Sunday 4/3 Election Fraud, Reform, & Updates Thread

[MelissaB]

In order to organize and document I thought it would be a good idea to have a daily thread to place items related to reform, fraud, protests, and other items. This also make it easier to "catch up" when we are away from the computer for a while.

Please help us. If you see something that isn't here post it with a link to the thread and a thanks to the author. Thanks to everyone who is helping with this project.

Link to the thread from yesterday: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x352026

[lonestarnot]

1. Why are there no responses here? Has everyone forgotten already?

[MelissaB]

2. I just haven't had time to work on this thread this morning.

Chores, a new puppy, two kids, and yard work are wearing me out. :)

Let me see what I can do. Feel free to add, too, lonestarnot.

[MelissaB]

3. Unresolved issues remain

Unresolved issues remain

By THE JOURNAL NEWS
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: April 3, 2005)


ALBANY — The Legislature passed a $105 billion state budget last week — but the fiscal fights aren't over. Gov. George Pataki has objected to the spending levels — and has the power to veto parts of the budget he doesn't like. Further, the legislative leaders acknowledged they left several programs in limbo amid the rush to adopt a budget before the April 1 start of the fiscal year.

Here's a look at the outstanding issues


Election laws
The money: $220 million in federal aid — if New York upgrades its election system this year.

Where it stands: There are two outstanding issues: forms of identification for first-time voters and control of voting machines — including doling out of multimillion-dollar contracts to replace the old, lever-style machines.

Outlook: Neither Democrats nor Republicans want to lose the money. But this debate has lingered for several years and may not get resolved until the end of the legislative session in June.

Link: http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050403/NEWS05/504030347/1021

[MelissaB]

4. The Real Terrorists Are Holed Up In Washington

The Real Terrorists Are Holed Up In Washington

By GLENN CHENEY
Published on 4/3/2005

You want to mock a terrorist attack? Mock this: The terrorists are already in the gates. Nobody knows who they are. They look like elected officials, celebrities on TV, students in school, executives with briefcases, dudes hanging out on street corners.

>>>snip

Throwing Journalists In Jail

While televisions gush with glitz and idiocy, the terrorists throw journalists in jail. They make a bad journalist a whore. They make a whore a bad journalist. They let him into the White House. He asks stupid questions, gets stupid answers. He does not remove his shoes.

They slash the Constitution, seize without need, search without warrant, arrest without cause, hold without charges, try without jury, and outsource cruel and unusual punishment to places where tyranny rules.

They rule. They corrupt. They buy legislators. They sell favors. They puff themselves up on TV but fling so much mud that nobody can see what's happening. They replace voting machines with black boxes. Nobody gets to look inside. They fool enough of the people enough of the time.

More: http://www.theday.com/eng/web/news/re.aspx?re=CCBA46B0-DB13-46B4-88F9-BB31AAB92DD9

[MelissaB]

7. Discussion

here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3415394

[MelissaB]

5. News and views from the Louisiana Capitol

BRIEFING BOOK
News and views from the Louisiana Capitol
Sunday, April 03, 2005

>>>snip

Rookie raises hand

Newly elected Rep. Juan LaFonta, D-New Orleans, sat quietly as members of the House Committee on House and Governmental Affairs, especially longtime Rep. Peppi Bruneau, R-New Orleans, pummeled Orleans Parish Criminal Court Clerk Kimberly Williamson Butler with questions about the foul-ups in the Sept. 19 citywide election. That's when 90 precincts received voting machines late, some hours after the polls opened. LaFonta, who replaced Rep. Edwin Murray, D-New Orleans, when Murray was elected to fill a vacant seat in the Senate, pushed his button to signal to committee Chairman Rep. Charles Lancaster, R-Metairie, he wanted to be recognized to ask a question about long lines of voters at various precincts in New Orleans during the presidential election in November. Lancaster announced that the newly minted lawmaker wanted to ask his first question, and added: "We're hoping you'll be another Peppi Bruneau," a reference to the sometimes pointed, caustic questions posed by the veteran House member from Lakeview. "I don't know how to respond to that," LaFonta said with a smile.


Link: http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/capital/index.ssf?/base/news-2/1112511495194040.xml

[MelissaB]

6. Scotsman, UK : The Black Box Holding Our Future

The Black Box Holding Our Future

By Chris Mead, PA Elections Editor

It may be a plain black box but it holds the nation’s future.

And it symbolises a key principle of our democracy – that the vote should be secret.

Other nations, including some in the third world, have introduced new technology to their democratic systems in the form of voting machines.

But, despite some trials in council contests, the mechanics of Britain’s General Election polling system is little changed from more than a century ago when the secret ballot came in.

The price of sticking to tradition is that while other states know who has won the election within minutes of close of poll, we sometimes have to wait until well into next day.


More: http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=4345336


(Sounds good to me. I can wait a little while to know that all the votes are counted.)

[MelissaB]

8. Science proves that vote fraud is real!

Sunday 3rd April 2005 (19h09) :

Science proves that vote fraud is real!

Vote fraud confirmed: US Count Votes has come out with a remarkable paper authored by a committee of twelve, most of them highly-qualified mathematicians and statisticians from major universities. This study highlights the serious ramifications of the exit poll discrepancy while demolishing the "chatty Dem" theory (more properly known as the "reluctant responder" theory), which remains the official explanation for that incongruity.
The only possibility left is vote alteration.

Alas, this important scientific study has yet to make an impact. The media, distracted by the Pope’s death, hasn’t noticed that Uncle Sam is also facing the Reaper. The only significant coverage of this report has appeared in the Akron Beacon Journal.

For those of you who are paying attention, the full analysis is here. An "executive summary" is here.

And if you’d like an ultra-brief summary of the summary:

The exit poll discrepancy in the 2004 American presidential election was the largest in the poll’s history -- about five-and-a-half percent. The odds against the polls being so wrong are roughly one in a million. The "chatty Dem" theory is nonsense: Responses to the pollsters were higher in Republican strongholds -- where the exit poll discrepancies were widest.

Answer that, Mr. Mitofsky.

I suppose the only (weak) counter-argument he might offer would be along these lines: For some reason, Kerry supporters in Bush strongholds -- but not in Democratic precincts -- were remarkably eager to push all others aside and commandeer the pollsters. Not only is this scenario counterintuitive, it goes against all previous experience. It also goes against Mitofski’s own data.

Once again, I would remind readers of another oddity besetting these troubling exit polls: On November 2, 2004, pollsters did not restrict inquiries to the votes cast on that date. They also asked voters about the 2000 election. 43% of the respondents said they had chosen Bush on that previous occasion, while 37% reported having cast a ballot for Al Gore.

But Gore WON the popular vote. This simple fact -- which even math illiterates should be able to comprehend easily -- proves that the exit pollsters favored Republicans, not Democrats.

Author Josh Mitteldorff, in the executive summary of the US Count Votes report, does not favor the theory that touch screen voting had greater error rates than did punch cards. However, on page 18 of the report proper, we see data suggesting that mechanical voting machines had a significantly higher error rate than did paper ballots.

How to resolve this seeming contradiction? I remind readers that punch cards are run through a computerized central tabulator -- the "mother machine," as Teresa Heinz-Kerry once put it. Absentee ballots and provisionals must be counted by hand.

>>>snip

Returning our attention to the new US Count Votes report:

So far, the best analysis of this analysis comes from Newsclip Autopsy. Highly recommend reading.

Here’s an important excerpt:


The exit polls for the 2004 election not only tabulated views from the Presidential election. It also received information about the voters intentions for the U.S. Senate races. Guess what?! Yup. Strangely enough, the exit polls were far more accurate at determining who would win for Senator. As history shows us, there is no precedent for widespread "ticket-splitting" in other elections. That is, if you vote democratic for President, there is an overwhelming probability that you would vote democratic for the Senator. US Vote Counts summarizes this peculiarity this way:
"There is no logic to account for non-responders or missed voters when discussing the
difference in the accuracy of results for the Senate versus the presidential races in the same exit poll."

No logic, indeed. Unless this is a nation where "multiple personality disorder" is present in epidemic proportions!!! To allay that particular fear, this report confirmed another startling finding which was observed in a previous report by the same group. Exit polling accuracy was dependent on whether the election ballots were hand-counted or not!! This is a highly significant finding, considering that, in Ohio, only a non-random 3% of the ballots were hand recounted. Many of these instances had recounts which were different from the machine counts.

And how did Ken Blackwell, the corrupt Ohio Secretary of State, respond to all this?

"What are you going to do except laugh at it?" said Carlo LoParo, spokesman for Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, who’s responsible for administering Ohio’s elections and is a Republican candidate for governor. "We’re not particularly interested in (the report’s findings)."
There you have it: Laughter directed at science. Laughter directed at ten PhDs. As though placing the topic behind a curtain of guffaws replaces the need for a counter-argument.
Once more, the Republicans assail Reason itself.

Please do everything you can to publicize the work of US Count Votes. This important scientific analysis should be leading all other headlines on Buzzflash, Bush Watch, Air America, Daily Kos...not to mention the New York Times, CBS, ABC and the rest of the mainstream media. Alas, even the wonderful blog by John Conyers has not yet covered this report.

More: http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=5667

[Wilms]

9. (WI) Doyle Proposes Statewide Election Reform

Doyle Proposes Statewide Election Reform

4/1/2005

ELECTION REFORM PACKAGE

http://www.wispolitics.com/index.iml?Article=34282

[MelissaB]

10. Analysis - Vote Counts May Have Been Altered

Analysis - Vote Counts May Have Been Altered

Friday, 1 April 2005, 12:40 am
Press Release: uscountvotes.org

Scientific Analysis Suggests Presidential Vote Counts May Have Been Altered
Group of University Professors Urges Investigation of 2004 Election

http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/Exit_Polls_2004_Edison-Mitofsky.pdf
US Count Votes
March 31st , 2005
Officially, President Bush won November's election by 2.5%, yet exit polls showed Kerry winning by 3% <1> . According to a report to be released today by a group of university statisticians, the odds of a discrepancy this large between the national exit poll and election results happening by accident are close to 1 in a million.

In other words, by random chance alone, it could not have happened. But it did.

Two alternatives remain. Either something was wrong with the exit polling, or something was wrong with the vote count.

Exit polls have been used to verify the integrity of elections in the Ukraine, in Latin America, in Germany, and elsewhere. Yet in November 2004, the U.S. exit poll discrepancy was much more than normal exit poll error (and similar to that of the invalid Ukraine election.<2> )

In a recent survey of US members of the world's oldest and largest computer society, The Association for Computing Machinery, 95% opposed software driven un-auditable voting machines <3> , of the type that now count at least 30% of U.S. votes. Today's electronic vote-counting machines are not required to include basic safeguards that would prevent and detect machine or human caused errors, be they innocent or deliberate. <4>

The consortium that conducted the presidential exit polls, Edison/Mitofsky, issued a report in January suggesting that the discrepancy between election results and exit polls occurred because Bush voters were more reticent than Kerry voters in response to pollsters.


The authors of this newly released scientific study "Analysis of the 2004 Presidential Election Poll Discrepancies" consider this "reluctant Bush responder" hypothesis to be highly implausible, based on extensive analysis of Edison/Mitofsky's exit poll data. They conclude, /“The required pattern of exit poll participation by Kerry and Bush voters to satisfy the exit poll data defies empirical experience and common sense under any assumed scenario.”/

A state-by-state analysis of the discrepancy between exit polls and official election results shows highly improbable skewing of the election results, overwhelmingly biased towards the President.

The report concludes, “ We believe that the absence of any statistically-plausible explanation for the discrepancy between Edison/Mitofsky’s exit poll data and the official presidential vote tally is an unanswered question of vital national importance that needs thorough investigation.”

Ph.D. statisticians in America who have seen this group's preliminary exit poll study have not refuted it. This new study is a much more comprehensive an analysis of the exit poll discrepancies.

The report is available on-line:

http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/Exit_Polls_2004_Edison-Mitofsky.pdf
An executive summary of the report by is available at:

http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/Exit_Polls_summary.pdf
*Contributors and Supporters of the Report include:*

*Josh Mitteldorf*, PhD - Temple University Statistics Department

*Steven F. Freeman*, PhD - Center for Organizational Dynamics, University of Pennsylvania

*Brian Joiner*, PhD - Prof. of Statistics (ret) University of Wisconsin

*Frank Stenger*, PhD - Professor, School of Computing, University of Utah

*Richard G. Sheehan*, PhD -Professor, Department of Finance, University of Notre Dame

*Paul F. Velleman*, PhD - Associate Prof., Department of Statistical Sciences, Cornell University

*Victoria Lovegren*, PhD - Department of Mathematics, Case Western Reserve University

*Campbell** B. Read*, PhD - Prof. Emeritus, Department of Statistical Science, Southern Methodist University

*Jonathan Simon*, J.D., National Ballot Integrity Project

*Ron Baiman, *PhD* *– Institute of Government and Public Affairs, University of Illinois at Chicago


*************
*About US Count Votes*

US Count Votes is a Utah non-profit corporation. It is seeking financial support to complete its "National Election Data Archive" project. The goal of the project is to apply statistical and analytic methods to investigate the integrity of the 2004 elections and to provide for timely verification of the integrity of future elections..

For further information: contact Bruce O’Dell, Vice President, US Count Votes

Email: [e-mail]

or visit www.electionarchive.org
NOTES:
<1> "Evaluation of Edison/Mitofsky Election System 2004" prepared by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International for the National Election Pool (NEP) Jan. 19, 2005

<2> In the November 21 runoff, Ukraine's official vote count had Prime Minister Yanukovych the winner by 2.7%. Two exit polls showed him losing by 8% and 2%, respectively. Thus, the discrepancy was between 10.7% and 4.7%. In the US, the discrepancy was between 6.5% and 5.5%. See http://www.templetonthorp.com/ru/news808 and http://www.indybay.org/archives/archive_by_id.php?id=2669&category_id=44.

<3> http://www.acm.org/usacm/weblog/index.php?p=73
<4> http://uscountvotes.net/voting_machines/Best_Practices_US.pdf


Link: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0504/S00001.htm

Discussion thanks to althecat here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x351187

[MelissaB]

11. Why media ownership matters

(This is a great read from beginning to end.)



Sunday, April 3, 2005 - Page updated at 12:00 a.m.
Guest columnists

Why media ownership matters

By Amy Goodman and David Goodman

George Bush must have been delighted to learn from a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll that 56 percent of Americans still think Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the start of the war, while six in 10 said they believe Iraq provided direct support to the al-Qaida terrorist network — notions that have long since been thoroughly debunked by everyone from the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee to both of Bush's handpicked weapons inspectors, Charles Duelfer and David Kay.

Americans believe these lies not because they are stupid, but because they are good media consumers. Our media have become an echo chamber for those in power. Rather than challenge the fraudulent claims of the Bush administration, we've had a media acting as a conveyor belt for the government's lies.

As the Pentagon has learned, deploying the American media is more powerful than any bomb. The explosive effect is amplified as a few pro-war, pro-government media moguls consolidate their grip over the majority of news outlets. Media monopoly and militarism go hand in hand.

When it comes to issues of war and peace, the results of having a compliant media are as deadly to our democracy as they are to our soldiers. Why do the corporate media cheerlead for war? One answer lies in the corporations themselves — the ones that own the major news outlets.

More: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2002228040_sundaygoodman03.html

Thanks to Bigmac here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x117384

[Griffy]

12. keep up the good work.. its all about awareness

and its a long slow proccess.. Im out there too, talking to people.. passing oout DVD and other info..

so I wanted to thank the thankless :)