4,000 votes to a candidate's total, it is likely to be noticed, but smaller inaccuracies may not be. There is also no way to be sure that the nightmare scenario of electronic voting critics did not occur: votes surreptitiously shifted from one candidate to another inside the machines, by secret software.

It's important to make it clear that there is no evidence such a thing happened, but there will be concern and conspiracy theories until all software used in elections is made public. Voters who use electronic machines are entitled to a voter-verified paper trail, which Nevadans got this year, so they can be sure their votes were accurately recorded.

The outrageous decision by Warren County, Ohio, to lock down the building where votes were being counted is an extreme example of another serious problem with the elections: a lack of transparency. In some states, reporters are barred from polling places. The wild rumors about Cuyahoga County, Ohio, where the official results appeared to include an extra 90,000 votes, were a result of its bizarrely complicated method of posting election results, which is different in even- and odd-numbered years. The nation needs to develop an election culture in which officials in every part of the country automatically keep things as open - and as simple - as humanly possible.

Besides election equipment that is easy to check for error, the strongest defense against conspiracy theorists is election officials who act with openness and integrity. Here, too, the current system is at fault. Ohio and Florida, two of the key states in the election, have highly partisan secretaries of state who favored the Republicans all year in their rulings. If we want the voters to trust the umpires, we need umpires who don't take sides.

Love, Connie

I'm with you on THIS election, Connie.

And like you say it's important to fix the problem for the long term, but it is of the utmost importance to make sure the process worked this time.

Like that John Turley atty from George Washington U. warned, there is no time like NOW to look into it and resolve it!!! So we can't just sit back.

INCIDENTALLY, what the heck is Keith O. doing on VACATION THIS WEEK?!! We need him airing NOW! How could he take a vacation, no matter how planned or needed or deserved, this week???? I must go and email that man.

Love,

Even though Keith Obermann is on vacation he is still reading his emails and doing his column. Here is today's info from Keith. O'Reilly is an arse.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/

Oh Brother, Ohio, and O'Reilly (Keith Olbermann)



SECURE UNDISCLOSED LOCATION - Keep your aluminum foil hats at the ready.

The purported linking of failed Florida congressional candidate Jeff Fisher and Ralph Nader, trumpeted on Fisher's website, is news to Nader's spokesman Kevin Zeese.

That's particularly troublesome for Mr. Fisher because it is to Zeese that the connection is attributed:

"Kevin Zeese," the Fisher site reads, "officially announced that Presidential Candidate Ralph Nader will be consulting with Jeff Fisher and Jan Schneider regarding the investigation of voter fraud and a statewide recount for the state of Florida."

When the nose-to-the-grindstone Countdown staff (as opposed to me, vacation boy) contacted Zeese, he said it was the first he'd heard of any "official announcement." Zeese acknowledges he'd spoken to Fisher, and surmises, correctly I think, that Fisher (he lost in the Florida 16th) and Schneider (she lost in the 13th, to Katherine Harris) were trying to increase their credibility by tying their efforts to the Nader campaign. Given the pounding Nader's gotten for four years, Zeese laughed out loud at the irony.

Fisher has been cited in many places as claiming he has firm evidence of deliberate computer-hacking in the Florida vote, and was awaiting FBI agents with whom he was to share it. Not to dismiss him or his claims, but the show's contact with him was not encouraging. He spoke vaguely of sources and whispered a lot.

Hell, "Deep Throat" from Watergate whispered a lot.

Then again, so does the guy who wanders around Columbus Circle claiming the government caused the Red Sox to win the World Series.


We'll reserve judgment on Mr. Fisher's claims - and keep them out of this space until and unless they have stronger legs. But the "consulting" role with Nader isn't the case, and bodes ill for Fisher's other assertions.

Meanwhile in Ohio, it's not exactly the lead story on Nightly News, but the verifying of the provisional ballots has gotten the attention of the most influential, and underrated, news source in the country - the Associated Press. It is from this wire service that most smaller newspapers and nearly all local and national radio and television news departments glean their national material (and from which, though they'd never admit it, most newspaper columnists, draw most of their data).

The AP reports that by yesterday, 11 of Ohio's 88 counties had completed vetting the provisionals and that ten of the districts have accepted the validity of more than 90 percent of them. One - Belmont County (along the West Virginia border) - has tossed 42%, and nearing the halfway mark in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), the election board there has accepted about two-thirds.

And this afternoon, the AP's TV and radio columnist Frazier Moore wrote a withering satire of the post-election television political landscape, so much in the manner of Jonathan Swift that it has been forwarded to me by conservatives claiming it "proves" there's no reason to cover any voting issues. Generally speaking, mainstream silence seems to be passing: Sunday, the Hartford Courant printed an op-ed from the Associate Dean of the Yale Law School, Ian Solomon - one of those Democratic lawyers dispatched to Florida to "watch" the election - who suggested the monitors had been too busy verifying the paper ballots to pay attention to the prospect of computerized irregularities (thus, Dean Solomon admitted, "I might have been an unwitting accessory to fraud."

The Boston Globe plans a piece on the silence - which still seems more a case of media passivity than conspiracy - in the next few days. Even the Washington Times addressed it yesterday (albeit with the headline "Anti-Bush Internet Site Angles For Election Probe" by focusing on MoveOn.org's "Investigate the Vote" campaign. Jerrold Nadler of New York, one of six Democratic congressmen who demanded an investigation by the General Accountability Office in the days after the election, says now he anticipates a response from the GAO by the end of this week, and that could stir the pot a little further.

We may even have seen something of a reaction to this story on Fox News. There, our old loofah-wielding friend Bill O'Reilly is at it again, wandering further and further into semi-lucidity and self-contradiction. As reported by Brian Stelter over at TVNewser O'Reilly managed to put himself at direct odds with his own boss, Roger Ailes.

"The Pew Research Center is out with which media was most trusted during the presidential campaign," O'Reilly stated Monday night. "On the TV side, Fox News wins big - Dead last was MSNBC, which was six percent of Americans trusting them. Obviously they have major problems over there."

As usual when dealing with the O'Reilly Fact-or-Fiction, he leaves himself so open to fact-checking on so many fronts, that it's difficult to decide where to thrust the first sword.

Let's start with the Pew poll. Firstly, it had nothing to do with which media was "most trusted" - it only asked where people got most of their news on the election. And using Fox's own criteria - they're right and everybody else ranges from liberal to treasonous - they were cited as the respondents - primary source by 21%, compared to the NBC/MSNBC/CNBC combination (also 21%), and compared to the combined three broadcast network news departments (29%). The internet was also cited as a primary source by 21%, suggesting respondents were permitted to give more than one answer. This not only isn't "Fox News wins big" using some of the same massaging of numbers O'Reilly is fond of, it's not even "Fox News wins at all."

Sorry about that "massaging" reference to O'Reilly in there. Poor choice of words.

Most intriguingly, O'Reilly's employer, Mr. Ailes, recently dismissed the company that did the survey O'Reilly trumpeted so loudly. In its recent piece on the network, The New York Times noted that Pew's June survey reported that 41 percent of Fox News viewers identified themselves as Republicans, and 52 percent of them called themselves Conservatives.

Roger Ailes then told the paper that the Pew Research Center had produced "a totally fraudulent survey done by a bunch of liberals."

So O'Reilly is reduced to relying on a polling company that his boss believes traffics in "totally fraudulent surveys," to altering the questions posed by that company to fit his own boasts, and to accepting those numbers he likes from that polling and ignoring the ones he doesn't.

Sounds like somebody hasn't had a good falafel in awhile.

I must admit that when I read all that fascism and discovered that of January this year the U.S. fulfilled all 14 points of a fascist government ( along with Israel) I lost some more sleep last night. Calmed down now though. My sister told me after reading it, " That's why I have a bumper sticker on my car that says 'Fascism Sucks.'"

Liked the "massage" crack that Keith made about O'Reilly.

Love, Connie

Hello again,

I hope you don't think I'm insensitive to post here on this issue this evening when we are all united in prayer for Greg. My candle is lit right beside me. Even though I had to go out tonight I have been doing nothing but thinking of Greg!

However since this issue is also dear to Greg I thought I'd carry on a little bit of the work here while I'm waiting for good news about Greg in the morning.

I'm copying a very surprising email I got from John Kerry (remember that phantom?) that went to all supporters:

"I want to thank you personally for what you did in the election -- you rewrote the book on grassroots politics, taking control of campaigns away from big donors. No campaign will ever be the same.

You moved voters, helped hold George Bush accountable, and countered the attacks from big news organizations such as Fox, Sinclair Broadcasting, and conservative talk radio.

And your efforts count now more than ever. Despite the words of cooperation and moderate sounding promises, this administration is planning a right wing assault on values and ideals we hold most deeply. Healthy debate and diverse opinion are being eliminated from the State Department and CIA, and the cabinet is being remade to rubber stamp policies that will undermine Social Security, balloon the deficit, avoid real reforms in health care and education, weaken homeland security, and walk away from critical allies around the world.

Regardless of the outcome of this election, once all the votes are counted -- and they will be counted -- we will continue to challenge this administration. This is not a time for Democrats to retreat and accommodate extremists on critical principles -- it is a time to stand firm.

I will fight for a national standard for federal elections that has both transparency and accountability in our voting system. It's unacceptable in the United States that people still don't have full confidence in the integrity of the voting process.

I ask you to join me in this cause.

And we must fight not only against George Bush's extreme policies -- we must also uphold our own values. This is why on the first day Congress is in session next year, I will introduce a bill to provide every child in America with health insurance. And, with your help, that legislation will be accompanied by the support of hundreds of thousands of Americans.

There are more than eight million uninsured children in our nation.

That's eight million reasons for us to stay together and fight for a new direction. It is a disgrace that in the wealthiest nation on earth, eight million children go without health insurance.

Normally, a member of the Senate will first approach other senators and ask them to co-sponsor a bill before it is introduced -- instead, I am turning to you. Imagine the power of a bill co-sponsored by hundreds of thousands of Americans being presented on the floor of the United States Senate. You can make it happen. Sign our "Every Child Protected" pledge today and forward it to your family, friends, and neighbors:

http://johnkerry.com/EveryChild

This is the beginning of a second term effort to hold the Bush administration accountable and to stand up and fight for our principles and our values. They want you to disappear; they are counting on that. I'm confident you will prove them wrong, and you will rewrite history again.

Here is what I want you to know. I understand the strength, commitment, and passion that are at the core of what we built together -- and I am determined to make our collective energy and organization a force to be reckoned with in the weeks and months ahead.

Let's roll up our sleeves and get back to work for our country.

Thank you,
(signed John Kerry)"

I'll post this and then on the next post I'll lift the latest messages from Keith O. from the station website.

Love,

This was under "An odd statement from John Kerry" at the news station website. Keith O. is still taking emails and updating on this issue from his vacation at a 'Secure Undisclosed Location.' They didn't print Kerry's whole message out, and I don't think the message, although it is still largely between the lines, is confusing at all. (Because he's asking for emails, I copied from Bev Harris' site the latest and emailed it to Keith O. just to make sure he's staying informed about that org. You can also check out their latest at that website.)

"Didn't you run for president once? (Keith Olbermann)

SECURE UNDISCLOSED LOCATION— There has been a John Kerry sighting.

"Regardless of the outcome of this election, once all the votes are counted— and they will be counted— we will continue to challenge this administration," the 2004 Democratic candidate said in a prepared statement released today. "I will fight for a national standard for federal elections that has both transparency and accountability in our voting system. It is unacceptable in the United States that people still don't have full confidence in the integrity of the voting process."

Since his concession, Kerry's silence on the questions of voting irregularities in Florida, Ohio, and elsewhere, has perplexed those pursuing those questions, helped render largely passive the media who should've been doing so, and provided virtual proof to others that there weren't any questions at all. His supporters have been mystified at news this week that millions of dollars from his war chest went unspent. His lawyers have been characterized as flying below the radar as the Libertarian and Green Parties have pushed their recount in Ohio.

He has seemed to his supporters and many neutrals, in short, as being AWOL.

The statement doesn't exactly dispel that aroma. It came by way of an e-mail to supporters— but not to the media— and a video on his otherwise update-free campaign website, which maintains the frozen-in-time November 2 front page that makes it look like the political equivalent of Miss Haversham's cobweb-strewn house in Dickens' "Great Expectations."

The primary topic of the mass e-mail isn't even this election or future ones. It's about a petition drive for universal child health care legislation Kerry intends to introduce on the first day of the new Congress. Whether the voting stuff was added as a sop to supporters loudly wondering where he— and the unspent $15,000,000— has been, is conjecture.

But the video is just plain weird. The phrasing of the start of the relevant passage—"Regardless of the outcome of this election"— is open to the same kind of parsing and confusion usually reserved for the latest release from Osama Bin Laden. Those seven words are extra-temporal; they are tense-free. In them he could be describing an election long-since decided, or one whose outcome is still in doubt.

And the timing and delivery of the message are equally confusing. No notification to the media? When much of the mechanism of political coverage is kick-started by statements like this one? And its issuance on a Friday afternoon— the moment of minimum news attention so famously titled "Take Out The Trash Day" on the NBC series "The West Wing"?— is perplexing, if not suspicious.

It has the vague feel of deliberate ambiguity, as if Kerry is saying to those who are plagued by doubts about the vote just seventeen days ago, that he agrees with them, but they shouldn't tell anybody. It's exactly what these confusing times do not need: more confusion.

Thoughts? E-mail KOlbermann@MSNBC.com

• November 19, 2004 | 9:40 a.m. ET

All I know is what I don't read in the papers (Keith Olbermann)

SECURE UNDISCLOSED LOCATION— I'm beginning to think like Jim Bunning now.

So far in this post-election trip through Alice's looking glass we've had:

—a University of Pennsylvania professor defending the accuracy of exit polling in order damn the accuracy of vote counting;

—a joint CalTech/MIT study defending the accuracy of exit polling in order to confirm the accuracy of vote counting;

—a series of lesser academic works assailing the validity of the Penn and CalTech/MIT assessments;

—and now, a UC Berkeley Research Team report that concludes President Bush may have received up to 260,000 more votes in fifteen Florida counties than he should have, all courtesy the one-armed bandits better known as touch-screen voting systems.

And, save, for one "New York Times"reference to the CalTech/MIT study "disproving" the idea that the exit poll results were so wacky that they required thoroughly botched election nights in several states, the closest any of these research efforts have gotten to the mainstream media have been "Wired News" and "Countdown."

I still hesitate to endorse the 'media lock-down' theory extolled so widely on the net. I've expended a lot of space on the facts of political media passivity and exhaustion, and now I'll add one factor to explain the collective shrugged shoulder: reading this stuff is hard. It's hard work.

There are, as we know, lies, damn lies, and statistics. But there is one level of hell lower still— scholarly statistical studies. I have made four passes at "The Effect of Electronic Voting Machines on Change in Support for Bush in the 2004 Florida Elections," and the thing has still got me pinned to the floor.

Most of the paper is so academically dense that it seems to have been written not just in another language, but in some form of code. There is one table captioned "OLS Regression with Robust Standard Errors." Another is titled "OLS regressions with frequency weights for county size." Only the summary produced by Professor Michael Hout and the Berkeley Quantitative Methods Research Time is intelligible.

Of course, I'm reminded suddenly of the old cartoon, with the guy saying "I don't understand women," and the second guy saying, "So? Do you understand electricity?"

In his news conference yesterday at Berkeley (who attended? Who phoned in to the conference call? Why didn't they try?) Professor Hout analogized the report to a "beeping smoke alarm." It doesn't say how bad the fire it is, it doesn't accuse anybody of arson, it just says somebody ought to have an extinguisher handy.

Without attempting to crack the methodology, it's clear the researchers claim they've compensated for all the bugaboos that hampered the usefulness of previous studies of the county voting results in Florida. They've weighted the thing to allow for an individual county's voting record in both the 2000 and 1996 elections (throwing out the 'Dixiecrat' effect), to wash out issues like the varying Hispanic populations, median income, voter turnout change, and the different numbers of people voting in each county.

And they say that when you calculate all that, you are forced to conclude that compared to the Florida counties that used paper ballots, the ones that used electronic voting machines were much more likely to show "excessive votes" for Mr. Bush, and that the statistical odds of this happening organically are less than one in 1,000.

They also say that these "excessives" occurred most prominently in counties where Senator Kerry beat the President most handily. In the Democratic bastion of Broward, where Kerry won by roughly 105,000, they suggest the touch-screens "gave" the President 72,000 more votes than statistical consistency should have allowed. In Miami-Dade (Kerry by 55,000) they saw 19,300 more votes for Bush than expected. In Palm Beach (Kerry by 115,000) they claim Bush got 50,000 more votes than possible.

Hout and his research team consistently insisted they were not alleging that voting was rigged, nor even that what they've found actually affected the direction of Florida's 27 Electoral Votes. They point out that in a worst-case scenario, they see 260,000 "excessives" - and Bush took the state by 350,000 votes. But they insist that based on Florida's voting patterns in 1996 and 2000, the margin cannot be explained by successful get-out-the-vote campaigns, or income variables, or anything but something rotten in the touch screens.

It's deep-woods mathematics, and it cries out for people who speak the language and can refute or confirm its value. Kim Zetter, who did an excellent work-up for "Wired News,"got the responses you'd expect from both sides. She quotes Susan Van Houten of Palm Beach's Coalition for Election Reform as saying "I've believed the same thing for a while, that the numbers are screwy, and it looks like they proved it." She quotes Jill Friedman-Wilson of the touch-screen manufacturer Election Systems & Software (their machines were in use in Broward and Miami-Dade) as responding "If you consider real-world experience, we know that ES&S' touch-screen voting system has been proven in thousands of elections throughout the country."

What's possibly of more interest to us poor laymen is what isn't in the Berkeley report.

As I mentioned previously, they don't claim to know how this happened. But more importantly, they say that they ran a similar examination on the voting patterns in Ohio, comparing its paper ballot and electronic results, and found absolutely nothing to suggest either candidate got any "bump" that couldn't otherwise be explained by past voting patterns, income, turnout, or any other commonplace factor.

In other words: No e-voting machines spontaneously combusting in Ohio.

"For the sake of all future elections involving electronic voting," Professor Hout concluded, "someone must investigate and explain the statistical anomalies in Florida. We're calling on voting officials in Florida to take action."

Anybody want to belly up to this bar?

Thougths? E-mail me at KOlbermann@msnbc.com

Wow, good stuff, both of these. Thanks for posting them, Piscesdreamer.

Just posting some of the latest from blogger...keeping the other torch burning
• November 21, 2004 | 5:51 p.m. ET

Relax about Ohio, Relax about the guy tailing me. (Keith Olbermann)



NEW YORK - Anybody else notice that when you politely refer to the Secretary of State of Ohio, you have to call him "Mr. Blackwell," just like that guy who compiles the goofy worst-dressed list?

Mr. Kenneth Blackwell is the subject of three actions regarding the Ohio vote that you haven't seen on television yet. Each (the Cobb/Badnarik Recount bid, the Alliance for Democracy legal challenge, and the Ohio Democratic Party suit over provisional ballots) has an undertone suggesting time is of the essence, and that he is wasting it. The accusation may or may not be true, but it also may or may not be relevant.

The Glibs' recount effort was underscored last week by their letters to Blackwell insisting he hurry up and finish certifying the count well before the announced deadline of December 6, because otherwise, there won't be enough time for the recount before the voting of the Electoral College on December 13. The Alliance attorney Clifford Arnebeck told The Columbus Dispatch that his quite separate legal challenge to the election must be addressed immediately because "time is critical." The local Democrats haven't been commenting on their low-flying suit - more about that later. They're just smiling quietly to themselves.

Cobb, Badnarik, Arnebeck, and everybody else actually has more time than they think. I addressed this topic with the wonderfully knowledgeable George Washington University Constitutional Law professor, Jonathan Turley, back on Countdown on November 9th. He noted the election process is a little slower - and has one more major loophole - than is generally known. It begins on December 7th, the date "when you essentially certify your electors... it gives a presumption to the legitimacy to your votes. And then, on the 13th, the electors actually vote."

But, Turley noted, "those votes are not opened by Congress until January 6. Now, if there are controversies, such as some disclosure that a state actually went for Kerry (instead of Bush), there is the ability of members of Congress to challenge." In other words, even after the December 13th Electoral College Vote, in the extremely unlikely scenario that a court overturns the Ohio count, or that the recount discovers 4,000 Gahanna-style machines that each recorded 4,000 votes too many for one candidate, there is still a mechanism to correct the error, honest or otherwise.

"It requires a written objection from one House member and one senator," Turley continues. Once that objection is raised, the joint meeting of the two houses is discontinued. "Then both Houses separate again and they vote by majority vote as to whether to accept the slate of electoral votes from that state."

In these super-heated partisan times, it may seem like just another prospective process decided by majority rule instead of fact. But envision the far-fetched scenario of some dramatic, conclusive new result from Ohio turning up around, say, January 4th. What congressman or senator in his right mind would vote to seat the candidate who lost the popular vote in Ohio? We wouldn't be talking about party loyalty any more - we'd be talking about pure political self-interest here, and whenever in our history that critical mass has been achieved, it's been every politician for himself (ask Barry Goldwater when Richard Nixon trolled for his support in July and August, 1974, or Republican Senator Edmund Ross of Kansas when his was to be the decisive vote that would have impeached President Andrew Johnson in 1868).

The point of this dip into the world of political science fiction is that the Ohio timeframe is a little less condensed than it seems. The drop-dead date is not December 13, but January 6.

It is noteworthy that the announcement of a legal challenge made it into weekend editions of The Cleveland Plain Dealer, The Columbus Dispatch, the Associated Press wires, and other publications. The Columbus paper even mentioned something curious. "Earlier this week, the Ohio Democratic party announced it would join a lawsuit arguing that the state lacks clear rules for evaluating provisional ballots, a move the party said will keep its options open if problems with the ballots surface."

This makes a little more sense out of a confusing item that appeared in an obscure weekly paper in Westchester County, New York, last Wednesday, in which a reporter named Adam Stone wrote "A top-ranking official with Democratic Senator John Kerry's presidential campaign told North County News last week that although unlikely, there is a recount effort being waged that could unseat Republican President George Bush." Stone quotes Kerry spokesman David Wade as saying: "We have 17,000 lawyers working on this, and the grassroots accountability couldn't be any higher - no (irregularity) will go unchecked. Period." Gives a little context to Senator Kerry's opaque mass e-mail and on-line video statement from Friday afternoon.

The Ohio newspaper coverage suggests that even the mainstream media is beginning to sit up and take notice that, whatever its merits, the investigation into the voting irregularities of November 2nd has moved from the Reynolds Wrap Hat stage into legal and governmental action. Tripe does continue to appear, like Carol Pogash's column in today's San Francisco Chronicle. Its headline provided me with a laugh: "Liberals, the election is over, live with it." I've gotten 37,000 emails in the last two weeks (now running at better than 25:1 in favor), and the two most repeated comments by those critical of the coverage have been references to the ratings of Fox News Channel, and the phrase "the election is over, (expletive deleted), live with it. I hesitate to generalize, but this does suggest a certain unwillingness of critics to engage in political discourses that don't have no swear words in 'em.

Meantime, The Oakland Tribune not only devoted seventeen paragraphs Friday to the UC Berkeley study on the voting curiosities in Florida, but actually expended considerable energy towards what we used to call 'advancing the story': "The UC Berkeley report has not been peer reviewed, but a reputable MIT political scientist succeeded in replicating the analysis Thursday at the request of the Oakland Tribune and The Associated Press. He said an investigation is warranted."

(There is more info at the site in case you want to go there and read it.)

Just keeping Greg and you all up to date.

Love,

Another update:
• November 21, 2004 | 5:51 p.m. ET

Ohio Dems joins recount effort (Keith Olbermann)



SECAUCUS— The headline might be a little expansive since the national headquarters has not yet echoed it, but it's still pretty impressive as it is:

"Kerry/Edwards Campaign Joins Ohio Recount."

The news release was issued this afternoon over the signature of Ohio's Democratic chairman, Dennis White: "As Senator Kerry stated in his concession speech in Boston, we do not necessarily expect the results of the election to change, however, we believe it necessary to make sure everyone's vote is counted fairly and accurately." White called for witnesses, volunteers, and donations.

The statement ends nearly three weeks of official Democratic ambivalence towards the formal recount process in the election's decisive state. As late as Friday, Senator Kerry's email to 3,000,000 supporters contained a seemingly ambiguous reference to that process, which began with the phrase "Regardless of the outcome of this election, once all the votes are counted, and believe me they will be counted, we will continue to challenge the administration."

It had been left to the independent parties, the Greens and Libertarians, to do the initial work demanding a recount in each of Ohio's 88 counties. Their combined effort led to a bond of $113,600 being posted with the state last Friday to guarantee the coverage of expenses incurred. Just today, the "Glibs" amplified their demands in Ohio, filing a federal lawsuit that, if successful, would require the completion of the "full, hand recount" before the meeting of the Electoral College on December 13.

The Ohio Democrats did not attach themselves to the lawsuit. "The recount can begin after the official results are certified, which likely will be in the first week of December," reads the news release. "The Democratic party wants to be fully prepared to begin a recount immediately."

Howard Fineman joins me on Countdown tonight at 8 and Midnight eastern to discuss the ramifications.

E-mail KOlbermann@MSNBC.com

from michael moore's site:
November 23rd, 2004 7:25 pm
Government Accountability Office to Conduct Investigation of 2004 Election Irregularities


Common Dreams

WASHINGTON -- November 23 -- Reps. John Conyers, Jr., Jerrold Nadler, Robert Wexler, Robert Scott, and Rush Holt announced today that, in response to their November 5 and 8 letters to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the GAO has decided to move forward with an investigation of election irregularities in the 2004 election. The five Members issued the following statement:

"We are pleased that the GAO has reviewed the concerns expressed in our letters and has found them of sufficient merit to warrant further investigation. On its own authority, the GAO will examine the security and accuracy of voting technologies, distribution and allocation of voting machines, and counting of provisional ballots. We are hopeful that GAO's non-partisan and expert analysis will get to the bottom of the flaws uncovered in the 2004 election. As part of this inquiry, we will provide copies of specific incident reports received in our offices, including more than 57,000 such complaints provided to the House Judiciary Committee.

"The core principle of any democracy is the consent of the governed. All Americans, no matter how they voted, need to have confidence that when they cast their ballot, their voice is heard."

The Members listed above were joined in requesting the non-partisan GAO investigation by Reps. Melvin Watt, John Olver, Bob Filner, Gregory Meeks, Barbara Lee, Tammy Baldwin, Louise Slaughter and George Miller.

Just giving you some of the latest comments on the election. The media has made many hints to the fact that Ohio is a mess...
Even though the inauguration will probably go forward in January, because in most people's minds it's a done deal, before that there still could be an upset to the idea that the Bush cabal has a 'mandate' and 'political capital to spend.'

To my thinking even if Bush didn't legitimately win, there were still a very many Americans who supported and enabled him. This is upsetting to me because I do not think what the US has done in Iraq is legitimate but is out-and-out atrocity. I would like to think more people would feel this 'war' is wrong.

Here is the latest updates from the blog - some of it is clowing and refers to previous blogging - over the last few days from Keith O. at MSNBC who is still working on it:

• December 27, 2004 | 12:11 p.m. ET

Kerry lawyer: does the re-election warrant the public trust? (Keith Olbermann)


NEW YORK - I spent the weekend holding the latest statement from John Kerry's Ohio attorney up to the light, to see if I could read the secret treasure map written in invisible ink on the other side.

In signing on to the Glibs' court bid to preserve all the evidence of what has been a severely compromised recount, Daniel Hoffheimer told us at Countdown: "Only then can the integrity of the entire electoral process and the election of Bush-Cheney warrant the public trust."

Surely, I'm not going out on a limb here to infer that at the moment, Mr. Hoffheimer and the Kerry-Edwards campaign don't think the entire electoral process and the election of President Bush warrant the public trust.

I mean, the infamous "regardless of the outcome of the election," phrase in Kerry's only post-concession comment on the mangled vote was so subtle in both temporality and meaning that it could have been inserted in a statement dealing with any eventuality ranging from a clearly determined vote that was in the past, to a still undecided result.

But not Hoffheimer's. Them's (to borrow the language of the noted political pundit Yosemite Sam) fightin' words. Fightin' words issued last Thursday evening, as America got out of town for a holiday weekend. Fightin' words that came just eight working days before the Electoral College votes are opened before Congress, and Maxine Waters or John Conyers or anybody else in the House can crawl all the way out on the limb of formal challenge, and it won't matter a jot if there isn't one Senator to crawl out there with them.

It's unfathomable that Kerry would sign the requisite written challenge. Given his incredibly nuanced response to the entire voting irregularities story, and his evident aspiration to become the Adlai Stevenson or even William Jennings Bryan of the 21st Century, becoming the Senate sponsor of the challenge would seem about as likely and about as consistent as a motorist doing 20 in the right hand lane, suddenly accelerating to 110 and doing the full Bill Murray Groundhog Day bit into the quarry.

Kerry's signature might not even be sought. There has been "very serious" contact among the staffs of leading Democrats in both houses about the implications of the challenge, according to a congressional figure privy to that contact. He estimates for us that the chance of a Senator actually signing on has — in the last week — risen from almost nothing, to upwards of one third.

And there is still that coda from Hoffheimer's statement. By itself, it is the thrown gauntlet, and yet it is produced at a time when gauntlets are pretty much symbolic protests. Unless, perhaps, that is the strategy here. The Ohio election was undeniably full of holes, but barring developments unforeseen, the collective verified hole is not likely to be big enough to drive a truck carrying 10,000 uncounted votes through it.

However, the recount has been butchered, badly enough that even an editorial in Sunday's Toledo Blade noted "the miserable performance of much of the American electoral system." The Green Party says that 86 of the 88 counties violated Ohio voting law and pre-selected what were to be randomly chosen precincts for hand recounts. It claims that only one county (Coshocton) ran a full hand recount of all of its votes, and, oopsie, its certified total number of votes rose from 16,000 on election night, to 17,000 after the recount (evenly split, we might add, between Bush and Kerry, but indicating 6% of all votes disappeared). The official recount in Fairfield County found added 1,130 votes to the first count of 66,378. Representative Conyers last week wrote again to Triad Systems asking them to refute charges that they had "remote access" to their voting equipment in Fulton and Henry Counties (read as: they could change computer stuff over the internet). In the kindest of all possible lights, a Triad employee tried to save the elections officials of Hocking County the 'trouble' of a full hand recount at Christmas time by helping them find a precinct whose second tally would match the first one.

Is the political premise here to redirect attention from the hazy confusion of election day voter suppression or unexplained lockdowns or troubled equipment, to the simpler-to-digest black-and-white issues of the recount? "Law says A. You did Z." The full Hoffheimer statement includes this: "Senators Kerry and Edwards... want to be sure that all circumstances involved in the Ohio election, including the recount, should be put before the Court and disclosed to the American people." For the record, Hoffheimer's full statement to Countdown is included at the bottom of this entry.

Excepting the possibility that the Greens/Libertarians/Kerry-Edwards suit will be immediately dismissed, this court action in Ohio is not going to be processed quickly enough to affect the inauguration. It could, instead, become a kind of institutionalized protest, the exact kind of lingering, evolving post-post game show that Al Gore swore the Democrats off of in 2000. It could become, in effect, the slow-moving symbol of the final line Hoffheimer's statement, questioning public trust in "the entire electoral process and the election of Bush-Cheney..."

Voters and politicians will have to determine if that is an appropriate playing field for political discourse for the next two or four years.

Speaking of discourse, I've received a handful of e-mails since I mentioned in passing in last Tuesday's post, the claims of a Florida computer software worker that he was asked to write a 'vote-switching program' in 2000. There have been several points raised that can, I think, be pretty easily cleared up here:

Several e-mails noted that the programmer, Clint Curtis, testified before the Conyers Voting Forum in Columbus, Ohio, earlier this month. Well, yes and no. He did tell his story there, but it's instructive to note that he was not asked to do so until after Representative Conyers left the forum, and had turned the chairing of the meeting over to a local politician. This wasn't a case of Conyers rushing to catch a bus, nor a problem with too many witnesses, nor a coincidence.
For weeks, say sources at various levels of the formal investigations into the voting irregularities, Mr. Curtis has promised them corroboration of his accusations — even if it was just the statement of someone to whom he said, in 2000, 'hey, this guy just asked me to write a vote-switching program.' These sources say they've received no such corroboration, and certainly none has been presented publicly.
One e-mailer complained that the denial by the politician accused by Mr. Curtis of soliciting the program seemed pretty tepid, and confined itself largely to his comment "I don't remember meeting Mr. Curtis." Well, the ambiguity of the denial is partially my fault. Much of the remarks were boilerplate and repetitive, but I did leave out a fairly salient one, in which he said these were: "some of the most ridiculous, fictional charges you could ever imagine." I wouldn't classify that as a 'non-denial denial.'
Two readers asked why we didn't simply put Mr. Curtis on 'Countdown' or otherwise interview him. Unfortunately, there is a question of the size of the platform here. If the details of his charges can be found on an innocuous website with limited readership, it doesn't matter much in the grand scheme of things if the possibility that they are partially or totally untrue, turns out to be the correct one. But if that's the case — if this is actually the story of a guy out to hurt a politician — and we put him on national television, I will have effectively recreated the Swift Boat Veterans fiasco. Under those circumstances, especially in the absence of corroboration, the truth becomes secondary, and the damage is the only verifiable thing.
Lastly (and, for my money, most entertainingly): I noted that an attorney for Curtis's former employers, for whom he was working when he claims to have been asked to develop the nefarious program, described him to MSNBC as a 'disgruntled former employee.' However, an e-mailer writes, at the time of his departure from the firm, the company gave him a going-away card. I had to smile at this evidence. When I left ESPN in 1997, the company gave me a tape of my oddest moments on the air, a huge farewell banner, and a going-away party that lasted until sunrise and was so joyous that the authorities were summoned. Still, I have to be the first one to say it: if anybody has the right to call me a 'disgruntled former employee,' it's ESPN.
As promised, the full text of the statement to Countdown from the evening of December 23 of Daniel J. Hoffheimer, State Legal Counsel, Ohio, Kerry-Edwards 2004, Inc., (and, yes, he's referring to himself in the third person here):

"Daniel Hoffheimer, State Legal Counsel for the Kerry-Edwards campaign, told MSNBC today that Kerry-Edwards will support the third-party candidates in asking the Federal Court in the Ohio recount lawsuit to order the preservation of the evidence obtained during the recount and to expedite discovery of the facts. Hoffheimer said that various problems and errors have occurred in a number of Ohio's 88 county boards of elections during the recount, which will conclude next week. Hoffheimer acknowledged that the most publicized of these problems was the machine manipulation in Hocking County but said that the developing evidence will reveal other problems as well. He said that Senators Kerry and Edwards are very concerned that the law for conducting the recount should be uniformly followed. They want to be sure that all circumstances involved in the Ohio election, including the recount, should be put before the Court and disclosed to the American people. Only then, Hoffheimer said, can the integrity of the entire electoral process and the election of Bush-Cheney warrant the public trust."

E-mail: KOlbermann@msnbc.com

• December 23, 2004 | 11:26 p.m. ET

Of Coffins, comp days, conspiracies and Christmas (Greg Kordick, Countdown Senior Producer)




"You angel of death, you're going to kill Clinton. We need to lock you up. Enjoy your vacation." It was with seemingly stunned disbelief Mr. Olbermann left that message on my cell phone. It was with equal disbelief I listened, standing on the streets of Montreal's Old Town. I laughed, but in that same instant, the realization hit: no vacation will ever be the same as long as the Big Bloggermann was following the news and following my movements away from work. You see, when I take a break from the Countdown, news breaks, and it's often of the variety that can never be fixed (unless you pull a Ted Williams and get cryogenically frozen).

Allow me to introduce myself since the boss man saw fit to publicly out me. To my adoring public I'm Greg Kordick, to my cohorts on the Countdown staff, the angel of death.

Keith mentioned this in a recent blog several days ago to deflect from Internet conspiracy theories that HIS week-long hiatus from MSNBC was more of a management-imposed permanent vacation, rather than a much deserved week off. Readers of the Internets, I can vouch for the fact that this is indeed a week respite of Keith's choosing and there is nothing more sinister at play. I however feel the need to dispel the Countdown conspiracy theory that when I cash in a comp day... celebrities cash it in for good... it is the Holidays after all... and I don't want Hollywood publicists now worrying about my comings and goings and the health of their clients.

On December 21st Keith wrote: "If you really want to worry about vacations, keep track of the days taken off by our crack line producer Greg Kordick... this year, on his days off, the following people have died: Ray Charles, Rick James, President Reagan, Rodney Dangerfield, Christopher Reeve, Marlon Brando, and Faye Wray. The jury in the Scott Peterson case came back on one of his days off, and returned its sentence on another one."

This whole conspiracy began in June. I was on vacation on Cape Cod. While I was off several stories broke during our normal newscast time which is generally unusual for 8pm at night. This week of breaking news culminated in the big one, the death of Ronald Reagan. When I returned to work, I walked in the door and was jokingly told you killed Reagan. Several days later I left work early. Five minutes out the door, the news broke that Capitol Hill was being evacuated hours before the president's body was to lie in state. Where was Greg? Then I take my birthday off, Ray Charles dies. The conspiracy takes hold but Keith is not a believer yet.

Fast forward. I take July 1st off because I'm stuck working on the company holiday for Independence Day. Marlon Brando dies. Everyone takes notice, Keith and I included. Fast forward to August. I return home to the Midwest. Look out, we're on death watch. I'm off for a 4-day weekend. Rick James and Fay Wray die. Fast Forward to September. I'm in Montreal. The news breaks that President Clinton needs emergency heart bypass surgery. Keith calls me in Montreal to express disbelief in the coincidence and the staff feels things aren't looking good for Mr. Clinton. Forget what the doctors say... the grim reaper of news is up north. His surgery is scheduled for a Tuesday and I'll be back at work. The staff breathes a sigh of relief. Clinton's surgery is a day early and pulls through fine. Maybe the death spell is gone, but there is definitely a firm belief that bad news breaks. While in Canada, the Russian school tragedy and Hurricane Frances dominate the headlines.

The conspiracy now hits my family and friends. I go home for a quick three day weekend in October and convey the story, laughingly, that my friends back at Countdown are just waiting to see who will die, or what will happen next. Monday morning comes. I wake up, say hello to my mother and there's no greeting back. "Christopher Reeve is dead." My mother couldn't bring herself to say it but her look said it all. What was her son's twisted connection to all of this? That same day it's announced Ken Caminiti dies.

At this point, it's obvious; I will never have another peaceful vacation again. I will always be looking over my shoulder at the nearest TV or hitting cyber cafés everywhere to catch the latest headline on msnbc.com. Case in point, mid December, I take a 4-day weekend to Key West. Friday night I log on quickly. I didn't kill Bernard Kerik but I sure as heck killed his dreams of making Homeland Security director. (Perhaps I killed his nanny... has she turned up anywhere yet... anyone... anyone... Bueller?) I'm flying home the following Monday. The plane touches down... I get to my car and turn on the radio... penalty phase over in the Scott Peterson trial. The decision was reached while I was still in the air. I didn't need to really see the live coverage, but I watched anyway. Death.

Since Keith outed me as the cable producer Angel of Death, I've had a chance to reflect on the conspiracy theory... and it is just that, a conspiracy. A quick check of the overall picture will bear that all out. People die every day. I was at work for the deaths of Yasser Arafat, Janet Leigh, Geoffrey Beene, Johnny Ramone, Julia Child, Isabel Sanford, Tony Randall, Alan King, Estee Lauder, Alistair Cooke, Peter Ustinov, Robert Pastorelli, Paul Winfield, Marge Schott, Jack Paar, Bob Keeshan, John Ritter, Johnny Cash and Dick the Goldfish to name a few. Unscientifically speaking, 86 percent of all celebrity deaths of 2004 happened while I was on the clock or within pagers distance of being called in to work to cover the story if need be. The exit polls are wrong. Finally tally is in. No Recount necessary. Case Closed.

For those that choose to STILL believe in the conspiracy, I want you to relax over the holidays. I'm not going anywhere... I will be very near MSNBC World Headquarters so all should be well. (But for those who want to play the home game of the Countdown Conspiracy, I am taking Thursday December 30th off... watch msnbc and msnbc.com for breaking developments).

I demand no apology from Mr. Olbermann for the inference that my days off lead to less than pleasant events in the world, in fact, I thank him for allowing me to use his space to get my version of reality out there. All I want for Christmas is for you guys to stop construction on the Gitmo style holding cell out back in Secaucus so I'm forced to never leave MSNBC. It's not funny. And please... please let 2005 be the year I can R.I.P. (Relax In Peace.)

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

On a separate programming note, we put the finishing touches to our Countdown Holiday show Tuesday night. Countdown's Favorite Things 2004 airs Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve... and a few times over the weekend. It's the highlights from the show over the last year... and it had us laughing in the control room not once but twice as we had to go back and fix a few hiccups here and there. If you can't make the usual show times during the holidays, this show is definitely a must TiVo so you can watch it and rewatch it at your leisure. You'll regret it if you miss it.

Thoughts? E-mail us at KOlbermann@msnbc.com

• December 22, 2004 | 6:48 p.m. ET

Challenges and the challenged (Keith Olbermann)

SECURE UNDISCLOSED LOCATION — So much for my vow of not posting again during my vacation.

However, a lot of facts from the previous post have been clarified — or muddied — and the news, to paraphrase one of my snarkiest friends in the business, "doesn't stop when you're off; it goes on another three to four hours a day."

Representative John Conyers of Michigan is awaiting a staff report before deciding whether or not to formally challenge Ohio's electoral votes a week from tomorrow. Ted Kalo, the Minority General Counsel of the House Judiciary Committee, advises us by email that Conyers "is waiting until all the facts are in," but notes that Representative Maxine Walters of Los Angeles has already spoken publicly about her willingness to be the house signatory on the challenge. Whether or not there's a senator willing to do the same is still an open question.

Mr. Kalo also points out details that make the recount situation in Hocking County, Ohio, seem far less closed than the County's Assistant Prosecutor led me to believe. I guess I'm still a little naïve on such things, but it would seem to me that in telling his story of a "comedy of errors" involving the inspection of the main vote tabulator there by a representative of the voting machine manufacturer, Triad Systems, David Sams might have been mentioned that in addition to being Assistant Prosecutor, he is also (per Mr. Kalo) the legal representative of the Hocking County Board of Elections during the recount.

I thought we had a bad jobs situation in Ohio. How come so many civil servants there have to double up?

Kalo, and the Green Party's recount coordinator for Southeastern Ohio, Orren Whiddon, both point out that the issue in Hocking is not so much what was or wasn't done to the machine, but the efforts of the Triad man to find out which of Hocking's precincts was to be subjected to the mandatory 3% hand recount.

One of our producers had asked Deputy Prosecutor Sams about how the subject of the unusual inquiries was dealt with at the informal "board meeting" Sams conducted Monday. Asked why the Triad employee would've asked about precincts at all, Mr. Sams replied, "I don't remember, to be honest, what he answered to that. But it was really just a comedy of errors. There was no impropriety."

Both Mr. Kalo and Mr. Whidden spoke highly of Sams, but suggest he missed the point. The Green Party rep notes that Ohio law is specific about the 3% sample that must be hand recounted in each county: it's supposed to be selected randomly. If the effort is made — either by an election official, or somebody else (like a manufacturer's rep) — to decide in advance which 3% of the vote is to be recounted, the concept of random selection is thoroughly contaminated and once again, a puff of smoke rises from the entire recount process.

Mr. Whidden told me by phone this afternoon that there are a lot of puffs of smoke. "86 of Ohio's 88 counties have pre-selected their random precincts," he claims. Their motivations — and even Triad's — may not be as nefarious as would appear. Ohio law states that if the 3% hand recount doesn't match the original vote, the entire County's vote must be recounted by hand. These County Board of Elections, especially in the smaller jurisdictions, are comprised largely of volunteers, and a full, hand recount means an incredible amount of work, which as human nature would suggest, they'd prefer to avoid.

Unfortunately, it also means that if you were trying to fix a vote in Ohio, or cover it up in a recount, you had merely to identify which precincts were least likely to be chosen (rather than randomly selected), and do your dirty work in them.

Which brings us back to Triad and what its rep was doing, trying to find out which precincts in Hocking would be recounted by hand, and offering tips to help make sure the recount matched the original vote. "Highly respected company," Whidden notes. "Triad has a rule against corporate donations to political parties; their employees may, but they don't. Not a Diebold situation. They answer questions openly. They believe in customer service." The problem arises when the customer service, even innocently, dovetails with the same mechanism that guarantees that the precinct selection isn't random, and full hand recounts don't occur.

Whidden points out how it's supposed to be done. In one county for which he acted as a supervisor, Athens, "the board of elections took the names of each of its precincts, put them on slips of paper, put the pieces in a coffee can, and kept pulling the slips out until they had precincts that totaled to 3% of the county vote. Great, great job."

So there's the early picture from Ohio: the best-respected of the computer companies, Triad, tries to help one of its customers out. The customer wants to go home without doing the heavy lifting that the law requires, but which to them seems utterly academic. The process is repeated across the state. Benign intentions; potentially pernicious outcomes.

Which brings us back again Washington. There, Mr. Conyers wrote yesterday to the various chairmen, network presidents, and news division leaders at ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, and the Associated Press, requesting that they release to the House Judiciary Committee "the raw exit poll data from the 2004 November presidential election you purchased from Mitofsky International and Edison Media Research." I suppose I should have some inside information on NBC's response, but I don't. Responses from the other networks have thus far spoken of the need to wait for final reports to be compiled from the data — which would seem to be exactly the opposite of the point Conyers is making.

HISTORICALLY CHALLENGED:
Lastly, I mentioned here Tuesday that I'd been advised by one of my extremist readers that Adolf Hitler was a Left-winger; that, in fact, all fascists were.

Little did I know that this revisionist history has been a popular subtext on talk radio for several years (I stopped listening to anything Rush Limbaugh said after he came to my desk in Bristol, Connecticut about a decade ago and told me his dream was to work for ESPN — how'd that work out for him, by the way?)

I got a flood of emails pointing out that on the basis of economic policy — the original means by which "right" and "left" came into use in Europe and here — the Fascists of Italy and Germany were a little to the right of Atilla the Hun. There were also useful reminders that the Germans and Italians backed Franco in the Spanish Civil War (with American leftists coming in against them as "The Lincoln Brigade"), along with a lot of simple guffaws.

One of the loudest was provided — unintentionally — by somebody who had drunk this particular kool-aid. "You do realize the Nazis were the 'National-Socialist German Workers' Party,' don't you? How many socialists in your experience have been what you would call 'right-wingers?'"

As I noted to my correspondent, the answer is probably contained in the following set of facts:

The Communist state in what was, until 1990, East Germany was officially called "The German Democratic Republic," and it was never mistaken by anybody for a democracy.
The Communist behemoth in China is officially "The People's Republic," and it's never been mistaken by anybody for a Republic (although if it were, its leaders would be called, by dint of pure linguistic logic, Republicans).
The football championship is officially called "The Super Bowl," and when the game isn't particularly super, they don't go offering everybody refunds.
Email: KOlbermann@msnbc.com.

• December 21, 2004 | 9:43 a.m. ET

I read every word of your last post here with the bloggers and it was worth every minute, PD. Thank you again!

Maria

Would anybody be so kind and fill me in on the definitions of "blog" and "blogger" ?

Thanks in advance,
Stephanie

If you do what amounts to journaling (as opposed to more formal journalism) in an online chronological format, adding dated entries as you go, then you are a blogger writing a web log or blog. Techno slang.

Maria

I'm still not sure I understand A blog is an on-line journal??? Bloggers are people who create on-line journals?

Webster has nothing to say where blogs are concerned (at least not yet).

LOve&LIght,
Stephanie

Blog is a relatively new word, that is why

I only heard about it about a year or so back and I don't really have much personal experience with it.

Tech "NO' dictionary is the problem.
He who talks most wins.

There is a new word for the same old stuff every month.

In the old days before the www, when you dailed up help, you would connect to a bulliten board.
Now BB's are formal and the very posts we see here are on a BB. The advancement was the use of databases and more CPU power to sort and links the formats.

The computer world is full of cheap free gunk.
Mostly MY-SQL database, a BB, and a web and e-mail server.
Presto, a 23 year old TECHnobody is now more knowledgable than the pill popping fast talking insan-U-Yak, RUSH.

This is why the story line behind the TV show the West Wing is so full of crap. The very people against the White House, sponser and write leftist script based on their preception of what the righit wing think and say about people such as bloggers, when the truth is, many in the WH channel are very much in tune to what the blogers say (coz it scares the heck out of them), but they don't think they are crazy or the enemy as the Holiwood and TV media protrays them. In other words, the free to think often think incorrectly and defeat their own purpose.
And we should all remember, "It's for entertainment only."

Sorry to bore you with the details but thats where the truth is hidden.

They say farming is difficult. I don't believe it.

L&L,
Darwin

Hello,

Well for a while this year we were in a state of suspense but now everyone knows how it all ends.

After all the gonging, at showtime it was more like a tinkling.

I thought I would follow up with a quote from a Wisdom magazine article 'Moose' by Cie Simurro. This is what I felt all along but this person says it well:

quote"Are you disappointed by the results of the elections? Moose medicine says, it is time for a new paradigm. The guidance I got the day after the election was, "You are still love." The new paradigm is that the power of our elected officials is going to come from the consciousness shift of individuals like you and I, who are fed up with the politics of hatred and division. The new Democratic hope, Barak Obama, speaks only of unity. Sorry - criticism, hatred, skullduggery only produce more of hte same. It is not weak and idealistic to pray for our leaders and send them love. It brings out the "beter" in them. Eventually the power of the base (us) will prevail when a quorum is reached. Jesus said to love your enemies. He knew it is counterproductive to try to change things from negative positioning. Political movements fail when we become that which we hate. Years ago, I was sent an excerpt from Leonard Zunin's book 'Contact: The First Four Minutes.' It's powerful. when a person of the Bahemba tribe in South Africa acts badly, he is placed in the center of the village. Each member of the tribe tells everything good they can remember about that person until every memory has been exhausted. Not one word of accusation. At the end, in joyous celebration, that person is welcomed back to the heart of the community. Afer that, who could be an outlaw? Let us encourage each other..."

I feel these are very wise, very needed words.

Hi Piscesdreamer & all,

PD-Thank you for sharing the magazine article. I Cie Simurro's viewpoint.

LOve&LIght,
Stephanie