I cannot thank you all enough for all your help. Thanks to you I was able to compile an amazing up-to-date list of resources and documentation on the issue of voter irregularities and voter fraud. Hopefully it will be useful above and beyond this particular project. Below I am reproducing the text of the "cover letter" I wrote to Senator Kerry and the document itself. Again, you are all amazing. Thank you.
Dear Senator Kerry,
Below you will find information compiled by thousands of people over the course of the last week. We believe, based on the evidence presented herein, that the integrity of the election is in doubt. We are not presuming to say who won the election, but we want to make sure that it was indeed fair and that all the votes have been counted correctly. You conceded in a presumably fair race, and no one expects you to unconcede on the basis of a speculation or conjecture, but both facts and questions have emerged since last Tuesday, despite the media lockout on the subject. You are still the man that we, the Democratic voters, chose to represent us. Please give voice to our fears and doubts regarding the uncompromised and fair nature of this election.
You will see that while some of the information comes from the Associated Press (and is probably not new to you), much of it is coming from grassroots watchdog sources: electronic media, blogs, political discussion forums like Democratic Underground, etc. While the media blackout on the issue was broken by Keith Olbermann of MSNBC and Fred Grimm of The Miami Herald, for the most part at the moment coverage is taking place through these grassroots means. But just because the internet is a dominant medium where this information is aggregated, does not mean we are loony conspiracy theorists. We are poll monitors, lawyers, statisticians, university professors, freelance journalists, filmmakers, accountants, researchers, activists, writers, compensating from the ground up for the fact that this crucial issue is painfully underreported.
In your concession speech you spoke of healing. How can healing begin in a climate of suspicion and resentment? Unless you pursue this matter all of us will be left with our worst speculations, festering into anger in the absence of proof and resolution. If George Bush really did win this election, fair and square, so be it, but the way things stand at the moment, it is not only his legitimacy, but the legitimacy of the office of the President and the electoral process itself that are undermined.
Ralph Nader has already initiated recount proceedings in New Hampshire after receiving multiple requests and complaints from voter activists. But his initiative, while important and necessary, does not have the gravitas and legitimacy in the public arena that yours would. How can we convince you? Please, consider the information presented below, and be our voice in this moment of crisis, if not for your own chance at presidency, then for a restoration of morale and hope among those of us who fought so hard for you, for a unified Democratic party, and for a legal and fair democratic process.
DOCUMENTATION
REPORTS AND COMPLAINTS OF VOTER IRREGULARIES AND FRAUD, GENERAL
House Democrats seek election inquiry... 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...
http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65623,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_3From the House Judiciary Committee letter to GAO regarding voting machines
“...In particular, we are extremely troubled by the following reports, which we would also request that you review and evaluate for us:
In Columbus, Ohio, an electronic voting system gave President Bush nearly 4,000 extra votes. "Machine Error Gives Bush Extra Ohio Votes," Associated Press, November 5.
An electronic tally of a South Florida gambling ballot initiative failed to record thousands of votes. "South Florida OKs Slot Machines Proposal," Id.
In one North Carolina county, more than 4,500 votes were lost because officials mistakenly believed a computer that stored ballots could hold more data that it did. "Machine Error Gives Bush Extra Ohio Votes," Id.
In San Francisco, a glitch occurred with voting machines software that resulted in some votes being left uncounted. Id.
In Florida, there was a substantial drop off in Democratic votes in proportion to voter registration in counties utilizing optical scan machines that was apparently not present in counties using other mechanisms.
http://ustogether.org/election04/florida_vote_patt.htm The House Judiciary Committee Democratic staff has received numerous reports from Youngstown, Ohio that voters who attempted to cast a vote for John Kerry on electronic voting machines saw that their votes were instead recorded as votes for George W. Bush. In South Florida, Congressman Wexler's staff received numerous reports from voters in Palm Beach, Broward and Dade Counties that they attempted to select John Kerry but George Bush appeared on the screen. CNN has reported that a dozen voters in six states, particularly Democrats in Florida, reported similar problems. This was among over one thousand such problems reported. "Touchscreen Voting Problems Reported," Associated Press, November 5.
Excessively long lines were a frequent problem throughout the nation in Democratic precincts, particularly in Florida and Ohio. In one Ohio voting precinct serving students from Kenyon College, some voters were required to wait more than eight hours to vote. "All Eyes on Ohio," Dan Lothian, CNN, November 3,
We are literally receiving additional reports every minute and will transmit additional information as it comes available”
Investigation into Trashed (Democratic) Voter Registrations
http://www.klas-tv.com/Global/story.asp?S=2421595&nav=168XRvNeSizable mistakes have been found before in Diebold-run elections. More notably, the machines are easily hacked in such a way as to change the vote totals in not-readily-detectable ways.
There is a “second set of books” built in to Diebold machines, which can be accessed remotely if necessary.
http://www.ejfi.org/Voting/Voting-30.htmNote that there is some evidence that this has actually happened:
At this metalink you will find an aggregate of excerpts from arguments detailing previous problems with these machines (the original links go up and down because of the high traffic to blackboxvoting.org)
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/4/224812/643REPORTS AND COMPLAINTS OF VOTER IRREGULARIES AND FRAUD, STATE-BY-STATE
FLORIDA
Evidence mounts that vote was hacked... Jeff Fisher, the Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida's 16th District says he has evidence not only that the Florida election was hacked, but of who hacked it and how.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1106-30.htmThis glitch was caught in Florida...but how many weren’t? Broward County corrected a computer glitch Thursday that had miscounted thousands of absentee votes...
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/10103931.htmFL: Sequoia Voting admits possible evote error
http://www.whtm.com/news/stories/1104/184856.htmlRelated Story:
Related story: Sequoia gives away evoting machines to swing state
http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/04/11/con04490.htmlSurprising Pattern of Florida's Election Results
Look at the Percent Change columns.
Notice how the percents vary much more widely in the Op-Scan counties versus the Touchscreen counties. With graphs, charts and explanation
http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htmAn Examination of the Florida Elections
New: Florida is reporting more votes in the presidential election than it is reporting citizens that turned out to vote. Adding all the presidential race votes reported by the Florida Department of State here yields a total of 7,588,422 votes. The Florida Department of State reports here that voter turnout totalled only 7,350,900. That's a difference of 237,522. 3.1% of Florida's presidential votes were in excess of the number of voters in the election. 380,952 votes separate the President and John Kerry in Florida... (WITH tables and graphs, a VERY thorough statistical study)
http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~adamsb6/elections/FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — U.S. voters nationwide reported some 1,100 problems with electronic voting machines on Tuesday, including trouble choosing their intended candidates.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/Page/document/v4/sub/MarketingPage?user_URL=http://www.globetechnology.com%2Fservlet%2Fstory%2FRTGAM.20041103.gtvotenov3%2FBNStory%2FTechnology%2F&ord=1100104777973&brand=globetechnology&force_login=truePalm Beach County Logs 88,000 More Votes Than Voters...According to the official election results posted on the Palm Beach County election website, 542,835 ballots were cast for a presidential candidate while only 454,427 voters turned out for the election (including absentee). This leaves a discrepancy of 88,408 votes cast for the presidential candidates.
http://www.washingtondispatch.com/spectrum/archives/000715.htmlNEW MEXICO
New Mexico State Police are investigating allegations of voter fraud... roughly 25 percent of the provisional ballots in Bernalillo County have been rejected as invalid.
http://www.kobtv.com/index.cfm?viewer=storyviewer&id=14841&cat=HOMEprecincts in New Mexico gave provisional votes that may never be counted to as many as 10% of all their voters.
http://www.ansiblegroup.org/furtherleft/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=51Voter fraud uncovered in New Mexico...
Washington, DC, Nov. 9 (UPI) -- Observers watching the counting of New Mexico's 2004 provisional and absentee ballots have uncovered evidence of voter fraud, Opinion Journal said Tuesday.
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20041109-010659-3448r.htmOHIO
Notes from Election Protection Call-taker in Ohio. Of special concern is the number of calls she got from people who tried to press "Kerry" But got "Bush."
http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2004/11/4/224812/643/246?mode=alone;showrate=1#246Alone in Ohio, officials cited homeland security... Citing concerns about potential terrorism, Warren County officials locked down the county administration building on election night and blocked anyone from observing the vote count as the nation awaited Ohio's returns...
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/11/05/loc_warrenvote05.htmlSomething mysterious happened in Cuyahoga Country, Ohio: 90,000+ more votes were counted than there were voters. The numbers have now been revised:
http://pages.ivillage.com/americans4america/id20.htmlBut an argument has been made that here just aren't enough absentee ballots in Cuyahoga County to account for the differences in numbers in the results.
In Excel format:
http://www.codehappy.net/cuyahoga.xlsIn XML format:
http://www.codehappy.net/cuyahoga.xmlWoodmere Vil. had 558 registered voters with 8,854 ballots cast, which is 1586% voter turnout. This is not an isolated case:
From data compiled from here
http://boe.cuyahogacounty.us/BOE/results/currentresults1.htma tally was made:
http://www.pacificviews.org/weblog/archives/000688.htmlBay 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 (VIL): 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: 760 registered voters; 8,822 ballots cast
Independence: 5,735 registered voters; 6,226 ballots cast
Mayfield (VIL): 2,764 registered voters; 3,145 ballots cast
Middleburg Heights: 12,173 registered voters; 14,854 ballots cast
North Olmsted: 25,794 registered voters; 25,887 ballots cast
Oakwood (VIL): 2,746 registered voters; 7,099 ballots cast
Olmsted 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 (Ward 6): 2,292 registered voters; 4,300 ballots cast
South Euclid: 16,902 registered voters; 16,917 ballots cast
Strongsville (Ward 3): 7,806 registered voters; 12,108 ballots cast
University Heights: 10,072 registered voters; 11,982 ballots cast
Warrensville Heights: 10,562 registered voters; 15,039 ballots cast
Woodmere (VIL): 558 registered voters; 8,854 ballots cast
An error with an electronic voting system gave President Bush 3,893 extra votes in suburban Columbus, elections officials said. Franklin County's unofficial results had Bush receiving 4,258 votes to Democrat John Kerry’s 260 votes in a precinct in Gahanna...
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041105/ap_on_el_pr/voting_problemsCASE--Citizens' Alliance for Secure Elections
http://www.caseohio.org/CaseOhio/is investigating various other voting irregularities in Ohio, among them:
* In Auglaize County, a letter dated October 21 under the signature of Ken Nuss, the county’s former deputy director, alleges that Joe McGinnis, a former employee of Election Systems & Software (ES&S), violated election protocol with his unauthorized use of the county’s central tabulating computer that creates ballots and compiles election results. Nuss, who resigned on October 21, alleges that McGinnis was improperly granted access to the computer the weekend of October 16.
* In Miami County, with 100% of the precincts reporting at 9am EST Wednesday, Nov. 3, Bush had 20,807 votes (65.80%) and Kerry had 10,724 (33.92%). Miami reported 31,620 voters. Inexplicably, nearly 19,000 new ballots were added after all precincts reported, boosting Bush’s vote to 33,039 (65.77%) to Kerry’s 17,039 (33.92%). CASE is investigating why the percentage of the vote stayed exactly the same to three one-hundredths of a percentage point after nearly 19,000 new ballots were added. CASE members speculate that it’s either a long-shot coincidence with the last three digits remaining the same, or that someone had pre-set a database and programmed a voting machine to cough up a pre-set percentage of votes. Miami County uses an easily hackable optical scanner with the central counter provided by the Republican-linked vendor ES&S.
* In Warren County, administrators and election officials locked down the county administrative building and prohibited all independent election observers from watching the vote count. County officials cited “homeland security,” according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. WCPO-TV Channel 9 News Director Bob Morford told the Enquirer that he had “never seen anything like it.” Morford asserted that throwing the media and independent observers out of the centralized counting area under the guise of “homeland security” was a “red herring.” He said, “That’s something to put up when you don’t know what else to put up to keep us out.” In Warren County, Bush picked up an additional 12,000 votes over his 2000 election total.
* In Franklin County, where Franklin County Board of Elections Director Matt Damschroder is also the former Executive Director of the county’s Republican Party, the county Board of Elections building looked like a bunker. Scores of city buses blocked parking spaces on the street outside, numerous concrete barricades surrounded the parking lot, and a metal detector was stationed at the only entrance. A phalanx of armed deputy sheriffs swarmed the only site where provisional voters could cast a guaranteed ballot. The Columbus Dispatch confirmed an Election Day Free Press story that far fewer voting machines were present in predominantly black Democratic inner-city voting wards than in the recent primary election and the 2000 presidential election, with their lighter turnouts. The reduced number of machines caused voters to wait up to seven hours and wait an average of approximately three hours. One Republican Central Committee member told the Free Press that Damschroder held back as many as 2000 machines and dispersed many of the other machines to affluent suburbs in Franklin County.
* In rural Drake County, Kerry received 78 less votes than Al Gore in 2000, but Bush received 3000 more votes. Drake is the only county in Miami Valley where Kerry’s votes was less than Gore’s and where Bush’s vote rose dramatically.
Was The Ohio Election
Honest And Fair?
Institute for Public Accuracy (includes statements by Ohio State Senator Teresa Fedor, Bill Moss, Executive vice president of HBCU Connect, Susan Truitt, Co-founder of the Citizens Alliance for Secure Elections, Dan Wallach (Wallach is an assistant professor of Computer Science at Rice University in Houston specializing in building secure and robust software systems for the Internet. Along with colleagues at Johns Hopkins, Wallach co-authored a groundbreaking study that revealed significant flaws in electronic voting systems.), Bob Fitrakis, Attorney/election monitor, etc.
http://www.rense.com/general59/wastheohioelectionhonest.htmMahoning and Mercer — the only counties in the Mahoning and Shenango valleys to use electronic voting machines and among only a handful in Ohio and Pennsylvania with the technology — encountered a series of problems that delayed results for hours Tuesday.
http://www.vindy.com/basic/news/281829446390855.phpINDIANA
In Laporte County, electronic voting machines tallied results for 22,200 voters, even though there are 79,000 registered voters in LaPorte County. Assuming the county actually had a 65% turnout rate (comparable to others in the area and its own track record), that means 29,000 votes were not counted.
http://www.michigancityin.com/articles/2004/11/04/news/news02.txtTHE SOUTH
Atlanta, GA - A national voting rights group says it documented hundreds of voting irregularities affecting poor and minority voters in seven Southern states - from long lines and faulty equipment to intentional voter intimidation
http://www.abcnews4.com/news/stories/1104/185549.htmlNORTH CAROLINA
11,283 extra votes for bush in North Carolina, blaming a "software glitch"...
A systems software glitch in Craven County's electronic voting equipment is being blamed for a vote miscount that, when corrected, changed the outcome of at least one race in Tuesday's election.
http://www.newbernsj.com/SiteProcessor.cfm?Template=/GlobalTemplates/Details.cfm&StoryID=18297&Section=LocalComputer Loses More Than 4,000 Early Votes...
Jacksonville, N.C. -- More than 4,500 Carteret County votes have been lost because officials believed a computer that stored ballots electronically could hold more data than it did.
http://www.wsoctv.com/news/3892151/detail.htmlalso:
http://www.thestandard.com/internetnews/000563.phpNEBRASKA
Sarpy County, Nebraska, 10,000 votes too many (ES&S machines)
http://www.wowt.com/news/headlines/1161971.htmlMETALINKS
Websites that are functioning as aggregates of evidence of election tampering and voter fraud with links
This website breaks down the issue (and the supporting links) by categories: Official Investigations, State-by-State, press articles and links to other websites
http://shadowbox.i8.com/stolen.htmBlackboxvoting blogspot, keeping track of the issues (very user-friendly)
http://blackboxvoter.blogspot.com/Another aggregate:
http://www.bopnews.com/And another one, very up-to-date
http://radtimes.blogspot.com/http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/2004votefraud.html(Nota Bene: On this website, the following graph is of particular interest:
)
Fraud Report Aggregate from scoop
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0411/S00124.htm#5 (with some useful graphs and by-precinct results)
***An INVALUABLE resource of detailed voter fraud links, both state-by-state and by national level (this is in discussion forum format, but it’s on the of best clusters of information available (progressively updated and evaluated in the Replies below the actual message). Everything comes with links, and there are hundreds of them in one place organized in an accessible manner:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=201&topic_id=1984#POLLS, NUMBERS AND STATISTICS
A statistical analysis of exit polling conducted for RAW STORY by a former MIT mathematics professor (former Associate Professor of Mathematics David Anick) has found the odds of Bush making an average gain of 4.15 percent among all 16 states included in the media's 4 p.m. exit polling is 1 in 50,000, or .002 percent.
http://www.bluelemur.com/index.php?p=405Data from New Hampshire used to motivate Nader’s recall petition
http://www.invisibleida.com/This site has great graphics that show irregularities, as well as a bios on the major computer companies that point to conflict of interests
http://ideamouth.com/voterfraud.htmA breakthrough and VERY thorough EXIT POLL ANALYSIS FOR 47 STATES by John Simon
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x36314Sheldon Drobny (of Air America) on Zogby re: the issue of polls
http://www.zogby.com/Soundbites/ReadClips.dbm?ID=10385GENERAL MEDIA
MEDIA BLACKOUT:
There is a media blackout about all of this. This was reported by Bev Harris of blackboxvoting.org and is corraborated here:
http://www.ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=950&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0Hackers rigging voting machines a real possibility
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/columnists/fred_grimm/10137159.htm?1cAn interesting article by Maureen Farrell: Another Rigged Election? The Elephant in the Voting Booth (with links)
http://www.buzzflash.com/farrell/04/11/far04038.htmlAs you know, investigative journalist Greg Palast has argued that it is very likely that John Kerry won the election
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/kerry_won_.php