Possible Connection between the FISA Amendment and Election Fraud 2008

[Time for change]

There are numerous possible reasons why the Bush administration fought so hard for so long to destroy our Fourth Amendment with a law that couldn’t possibly improve upon the then existing FISA law for the purpose of identifying terrorists.

The purpose of our Fourth Amendment is to protect us against unnecessary and malicious intrusion of government into our private lives. We now know that J. Edgar Hoover amassed tremendous power as FBI Director by wiretapping thousands of individuals and organizations to gather information, which he then used for blackmail and for otherwise shaping events to his liking. God only knows how George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have used and intend to use the information gained as a result of past illegal wiretapping and future wiretapping performed under the recently passed unconstitutional FISA amendment.

One possible use of the power handed to the Bush administration as a result of this law would be for election fraud. This would be done through manipulation of vote counts as they’re transmitted over the phone lines, under the guise of attempting to intercept communication between terrorists. This is how Eliot D. Cohen explains it in a recent article posted at the Election Defense Alliance:

Electronic voting is essentially tied to the phone lines because all votes cast in individual precincts must pass through the phone lines on their way to be tabulated at the main tabulation center. This makes it possible to electronically reconfigure votes before they even arrive at a central tabulation point by embedding the appropriate software in the lines, thereby destroying the prospect of a fair election outcome…. votes that disappear into the void of cyberspace only to reappear at the other end of a wire in an altered state… Independent inspection of voting machines and careful monitoring of election practices may therefore prove insufficient when cyberspace is not also safeguarded.

In the above scenario, the manipulation would occur as vote counts are transmitted over the phone lines, from the precincts where vote counts are initially counted or tabulated (“pre-tabulator” counts), to the county central tabulators, which tabulate the votes from every precinct in the county, to arrive at a final county vote count (“post-tabulator” counts.)

There are two very important points to make about this process: First, this manipulation can occur regardless of the method for counting votes at the individual precincts, as long as the final count is transmitted to the county central tabulator over the phone lines. The second important point is that manipulation of central tabulator counts is likely to be substantially more efficient than hacking of individual electronic voting machines at the precinct level. Rather than dealing with more than a thousand different voting machines, all it would take is a program to change votes coming in over the phone lines or within the central tabulator itself.


Examples of possible central tabulator mediated fraud in recent elections

In considering the following examples, keep in mind that the new powers granted to the Bush administration by virtue of the recent FISA Amendment could make this process a lot easier:

Baldwin County, Alabama, 2002 Governor election – Riley vs. Siegelman
On Election Day 2002, the initial vote count for Governor for Baldwin County, reported from the Baldwin County central tabulator at 10:45 p.m., was quite surprising to say the least. It reported: Riley (R) 30,142, Siegelman (D) 11,820, and the Libertarian candidate, John Sophocleus, 13,190. Although it was expected that Siegelman would lose Baldwin County, the margin of the loss was far more than expected, as he had lost Baldwin County in the Governor’s race in 1998 by only a little over four thousand votes. Most important, the idea of his losing to the Libertarian candidate was not plausible.

So, “someone” from the sheriff’s office went into the tabulation room to look into the matter and returned a few minutes later, announcing that the problem had been fixed. The new totals, which were reported at 11:04 p.m. and picked up and distributed by the AP, were: Riley 31,052, Siegelman 19,070, and Sophocleus a much more reasonable 937. The pickup of 7,250 votes by Siegelman was enough to give him a slim state-wide victory, which was reported as such by the AP.

But two minutes later, at 11:06 p.m., the results were changed again, reducing Siegelman’s total back down to 12,736, a decrease of 6,334 votes, which gave the election back to Riley. William Pfeifer, the Baldwin County Chairman of the Democratic Party, was just outside the tabulating room at 11:04 when the second report, giving Siegelman the victory, was announced. But he didn’t find out about the reversal until he returned home and turned on the news.

Warren County, Ohio, 2004 Presidential election
Following poll closing on Election Day 2004, election officials in Warren County Ohio made the decision to tabulate the Warren County votes in private, locking reporters and other interested parties out of the administration building. Their first excuse for doing this was that the presence of reporters could interfere with the vote tabulation. Later, they cited a “national security emergency” for their decision. They claimed that they learned of this “national security emergency” from the FBI – a claim that was soon denied by the FBI. Nor would the official who explained the reason for the lockdown identify the FBI agent who allegedly notified him of the “national security emergency”.

It may be significant that this event occurred towards the end of the evening, when it still looked very much as if Kerry would win Ohio. By the time the Warren County votes had been “counted”, victory had all but slipped away from the Kerry/Edwards ticket.

There was never an investigation of this incident by either the Ohio or federal government.

Cuyahoga County, Ohio, 2004 Presidential election
After much studying of the vote in Cleveland, I came to suspect that many thousands of votes were deleted from that heavily Democratic city, as discussed in this thread. My initial suspicions were aroused because of an anomalous relationship between voter turnout in Cleveland and the number of machines per voter, as discussed in Section IV, page 3, of the DNC report on the Ohio election, and because of very low turnout in many of Cleveland’s precincts, as initially reported by Richard Hayes Phillips. My suspicion was further aroused when I realized that the very low voter turnout in Cleveland was reported despite the fact that voting lines were quite long throughout much of the city, as described in this thread. And the observation by a Green Party observer to the Ohio recount of several anomalies didn’t serve to allay my suspicions.

When I tried to ascertain pre-tabulator vote counts for Cleveland I couldn’t find anyone who knew what they were. I contacted Michael Vu, the Director of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, to request those counts from him, and he promised to look for them, but he repeatedly failed to get back with me on this.

So finally, after discussing this issue with fellow DUer and Ohioan, adagiopop, he undertook an effort to obtain pre-calculator vote counts from Cuyahoga County. His initial efforts at this task identified several probable anomalies, as described in this thread. However, adagiopop was never able to complete that investigation.


Did the examples noted above involve manipulation of county central tabulators?

We will never know for sure whether or not the above noted examples actually involved central tabulator manipulation. There are two reasons for this. First, no valid recount was ever conducted in any of these elections. No recount at all was ever conducted in Baldwin County in 2002, despite the very suspicious circumstances and requests for a recount by the losing party, Don Siegelman. A recount was performed for the 2004 Ohio Presidential election, but it was not conducted according to rules designed to ensure an accurate recount, resulting in the sentencing of two election workers in Cuyahoga County for rigging the recount.

The other reason why we will never know whether central tabulator manipulation occurred in these (or other) cases is that there was no effort made at the time of poll closings to obtain precinct level pre-tabulator vote counts, for comparison with post-tabulator counts. As I noted above, I tried to do that for the 2004 Presidential election in Cuyahoga County, but that was several months after the election, the trail had run dry, and it was not possible to complete a full investigation (though a preliminary investigation resulted in numerous mismatches between pre- and post-calculator counts.)

I did speak with Ellen Theisen of Voters Unite! to ask her advice on how I could better obtain pre-tabulator counts. She told me that persons interested in investigating the 2004 election were having a hell of a time trying to get pre-tabulator vote counts from anywhere in the country. Those efforts had been almost universally unsuccessful.


How central tabulator fraud can be quickly identified and addressed

This is not rocket science. The only thing that the county central tabulators do (or rather, are supposed to do) is add up the votes from all the precincts in the county, to arrive at a final county total.

The pre-tabulator counts at the precinct level are generally made available to interested parties in all precincts, following poll closing, as soon as or shortly after the vote counts in the precinct are tabulated. Election laws on this matter differ from one jurisdiction to another. In Montgomery County, Maryland, where I have worked as a poll watcher, the results are posted at the precinct after the precinct votes are tabulated. I could be wrong about this, but I believe that there are few if any precincts in our country where the pre-tabulator counts would or could be legally withheld from the public.

If just one volunteer could be recruited for every precinct in states where close elections for President or other major offices are expected, we could obtain pre-tabulator counts for President (or other offices too) for those precincts. It would be a simple matter then, for any state or county results that seemed suspicious, to quickly compare pre-tabulator to post-tabulator counts as soon as the official results are announced. Any major discrepancies would immediately point to likely sources of fraud via manipulation of the post-tabulator count. Not only that, but the approximate magnitude of the manipulated votes would also be immediately apparent. Given that information, in a close election, a Presidential candidate would be foolish to concede the election until the discrepancies could be further investigated.