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from a press release:
At the press conference, Bev Harris of Black Box Voting said she would be challenging the Florida and Ohio vote counts. Her cell phone number is xxx-xxx-xxxx.
Below is the press release from today and the fact sheet. Before that is an exchange between the Kerry campaign and the Nader campaign.
Senator John Kerry’s spokesperson Adam Stone’s responded to a press query about Ralph Nader’s call on the Kerry-Edwards campaign to make sure every vote is counted, especially in Ohio, saying:
"Far from remaining silent, John Kerry and John Edwards days ago demanded that every vote be counted in this election, and built the 17,000 lawyer election team around the country that is ensuring that every American's right to vote is protected. Why does Ralph Nader want to create a phony wedge issue between progressives when he should be working with Democrats to guarantee the right to vote is protected?"
Nader-Camejo responds – this is old news – pre-Election Day. We now, after November 2, 2004, call on Senator Kerry and Senator Edwards to renew their commitment to ensure every vote is counted accurately, last made on the day they conceded the presidency to George W. Bush. Since that time they have remained silent on the problems in the counting of the vote despite increasing evidence of anomalies in the vote results favoring President Bush. Kerry-Edwards should use some of those 17,000 lawyers for good purposes – after using them for the constitutional crime of preventing voters from having the opportunity to vote for Nader-Camejo with their phony ballot access challenges – and aggressively challenge the results in states where issues have come to the forefront. Rather than creating a wedge between progressives the Nader-Camejo campaign is standing for the proposition that every vote must be counted. We continue to urge Kerry-Edwards to join us in this effort.
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For Immediate Release November 10, 2004
For Further Information Kevin B. Zeese 202-265-4000 Amy Belanger 202-265-4000
Ralph Nader Takes on Election Day Problems
“To create a vibrant democracy we must face the irregularities in our elections – not ignore them after election day.”
Washington, DC – Over 2000 citizens including voting rights advocates are urging in writing the Nader-Camejo campaign to help make sure every vote is counted and counted accurately. The Nader-Camejo campaign does not view the election to be over merely because concession speeches, which have no legal effect, have been given. Rather they are over when every vote is counted and legally certified.
Voting-rights groups and others have identified trouble spots and anomalies in several states meriting further investigation. They are discovering what Nader warned against throughout this election: because computers are inherently subject to programming error, equipment malfunction, and malicious tampering, paperless electronic voting machines make it impossible to safeguard the integrity of our vote. Imagine our country turning the technology and software for counting our votes over to three or four proprietary corporations. With other obstructions and manipulations, they thereby threaten the very foundation of our democracy. The Democratic National Committee website offers no response or advice to voters on where to turn. Senator John Kerry, thus far, has remained silent.
Regardless of whether it changes the electoral outcome, the Democrats should follow through on their repeated promises by the Kerry-Edwards campaign to the people to make sure every vote is counted – in Ohio and other states discovering similar problems with electronic voting machines and other irregularities. “It is imperative to find out what changes are needed in the equipment whether superior system substitutions should be used,” Nader said. “At a minimum, the Democrats should put the state on alert to clean up its act. With the extensive pre-election effort to prevent election fraud, including international observers, activist poll watchers and attempts to enforce paper trail backups, the Democratic Party’s silence is puzzling,” said Ralph Nader. “It needs to wake up from its week of ‘shock and awe.’”
Realities, plausibilities and rumors swirl around at times such as these. Facts must be separated from fiction if we are ever going to know what happened.
On November 5, The Nader/Camejo campaign filed a challenge seeking a hand recount of the New Hampshire ballots at the request of numerous voting rights advocates. Striking inconsistencies exist between the vote as reported on the AccuVote Diebold Machines and exit polls and voting trends in New Hampshire. These irregularities in the reported vote count favor President George W. Bush by 5% to 15% over what was expected. Problems in these electronic voting machines and optical scanners are being reported in machines in a variety of states.
Nader says major electoral reforms are needed to ensure that every vote counts, including the most unlikely to be counted – those of third party and independent candidates’ votes. Reforms should ensure that all voters are represented through electoral reforms like instant run-off voting, binding none-of-the-above options, and proportional representation; that non-major party candidates have a ballot access chance to run for office and participate in debates; and that public elections be publicly financed.
Ralph Nader called upon John Edwards and John Kerry to be serious about their pre-election and post-election promises: “Our offices are being flooded with faxes and e-mails asking for assistance in resolving these irregularities – a lot of them are citizens who voted for you. You must now take action to give our nation the fair accounting it deserves from the 2004 election and to protect democratic processes in future elections. Although your party extended considerable funds and manpower to unconstitutionally drive us off the Ohio ballot, in the spirit of good government, I urge you to make this effort now.”
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Fact Sheet 2004 Election
Widespread reports of votes uncounted due to machine failure, absurdly long lines, voter suppression, voting rules being capriciously applied, and other irregularities. There are also reports of striking inconsistencies between the vote as reported on optical scan vote counting machines and exit polls.
The Nader-Camejo campaign has received more than 2,000 faxes and e-mails asking for help investigating and challenging these irregularities. - In his introductory remarks to John Kerry’s concession statement, John Edwards said, “In America it is vital that every vote count, and that every vote be counted.” The Nader-Camejo campaign challenges Democrats to stand behind this principle.
- Nader-Camejo has requested a hand recount of the vote in New Hampshire because of reports of anomalies favoring President Bush in towns that used the Diebold AccuVote optical scan machines. We are examining the evidence in other states as well.
- Regardless of whether investigations show a changed outcome in the Presidential election, paperless voting machines threaten democracy. Every voting system includes a key component, called the ballot definition file (BDF), that is never subjected to an outside review or independent audit and undergoes very little testing. BDFs tell the voting machine software how to interpret a voter's touches on a screen or marks on an optical scan ballot (including absentee ballots), how to record those selections as votes, and how to combine them into the final tally.
Examples of machine irregularities:
<caron> In Columbus, Ohio – Elections officials admitted that a voting machine cartridge error gave Bush 4,258 votes and John Kerry with 260 in a Gahanna precinct 1B where only 638 voters cast ballots and only 365 people voted for Bush.
<caron> In Cuyahoga County, Ohio – 29 precincts cumulatively reported 93,000 more votes than voters.
<caron> In Broward County, Florida – Election officials noticed at the end of the day that the numbers of votes cast had gone down, not up. Officials found their software could handle only 32,000 votes per precinct before counting backward. The glitch affected 97,434 absentee ballots.
<caron> In Jacksonville, N.C. – More than 4,500 votes were lost in one North Carolina County because officials believed a UniLect Corp. computer set to handle only 3,005 votes could handle 10,500. Expecting the greater capacity, the county used only one unit during the early voting period. Officials said 3,005 early votes were stored, but 4,530 were lost and there is no way to retrieve the missing data.
Voting Problems in Ohio
- Warren County, Ohio – The county administration building was locked down on election night and observation of the vote count blocked (no other Ohio County closed off its elections board).
- Lake County, Ohio. Some voters received a memo on bogus Board of Elections letterhead informing voters who registered through Democratic and NACCP drives that they could not vote. Election officials referred the matter to the sheriff.
- Before Election Day, Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell (a Republican who co-chairs President Bush’s statewide campaign) was challenged by voters-rights organizations for denying citizens their voting rights on the basis of a rule (later rescinded) requiring voter registration forms be printed on 80 pound paper stock. Voter registration forms were submitted on newsprint in Cuyahoga County after being printed in the (Cleveland) Plain Dealer.
- Mahoning County. The glass on top of one electronic screen was too far from the screen, making it difficult for people to use their fingers to cast ballots. A screen went blank on a Youngstown voter while he cast his ballot. Also, in Mahoning County. 20 to 30 machines that needed to be recalibrated during the voting process because some votes for a candidate were being counted for that candidate's opponent. About a dozen machines needed to be reset because they essentially froze.
- Cincinnati. Problems with punch card voting machines delayed the start of voting for up to an hour Tuesday morning at a suburban precinct. Voters were unable to slide their punch-card ballots all the way into any of the six voting machines that had ALL evidently been damaged in transit.
- In Columbus, Ohio, overcharged batteries on Danaher Controls ELECTronic 1242 systems kept machines from booting up properly at the beginning of the day. The resulting delays, combined with higher voter turnout, resulted in lines of several hours – in one case, 22 hours – led to some citizens’ voting rights being taken away by administrative default.
This is not new. Serious problems with electronic voting were reported in 2000 and 2002, including o New Mexico, Nov. 2000 – 67,000 absentee and early-voting ballots were counted incorrectly.
o Texas, April 2002 – A difference in ballot data on different machines resulted in miscounts in 18 races.
o Florida, Sept. 2002 – 2,642 Democratic and Republican votes were counted as Republican.
o North Carolina, Nov. 2002 – 5,500 party-line votes, both Republican and Democrat, were uncounted.
o A national voting rights group - Count Every Vote 2004 -- documented hundreds of voting irregularities affecting poor and minority voters in seven Southern states — from long lines and faulty equipment to deliberate voter intimidation. The group listed a shortage of early voting locations in Duval County, Fla., the largest county in Florida in area and voting-age population, the failure of electronic voting machines in three South Carolina counties, and the loss of votes at a North Carolina precinct when too much information was stored on a computer unit.
Regardless of whether it changes the outcome, the Democrats should follow through on their promise to make sure every vote counts. It is imperative to find out whether changes are needed in the equipment. At a minimum, the Democrats should put the state on alert to clean up its act. Major electoral reforms are needed to ensure that every vote counts, including the most unlikely to be counted – third party and independent candidates’ votes. Reforms must ensure that all voters are represented through electoral reforms like instant run-off voting, binding none-of-the-above options, and proportional representation; that non-major party candidates have a chance to run for office and participate in debates; and that elections be publicly financed.
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