*** Boxer: "I don't know about the other states" ***

Folks, this is the real problem.

The one single Senator who stood up on January 6th has no idea what really happened on November 2nd. It's not that they have evaluated it and think there is not enough evidence to prove fraud. It's because they have not seen any of the evidence.

I just watched Barbara Boxer's press conference just before the proceedings. She was asked:

"Why are you targeting just Ohio today?"

She replies:

"...I don't know about the other states."


So that's why they're not doing anything. Because they don't know what happened. If Barbara Boxer doesn't know about the irregularities in Florida, NM, and other states, then it is likely that none of the others do.

That's why when we call and write to them we get these stupid form letters back saying that HAVA was a success.

Our job in the coming months is to educate our legislators. There will not be any election reform unless we do this. We must not just ask them to fix the system. We must show them the evidence, make them aware of what happened and how bad it is.

We must continue to fax, email, and call them but we must provide specific information, links to websites, reference studies and papers, etc. We must demand that they learn more about this issue.

Conyers is leading the way. He's going to try to make them aware. We must support him. Maybe we could make a "kit" of info and send a kit to every senator and congressperson.

Keep this kicked.

Tubbs Jones gave Boxer a lot of information about Ohio, and she read it. That's why she was concerned with Ohio. Forwarding her information on other states would be a great idea.

These are some of the BEST studies on Exit Poll discrepancy and other anomalies and facts, basically showing that Kerry won.

The UC Berkeley study found 130,000 to 260,000 phantom votes for Bush (or votes stolen from Kerry) in FLA's three biggest Democratic counties (Miami, Dade, Palm Beach) comparing electronic voting vs. other methods of voting. So it's NOT just the Exit Polls.

Dr. Freeman's 2nd paper makes some very strong political statements (re: our democracy), as does Dr. Baiman's. TruthIsAll's series "To believe Bush won, you have to believe..." sums up a whole lot of info from various sources, as well as his own statistical analysis.

---------

Dr. Steven Freeman's papers on the exit poll discrepancies (U of Penn/MIT)

(1st paper) http://www.truthout.org/unexplainedexitpoll.pdf
(also at: http://www.buzzflash.com/alerts/04/11/Expldiscrpv00oPt1.pdf)
(2nd paper) http://www.appliedresearch.us/sf/epdiscrep.htm

Dr. Ron Baiman's paper on national exit poll discrepancy (U of Chic)
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/99...

Dr. Michael Hout & UC stats team on 100,000+ phantom Bush votes in FLA (UC Berk)
http://ucdata.berkeley.edu

Ohio report
http://www.bpac.info

and

TruthIsAll's series: "To believe Bush won, you have to believe…"

Part 1
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=1316010

Part 2
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=1358806

Part 3
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x197878

...for your convenience (so you don't have to click on each of these documents to get the full url). Look at the parenthesis after each cut off url (below), and you will see the rest of the url. Copy into Word, remove parentheses, and re-attach.

Dr. Steven Freeman's papers on the exit poll discrepancies (U of Penn/MIT)

(1st paper) http://www.truthout.org/unexplainedexitpoll.pdf
(also at: http://www.buzzflash.com/alerts/04/11/Expldiscrpv00oPt1... ) (.pdf)
(2nd paper) http://www.appliedresearch.us/sf/epdiscrep.htm

Dr. Ron Baiman's paper on national exit poll discrepancy (U of Chic)
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/99 ... (7) (NOTE: the end of this url, when re-attached, is: /display/19/2004/997.)

Dr. Michael Hout & UC stats team on 100,000+ phantom Bush votes in FLA (UC Berk)
http://ucdata.berkeley.edu

Ohio report
http://www.bpac.info

and

TruthIsAll's series: "To believe Bush won, you have to believe…"

Part 1
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... (p?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=1316010)

Part 2
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... (p?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=1358806)

Part 3
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... (p?az=view_all&address=203x197878)

If they won't agree to a meeting, picket their office and invite the media. Lobby Dems and Republicans. Cause the Reps some bad PR in their districts.

just request a meeting and get one?

It depends on the office. Some welcome you, others screen out anyone the boss might not want to meet. You'll have a better shot at a local district office, rather than in Washington DC. Reps are usually easier to get into than Senators, who represent the entire state.

It helps if you can get a group together to make your request. Don't sound like crazy radicals, but just concerned citizens, preferably a bipartisan group, who wants to discuss serious concerns.

You might have better luck on an issue like Social Security "reform" than "voting fraud."

I used to be an aide to a State Senator, and back then most people who wanted appointments got them, even in Sacramento. At the very least, you'd be allowed to see an aide.

I've booked appointments with a Congressman before and gotten in locally, though our current one is a tougher sell and so he's refused appointments. Turning the visit into a media event might compel the staff to pay more attention.

Good luck--and let us know how this works out!

since they are in DC. I have met with my senator's aide twice in the local office with small groups of people on this issue. YOu need to be non-hostile and offer yourself or your group as a resource. Many of them are good hearted but simply ignorant. They have a lot to keep up wiht and often depend on citizen groups for info. Others are corrupt and don't care. That requires a different strategy.

Where did they go anyway? There's a new Forum isn't there?

seems to separate and divide us.

I agree. It will shift the flow of information and some might not get there.

there was talk a few days ago about having separate forums for Fraud and Reform... I thought someone mentioned they already did it. I'm staying here.

have the same goal which is clean elections.

for both issues. Did they change their mind?

Fraud is the main reason we need Reform....


Mods, if you can see this, most of us like this forum just as it is. :(

Had thought about it but like I said earlier, Faye would have had a heart attack. No one wants that!

:)

Some people lurking around here has been very insistent in trying to create a new forum (s) "dedicated to the fraud" exclusively.

Then another group thinks the fraud and electoral reform exclude each other as topics.

Other faction thinks they "include each other", so on, so forth...

It seems silly to me to divide the voting issues that way.

It would make more sense for some of us to work the voting issues, and another contingent to work on impeachment.

Yes, is silly.

So, working on "reform" will always be easier than working on bringing criminals to justice.

But, imo, we have to do both. With a vengence. We'll get less help or support with the latter, but we HAVE to keep pushing.

Originally I wanted another seperate forum but there is no need. We need all of the folks we can get to be accessable. :)

But here's Arnheim's thread from just a few inches down the front page of *this* forum:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=262387&mesg_id=262387

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=275330

Don't know why, but they left. :(

organizing people into working groups.

Not meant to split the forum or foreclose discussion in any way that I'm aware of.

I thought it meant that that the VOTE group was going into the "Groups" section.

I have to go by tomorrow and see what tasks are left to be taken. arnheim's really got this whole thing down to a science!

:toast:

She's doing great things. She should be very proud. :)

Don't make me stop this car!!

:evilgrin:

heart attack. Can't be doing that! ;)

That's how the right likes us: split apart and in the dark.

Bastards.

We are getting work groups together. We want a working group of teams that will collectively kick ass. :)

I've been reading that thread (which is in this forum), and my understanding is that they've formed an activism group called VOTE, not a DU "Group" or forum.

it explained it. I thought that the VOTE Group was actually going into the "Groups" section. My bad, and I certainly stand corrected. I've been busy at work, and last I read I saw the post about the new group.

:) sfexpat and I were answering at the same time. Didn't mean to hammer it in.

Things move really quickly around here if you try to get things done away from the keyboard. :)

:freak: :silly:

we will be continuing to live right here in this forum. :)

I liked them being here better. Now I have to go find them.
Let's see if they wanna come back. :)

in this forum. :)

We have a name: VOTE - Voters for Open and Transparent Elections

We are getting some sponsors and working to get some funds. We have volunteers and a mission and we welcome links to any other Progressive groups out there who are like-minded.

On edit: we have people working on a logo. We have a great volunteer working on flyers.

We have a database developer working on a database for all of our contacts. We are building a database of media contacts, elected officials with their voting records and activities, as well as contacts to other Progressive groups. This knowledge is power, people. POWER.

Our mission is to unite and work with these groups to make our voices heard.

PM me or katinmn or mordarlar if you want more info. Email me if you'd like to volunteer: [email protected]

coalition of a number of groups working on these issues. we haven't figured out a name yet. ARe you talking about something national, so if we wanted to we could be the (city name) chapter of VOTE? Or are you just talking about a DU thing?
IT will be a DU thread, or you will have a website? I am confused. But it sounds reallly good.

Our group is a nationwide thing. We want to have liasons to all state groups. We want to help empower smaller groups and work with the larger ones to stay on top of what is going on in DC both with the Congress folks who support us and the ones who don't.

This isn't a DU thing but it sprang from the complete awe I have of DUers and the work that we and other groups were able to get done. I started thinking, "What is the glue that holds us all together?" The answer was DU. DUers are all over the place but come here to pass on information and action items.

The next logical step: starting a group that could work with all of these groups that are splintered off everywhere. We could collect all of the information that is scattered out there on the web as well and put it in one place. We could get people working on election fraud packets and offer them up to other groups.

Think how many people we could have marching on the 20th if we linked with Progressive groups and threw in NOW, the Sierra Club, Planned Parenthood and groups that are as dismayed as we are over *! Do those groups know about the fraud? Probably not. My NOW newsletters don't mention it at all.

For now we are in the early stages of getting together. We have volunteers and people who are working on getting us a logo, creating a database for the large amounts of data that we will be storing, getting us a website, etc.

We have the numbers. We just need to get them all in one place.

I've said it before: a military can't win a war if they concentrate their troops all in one place. It takes having well-placed groups of troops in key areas. Our only downfall right now? Those groups of troops aren't communicating with each other.

VOTE hopes to change that.

to lose track of this; it can be easy to lost track of threads on DU! At leasf for me. I have only been around since the election. ARe you taking names somewhere?

always. This place is too much of an asset for us to abandon it.

Posting about VOTE will be in the 2004 Election Results forum primarily. The DUers who frequent this forum are still very much wanting to fight for election reform.

I believe that as we keep fighting for reform, we will continue to uncover some really nasty stuff about the rethugs. If this helps to bring * down, then that is just gravy for us. :evilgrin:

I am logging in volunteers in a contact database as they come in. We have quite a few already! :)

I did initially but dropped that because we are all quite happy right here. It's the most appropriate place for us right now.

www.votersunite.org has a plan and some materials to hand out, called "Mythbusters". We could add to this. We need to get face-to-face meetings with our state and local representatives and EXPLAIN this to them. I have already begun doing this, and e-mailing.

WE MUST EDUCATE THEM AND WE MUST DO IT NOW. Everyone must be responsible for THEIR OWN STATE--ESPECIALLY states that are planning to go with touchscreens--even those that provide a paper trail!

There is an excellent article that provides great background on the trouble with DREs by Ronnie Dugger from another post and I am reposting it here because it is a MUST READ and should be part of our hand-outs!

http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20040816&s=dugger

We need the representatives to sit down with the experts like Dugger and Chuck Herrin and Bev.

I'm printing copies of various articles and as much info that is slam-dunk facts so I can mail them to Boxers offices. All of them. Hopefully one of them will reach her hands.

It would be great if we can get everyone here to do the same to their Reps and Senators. We'll flood them with info and they won't be able to ignore the facts.

Peace!

co-founder of The Alliance for Democracy (Arnebeck is co-chair). They are going to be getting into this big time.

"In 1988 Ronnie Dugger wrote the definitive article on computerized vote fixing. Much of what we saw in Florida in 2000 was covered in his article, almost as though someone used it as a guide. It's never before been on the web since it predates the internet.
But here it is, digitized."
http://www.newsgarden.org/columns/dugger.shtml

Also see
The Greatest Cover-Up Of All:
Vote Fraud In America
by James J. Condit Jr.
(first published in 1992, Updated in July 2003)

http://www.votefraud.org/greatest_coverup_of_all.htm

I trust Boxer - fully. But I am blown away by all of our representatives and senators not being aware of what is going on here. That doesn't make sense. They have to be all over the election thing, they are in the circle after all. We are the ones who have to scurry after crumbs to put together the pieces of the puzzle. Please understand I am not doubting that they do not know, I am just having a hard time seeing how they could miss it. Is it possible Boxer was saying she doesn't know about the other states as in she doesn't know the specifics perhaps, like she had reviewed for Ohio, but surely they ALL know something was funny in FL and NM and NC, etc., etc.

my head has been spinning since I heard her say that and the more I think about it the more it actually makes sense.

Bernie Sanders of all people said on the house floor that the results of the election were not in question.

I don't think he could have said that unless he just doesn't know what's going on. I know he knows about the papertrail bill because he's a co-signer. But it's only been two months since 11/2 and most legislators have not been watching this issue like we have. They've been enjoying the holidays, etc...

another one -- My father spent some time with his rep in upstate NY, I forget her name. she was one of the 13 congresspeople that signed the initial GAO request. but even she said the same thing as Bernie. She still thinks that Bush really won Ohio and I don't think she has any idea what is going on in other states.

It takes education. As you know, it requires time. How much you know depends on how much time you are willling to spend learning about it.

We have to convince them. We have to educate them.

just not with my own. It is not that I lack the willingness so much as I already know the outcome. They are Bush-cronied up the ying-yang and any effort will be wasted.

I guess I have to be better educated myself before I can help anyone else. I am willing and able - just looking for direction.

the top right column on this web page is a collection of articles that are summaries on election fraud. there's also a slideshow that is very good.

http://election.solarbus.org

there's a lot there, so I'd start with either the slideshow or the flyer, both near the top of the right column

educate myself or were you suggesting I do something with this material to get it out to various Representatives?

Also I realized after I went to bed last night that I have been feeling as if my Reps are all Bush-yes-men, but actually our Sec of State is a Dem - a Dem who has designs on running for Governor in '06 so perhaps I am not as alone as I was thinking. However, she sent out a report just after the election bragging about the pros of electronic voting and purported accuracy that didn't exists before 2002 when our state went 100% electronic (Diebold no less). So I may as yet have difficulty selling her on the election fraud having to do with the machines. My husband met with her a month ago and he said she very much believes the machines are increasing accuracy in our vote, as the over/undervotes have all but been eliminated. Of course that has nothing to do with programming schemes to defraud the system and frankly I will be skeptical of anyone who remains advocates of electronic voting (without paper trails), regardless of their party affiliation.

you, them, both... anyone who wants/needs to learn more about the issue. I think it's important to not overload them at the beginning but first provide an overview.

Diebolded and does not listen to any other views......try contacting Eloriel (I think she's very up on the situation in GA)....from what I recall of DU discussions from the late 2003 on, Cox's whole political future is based on her being 100% correct in her decision to support Diebold

You are absolutely correct - Cox and 100% Diebolded as you so succinctly put it. But how do I contact Eloriel?

i vaguely remember someone who did ALOT of work early after the election, crunching numbers and putting together links and data - is this the person you mean? And if so, I do not see them here anymore - do I just send an email or what?

pulls it all together...so fine!

it actually needs a lot of work but I'm doing the best I can :o)

of them are so cluttered that it's really hard to find your way around. I have sent lots of people there. he always gets the important stuff and it's easy to tell what you've already seen and what you haven't .

Wondering if --in addition to emails--we could send a CD to each of the offices. On CD--compile some of the main articles, resources that we already have so far. CD would get attention and be a "first step." I'd be willing to take that on (copying CD's and sending them out--I can put a label on and make them look good)--if you guys like the idea. And maybe others could help do this, too, depending on how many we want to put on the list.
As for content: the group should work on the content together. I have some materials but not all.

This doesn't take the place of emails, which are more dynamic. But we could link some subsequent email updates (maybe weekly email updates)to our original disk, so they would know it's coming from the same group. This would keep the flow of info organized and eliminate redundancy. It also helps target certain resources that we think are good--when you just send people out to search on the net on this topic, it can seem overwhelming. We could help by condensing the core material for them.

Just an idea. I believe in working in groups, so give some feedback. I am not sensitive to criticism. Just throwing out ideas.
It's possible some of the more organized groups have already got this idea in process. We could coordinate with the VOTE group on this. But I think we need to move on it quickly, whoever does it.

So anyway garybeck, I support the idea of helping to educate the legislators. They're a little ?! behind, which is understandable, as there's so much going on on every front. With all they've got to fight, I'm sure they would love this nasty little ??election?? gremlin to go away. They probably feel like they're doing triage in the ER right now. I think we could help them get up to speed.

I'm surprised you're still up!

When I logged in to DU a few minutes ago, there was a new sticky at the top of the page about a NEW FORUM: DEMOCRATIC PARTY.

I think that's a pretty good solution - for now. People who want to say "move on" can mosey right on over there and leave us alone.

Now, as to your post, Gary:
I've wondered this same thing myself.
A few weeks ago, I sent a very long, detailed letter to Russ Feingold. I have not heard back from him yet - but I am sure I will - he always answers letters to his people.

I made sure to include information on other states as well, and expressed my concern that these "irregularities" have not YET come to Wisconsin - but they could.

It's OKAY if people are trying to organize what we know, to make a structure, to try to find a focus.

That's just us, trying to make sense.

One thing I haven't seen (and believe me, I've watched) is the impulse to foreclose any line of thought.

Remember, our flexibility is our greatest strength. Let's prize it for the gift it is.

my wordy 2,
Beth

I'm perfectly OK with those kind of discussions. I was indirectly refering to the Freepers who show up in here to disrupt and cause all kinds of mischief.

I will be posting over there, as well. I just wish people would pay attention to the forum they are visiting, that's all. I would never go into "Campaign 2006-2008" and say "WE NEED TO INVESTIGATE THE FRAUD! NOBODY WILL BE ELECTED UNTIL WE DO!" That would be, IMO, disrupting.

Thanks for the chance of clarifying. :)

I think the idea is that they basically get their news from the corporate media and they are just as lost as the average person on the street. sad but true. but I guess it's better than thinking they know it all but still don't care.

Thank you for this - yes, we're going to have to be our own media and focus on educating those who represent us!

And here´s where we got to do it:

http://www.1-2-free-forums.com/mf/index.php?mforum=mtf&sid=f296245a7a621eb8bd05f612c7373074

I have decided I need to fedex Barbera Boxer with the Georgia data that I have collected. I also will make a website avail. including copies of all Open Records Letters and the responses..
it will be countpaperballots.com

Georgia is the ground zero folks. We have some things in GA that make it a perfect place to launch a serious inquiry into election fraud.

The problem is timing... what do I share to the world without ruining the court case? any thoughts.

Also, anyway to make sure Barbera boxer can receive my fedex, which I will send today if someone tells me who to addres it to, and who will receive it and put it in Barbera's hands..

HELP anyone out there and CA who know the ropes...

but how about a single document? That proves fruad--send to our legal team for editing

Very much needed--and a good writer to pull it all together. http://election.solarbus.org/ is fabulous as a resource, but there should maybe be one article at the top, overriding all, with big title, "KERRY WON: The Smoking Guns" or something like that, which cites everything and makes the case.

every time I think I have the "one document" that should remain at the top, something new gets released. I think the slideshow and summary in the right column are good "one document" for starters. but news keeps breaking and there are new discoveries every day so it's hard to keep any one thing at the top all the time. If someone came up with one document that has the smoking gun beyond all shadows of a doubt, believe me it would be at the top and stay there for a long time!!

thanks for your support and keep the feedback coming

gary

http://election.solarbus.org

I suggest a very recognizable "breaking news" or email updates on a regular basis--linked to a fax as well?--something that becomes identifiable as from us, and is a very dependable resource.

The problem I see is the overwhelming amount of material--if we could provide a clearinghouse and way to give them the instant updates...
and work with VOTE group on this so it's a concerted effort?

they're not terribly "regular" though! the best thing to do is check the site once a day. Notice it says on the top what time it was last updated.

and if you think i'm missing something important, let me know!

When you put it all together, it smokes, believe me!

trying to do this myself ARGGGGg--

Maybe this could be a separate thread

I have NOTHING about GA on the solar bus website:

http://election.solarbus.org

please, could you write a summary, or give me some preliminary info to post? thanks. you can contact me directly at gary(at)solarbus.org

thanks SOLARBUS, will send you full packet tomorrow AM,
preparing the whole thing.. thanks for your offer...
love your site...
rigel99

Sorry, I lost my job (which is a good thing) and could not get this to you sooner.. should be in your e-box... lemme know if that's a form that you can post on your site. will get www.countpaperballots.com which will be Georgia's site going forward up this weekend.

Boxer's address:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=264605

Senators fax numbers:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=216683

There was also a post that included all of Boxer's offices in California but it seems I didn't bookmark it. If someone else did maybe they can give you the link.

most of the day and scanning other topics since I got on tonight. I am not sure if what ever you need in GA has already been handled, or if I would even be able to accomplish what you are asking for, but I do live here and I am willing to try. Can you tell me what you need?

And please explain the "Georgia is the ground zero folks" comment.

I am anxious to help but don't know what is going on and I am not sure 12:40 is the time to begin trying to catch up on a project that has been brewing all day and culminating here in the wee hours. Can someone give me a condensed version and I will let you know if I can help? Thanks.

read this thread to get in touch with people in your state

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x283538

appalling level of ignorance of most of our legislators.
See this thread
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss//duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x279604
Gordon Smith says exit polls are nearly always wrong and says he hasnt even looked at the Conyers report, and that this election was a lot better than 2000, and cites HAVA as having improved things!

I see educating our legislators as one of our PRIMARY tasks. The Dean people in NJ have found the same thing. And many think a paper trail will solve everything! A number of them are proposing election reform legislation and we need to connect wiht them and get them to see us as a resource for information so they don't pass more messed up legislation.

As far as the repubs go, I would guess that they're equally ignorant of the facts, but also unwilling to look at them objectively. the dems are our only hope.

paper trail. We have a good system in OR but they still need to be educated becasue they will be voting on legislation and because they have a whole lot of very active, very concerned constituents who will be bugging them about this.

i got a really rude awakening to the ignorance of our legislators at the dem convention..

as a delegate , i was sitting right next to or behind corine brown and meeks of fla...the last night of the convention at our hotel i sat next to corrine..we had built a wonderful rapport throughout the convention..we became more like girlfriends..at the hotel restaurant the last night corrine sat next to me, and she asked me why i ran for delegate..i told her it was because i was a 33 yr american airlines flt attendant ny based..and i knew * and comapny were involved or complicit in 9/11 and killing my co-workers...and i told her of my long journey to the truth...and i then brought up pnac and rebuilding americas defenses...
i promise you..she had no clue what i was talking about...not one clue..so i tried discussing it with her, the neo cons and the new pearl harbor...and she was absolutely blind about it all...and i was stunned that she was so clueless..
she asked me to send it to her, and i got mad, i asked her how can she represent the peopole and know so little about any admin that is deciding our policies...she laughed...yes she laughed..and said if we knew how little our reps knew...it would shock us..she said ..the people know much more than we do...
i got downright angry...
i then asked her ..then who is watching the chicken coop?? who is responsible for knowing why and how my co -workers were killed if it wasn't them??
and she just gave a non commitial answer...and i told her i was appalled with her attitude about the policies of this administration, and i would hold her accountable for her negligence in that matter...

we all assume these people are working for us..we assume they know whats going on...its a bad assumption..a very bad assumption indeed.

we need to hold the fire to their feet..we need to send them everything and deluge them until they have no choice but to read some of it..we have no choice but to go to meetings they are at and stand up and ask them specific questions, and demand answers..if they don't know..and you will know if they dont know by the blank stares on their faces...then tell them you want and expect them to know the answers and provide them with the facts..

yes..we need to educate our representatives..and we need to do it now and quickly...
and if they try to blow you off...tell them up front that you will hold them accountable...

but you must make the most of your time with them..if you know they will be at a dec meeting or a dem club meeting..write your questions of your points down ..be prepared...
go to their offices and have your points written down..have copies of stuff you want them to address and to know about...tell them you expect them to address your concerns..but give them time to look at it , but follow up..and tell them you will follow it up with them...

you may get alot from your reps and you may not...i am still awaiting someone here in fla to explain to me what jeb knew 4 days before 9/11 when he signed exec orders for marshall law...no one seems to want to answer me on that one!!

fly

and simply not caring is something I had no idea about. Makes me have a whole lot of respect for the ones who do take the time to educate themselves.

a giant fan of corine..after her fight and going as far as censure on the floor of congress, and then to find out she had no clue of pnac and the neo con philosophy and policies..i was dumb founded..and pretty angry...thats when i realized ..we can not assume these people representing us know what we do...many just don't. They are so busy raising money and traveling and dealing with so many things..i guess educating themselves to what we think is common knowledge..is not common knowledge to the reps...
we need to be dilegent to educating them..about all the voter problems..but we need to compact it so it is easily understood and doesn't take so much precious time that they don't have.
another words we must be specific and concise.
fly

what they intend to do about it is crucial. We need to actually form relationships with their aides; become resources for them.

Hard to compact the info; it is really quite complex. Ideas, anyone? I think we need to get Dean in congress and do his 90 minute hack the machine and switch the vote demo.That would say a lot more than any research paper. wonder how we do that?

:tinfoilhat:

This was 12/12/04

Honorable Senator Boxer,

First, although belatedly, I would like to congratulate on your win by such a large margin. I can rest comfortably knowing that you will continue to represent us.

My pressing concern, along with so many of my friends and acquaintances today is the issue of voting irregularities and the questions of election fraud in Ohio and possibly other States.

An article by Mr. Wayne Madsen also claims padding of votes in "safe" States such as our State to ensure the popular vote for Mr. Bush.
I have expressed my concern already to Congressman Conyers, as I truly have a hard time believing that voters who believe in you and Mr. Waxman would not vote for Senator Kerry for president.

There are numerous people going over the data in many States, and I hope this issue is going to be taken seriously by both parties.
Major media for whatever reason, chooses to dismiss this issue, but can we really rely on an election system, when so many voters feel that something is not right? When so many mathematicians and statisticians post their findings of this election to be an extreme anomaly.

Please support Congressman Conyers in his effort on the Senate side, as well as the citizens, who are marching in the 51 Capitol March. I have no doubt that you will fully support Senator Kerry with any inspection of the machines and or recount in Ohio.

Respectfully yours,

xxxxx

I believe we all have to now follow up with all the data to be sent to the Senators.
I am still looking at the now final CA data and Kerry still has less votes than her in 46 counties. I am trying to do some what if scenarios, such as the difference going to other candidates, and even when I deduct ALL the votes for the other candidates from Kerry Boxer difference, Kerry still has less votes in many counties. Meanwhile, a close to equal number of non-votes exist as there are other candidate votes statewide. Looking at statewide totals seems deceptive at first glance, and therefore has to be scrutinized per county results.

The biggest % No-Votes for prez and sen occured in

Mariposa 671 818
Percent 7.2% 8.8%

the final prez result in Mariposa was
Kerry-Bush
3,251 5,215
37.6% 60.3%

the final sen race
Boxer-Jones
3,437 4,751
40.4% 55.9%

Registration there is quite red but does not reach 50%

Dem-Rep-Decline to State
3,654 5,340 1,485
32.52% 47.53% 13.22%

Mariposa machines used
Optical Scan: Precinct-Based
Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc.

Any ideas on this one?

I hope there are others going through the CA data, as I am not a Math wiz...


:eyes:

and btw, I still think it was done without the majority of officials knowing. I know they were offended in various quotes in news articles, this investigation is not implying wrongdoing by election officials (except Blackwell at the moment of course).
We may have to stress that.
It's the software that will lead us to the culprit!

if there was such padding in CA, could it be revealed in a recount? I thought Diebold was banned there. If there are problems there it would be very interesting to figure out how they did it without Diebold and with paper trails.

it would be the most safe state to pad, because most certainly the results will not be scrutinized.
Vis-a-Vis media requested write-in candidate for San Diego Mayor showed write-in candidate Frye won, after Rep. Candidate was sworn in.
According to all irregularity reports on verifiedvoting, the majority of complaints here related to registration and absentee ballots, requested and not received.
Yet, I also saw quite a few complaints and concerns about pollworkers providing pencils for signatures. I still have to see if this correlates to anything within the results. (my computer froze that day, and all the highlighting I did disappeared)
Also, pollworkers handing out ballots with the receipt stubs already taken off, "for convenience". Pollworkers throwing away the receipt stubs.
E-voting not registering voter's choice, and machine malfunctions, ballots already pre-marked etc.
The most complaints were logged in Alameda County, very dem leaning. Even though the Sec of State required all counties to offer regular ballots to people, who request one instead of voting on e-machines, were given provisional ballots instead.
One precinct received onother precinct's pollbook (from Beverly Hills) and was giving out provisional ballots, most of the morning.
Some people received sample ballots that had a different sequence of candidates and measures from the actual ballot etc.

some info on previous CA incidents of machines: (Sequioa only)

Sequoia in the News — A Partial List of Events
Compiled by www.votersunite.org Page 8
Date Machine Place/Description
March 2004 Optech optical
scan
Napa County, California. The machines failed to record votes marked with dye-based ink. The error was
found during a manual recount used to verify accuracy. After counting 60 ballots, officials discovered
that the number of votes didn't match the votes recorded by the machines.
Prior to the election, a Sequoia technician ran test ballots through the machine to calibrate its reading
sensitivity, but failed to test for gel ink. 18
Tuteur said the machine dropped 6,692 votes out of a total of 468,001 votes
cast on the more than 13,000 absentee ballots. He added that there was no pattern to the dropped votes:
They spanned federal, state and county races and affected various candidates and ballot measures. 19
June 2004 AVC Edge Sequoia Software Source Code. Evidence of serious security problems shows up in source code left on an
unsecured site by Sequoia.
A team of university computer security scientists is currently studying the "WinEds" central tabulator
produced by Sequoia Voting Systems. Preliminary work indicates that Spanish language ballots can be
tampered with using this software, and that an unauthorized, uncertified program called "reverse.exe"
resides on a very unusual location for a voting system (and one that most certifiers would never think to
examine) -- the results cartridge itself. The "reverse.exe" program is used for ballots for the visually
impaired, but researchers are concerned that it could open up back doors into manipulating the vote process
for all voters. This program is referenced in Sequoia user manuals, but has never received a NASED number
and has never been certified at all. 20
18 Lost E-Votes Could Flip Napa Race. Wired News; March 15, 2004; By Kim Zetter. http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,62655,00.html
19 E-Vote Snafu in California County. Wired News; March 18, 2004; By Kim Zetter. http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,62721,00.html
20 http://www.blackboxvoting.org/

Sequoia in the News — A Partial List of Events
Compiled by www.votersunite.org Page 8
Date Machine Place/Description
March 2004 Optech optical
scan
Napa County, California. The machines failed to record votes marked with dye-based ink. The error was
found during a manual recount used to verify accuracy. After counting 60 ballots, officials discovered
that the number of votes didn't match the votes recorded by the machines.
Prior to the election, a Sequoia technician ran test ballots through the machine to calibrate its reading
sensitivity, but failed to test for gel ink. 18
Tuteur said the machine dropped 6,692 votes out of a total of 468,001 votes
cast on the more than 13,000 absentee ballots. He added that there was no pattern to the dropped votes:
They spanned federal, state and county races and affected various candidates and ballot measures. 19
June 2004 AVC Edge Sequoia Software Source Code. Evidence of serious security problems shows up in source code left on an
unsecured site by Sequoia.
A team of university computer security scientists is currently studying the "WinEds" central tabulator
produced by Sequoia Voting Systems. Preliminary work indicates that Spanish language ballots can be
tampered with using this software, and that an unauthorized, uncertified program called "reverse.exe"
resides on a very unusual location for a voting system (and one that most certifiers would never think to
examine) -- the results cartridge itself. The "reverse.exe" program is used for ballots for the visually
impaired, but researchers are concerned that it could open up back doors into manipulating the vote process
for all voters. This program is referenced in Sequoia user manuals, but has never received a NASED number
and has never been certified at all. 20
18 Lost E-Votes Could Flip Napa Race. Wired News; March 15, 2004; By Kim Zetter. http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,62655,00.html
19 E-Vote Snafu in California County. Wired News; March 18, 2004; By Kim Zetter. http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,62721,00.html
20 http://www.blackboxvoting.org/

results and they can rig it so the margin is never close enough for a recount. Even in OR we have to work on our tabulators because we have Diebold tabulators. I have read also that they siphoned off votes from CA to pad the popular vote so * would have his mandate!

...with secret, proprietary source code. Or if it's not Diebold it's some other BushCon company with secret source code.

No, CA is not 100% paper trail. Mandated for 2006, I believe. SoS Shelley made paper ballot an option, but not many people knew about it.

Shelly kicked Diebold out of several counties, and sued them for lying about their machines. But not out of every county.

And yes, I agree, it's the recount thing. That's the problem. They can fiddle the numbers but it takes elaborate backtracking and lots of time to find out exactly what happened. It might take actually going to poll books in precincts. And nobody does this kind of checking unless there is an obvious screwup. I don't know what the rules are for recount in CA, but I'm sure there has to be a big problem or a challenge to get results really checked.

I found a really weird anomaly in San Bernardino County. From memory: Approx. 55% Bush, 43% Kerry. Senate: approx. 50% Boxer, and 40+% Jones. Parse this out, and it means some 2,000 people voted for Bush and Boxer. A few weird votes like that, maybe. But 2,000?

Boxer-leftist, lib, fem--despised by BushCons.
Jones--anti-abortion, far rightwinger.

These people voted for Bush and DIDN'T choose Jones over Boxer? (Or voted for Boxer and chose to vote also for Bush?)

Makes no sense.

Bush probably padded here (or Kerry votes shaved off--or both).

I haven't looked at it that closely--but that was my hit on it. Very weird.

is there a way for citizens to do a recount in CA like there is in other states?

ULY 2004
A recount is conducted by the elections official for the purpose of verifying the number of votes counted for any office or measure in an election. California Elections Code Chapter 9, Sections 15620 through 15634 govern voter requested recounts..

REQUESTING A RECOUNT
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Who can request
 
 
Any voter of the state may file a request. (E.C. 15620)
 
Timing of Request
 
 
The request must be filed within five (5) calendar days after the completion of the official canvass. The canvass is complete when the elections official signs the Certification of the Election Results. (E.C. 15620)

Exceptions: For statewide contests, the request must be filed within five (5) calendar days beginning on the 29th day after the election.
 
Format of request
 
 
*
The request must be in writing. (E.C. 15620)
 

*
Must specify the contest to be recounted. (E.C. 15620)
 

*
Must state on behalf of which candidate, slate of electors, or position on a measure (affirmative or negative) it is filed. (E.C. 15620)
 

*
May specify the order in which precincts shall be counted. (E.C. 15622)
 

*
May specify the method of counting to be used (computer, manual or both). (E.C. 15627)
 

*
May specify any other relevant material to be examined. (E.C. 15630)
 

*
For statewide contests, may specify in which county or counties the recount is sought. (E.C. 15621)
 


Place of filing
 
   

*
With the county elections official responsible for conducting the election, if the contest is not voted upon statewide. (E.C. 15620)
 

*
If election is conducted in more than one county, the request may be filed with the county elections official of, and the recount conducted within, any or all of the affected counties. (E.C. 15620)
 

*
With the Secretary of State if the contest is voted upon statewide. (E.C. 15621)
 

*
With the City Clerk if it is a city election (or if the city has not consolidated with the county). (E.C. 15620)
 


Notice of recount
 
*
A notice stating the date and place of the recount will be posted by the elections official at least one day prior to the recount and the following persons will be notified in person or by telegram: (E.C. 15628)
 

*
All candidates for the office being recounted.
 

*
Authorized representatives for presidential candidates, if the race for presidential delegates is to be recounted.
 

*
Proponents of any initiative or referendum or persons filing ballot arguments for or against any initiative, referendum or measure to be recounted.
 

*
Secretary of State if the recount is for candidates for any state or federal office, delegates to a national convention, or any state measure.
 


Process of recount
 
  

*
The recount is open to the public. (E.C. 15629)
 

*
Recount must start no later than seven calendar days following the receipt of the request and shall be continued daily, Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays excepted, for not less than six hours each day until completed. (E.C. 15626)
 

*
A manual recount must be conducted under the supervision of the elections official by recount boards, consisting of four voters of the county, appointed by the elections official. (E.C. 15625)
 


Result of Recount
 
 

*
The results of a recount are declared null and void unless every vote in which the contest appeared is recounted. (E.C. 15632)
 

*
Upon completion of a recount, if a different candidate, slate of electors, or position on a measure receives a plurality of votes, the results of the official canvass will be changed and the election results re-certified. (E.C. 15632)
 

*
A copy of the results of any recount conducted shall be posted conspicuously in the office of the elections official. (E.C. 15633)
 


Cost and payment
 
 
The elections official shall determine the amount of deposit necessary to cover costs of the recount for each day. (E.C. 15624)

The voter filing the request for recount must deposit, before the recount commences and at the beginning of each day following, such sums as required by the election official to cover the cost of the recount for that day. (E.C. 15624)

If upon completion of the recount the results are reversed, the deposit shall be returned. (E.C. 15624)
 

 
COST BREAKDOWN FOR MANUAL TALLY

No. of Boards
Cost per Day
1
$2,182
2
$3,545
3
$4,908
4
$6,271
5
$8,453
6
$9,816
7
$11,179
8
$12,543
9
$14,724
10
$16,088
11
$17,451
12
$18,814

*Cost will include labor, facilities, material and personnel. Cost will vary according to type of election and personnel involved.

 
Automatic Manual Recount
By law, a random sample of ballots from every election must be recounted manually to verify the computer count. A minimum of all votes cast in one percent (1%) of the precincts is included in this process. The Automatic Manual Recount is open to the public.
(E.C. 15360)

in FL this happened...

I wonder if there's any way a few precincts could be checked in CA, even without doing an official recount.

County TYPE verifiedvoting.org/

Alameda E-Voting: Touchscreen
Diebold Election Systems

Alpine Punch Card
Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc.

Amador Optical Scan: Precinct-Based
Percent Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc.

Butte Optical Scan: Precinct-Based
DFM Associates

Calaveras Punch Card
Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc.

Colusa Optical Scan: Precinct-Based
Election Systems and Software, Inc. (ES&S)

Contra Costa Optical Scan: Precinct-Based
DFM Associates

Del Norte Punch Card
Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc.

El Dorado Punch Card
Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc.

Fresno Optical Scan: Precinct-Based
Diebold Election Systems

Glenn Punch Card
Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc.

Humboldt Optical Scan: Precinct-Based
Diebold Election Systems

Imperial Punch Card
Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc.

Inyo Punch Card
Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc.

Kern Optical Scan: Precinct-Based
Diebold Election Systems

Kings Optical Scan: Precinct-Based
Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc.

Lake Optical Scan: Precinct-Based
DFM Associates

Lassen Optical Scan: Precinct-Based
Diebold Election Systems

Los Angeles Optical Scan: Central-Count
InkaVote

Madera Optical Scan: Central-Count
DFM Associates

Marin Optical Scan: Precinct-Based
Diebold Election Systems

Mariposa Optical Scan: Precinct-Based
Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc.

Mendocino Optical Scan: Central-Count
Diebold Election Systems

Merced E-Voting: Touchscreen
Election Systems and Software, Inc. (ES&S)

Modoc Optical Scan: Precinct-Based
Diebold Election Systems

Mono Optical Scan: Precinct-Based
Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc.

Monterey Optical Scan: Central-Count
Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc.

Napa E-Voting: Touchscreen
Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc.

Nevada Optical Scan: Central-Count
Election Systems and Software, Inc. (ES&S)

Orange E-Voting: Other
Hart InterCivic

Placer Optical Scan: Precinct-Based
Diebold Election Systems

Plumas E-Voting: Touchscreen
Diebold Election Systems

Riverside E-Voting: Touchscreen
Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc.

Sacramento Optical Scan: Precinct-Based
Election Systems and Software, Inc. (ES&S)

San Benito Punch Card
Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc.

San Bernardino E-Voting: Touchscreen
Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc.

San Diego Optical Scan: Precinct-Based
Diebold Election Systems

San Francisco Optical Scan: Precinct-Based
Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc.

San Joaquin Optical Scan: Precinct-Based
Diebold Election Systems

San Luis Obispo Optical Scan: Precinct-Based
Diebold Election Systems

San Mateo Optical Scan: Precinct-Based
Election Systems and Software, Inc. (ES&S)

Santa Barbara Optical Scan: Precinct-Based
Diebold Election Systems

Santa Clara E-Voting: Touchscreen
Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc.

Santa Cruz Optical Scan: Central-Count
DFM Associates

Shasta E-Voting: Touchscreen
Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc.

Sierra Punch Card
Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc.

Siskiyou Optical Scan: Precinct-Based
Diebold Election Systems

Solano Optical Scan: Precinct-Based
Election Systems and Software, Inc. (ES&S)

Sonoma Optical Scan: Precinct-Based
DFM Associates

Stanislaus Optical Scan: Precinct-Based
Election Systems and Software, Inc. (ES&S)

Sutter Optical Scan: Precinct-Based
DFM Associates

Tehama E-Voting: Touchscreen
Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc.

Trinity Optical Scan: Central-Count
Diebold Election Systems

Tulare Optical Scan: Precinct-Based
Diebold Election Systems

Tuolumne Optical Scan: Central-Count
Election Systems and Software, Inc. (ES&S)

Ventura Punch Card
Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc.

Yolo Punch Card
Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc.

Yuba Punch Card
Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc.

us in 2000. It has to be straightened out at the voting and tabulating levels. We can't depend on recounts to straighten out a crooked election.

so SoS gets it correct and is immediately targeted by the republicans

He is a dem.

Shelley Says He'll Testify Before Panel
By Tim Reiterman, Times Staff Writer

California secretary of state was facing a subpoena. Legislators are studying allegations that he mismanaged federal election funds.

Assemblywoman Nicole Parra (D-Hanford) was poised to seek a subpoena to compel the elections chief to testify before the Joint Legislative Audits Committee, which she heads.

snip

At the committee's first hearing Monday, Shelley sent a representative to testify about the state's disbursement of Help America Vote Act funds. But Parra said that there were a number of questions that Shelley's Help America Vote Act coordinator, Tony Miller, was unable to answer, such as: Who ordered staff members paid with the program's funds to stop submitting time cards? And what was Shelley's response when he became aware that some program staff members were attending partisan events?

The committee vice chairman, Sen. Charles Poochigian (R-Fresno), said he wants to ask Shelley about the process for selecting consultants, negotiating payments and controlling contractors. Although some disclosures have been "alarming,'' Poochigian said, "we need to be judicious and not jump to conclusions.''

Originally, Parra set a deadline of Tuesday afternoon for Shelley to agree to testify. But she extended it after he said that he needed time to talk with his attorneys because of other pending investigations.

Federal and state authorities are investigating more than $100,000 in campaign contributions to Shelley from people and companies who were paid from a state grant awarded a few years ago to a San Francisco community center with Shelley's help. And state personnel officials are examining Shelley's alleged abuse of employees.

The Bureau of State Audits last month concluded that Shelley's office circumvented state contracting rules and failed to properly monitor its Help America Vote Act spending. Among other things, contractors were paid to write speeches for Shelley, a Democrat, and to attend political events, such as a fundraiser for Democrat Sen. John Kerry, a presidential candidate.

California stands to receive $350 million from the program, which Congress adopted to avoid problems like those in the 2000 presidential election in Florida.

full article at

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-shelley14jan14,1,3080241.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

because suit she and March filed was decided and no suit vs Diebold can be brought again in CA.......I do not understand the legal situation, but many are very angry and think CA may be lost to Diebold, as I understand it.....PLEASE check for accurate info...what I remember sounded very bad for fair voting future in CA

Attorney General Lockyer Announces $2.6 Million Settlement with Diebold in Electronic Voting Lawsuit
Settlement Would Resolve False Claims Allegations, Strengthen Security of Equipment


November 10, 2004


04-130
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(916) 324-5500

(OAKLAND) – Attorney General Bill Lockyer today announced a proposed $2.6 million settlement with Diebold Election Systems, Inc. (Diebold) to resolve a lawsuit that alleged the Texas-based firm provided false information to obtain payments from the state and counties for its electronic voting equipment.

"There is no more fundamental right in our democracy than the right to vote and have your vote counted," said Lockyer. "In making false claims about its equipment, Diebold treated that right, and the taxpayers who bought its machines, cavalierly. This settlement holds Diebold accountable and helps ensure the future quality and security of its voting systems."

Lockyer filed the proposed settlement simultaneously with the complaint in Alameda County Superior Court. He filed both jointly with Alameda County District Attorney Thomas J. Orloff and Alameda County Counsel Richard E. Winnie. Before it becomes final, the settlement must be approved by the court.

The complaint is an amended version of a false claims lawsuit originally filed November 21, 2003 by James March and Bev Harris. Lockyer and the local prosecutors, after conducting their own investigation, intervened on September 7, 2004 and took over the case. March and Harris are entitled to claim a portion of the proceeds from the proposed settlement. The court will determine how much they receive. Additionally, if the court determines March and Harris are entitled to recover attorneys fees and costs, Diebold will be responsible for reimbursing those expenses.

The proposed settlement calls for Diebold to pay a total of $2.6 million. The payment would be allocated as follows: $1.25 million to the state and $100,000 to Alameda County to resolve alleged violations of the state's False Claims Act (FCA); $375,000 each to Alameda County and the state to resolve alleged violations of the state's Unfair Competition Law; and $500,000 to the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies (IGS). The IGS would use the $500,000 to fund research aimed at training poll workers in the use of electronic voting technology.

In addition to the $2.6 million, the settlement would require Diebold to pay the costs of providing optional paper ballots to voters in Alameda and Plumas counties in the November 2, 2004 general election, if the counties request such reimbursement. Diebold's obligation under this provision would be limited to the cost of providing paper ballots for up to 25 percent of the registered voters in the two counties.

Under the settlement, Diebold also would: pay for optical scan equipment and ballots used in the November 2, 2004 general election in Kern, San Joaquin and San Diego counties; pay for storage of electronic representations of each ballot cast on touchscreen voting units in the November 2, 2004 general election in Alameda, Plumas and Los Angeles counties; upon Alameda County's request, pay for tamper-resistant tape used by the county in the November 2, 2004 general election; install, and pay the cost of installing, upgraded touchscreen firmware in Alameda, Plumas and Los Angeles counties, and upgraded vote tabulation software in all counties using Diebold voting systems in the November 2, 2004 general election; upon Alameda County's request, pay for 750 expanded memory cards for the county's touchscreen voting units.

Additionally, the settlement includes important provisions that would require Diebold to strengthen the security of its touchscreen voting machines and vote tabulation servers. During the course of negotiating the proposed settlement, Diebold took steps to implement some of these "injunctive relief" requirements.

One provision would require Diebold to replace hard-coded, "supervisor" passwords with dynamic passwords, and provide directions and training to enable election officials to change the dynamic passwords. Diebold also would have to encipher data transmissions between touchscreen terminals and vote tabulation servers, and replace hard-coded data encryption, standard security keys with encryption keys programmable by counties.

Additionally, the settlement would require Diebold, upon request of the counties using its voting equipment, to reconfigure the vote-tabulation server to better secure the systems in those counties. In the alternative, Diebold could instruct the counties on how to complete such a reconfiguration. Under the settlement, Diebold would be prohibited from connecting voting systems to specified networks, transmitting official election results through use of such networks, or downloading software or firmware through use of specified networks. The settlement also would require Diebold to offer training materials to the counties on how to use its voting systems.

Further, Diebold would have to provide the California Secretary of State, upon demand, documents from independent federal testing authorities, and information related to the development, testing, installation and operation of its voting systems. The information would allow the Secretary of State to further analyze the Diebold systems used in California elections.

The amended complaint filed by Lockyer and the Alameda County officials alleges Diebold made false claims about the security, and state and federal certification, of its touchscreen machines and vote tabluation system. As a result of those false claims, the complaint alleges, Alameda and other counties spent taxpayer money to buy the equipment. The state then reimbursed six counties for a portion of their payments with funds provided under the Voting Modernization Bond Act of 2002 (VMBA), according to the complaint. Those counties included Alameda, Kern, Lassen, Plumas, Santa Barbara and Siskiyou.

In the case of Alameda, the county spent about $11.8 million on Diebold equipment, some of which failed during the March 2004 primary election. Alameda County recouped roughly $8.8 million from the state-provided VMBA funds.



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this thread is starting to remind me of the line in Fahrenheit 911, when Conyers says "we don't read the reports my son"

Maybe they don't know about election fraud because they are so removed from the details of everything. When they speak publically someone else writes it, they just read it. they don't know much about the issues, unless it's the one or two that matter most to them.

it's disgusting but it's true... we have to make this "one of the issues that matters most" to them so that they actually learn about it first hand, not just read statements that someone else prepared.

Let's not reinvent the wheel.

Voters Unite has already written a long, detailed, documented piece that has gone out to over 800 election officials nationwide.

It's called Myth Breakers. An updated version will be ready shortly.

It could go to every member of Congress and the Senate, hand-delivered would be best.

www.votersunite.org - front page of website:

Spread the Truth! Deliver "Myth Breakers for Election Officials" to inform your local election officials and legislators about e-voting. Participants have confirmed that "Myth Breakers for Election Officials" has been delivered to 838 local election officials. But there's still a lot to go!
Sign up for your county
Check the status of your state
Open "Myth Breakers" now

of machine incidents, which is in pdf.
Excerpts I posted.

If there's one thing we learned from Jan. 6, it's that lots of faxes, emails and calls make an impression. Lots of people showing up hand delivering Myth Breakers, either in small groups or one after another, would have to make an impression.

We need to keep collecting evidence and build public awareness. Maybe pushing some of our non-major (more independent) media would be a good idea too.

claims, and had to see it for myself. I was a heavy consumer of MSM, but also truthout and some others.
What I found is so much information already exists, and only a handful of people have made an effort to make it the "big stink" that it is.
Albeit there was some mention in the MSM prior to the election of possible problems, they never portrayed it to be this serious. And never did I think it was this bad.

It is an outrage that the election system is flawed to this extent!

I don't blame the Senators not knowing, they have tons of shit to deal with.
I blame it on people being rendered powerless, by being called conspiracy theorists, alarmists, sore losers and cry babies.
We have the facts and more facts to come into light, we have the ammunition, let's spread the word.

APPALLED! And I've been thinking about this for months. It just flabbergasts me that they didn't know, or are pretending they didn't know, or whatever they are doing. And since this (their motives, knowledge) may greatly influence how we are received now (and has certainly influenced how they have behaved so far), let me just explore it a bit.

Late last summer, I called my two Senators' offices and House rep in CA--just after I had gotten onto the blackboxvoting.org info--and told aides of my concern. I was struck by their ho-hum attitude, and, to tell you the truth, fell for it. If THEY were not concerned--those whose main job in life is to GET VOTES--then maybe I was being a bit alarmist.

Fast forward three months: Stolen Election II.

I will never do THAT again, trust a legislator.

Jeez. Anyway, so WHAT accounts for their complete lack of interest (or feigned lack of interest) in BUSHCONS OWNING AND CONTROLLING OUR VOTING SYSTEM with secret source code and no paper trail?

In the following, I am making NO accusations of particular people. I'm merely listing the probable reasons for no interest among vote-getters on how votes are counted, based on what we know of how this system was put together. Individual motives may be mixed, or not mentioned here. And I would say, in general, that Leftists tend to forget how much MONEY influences everything in DC. In fact, I could almost say this whole thing (a fraudulent election system) is about money and not about our right to vote (from the point of view of our elected representatives).

1. Corruption.

Porkbarrel: HAVA money to the states. Diebold et al and their lavish wining and dining of election officials and legislators.

To print paper ballots and count them doesn't cost that much. To install elaborate new electronic systems requiring a lot of testing, a lot of public education ("selling" the system to the public), and constant "servicing" is very expensive. Who gets that money? Who gets to DISTRIBUTE that money? (--with the great irony that Wally O'Dell and other Bush "Pioneers" end up with much of it, and then donate in $100,000 chunks to "elect" Bush!). MONEY. Think hard about it. Ask questions about it.

One of the Jan. 6 speakers said something about HAVA being "underfunded." Do we really want/need MORE money going, ultimately, to Bush "Pioneers"? Congressional mandates like this (electronic voting) suck up state resources, impose harsh burdens. Maybe THAT'S the point of mandates/underfunding: to keep SoS's minds distracted, and not on security of the vote.

As to personal corruption, there COULD BE just outright bribery, or payoffs in wining, dining and "conferences" in the Bahamas. Needs investigation, so we know what and who we're dealing with. Also, see "Bubble," below (and keep in mind that, as members of the rich class, our legislators, too, benefit from tax cuts for the rich--thus, Bush cutting the taxes of the rich may not be any great personal concern of theirs, that might have added to their personal motivation to oust him, with an honest election system beforehand, or serious investigation and challenge afterward).

2. Fiefdoms.

This one occurred to me with regard to Gov. Bill Richardson in New Mexico, supposedly a good progressive Democrat. Why on earth was he obstructing the Greens from recounting in New Mex? You'd think he'd want to know if Bush didn't win! Here's my thought: Dems are aware this is a fascist coup, and some think they can "circle the wagons" and protect their little fiefdom of power--that the BushCons will not affect them much, and will allow a few little Dem strongholds here and there to create an illusion of democracy. Thus, Kerry concedes (& retires to his little fiefdom in the Senate and in the DNC). Thus, B. Boxer gets a huge mandate in CA, and doesn't want to question THAT vote (blinds herself to the very odd discrepancy between her vote and Kerry's), and figures she's got power in CA, assert and protect that, and move on. (Surprise, though--she put it on the line for Ohio--but only after great pressure from constituents. I'm talking about what her first thoughts might have been--and those of similarly situated Dems--just after the election.)

(Upshot of fiefdomism: It's not that they don't know--some of them--it's not that they don't care, it's that they've made a strategic decision to ignore the facts, and think they will be safe from the junta.)

3. Ignorance.

I heard Bev on Air America remark that one SoS she'd called, in connection to her FOIA request, didn't understand the simplest things about his electronic voting system (how to get some kind of printout or other--didn't even know such a printout was possible--don't recall details). Question: Did they even know what they were buying? Were they sold a bill of goods? Are our elections officials DEPENDENT on electronic voting machine companies' employees and "service" to run this system? And when they hire staff, do they then hire out of that pool (company employees)? And if our elections officials are ignorant of these systems, WHAT ABOUT OUR LEGISLATORS?

This is a hard one to swallow: How could an elected official, or an SoS, NOT be concerned about this insecure, hackable, Republican-controlled election system--and not know it inside out, and not be onto it as a matter of first importance? Hard to figure.

Bev and others did some work in CA prior to the election, and one of the results was CA SoS Kevin Shelley last summer provided a paper ballot option to CA voters. (He also sued Diebold for lying about their machines.) (NOTE: And then guess what? Mysterious corruption and sex harassment charges against Shelley appeared in the newspapers. Total B.S, as far as I can see. A BushCon warning?)

This item was about ignorance (why didn't Shelley--or other SoS's--provide options, insist on paper trail, BEFORE public pressure, etc.? Ignorance?), but it has morphed into a new item...

4. Fear.

'nuf said.

5. Living in a bubble (related to fiefdomism).

Millionaires, all of them, or on their way to being. Highly privileged. Excellent salary. Excellent benefits. A certain amount of honor and fame. Importance. Eat well every day. Live well. Employment secure (even if they lose an election, they're now in "the system"--and can become consultants, join law firms, become lobbyists, get professorships, etc.)

They are not like you and me--for whom this fascist coup has REAL impacts: lost jobs, lousy jobs, high living costs, elderly parents with shrinking incomes, no medical insurance--astronomical costs, no money to pay lawyers when Homeland Security drags you away in the middle of the night, no security, little or no influence, kids vulnerable to the Draft, people we know suffering or dying in Iraq, long commutes, high gas costs, etc. , etc.

So...our votes really DON'T matter as much to them (our representatives) as they do to us. That Kerry is not president is a HUGE blow to us--because he is not saving Social Security, he is not implementing a plan for alternative energy, he is not fighting for decent medical coverage for all, he is not de-escalating Iraq, he is not preventing pollution of our water supply--nor is there a Congress looking after our welfare--BECAUSE OUR VOTES FOR THESE THINGS WERE STOLEN. We feel this acutely. Do our representatives?

6. Skull and Bones/War.

The most paranoid of my possible reasons for why Democratic leaders UTTERLY FAILED, CATASTROPHICALLY FAILED, to PREVENT BushCons from gaining control of our election system (not even to object LOUDLY, and WARN US). Most of them support the war and the war machine. They are invested as war profiteers. The Dem leadership helped kill the Howard Dean candidacy BECAUSE he was anti-war, and because the country was going to vote anti-war, and that is just not going to be allowed in this country ever again. Anyone against war, and for cutting military spending, will be eliminated one way or another.

Bear in mind that 124 in House and Senate (all Dems except Jeffords) voted against the Iraq war.* So I'm talking mostly about the leadership. It LOOKS LIKE a frigging CONSPIRACY of the military-industrial complex, which buys or threatens Dems, and of course has full Pug support for 24/7 war forever.

*(122 MORE than voted against Vietnam so long ago--progress!?)

In short, the Dems WANT the Iraq war (for financial reasons--personal and/or porkbarrel--and to keep far right Jewish support i.e., US military protecting Israel, or some variety of motives like this), but do NOT want to be saddled with running it (Vietnam nearly destroyed the Democratic party). So it doesn't matter to THEM if Bush continues. It's actually for the best (from their point of view)! And if they can eventually straighten out the election system, and get the White House back in '08, they will be sitting pretty: They can blame all the problems on Bush, and ANYTHING positive they do, no matter how little, will make them look good. Leftists will be grateful for the smallest crumbs.

Upshot: They threw the election(?). They knew damn well what the potential for BushCon election theft was. They ignored it! In fact, it will be a plus--they can eventually add it onto the pile of BushCon scandals that will win them back the White House in '08.

Further thought: The above might be mingled with fear. Fear that the BushCons COULD NOT have been gotten out of office (electronic voting or no electronic voting). Dems have no power, no media. Best to sit back and let the BC's destroy themselves and then pick up the pieces of the country when it's over, and try to put it back together.

Evidence: Back in '03, the Dem leadership was not interested in winning the '04 election--until the grass roots erupted, with Dean, THEN they came up with THEIR acceptable pro-war candidate Kerry. The one thing that could NOT be given to Americans was the option of voting against war (though many thought they were doing so in voting for Kerry, made possible by his iffy statements, and having no other choice). The Dems IGNORED the blatant non-transparency of the election system--incredibly. Not one word about it in the campaign. This, more than anything, leads to paranoid suspicions.

In the DNC-guided campaign, there was never any serious questioning of the invasion, the blatant lies told, preemptive war, the Constitutional principles that were violated, the use of mercenaries, the Halliburton and other military-industrial complex thievery, and not one word about torture. A slam-dunk case against Bush. They didn't use it. Why not?

-----------------

I emphasize again that I am making NO accusations of anybody. Any names I've mentioned above are just by way of example (of what may be dozens of cases of the same syndrome). Also, I have NO INTENTION of starting arguments here about Dem policy or the merits of the Dem party.

This analysis is merely an attempt to understand the inexplicable: Why do mainstream Dems seem utterly disinterested in Bush stealing a second election, and in what this new election system portends for the future of the Democratic Party?

Their disinterest is extraordinary. How to explain it? And MOST IMPORTANTLY, how to deal with it NOW as we come up against it in our efforts to fix this election system?

Summary: Money, War, Bubble, Ignorance

So, in lobbying legislators for election reform, think: MONEY (election system money, and their own privilege and security). WAR (who's for it, who's against it, and how that may influence how they feel about Bush election theft). BUBBLE (they really don't care, or not much--they don't think it will affect them) And IGNORANCE (maybe part of the picture, but hard to believe).

VALUE OF OUR VOTE

We're really finding out how valuable our vote is. It is pure gold. That's why BushCons outright stole it, why some are in fear of it, and why some don't care if we lose it (our disempowerment is their advantage).

We, American voters, are at the vortex of power in the world. We HAVE the power to stop war, and to create a peaceful and prosperous world for all. That is why we have been disempowered, with such elaborate forethought, to the very mechanisms of our vote, and the thought-control babble on TV.

When you're feeling depressed and defeated, think about how valuable your vote is to all of these powerful people--and then fight like hell to get it back!

or be aware of the pervasive evidence of fraWD? Seriously.

I sent her some info along with a thank you note btw.

keep in mind, although you may be obsessed with the issue and very aware of many of the details, most people in this country are completely unaware. A growing number of people are becoming aware of the paperless voting machines. she must be aware of it because of the bill in congress.

but still most people, even if they know about the paper ballot bill, may not even be aware of diebold and ess. and most people if they watch the corporate media just have no clue.

i think most of our legislators don't have the time to get into the details of every issue. Boxer and others might know about the paper ballot bills, but they probably have been relaxing with their families over the holidays and watching the regular news, and not reading DU like we have.

it's not an excuse, i'm just saying that it's an obsticle. i think there are some that believe even Boxer knows exactly what's going on but she's part of the conspiracy. I think it's much more plausible that she just doesn't know, as she said on TV.

It's sickening to think that they don't know about this, but at least we can see where the battle is. we have to convince the public, but we also have to convince our representatives. we can and we must.

members of congress don't read most of the stuff they have to decide on. It was a very sobering part of the film. Getting info into the hands and minds of congress is the hardest part of our work, imo.

I've just been amazed at how many people thought that, once he initially conceded on 11/3/04, that was it. That that meant Bush won, regurdless of anything else that has been found.
I've actually heard people say "Yeah, I know they figured out Kerry actually carried Ohio and therefore won, but it's too late because Kerry has already conceded, so he NOW HE CAN'T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT."
In other words, they think it was like "Simon says".
Once you've more or less "conceded", they are ignorant that there are these deadlines that extend on past the initial concession dates, that give you some options. I've had to explain to several people that it's not like "Simon says". That, though you may have said "I concede", and "congratulate" Bush, if you later find, within some time constraints, that Kerry may have actually won, you can still do something. You haven't opted out.

I was talking to a fairly intelligent young woman before the election, too, for another example: she thought, quite seriously, that Saddam Hussein had been behind the raid on the WTC.

The 102 page document did not just detail Ohio. She has that and more information has been released and sent on to those that need it. If you think she needs more information, by all means send her it. The before mentioned document was just PRELIMINARY Conyers,Tubbs-Jones, Arnbeck, Jackson, and others are asking for more information and they ALL clearly stated there is an ongoing investigation.

in the same press conference when she was asked what evidence she had to support her contesting the electors, she said it was the stories that Tubbs had told her personally.

I seriously doubt that even Boxer had read Conyers document. It was just released the day before. HOpefully she has now but I wouldn't be surprised if she hasn't.

didn't read this document. Clinton, Kennedy, Boxer, Conyers, Tubbs-Jones, and all the rest all seem more fired up then I've seen them in years. I think they have decided that Dean's grassroots plan is the key to rendering * powerless. I also think they read that document. Just because they were not in session doesn't mean they weren't working on this stuff. Conyers didn't have to release the information publicly for the information to get in their hands.

Numbers taken from lavote.net "Photo Memoirs"

Record Shattering Numbers from the
November 2, 2004 Presidential General Election
• Record # of registered voters (4,075,122)
• Record # of voter registrations in the last month (446,122)

• Record # of absentee ballots mailed (752,217)
• Record # of absentee ballots returned & counted (636,028)
Rejects Total 116,189 ( my 2 cents)

• Record # of early voters via electronic touchscreen (65,665)

• Record # of provisional ballots issued (204,578)
• Record # of provisional ballots counted (166,894)
Rejects Total 37,684 ( my 2 cents)

• Record voter turnout (3,085,582 = 79.1%*)

• Record # of poll workers recruited and trained (30,381)
• 4,118 County Poll Workers
• 3,120 College Poll Workers
• 4,333 High School Poll Workers
• 18,810 other
• Record # of phone calls answered on election day (90,679)
• Record # of website visitors on election day (191,972)
• Record # of website hits on election day (5,999,152)
* % based on 3,901,106 registered voters (# at time of official report to Secretary of State prior to election day).

Then comparing State SOS and above

Kerry Bush Total Other No Votes Total
1,907,736 1,076,225 39,319 62302 3,085,582
Boxer Jones
1,940,493 822,351 144192 178,546 3,085,582

plus uncounted

No Votes Rejects Total
62,302 153873 216175 (edited for error)

Registration by party
Dem Rep Total Other Decline to state Total
2,016,280 1,071,615 178,794 706,049 3,972,738 (as per State)
3,901,106 as per LA
71,632 difference in voters

Interestingly, 71,632 fewer registered voters in LA than what Sec State has on record as of 10/18/04 last day for 2004 election.
:shrug:

If we could come up with the best possible info to send then persons at du could each start picking one state to target. That person would take the responsibility of sending the packet to the senators and congresspeople from that state. If two people volunteer for a state they could split the responsibility. I would have trouble gathering all the possible best info, but if someone could help to work on this task(with my assistance) I would be happy to work on New Mexico. Probably best if we pick the states we are living in. I have friends that would be happy to work on Illinois and possibly California. Though Cali went blue it is likely some fraud was attempted, true? Do we have any evidence for this. I could probably help to deliver some more states. Contact me if you think this would work...

P.S. if you have any info on rides from New Mexico to D.C. on the 20th, please let me know... Thanks....

I believe it was a strategic decision on the part of the Democrats as a whole to limit their objections to Ohio and (for the most part) to charges of brazen voter intimidation/vote suppression. I'm guessing they didn't want to play into the hands of the Republicans who were obviously poised to counter charges of widespread election fraud (and who, in their miscalculation, came off as the calloused, sophomoric bullies that they are).

Interesting that only one Republican senator rose to speak against the objection. Maybe they were afraid of being memorialized as assholes in Fahrenheit 9/11 II!

the only way DU comments and ideas can be regarded in the Senate and House is if a DU member is in there or works closely with a Senator or Representative.

DU ideas played a major role in getting Boxer to stand.

how dangerous this regime really is.

Or maybe it's like that part in the book "Night" by Elie Weisel where Moshe the Beadle warns the people about the horrific things the Nazis are doing to the Jews....

...and nobody believed him untill it was too late :scared:

Take into consideraton that the book is a memoir, not a fictional novel.

http://nov3.us/billofrights.php


I think we need something like a media kit. it would include the doc referenced above, a copy of the Votergate movie on CD or DVD, the slideshow, and some good graphs and pie charts (TIA are you listening?)

I think it would make an impression if every office got hand delivered many copies of the same kit. It would show them we're serious. If the kit was easy to assemble, with a CD burner and a printer anyone could do it. Then we could all agree to make one and walk it into the local offices.

If an office had 25 people walk in and hand deliver the same packet of information, I think it would have an impression and it would get read.

and I am still in the dark on several things. I can see that I am a couple of hours behind when the discussions ended here which probably means I am going to have to wait until tomorrow to hear from any of you. Some of the things on this thread have blown me away (and that is hard to do anymore). I am anxious to hear more about the GA connection (whenever anyone can fill me in) because as a Georgian, this may possibly be an area where I really can be of some help.

I am also confused about what exactly happened in CA but I sure didn't like the sound of the future of their voting system not looking too promising.

I am trying to figure out an effective way to discuss some things with anyone who has been participating in this discussion so when any one gets on and has the time, perhaps you could drop me an email or something and I will respond as soon as I am able. I am really starting to see some possibilities here and feel excited that I may finally have a real chance to DO something. I hope to hear from someone. Meanwhile after pulling a 4:30 night last night, I think I better scoot or may not be coherent enough to talk to anyone tomorrow anyway. Will be up and running by 6:30 ET, but should be back to my computer by noon to 1:00.

related questions I can tell you what I have, and what a whole bunch of us tried to do under a "CA Action" thread. I can give you what I have ready at hand, and if not we'll see if we can find it.:hi:

and yes, CA is part of it, but the part I am most concerned about (can possibly help in) is GA, not CA. Though I lived in CA for years too and have many friends there, I myself cannot actively participate in what is going on there.

Earlier in this thread there were 2 very significant mentions of GA,

1)"Ga is collecting a HUGE mound of election data", and in the same post (by rigel99) that, "Georgia is the ground zero folks. We have some things in GA that make it a perfect place to launch a serious inquiry into election fraud."

and

2)Bobbieinok seemed to know a great deal about GA and referred me to Eloriel (whom I have been unable to reach as of yet) - but this post led me to believe that something may be brewing in GA that I can lend an assist with (especially given that my husband had lunch with GA SoS about 2 weeks ago. I am not a fan for many reasons, not the least of which was a report she published shortly after 11/2 singing the praises of electronic voting (GA is all electronic voting by none other than Diebold) but if I knew a bit more, perhaps I can still help in some way)

I have no clue what the first refers to but needless to say, I am very curious. As for the second, I am merely offering my services if anyone can lead me as to what their specific needs are here.

Sorry - I feel like all I can post anymore are jumbled messages that may or may not make sense. Frankly I have not figured out how to juggle this whole DU thing now that I am trying to follow several threads at once. I get them confused and lose track of where I have seen things, and yet when I go looking for something, I only find something new that also intrigues, engages, and monopolizes my thoughts for a spell - only to arrive back at the original quandary that set me off in the first place, empty-handed, but with one more thing to "follow-up" on, on my plate -- AND all the while carrying around posts I want to make myself, asking the billion questions that have occurred to me all along the way . . . IS THIS A SKILL THAT WILL DEVELOP OVER TIME OR WILL MY BRAIN ALWAYS BE SWIMMING LIKE THIS AND PLAYING CATCH UP, BUT NEVER REALLY CATCHING UP????? :nuke:
(Don't answer that . . . because I think I know the answer and I am in now, like it or not)

I guess what I am asking for is patience while I learn and please, if I leave you hanging for something, PING ME! This is new to me but I will catch on.

Edited to ask this one question:
If someone's icon has the guy sleeping, does that mean they put you on their ignore list? And if so, does that mean you can't even ask them what you said or did that put them off? I know this may seem like an obvious question, but if I know for sure that is what it means I won't waste my time replying to these people and then waiting on a response that will never come because I am on their ignore list.

It is the CLOSEST statewide race in the country. And the repugs
are filing a suit on friday documenting many irregularities.

:dunce: I cannot believe they do not know. This B.S. I have written letters until my fingers are shorter!

they don't even read the bills they sign.

that's how they could not know what's going on.

You are exactly correct. In addition, most of the efforts of Conyers' staff were focused on Ohio because the fraud there was the easiest to explain. Lastly, Boxer went through a nasty reelection fight and probably was still a bit distracted.

Support Conyers and watch him escort the shrub out of the White House when all of the evidence of collated!

so we can "splain" it to them! Where do these representatives and congresspeople stay in Caves? Osama gets better news than they do? Someone needs to direct them to liberal net news!

I watch it live and also the debate in the House and the Senate on Cspan.
I watch the replay too. I suggest all of you watch the full proceeding. I watch it twice. There are many representatives that say it is not only limited to Ohio.

As for Boxer statement before the objection. Please look at the question ask. Would you have answer differently? Ohio is the main issue at that precise moment. There is no contest being filed for other states. The point was make which is most important.

yes, I would have answered differently. and the question was a good one. Ohio should not have been the only state contested. Florida and NM had plenty of evidence. And once Diebold and ESS comes into question, the entire election comes into question. If she knew the facts she would have been contesting the entire election.

I recognize that some of the other legislators mentioned other states, but if you look at Boxer, she's reading a statement, and she even stumbles over some of the facts that most of us have been talking about for 2 months.

Gary

The fact she is willing to stand up for Ohio even though she is not the Senator there speak volume. As for others states guess the representatives there just need to do their job. Tubb Jones did hers.

I do think you are right in the fact that if she knew she would have contested them all. But even if she knew she cant if no representatives from the congress bring it up to her for signing.
And no she cant say she knew even if she knew cause that makes the other states representative looks bad.

So I think her answer was correct.

Boxer did it rigth. But sadly she will be attack by both parties.You guys need to stand by her. As the saying goes "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

There will be alot of Senators and Congressman/woman who will never forgive her for shattering their nice peaceful world with her objections. You articles which I think is in good faith will only serve to raise question on her which she so clearly do not need given the troubles and griefs she know she will face by standing up for the people of Ohio.

I had been assuming our 'representatives' have been willfully ignoring the facts because they have sold out, or are desperately seeking Republican approval for every comment they make. If they just need to be educated, there may be some glimmer of hope yet. The environment here inside the Beltway is mostly sealed off from reality, so it takes some 'hard work' to break though the truth barrier.

to some of them, we are conspiracy nuts. This is not going to be easy. But if we give them enough information, and enough of us send it, they can't ignore it.

and better yet, Kerry's leftovers, to buy MSM ads, say, on the Superbowl (has that occurred yet?). That would make a big noise. Just list a few of the basic facts; we'd need to pick the top 3 or four and come up with a 30-second blurb in 3rd-grader English.

find another way to educate them. They get huge numbers of emails and faxes, and apparently at most note the issue of interest and keep tabs of numbers contacting.

So since its important to educate them, one has to find another way.
Apparently the only ways are to visit the local office in person and educate them; and have someone from the district visit the Washington Office and carry documentation.

not do nothing with Congress, keep feeding info etc. But, as has often been pointed out, until the election law about the relationship between the Feds and the States gets sorted out - which might take a while - the States are in charge of the processes. If our sense is that folks like Boxer may be clueless on important details, can you imagine how ignorant of the facts the governors are?

Isn't there an annual governors' conference? How could we get this issue on that agenda?

The Gropenazi is there

:kick:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=284514#284854

Ready to go document to be sent to legislators from votersunite.org

While serious issues and problems have been voiced, I do not see anything in the resulting HAVA Act, to prevent these problems. All that the HAVA appears to be doing is create commissions for research, and money allocation. Or Have I missed something?
I have included the members of both committees, albeit this is current info, and not of 2001 when the hearings occured.
It appears these are the only hearings on voting technology.

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c107:h.r.3295.enr:

Full Committee Hearing on National Energy Policy – Report of the National Energy Policy Development Group
http://www.house.gov/science/full/fchearings.htm

II.       Witnesses
There will be one panel of four witnesses:

(1)   Dr. Stephen Ansolabehere, Professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Project Manager of the Caltech-MIT Voting Project.  The Voting Project was created in December 2000 to prevent a recurrence of the problems that threatened the 2000 elections.  Specific tasks of the project include evaluating the current state of reliability and uniformity of U.S. voting systems, and proposing uniform standards and quantitative guidelines for performance and reliability of voting systems.  The Voting Project just completed a March 30, 2001 preliminary assessment of the reliability of existing voting equipment. 

excerpt:

1.  High rates of uncounted, unmarked, and spoiled ballots – what we call residual votes.  The average incidence of such votes is about 2 out of 100 ballots cast over the last four presidential elections.   These ballots vary by state.  Massachusetts and Maryland have fairly low rates of residual votes – less that 1 percent.  New Mexico, South Carolina, Georgia, and Illinois had high residual vote rates – above 3 percent of all ballots cast. Some counties have residual vote rates in presidential elections as high as 20 percent or 30 percent of all ballots cast.

Our project has examined what one of our group calls the “epidemiology of voting.”  I have distributed to the committee one of our reports that examines the extent to which the residual vote rate depends on equipment used in the counties.    Counties using punch cards average the highest residual vote rate, approximately 3 percent of ballots cast.  Counties using electronic equipment also post relatively high average residual vote rates. Counties using paper, lever machines, and optical scanners average 2 percent or less.  

We should lower the residual vote rate.  Getting rid of punch cards is probably a good first step.  But even 2 percent seems too high.  Our project’s goal is a residual vote rate of one-half of one percent, which approximately 10 percent of counties currently achieve.  There are many ways that this could be accomplished – more poll workers, voter education, better machines.

2.  Errors in voter registration data bases.  In response to NVRA a number of states and counties have undertaken considerable projects to develop computerized voter registration systems and clean up their voter registration rolls.   In doing so, these states have estimated the number of duplicate or incorrect registrations.  Michigan, for example, encountered 1 million duplicate registrations out of approximately 9 million registered voters.  Los Angeles County audited their rolls and estimates that 25 percent of all registrations have some sort of problematic or incorrect information.

According to the Current Population Survey conducted by the US Census, in the 2000 election approximately 3 million registered voters did not vote because of registration problems.

We should set standards for quality of data bases and fund efforts to clean the data bases and make these data electronically accessible at polling places.

(2)   Dr. Rebecca Mercuri, Assistant Professor of Computer Sciences at Bryn Mawr College, is a nationally recognized expert on voting technologies and standards.  In October 2000, she successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis, “Electronic Vote Tabulation Checks & Balances.”

excerpt:
Fully electronic systems do not provide any way that the voter (or election officials) can truly verify that the ballot cast corresponds to that being recorded, transmitted, or tabulated.  Any programmer can write code that displays one thing on a screen, records something else, and prints yet another result.  There is no known way to ensure that this is not happening inside of a voting system.

Electronic balloting and tabulation makes the tasks performed by poll workers, challengers, and election officials  purely procedural, and removes any opportunity to perform bipartisan checks.  Any computerized election process is thus entrusted to the small group of individuals who program, construct and maintain the machines.  The risk that these systems may be compromised is present whether the computers are reading punched cards or optical scanned sheets, or are kiosk-style or Internet balloting systems.

excerpt:
Now the computer industry has already established standards for secure system certification, mandated by Congress under the Computer Security Act of 1987.  NIST typically administers this certification for devices purchased by the Department of Defense.  Congress, though, exempted itself from compliance with the Act, hence they have never certified the accuracy and integrity of any computer-based voting systems used in Federal elections.  This loophole must be changed.  The existing standards are far from perfect, but they are the best assurance mechanism that the computer industry has at present.  (It is important to understand that the Federal Election Commission does not now have voting system standards in place.  Instead, the purchasers and vendors use an obsolete set of suggested practices that were never adopted by all of the States.) 

To date, no electronic voting system has been certified to even the lowest level of the U.S. government or international computer security standards (such as the ISO Common Criteria or its predecessor, TCSEC/ITSEC), nor has any been required to comply with such.  No voting system vendor has voluntarily complied with these standards (although voluntary compliance occurs within other industries, such as health care and banking), despite the fact that most have been made aware of their existence and utility in secure product development. There are also no required standards for voting displays, so computer ballots can be constructed to give advantage to some candidates over others

(3)   Dr. Doug Jones, Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Iowa, has served on the Iowa Board of Examiners for Voting Machines and Electronic Voting Systems since 1994, and has chaired the board since the fall of 1999.  This board, appointed by the Iowa Secretary of State, must examine and approve all voting machines before they can be offered for sale to county governments.  The board meets whenever a manufacturer wishes to offer a new voting machine or a new modification of an existing machine for sale in the state of Iowa.

excerpt:
Today, all new precinct-count voting machines are offered with communication options; this includes direct-recording voting machines, optical mark-sense ballot readers, and punched-card ballot readers. These allow the machines to electronically communicate the vote totals to a machine at the county level that computes county wide vote totals within minutes of the close of the polls.

quote:
The use of a proprietary Microsoft operating system in a voting machine and the fact that the current standards provide us with no control over this use is particularly troublesome! Microsoft is currently in the midst of an antitrust case -- which is to say, it is in an adversary relationship with the Federal government! Thus, the company has great reason to be interested in the outcome of elections.

In fact, about a year ago, I remember hearing a Microsoft representative state that he hoped to delay hearings on their antitrust case until after the election because he believed that Microsoft would receive a more favorable hearing from a Bush administration, and I remember that, when asked about this, then candidate Bush confirmed that he did not favor the antitrust litigation.

Thus, we are in the bizarre situation that our current standards exempt large portions of software in voting machinery from inspection, where those portions happen to be made by an organization that has taken a partisan position in an upcoming political race!

(4)   Mr. Roy Saltman is a consultant and a retired employee of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (formerly, the National Bureau of Standards) who authored the 1988 National Bureau of Standards report, “Accuracy, Integrity, and Security in Computerized Vote-Tallying,” that first raised the difficulties of using punch cards and other machine-readable ballots.  He also authored the 1978 National Bureau of Standards study, “Science & Technology: Effective Use of Computing Technology in Vote-Tallying.”

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE
MEMBERSHIP - 108th CONGRESS

Jurisdiction
The Science Committee has jurisdiction over all non-defense federal scientific research and development (R&D). Federal agencies that fall under the Committee's jurisdiction (either completely or partially) include: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Department of Energy (DOE), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), National Science Foundation (NSF), Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), U.S. Fire Administration, and U.S. Geological Survey.

Republican Members (25)
Democratic Members (22)

Ralph M. Hall, Texas
Bart Gordon, Tennessee

Lamar S. Smith, Texas
Jerry F. Costello, Illinois

Curt Weldon, Pennsylvania
Eddie Bernice Johnson, Texas

Dana Rohrabacher, California
Lynn C. Woolsey, California

Ken Calvert, California
Nick Lampson, Texas

Nick Smith, Michigan
John B. Larson, Connecticut

Roscoe G. Bartlett, Maryland
Mark Udall, Colorado

Vernon J. Ehlers, Michigan
David Wu, Oregon

Gil Gutknecht, Minnesota
Michael M. Honda, California

George R. Nethercutt, Jr., Washington
Brad Miller, North Carolina

Frank D. Lucas, Oklahoma
Lincoln Davis, Tennessee

Judy Biggert, Illinois
Sheila Jackson-Lee, Texas

Wayne Gilchrest, Maryland
Zoe Lofgren, California

W. Todd Akin, Missouri
Brad Sherman, California

Timothy V. Johnson, Illinois
Brian Baird, Washington

Melissa A. Hart, Pennsylvania
Dennis Moore, Kansas

J. Randy Forbes, Virginia
Anthony Weiner. New York

Phil Gingrey, Georgia
Jim Matheson, Utah

Rob Bishop, Utah
Dennis Cardoza, California

Michael C. Burgess, Texas
Vacancy

Jo Bonner, Alabama
Vacancy

Tom Feeney. Florida
Vacancy

Randy Neugebauer, Texas

The Hearing in The Senate 5/8/01
Election Reform Hearing Set for May 8

        Washington, DC – The Full Committee hearing on Election Reform is scheduled for Tuesday, May 8, at 9:30 a.m. in room 253 of the Russell Senate Office Building.  Senator McCain will preside.  Members will examine the reliability of current and future voting technologies.

        Following is the tentative witness list (not necessarily in order of appearance):
 
Honorable Sheila Jackson Lee, Representative, Texas

Panel I
Honorable Betsey Bayless, Secretary of State, Arizona
Honorable John Willis, Secretary of State, Maryland

Panel II
Honorable Robert H. Michel, Co-Chair, National Commission on Federal Election Reform
Honorable Bill Richardson, National Commission on Federal Election Reform
Dr. Stephen Ansolabehere, Professor, Department of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

http://www.commerce.senate.gov/hearings/hearings01.htm

Committee Members
Ted Stevens - Alaska
Hart 522   202-224-3004

John McCain - Arizona
Russell 241   202-224-2235

Conrad Burns - Montana
Dirksen 187   202-224-2644

Trent Lott - Mississippi
Russell 487   202-224-6253

Kay Bailey Hutchison - Texas
Russell 284   202-224-5922

Olympia Snowe - Maine
Russell 250   202-224-5344

Gordon Smith - Oregon
Russell 404   202-224-3753

John Ensign - Nevada
Russell 290   202-224-6244

George Allen - Virginia
Hart 708   202-224-4024

John Sununu - New Hampshire
Russell C4   202-224-2841

Jim DeMint - South Carolina
Hart 825    202-224-6121

David Vitter - Louisiana
Hart 825A    202-224-4623

Daniel K. Inouye - Hawaii
Hart 722   202-224-3934

John D. Rockefeller IV - West Virginia
Hart 531   202-224-6472

John F. Kerry - Massachussetts
Russell 304   202-224-2742

Byron L. Dorgan - North Dakota
Hart 713   202-224-2551

Barbara Boxer - California
Hart 112   202-224-3553

Bill Nelson - Florida
Hart 716   202-224-5274

Maria Cantwell - Washington
Hart 717   202-224-3441

Frank Lautenberg - New Jersey
Hart 825A   202-224-3224

Bennjamin E. Nelson - Nebraska
Hart 720    202-224-6551

Mark Pryor - Arkansas
Russell 217    202-224-2353