http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_nancy_to_080411_the_myth_of_verified.htmApril 11, 2008
The Myth of Verified Voting: How GOP strategists & J. Abramoff transformed America's elections & the reform movementBy Nancy Tobi
For the published version of this article and more about elections in 21st century America, read the newly released
Loser Take All, edited by Mark Crispin Miller.
K Street Lobbyists and Election ReformIn 1995, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and Republican strategist Grover Norquist launched the "K Street Project." (i) Named for the Capital Hill street housing many lobbying firms, the Project gave lobbyists direct access to Washington lawmakers through weekly policy and strategy meetings. The most infamous K Street lobbyist was Jack Abramoff, who worked for the firm Greenberg Traurig. Abramoff, now in prison, took money from his American Indian tribe clients, and laundered it to Congressional Representatives in return for legislative and policy favors aligned with the Project's political agenda.
But this was not just any money laundering enterprise. Abramoff's dry cleaner was converting money to election fraud.
In 2002, the New Hampshire GOP received three $5,000 checks, just in time to pay $15,600 to a telemarketing company that jammed the phone lines of the Democratic Party's get-out-the-vote campaign in the morning hours of the election. The three $5,000 checks? One each from two separate Abramoff tribal clients and the third from K Street loyalist Tom DeLay's ARMPAC.(ii)
The phone jamming trick, contributing to GOP Senator Sununu's narrow win, shows the magical rabbits that can pop out of a hat when Capital Hill lobbyists focus their attention on elections.
In its heyday, the K Street Project held election "reform" dead center in its crosshairs. Project activities like New Hampshire's phone jamming, Ohio's "Coingate" and Tom Delay's Texas "PAC-gate", spun lobbyist money into election fraud gold. K Street masterfully laundered funds to influence election campaigns, policies, and processes around the nation. The Project functioned as one big money-laundering-for-election-fraud apparatus.
K Street's most influential project was the 2002 sweeping election reform known as the "Help America Vote Act" (HAVA), whose architect, former Congressman Bob Ney, is also now in federal prison. (iii) HAVA was brilliantly subversive, spinning money into a sparkling, rich, complex and intricate golden gateway to perpetual election fraud.
HAVA's most benign outcome was to feed billions of dollars to an unsavory e-voting industry, including Greenberg Traurig's client, Diebold Election Systems.(iv) Its most insidious and dangerous outcome was the creation of the myth of verified voting and the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), a White House agency with unprecedented power over the nation's elections.
Election 2000 - Election Reform 2002In the aftermath of Election 2000, the Supreme Court's Bush v. Gore decision(v) dealt one terrible blow after another to our nation's democracy. The subversion of the democratic process that began with this decision continued with HAVA and its agency of perpetual subversion: the EAC.(vi)
In 2002, the K Street-influenced Congress passed HAVA with great theatrical fanfare. The American people, still reeling from Election 2000, received it with a wholesale willingness to suspend disbelief.
But when the smoke had cleared, a closer look revealed that HAVA had codified, rather than fixed, Election 2000's largely unreported but most egregious trespasses of democracy (vii):
1. Electronic voter registration databases: In Florida 2000, up to 94,000 eligible voters - all identified as "Democratic-leaning"- were unjustifiably purged from electronic voter databases and not allowed to vote.
2. Electronic voting machines: Florida 2000's electronic voting equipment mistabulated countless votes. In Volusia County alone, computers tabulated for Candidate Al Gore negative 16,022 votes.
3. Presidential appointees with powerful authority to influence election outcomes: Florida 2000's vote count was stopped by the Supreme Court, effectively deciding the election for us.
HAVA alchemy transformed these three root causes of the Election 2000 catastrophe into the law of the land:
1. Electronic voter registration databases: HAVA required every state in the nation to implement electronic voter registration databases.
2. Electronic voting machines: HAVA mandated accessible voting equipment, specifically recommending and funding computerized touch screen machines.
3. Presidential appointees with powerful authority to influence election outcomes: HAVA created the Election Assistance Commission, four presidential appointees with broad and ever-expanding powers over the nation's election systems.
Post-HAVA elections have delivered one disaster after another - from e-voting crashes, unequal distribution of expensive computerized equipment, registration database complications and abuse (viii), electoral lawsuits, and the multi-billion dollar e-voting industry's coups over the nation's democratic election processes (ix).
Outsourced Elections and Secret Vote CountingMUCH MORE
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